At Sukkot services on Monday I heard a teaching I liked, and I forgot to include it in my earlier Sukkot post. I heard this from Rabbi Yisroel Altein, who taught it in the name of the last Lubavhicer rebbe.

On Sukkot we take up the "four species"; this is one of the obligatory mitzvot of the holiday. The rabbis (I'm not sure where and he didn't say) compare the four species to four types of Jews:

• The etrog (this is a citrus fruit) has both good taste and good fragrance; this is like a Jew who both has learning and performs mitzvot.

• The myrtle has fragrance but is inedible and the palm is edible but has no fragrance. One of these represents a Jew with learning but no mitzvot, and one represents a Jew with mitzvot but no learning (one who does the mitzvot because he's been instructed to, but lacks deeper torah knowledge).

• The willow has neither fragrance nor taste, and represents a Jew with neither learning nor mitzvot.

But, the rabbi said, just as you can only perform the Sukkot mitzvah if you have all four -- if you're missing one of them it's not kosher -- we as a community aren't complete if we don't include all four types of Jews. Not, heaven forbid, that we should encourage people to stop learning or doing mitzvot but, rather, that there are people with neither, and they are still Jews and deserving of being included in the community.

Daf Yomi:

Some found items belong to the finder; others must be announced so that the owner has a chance to reclaim them. In a mishna a few pages back, R' Meir listed items that the finder can keep: scattered fruit, scattered coins, small sheaves in a public thoroughfare, round cakes of pressed figs, baker's loaves, strings of fishes, pieces of meat, fleeces of wool brought from the countryside, bundles of flax. R' Yehudah, however, said that anything with something unusual about it cannot be kept (for example a loaf of bread containing money).

That was Monday. The next mishna, on today's daf, considers the other side, saying that the following must always be announced: fruit in a vessel (or a vessel by itself), money in a purse (or a purse by itself), heaps of fruit (that is, it was placed not dropped), heaps of coins, three coins stacked, bundles of sheaves in private premises, home-made loaves, fleeces of wool from the craftsman's workshop, jars of wine, jars of oil. (21a, 24b)

What are the principles at play here? One is identifiability; there is no way to prove ownership of scattered coins and all baker's loaves look the same. Another is intent; items neatly stacked, even if in small quantity, were put there, so we presume that the owner is coming back for them. Another is whether, upon learning that he's lost something, a person searches for it or gives up hope of recovery. (The rabbis say that small sheaves in the public road get trampled and destroyed, so people just accept the loss.)

I expect value to play in here too, but if so I'm surprised that a finder can keep (many) scattered coins but must announce a mere three if stacked, and that a finder can keep meat and fish but must announce an empty purse. But there's a lot of g'mara here that I haven't learned yet, so maybe this is addressed.

(A comment explains that for meat and fish, the person who lost them assumes they will have spoiled before he can find them.)

The high holy days went very well for me this year. It's hard to explain in words, but they did what they are supposed to do. I feel like I'm in a good place for 5777.

I co-led the Ruach service on both Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur mornings again (with the associate rabbi). That went well, and I was particularly tickled by the person who privately asked me if next year I could do it all by myself. (She likes the way I lead.) I pointed out that it would be rather awkward for me to bring that up with the folks in charge.

We started this service several years ago because the sanctuary service, still being done out of Gates of Repentance which has many deficiencies, was hard for some of us to engage with. It's not about formal music; I'm all about some of the formal music of the season. But it sometimes felt like we were being performed at instead of being invited in. So we started this service to do things differently. This year we bought the new machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh, for the whole congregation (previously we had enough copies for the Ruach service, and previous to that we used draft photocopies). And we've just concluded our first year with a real cantor, who is working hard to make the sanctuary service more engaging. So, it is possible that in the not-too-distant future we could get to a point where we no longer need this service. Some (like my fan from the previous paragraph) might think that's a bad thing for me, but I'd actually be delighted to bring more of the congregation to the level that our smaller cohort strives for. We shall see. None of this has been discussed yet; it's just ideas kicking around.

On Sukkot morning I went to Chabad. I met the Chabad rabbi a few years ago when I took what would be the first of (so far) three classes that I've taken from him. He's friendly and welcoming and he encourages women to learn. So I showed up (unannounced) and I felt welcome. There was one other woman there at the beginning, and we got two more by the end, with maybe 15 or 20 men. (Kind of hard to see with the mechitza and some left immediately after.) Most of us went to the sukkah after for a little food and drink, and the conversation was friendly. I chatted with a woman who's a cancer researcher (i.e. she works, in a professional position) and we talked about technology and medicine and conducting clinical trials and stuff.

