Somebody said today is World Frog Day (who knew? not I!), and with Pesach coming up soon that led to some discussion of the second plague, and somebody linked to a passage in the talmud about it and I have questions:

Rabbi Akiva says: It was one frog, and it spawned and filled the entire land of Egypt with frogs. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya said to him: Akiva, what are you doing occupying yourself with the study of aggada (stories)? This is not your field of expertise. [...] Rather, the verse is to be understood as follows: It was one frog; it whistled to the other frogs, and they all came after it. (Sanhedrin 67b)

(Convention: the parts in bold are in the original text; the rest is editorial elucidation. The talmud's discussions are often quite compact.)

If I'm reading this correctly, Rabbi Elazar's objection to Rabbi Akiva's statement isn't the claim that there was one frog that then produced more. Rabbi Elazar is fine with the "one original frog" idea. No, he's disputing how the other frogs got there; Akiva says the first frog spawned them, while Elazar says it summoned them.

Rashi elaborates Elazar's complaint: Akiva should refrain from stories about frogs and focus on more serious stuff, like laws of plagues and afflictions, that Akiva actually knows something about. Which makes me wonder what any of them are saying about Elazar's knowledge, since it's apparently ok for Elazar to talk about this stuff. This is Elazar ben Azariah, who at the age of 18 was miraculously given white hair overnight so that the other sages would take him seriously as (briefly) the head of the Sanhedrin. It's not like he's some nobody who doesn't know more "serious" stuff and is only equipped for stories.

What a peculiar passage.

And also: world frog day? Really? (Search engines produce hits. And I found it on a list on Wikipedia, for what that's worth.)

My synagogue has gone through some changes in the last couple years, on top of the changes forced on all of us by the pandemic. Last year we hired a new rabbi and this year we hired a new cantor, and in-person services are more of a thing than they were, so lots of stuff is new together.

The rabbi and the cantor work well together. I already knew this from the morning minyan, but it also carried over to the formal high-holy-day services with all their extra stuff. Later, when all the holidays are over (they aren't yet), I want to ask the rabbi about some of the choices he made, but it was generally fine. It was nice to be together again.

I was asked to read torah, even though I said I'd pretty much have to memorize it because of the vision issues that are why I stopped reading torah on Shabbat. The readings for Rosh Hashana aren't that long, so I could memorize it, and anyway I don't know the special trope for the day so I was going to have to learn the music by rote anyway. That all went fine. I had the last aliyah and I noticed that other people were translating after their readings, so I followed suit on the spur of the moment. Later I realized that most of the others were reading translations, not doing it on the fly. (I'm not fluent in Hebrew, but I knew this part.) Ironically, I did need to look at the scroll for that part and there were some stumbles as a result, but on Yom Kippur several people stopped me to tell me how much they liked my RH reading, with specific compliments. Wow.

We have programming all day on Yom Kippur so you don't have to leave if you don't want to. The "learning" slot had two class options, fewer than in the past but I think this worked together. I went to a very good class on the Vidui (confessional) prayer, taught by someone who used to be our associate rabbi 15-20 years ago. (He moved away for another pulpit and returned to Pittsburgh a couple years ago, taking an educational position rather than a pulpit.) We did a close reading of the text compared to the translation in our prayerbook and talked a lot about the word aval.

In some years I've gotten to the end of Yom Kippur on a high, feeling scrubbed clean and energized and stuff. That didn't happen this year. I think some of that is due to some liturgical choices they made. I wonder how much of it is due to having finally been to a traditional Yom Kippur service (last two years) and now I'm more keenly aware of the differences.

For festivals we combine with another congregation and Sukkot was there not here. "There" is a two-mile walk each way for me, so I went to Beth Shalom, a Conservative congregation that also has an occasional musical Shabbat evening service that I've gone to. The people there were very welcoming, the service was complete and yet efficient, and the leaders and speakers were good. I was surprised to be offered an honor (carrying the first torah scroll). I had pleasant conversations with several people I didn't know at the kiddush after. I wonder if I should try to go there next Yom Kippur.

We've been able to have most of our meals in the sukkah this week, though a couple got rained out. This late in the year I didn't have expectations.

Not for Lightweights by Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher) just showed up in my feed. (It looks like a repost; not sure when he wrote it.) He talks about using a sabbatical from his job as a pastor to explore other churches, some quite different from his own. In this post he talks about going to a Byzantine Orthodox service. What he wrote resonated for me:

Pews? We don’t need no stinking pews! Providing seats for worshipers is SO 14th century. Gorgeous Byzantine art, commissioned from a famous artist in Bulgaria. Fully robed priests with censors (those swinging incense thingies). Long, complex readings and chants that went on and on and on. And every one of them packed full of complex, theological ideas. It was like they were ripping raw chunks of theology out of ancient creeds and throwing them by the handfuls into the congregation. And just to make sure it wasn’t too easy for us, everything was read in a monotone voice and at the speed of an auctioneer. [...]

After 50 minutes Shelby leaned over and asked how much longer the service would be. I was trying to keep from locking my knees because my thighs had gotten numb. I showed her the book [which was a summary/guide, not complete text]. We were on page 15. I flipped through the remaining 25 pages to show her how much more there was. Her mouth fell open. [...]

In a day when user-friendly is the byword of everything from churches to software, here was worship that asked something of me. No, DEMANDED something of me.

