Three weekends
Jul. 20th, 2009 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livOK, so here's some of the stuff I haven't had time to write about for the last several weeks:
The 4th July weekend was a long holiday, we had Friday off from Yeshiva. We ended up spending quite a lot of our three day weekend catching up on sleep and the internet, with a bit of shul attendance. Friday night was the trendy left-wing Orthodox place, which means they sorta kinda accept women's participation and they even sorta kinda have a woman rabbi, though she's not The Rabbi and she doesn't get to use the title. But they do have very lovely music and a beautiful shul with a huge glass window opening onto a magnificent tree, and it was very relaxing to watch the sunset through the leaves and fall into the music. Saturday morning and Saturday evening we were athatam_soferet's regular Conservative shul, which actually is egal and very friendly and a good community as well as a good place to pray. And we came back from services and watched the fireworks from the flat which is high enough up to have a good view.
Sunday was a little adventure:hatam_soferet has contacts who know about a shul that is closing to merge with another local community, and they wanted to donate their library to a good cause, so she matched them up with my Progressive communities in Scandinavia. So we had to go to a small town in Connecticut to collect this donation of bookies. hatam_soferet's friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
boroparkpyro very kindly agreed to be our driver, so we hired a car and headed northwards. I really enjoyed the chance to go for a drive outside the city, especially with boroparkpyro for a guide as he knows lots about linguistics and local geography and history. Anyway suburban Connecticut is a whole different experience of America from what I've seen so far. And the closing shul, wow, it's located in a colonial mansion with its own ballroom and is generally rather stunning. It was more driving than I'd usually think of as reasonable for a day trip, though, being about 250 miles round trip.
The following weekend I went straight from class to the airport and from there to Montreal to seerysmiel. I stopped on the way in Queens, at daharyn's recommendation, to get something to eat, and found a Tibetan place which served me interesting and filling soup. I had a completely wonderful and extremely relaxing weekend chez rysmiel (in spite of the flying part). rysmiel fed me some delicious food, (sushi, north American diner style, and Greek, with mindblowingly good icecream for snacks), and talked me into buying waaaay too many books again, and we enjoyed some amazingly dramatic storms and had lots of really good conversations, yay. New York transport was partly disrupted for weekend repairs when I came back, and being inexperienced I got a little lost trying to find alternative routes. But part of the getting lost involved walking a chunk of the width of 125th St, which is fascinating, it hardly seems the same city as a few blocks further down. There was among other things an apparently spontaneous memorial to Michael Jackson on the barriers around a building site.
This weekend that's just gone was a bit more relaxed again, though still somewhat busy. We spent Friday afternoon at Sotheby's, appreciating the really world class collection they have of rare, mostly printed, Judaica they are trying to sell just now. That meant coming back in the middle of Friday afternoon rush hour, but ashatam_soferet pointed out, that's also part of the New York experience! And the evening was spent in a state of glorious post-week vegetating, eating roasted vegetables and drinking tea and watching another marvellous thunderstorm. Saturday we were at shul in the morning, then lunch with a friend of hatam_soferet's who is generally wonderful, and that went on so long that I had to start getting ready for the concert as soon as I got home. And yesterday we sorted through all the books from the shul, a fantastic mix of treasures and trash and everything in between. We found a set of tefillin and a badge making machine as well as some very good books that will do Scandinavia a lot of good. Also some stunningly awful Manuals for Jewish Youth covering most of the 20th century.
Also there has been lots and lots and lots of learning, which is going to need to be a separate post or six. Life is good, though absolutely manic. Also, I am not doing brilliantly with communication; the rare moments when I am contactable, I sometimes get a bit overwhelmed with six people all trying to talk to me at once by multiple media. I am truly happy and flattered that so many people want to talk to me, but I have ended up running off in the middle of conversations simply due to having too many inputs quite a few times. I am sorry if you're one of the people I did that too, and also sorry for not being very good at initiating emails, blog comments or other communications you might be expecting from me.
