![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI didn't get much job hunting done this week, but never mind.
A friend of my mother's lost her father earlier this week. For various reasons the funeral ended up being on Wednesday, and in Brighton. My parents couldn't go, because they had unmissable commitments here. My siblings (who actually live in Brighton) couldn't go, because P'tite Soeur was working and Screwy was in Germany. So that meant it was my job. I am glad I went, it was the right thing to do, but it involved nearly 8 hours' travelling between inefficient trains and getting caught in a traffic jam when someone gave me a lift back to Cambridge. Also, I had to wear evil shoes all day, which never helps.
Anyway, having spent the whole summer getting my head round the Orthodox way of looking at things, my new-found tolerance was almost spoiled by attending an Orthodox funeral. The idea of separating sexes during a funeral seems really barbaric to me. Really, if a husband and wife, or brother and sister dealing with the very recent loss of a parent want to give eachother a reassuring squeeze, you'd have to be absolutely perverse to see that as inappropriately sexual. And when it comes to denying women the right to participate in mourning rituals, I really can't accept that. Even the most sexist person ever would acknowledge that women are just as grieved by losing a parent (let alone a child or spouse) as men.
In this particular case, it was the daughter and granddaughter who were the most religious of the family, and the ones who most needed to be reciting the mourners' prayer and symbolically burying the body. The sons and sons-in-law are not regular shul-goers and found the whole thing embarrassing rather than comforting. To make it worse, the rabbi got impatient with them when they stumbled over the difficult and unfamiliar Aramaic prayer, but that's not an Orthodox thing, that's a lack of compassion thing.
Also, the Orthodox liturgy is kind of awful. It's full of "don't you dare question God" and even includes that line from Job,
Then I spent pretty much all of yesterday and today proof-reading an ex-colleague's PhD thesis. That's a time-consuming job, but I know it will make a big difference to her to get some help with the language.
On the positive side, I had a lovely time withpseudomonas on Tuesday, using the University Library for actual research (it's not as glamorous as the Bodleian, but still pretty nice!). We dropped into the little Darwin exhibition while we were there, and then had (indifferent) cream tea in Tatties, and then joined jack for supper at the Waterman, which has some of the best pub food I've eaten outside the Pembury recently. Ended up at games evening again, where I played Blokus and Articulate and met even more lovely people I hadn't spoken to the previous week.
A friend of my mother's lost her father earlier this week. For various reasons the funeral ended up being on Wednesday, and in Brighton. My parents couldn't go, because they had unmissable commitments here. My siblings (who actually live in Brighton) couldn't go, because P'tite Soeur was working and Screwy was in Germany. So that meant it was my job. I am glad I went, it was the right thing to do, but it involved nearly 8 hours' travelling between inefficient trains and getting caught in a traffic jam when someone gave me a lift back to Cambridge. Also, I had to wear evil shoes all day, which never helps.
Anyway, having spent the whole summer getting my head round the Orthodox way of looking at things, my new-found tolerance was almost spoiled by attending an Orthodox funeral. The idea of separating sexes during a funeral seems really barbaric to me. Really, if a husband and wife, or brother and sister dealing with the very recent loss of a parent want to give eachother a reassuring squeeze, you'd have to be absolutely perverse to see that as inappropriately sexual. And when it comes to denying women the right to participate in mourning rituals, I really can't accept that. Even the most sexist person ever would acknowledge that women are just as grieved by losing a parent (let alone a child or spouse) as men.
In this particular case, it was the daughter and granddaughter who were the most religious of the family, and the ones who most needed to be reciting the mourners' prayer and symbolically burying the body. The sons and sons-in-law are not regular shul-goers and found the whole thing embarrassing rather than comforting. To make it worse, the rabbi got impatient with them when they stumbled over the difficult and unfamiliar Aramaic prayer, but that's not an Orthodox thing, that's a lack of compassion thing.
Also, the Orthodox liturgy is kind of awful. It's full of "don't you dare question God" and even includes that line from Job,
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Well, if it weren't for the weird segregation thing I'd be fine with that, different people find different aspects of theology comforting.
Then I spent pretty much all of yesterday and today proof-reading an ex-colleague's PhD thesis. That's a time-consuming job, but I know it will make a big difference to her to get some help with the language.
On the positive side, I had a lovely time with
pseudomonas on Tuesday, using the University Library for actual research (it's not as glamorous as the Bodleian, but still pretty nice!). We dropped into the little Darwin exhibition while we were there, and then had (indifferent) cream tea in Tatties, and then joined jack for supper at the Waterman, which has some of the best pub food I've eaten outside the Pembury recently. Ended up at games evening again, where I played Blokus and Articulate and met even more lovely people I hadn't spoken to the previous week.