When I started attending synagogue services, I sometimes found myself at Orthodox or Conservative services. I could barely read Hebrew, and what I could read, I read very slowly. I sure wasn't keeping up. When I got lost, I would find the next kaddish in the book and listen for it to get back on track. (Kaddish shows up a lot of times in a traditional service.) Some things I knew well enough to say; most went over my head. Each time I went I learned a little more. I am still not fluent in the traditional service, though I like to think I would be had I joined a traditional congregation instead of a Reform one.

The Reform movement, for all the good it does in other areas, fails profoundly in supporting prayer growth. That's because the norm is to aim for the lowest common denominator. It's not just that they removed a lot of stuff from the service; it's that what they kept they still simplify. If you're lucky the simplification is just to read a prayer in English, but it's more likely to be a song containing a single phrase from the prayer or, too often, a loosely-related creative English reading. They do this in the name of being welcoming, to make sure everybody there can have a comfortable experience, to make sure no one has to work.

We lose so much by doing this. By trying to make everybody completely comfortable, we impede growth. Growth means going beyond what you already know. It means stretching. It means being temporarily less comfortable.

I'm not saying I want to spend three hours every Shabbat morning listening to rapidly-mumbled Hebrew I don't understand (even though we get to sit for a lot of it). But I want to grow. I want to increase my fluency. And I want to plumb the depths of our actual tradition before ditching that in favor of some modern English poetry that too often misses the mark. There is so much to learn, and every time my congregation replaces a Hebrew prayer with something else, I feel the loss of support from my community in doing that growth.

My Shabbat morning minyan has more traditional content than the norm for Reform, and it was hard-won. Our previous rabbi built that community competence over three decades; when we got a new rabbi who sometimes switched to English for parts we actually know, I took him aside and said "please don't take away the parts we worked for" (and he listened). So far, maybe because he's comparatively new, he hasn't pushed us add more, and sometimes new songs take away some parts and then catch on and now we're singing one line where we used to do a prayer and we've lost another one. And maybe it's a very nice song but it's still a move away from engaging with the prayerbook's traditional content. While I enjoy singing and learning new music, I feel the loss when this happens without some offsetting increase.

I could, I assume, get the growth I seek by going to a traditional synagogue every Shabbat -- it might take years, but just as I went from sounding out basic prayers to reading and comprehending them at speed through repetition and concentration, I assume it would happen there too. I wish I had a path for that growth within my current community. I wish it were considered more acceptable to ask people to work a little, to stretch gradually. If we're there for God -- and I acknowledge that not everybody is -- then we should want to try to do more, shouldn't we?

I've taken classes from Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) before and even written about some of them. The session on self-driving cars and priorities in saving lives still sticks with me (and was relevant in the Hadar class on medical triage). I've just signed up for Beyond Right: The Values that Shape Judaism's Civil Code, which has the following description (stashing here for my future reference in case that link stops working):

Talmudic analysis and mind-bending logic have long been a hallmark of Jewish scholarship. But buried beneath much of the discussion and legalese are core Jewish values that fuel so much of the debate. This course examines a number of key legal issues that disclose fundamental ethical considerations that serve as the engine of Jewish civil law.

1. Beyond Good Neighbors: Most laws are designed to protect the rights of people and their property. But Judaism’s civil code is driven by a different goal. Explore how laws of damages and disputes support a uniquely Jewish view of the human mission.

2. Beyond Restitution: In seeking to restore the rights of plaintiffs, Jewish courts actively assist offenders in achieving full repentance too. Why? Discover the advantage of properly undoing damage over mere compensation.

3. Beyond Taking Offense: You may feel a moral urge to speak up against an offensive action. But might you have a legal responsibility to deter someone from certain behaviors? Judaism says: Yes. In this lesson, we discuss why and when.

4. Beyond Personal Freedom: With 613 commandments in the Torah and myriad rules expounded in the Talmud, can Judaism ever be called “liberating”? Let’s delve into the Exodus, the covenant, and the ways in which laws can lead to the purest human freedom.

5. Beyond Lawful Ownership: Is the claim of ownership anything more than a subjective social agreement? A foundation of Chassidic thought is that material possessions contain spiritual energy that is specific to their owners. Let’s consider the owner’s rights and responsibilities through this lens.

6. Beyond Presumption of Innocence: While a presumption of innocence can protect defendants from liability, it is not quite a declaration of uprightness. Jewish law goes so far as to presume every person’s core goodness. See how this view can lead us to a truly upright world.

Lesson 5 seems a little out of place, just from that description, but we'll see how it plays out.

JLI produces classes but doesn't conduct them directly. I'll be attending a locally-taught class using their materials and syllabus (same teacher as the previous classes I've taken). Past classes have been discussion-heavy and this class offers a Zoom option, so I'm not sure how that'll be managed. We'll see. (My understanding is that people can attend our session via Zoom, not that there will be a separate Zoom-only session.)

Them: Do you have room at your seder for two more?

Me: Of course.

Them: We don't want to impose.

Me: We'd love the company.

Them: Are you sure? We don't want you to have to cook extra at the last minute.

Me: "Let all who are hungry come and eat." Also, I cook on the assumption that Eliyahu and his entourage will appear at the door. It's fine.

(And if Eliyahu doesn't show up, I have food for lunch the next day.)