The 4th July weekend was a long holiday, we had Friday off from Yeshiva. We ended up spending quite a lot of our three day weekend catching up on sleep and the internet, with a bit of shul attendance. Friday night was the trendy left-wing Orthodox place, which means they sorta kinda accept women's participation and they even sorta kinda have a woman rabbi, though she's not The Rabbi and she doesn't get to use the title. But they do have very lovely music and a beautiful shul with a huge glass window opening onto a magnificent tree, and it was very relaxing to watch the sunset through the leaves and fall into the music. Saturday morning and Saturday evening we were at
hatam_soferet's regular Conservative shul, which actually is egal and very friendly and a good community as well as a good place to pray. And we came back from services and watched the fireworks from the flat which is high enough up to have a good view. Sunday was a little adventure:
hatam_soferet has contacts who know about a shul that is closing to merge with another local community, and they wanted to donate their library to a good cause, so she matched them up with my Progressive communities in Scandinavia. So we had to go to a small town in Connecticut to collect this donation of bookies. hatam_soferet's friend boroparkpyro very kindly agreed to be our driver, so we hired a car and headed northwards. I really enjoyed the chance to go for a drive outside the city, especially with boroparkpyro for a guide as he knows lots about linguistics and local geography and history. Anyway suburban Connecticut is a whole different experience of America from what I've seen so far. And the closing shul, wow, it's located in a colonial mansion with its own ballroom and is generally rather stunning. It was more driving than I'd usually think of as reasonable for a day trip, though, being about 250 miles round trip. The following weekend I went straight from class to the airport and from there to Montreal to see
rysmiel. I stopped on the way in Queens, at daharyn's recommendation, to get something to eat, and found a Tibetan place which served me interesting and filling soup. I had a completely wonderful and extremely relaxing weekend chez rysmiel (in spite of the flying part). rysmiel fed me some delicious food, (sushi, north American diner style, and Greek, with mindblowingly good icecream for snacks), and talked me into buying waaaay too many books again, and we enjoyed some amazingly dramatic storms and had lots of really good conversations, yay. New York transport was partly disrupted for weekend repairs when I came back, and being inexperienced I got a little lost trying to find alternative routes. But part of the getting lost involved walking a chunk of the width of 125th St, which is fascinating, it hardly seems the same city as a few blocks further down. There was among other things an apparently spontaneous memorial to Michael Jackson on the barriers around a building site. This weekend that's just gone was a bit more relaxed again, though still somewhat busy. We spent Friday afternoon at Sotheby's, appreciating the really world class collection they have of rare, mostly printed, Judaica they are trying to sell just now. That meant coming back in the middle of Friday afternoon rush hour, but as
hatam_soferet pointed out, that's also part of the New York experience! And the evening was spent in a state of glorious post-week vegetating, eating roasted vegetables and drinking tea and watching another marvellous thunderstorm. Saturday we were at shul in the morning, then lunch with a friend of hatam_soferet's who is generally wonderful, and that went on so long that I had to start getting ready for the concert as soon as I got home. And yesterday we sorted through all the books from the shul, a fantastic mix of treasures and trash and everything in between. We found a set of tefillin and a badge making machine as well as some very good books that will do Scandinavia a lot of good. Also some stunningly awful Manuals for Jewish Youth covering most of the 20th century.Also there has been lots and lots and lots of learning, which is going to need to be a separate post or six. Life is good, though absolutely manic. Also, I am not doing brilliantly with communication; the rare moments when I am contactable, I sometimes get a bit overwhelmed with six people all trying to talk to me at once by multiple media. I am truly happy and flattered that so many people want to talk to me, but I have ended up running off in the middle of conversations simply due to having too many inputs quite a few times. I am sorry if you're one of the people I did that too, and also sorry for not being very good at initiating emails, blog comments or other communications you might be expecting from me.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-21 01:28 am (UTC)I keep meaning to visit the city for a weekend so I can daven at BJ -- I don't know that it's going to be exactly my cup of tea, but from all accounts it's not quite like anywhere else in the world, and I am eager to see how they do Shabbat. One of these months, I'm sure. :-)