I only had one problem. Well, two I guess -- I can never keep up with Orthodox prayer; I'm just not that fast. So that wasn't unexpected. But the other was the language barrier. Not Hebrew; while I'm by no means fluent I do ok there. No, I mean that even though they were praying in Hebrew I found it really hard to follow because of pronunciation. There were times when I knew exactly what words I should be hearing, had the siddur in front of me -- and couldn't match up what I was hearing with what I was reading. I wouldn't have expected that to be the steepest learning curve...

(This isn't just about Ashkenazi versus Sephardi pronunciation; I've got a reasonable handle on that. Chabad seems to change vowels compared to other Ashkenazim, so that's two steps removed for me and my Sephardi pronunciation.)

This Chabad, unfortunately, doesn't have their own Friday-night services; part of the reason I'd gone was to scout for alternatives to what are often unsatisfying Friday services at my own synagogue. Bummer. But there will be other occasions to visit; I went on Sukkot because my congregation and another join forces for the festivals, alternating locations, and I wasn't interested in walking two miles each way to the other synagogue.

I realized today what I need for my sukkah for next year: cable ties.

Not for the sukkah itself, but for the lights. I use strings of lights of the "plug one into the end of another" variety, to make a long chain of them, but they all lead with a fairly long expanse of cord without lights. That makes sense for the first set of lights in a series, if they're assuming these would be plugged into a wall somewhere (instead of my outdoor-rated heavy-duty extension cord run from the garage), but the result is expanses of non-light or wrapping up that extra cord length somehow. I wrapped up the extra cord length in a suboptimal manner, and then remembered that a solution exists.

Onto the shopping list, then.

Sukkot starts pretty soon here, so chag sameach to all who are celebrating.

I drink quite a bit of caffeine, which poses a problem come Yom Kippur each year because of the 25-hour fast (food and drink). Every year I start ramping down the caffeine on Rosh Hashana (10 days earlier), try to reach zero caffeine the day before Yom Kippur, and soldier through. But I always get a caffeine headache anyway. Somebody once suggested that I needed to be at zero caffeine for more like three days, which I haven't managed to do yet. (Yes, I admit my substance addition. Moving on...)

Monday night we were wondering how quickly caffeine leaves the body anyway, and Dani found this article. Lookie here (emphasis mine):

The dosage of caffeine consumed can impact how long it stays in a person’s system. Someone who ingests low dose (especially relative to their body mass) should clear caffeine from their body quicker than someone who ingests a high dose. Though other factors play a prominent role in clearance, the body can only metabolize and excrete a set amount of caffeine at a time; if this threshold is exceeded – metabolism and clearance is compromised. [...] A heavy caffeine consumer may ingest over 400 mg per day (equivalent to 4 cups of coffee). At this point, enzymes in the liver may be overtaxed and more caffeine (and its metabolites) may accumulate within the body. This accumulation may prevent efficient clearance and result in reabsorption, prolonging excretion times relative to dosage consumed.

Oh really? I had never considered the possibility that one could slow down caffeine loss by overloading. This, I decided, called for science.

Tuesday I drank three cups of coffee, about 12oz of iced tea (equivalent of two teabags), two cans of Coke Zero (Cherry, if we're being precise), about 12oz of apple cider, and about six cups of water. I ate as I normally do in advance of the fast. Then at dinner I had a glass of Coke Zero (maybe 8oz?), followed by a glass of orange juice and a glass of water.

This should be sounding alarm bells to most people experienced with Yom Kippur. All of this is in extreme contrast to the near-universal advice one hears about caffeine and fasting. Possibly that advice is geared more toward the folks who drink a couple cups of coffee a day; I don't know. Also, caffeine is a diuretic so I was concerned about thirst, even with all the water/juice.

But I am here to report that I did not get a caffeine headache today, and I didn't feel any more thirsty than I usually do. In fact, after some thirst pangs this morning, I pretty much didn't notice thirst for the rest of the day. (Also: yes, I slept as well as I usually do on Yom Kippur last night.)

Wow. It's only the one data point, so further research is called for, but initial research results show promise.

(Monday night we also discovered the existence of caffeine patches -- like those nicotine patches smokers wear, but for caffeine -- but there was no way to get some in time.)