Excellent weekend
Nov. 9th, 2009 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livFriday was really horrible, running round town trying to do an errand which I thought would be simple but ended up being a long drawn-out, fruitless and very damp quest for an object which essentially isn't for sale (a replacement power adapter for my Eee netbook). So I got home and I was cold and tired and grumpy, and I decided I couldn't face going back out into the rain to go to shul. So I had a really relaxed evening at home, eating pasta with tasty mushroom sauce, and writing some backlogged posts, and drinking tea and getting myself into a more shabbat-like mood.
AF's parents very kindly offered to drive me to the Cheshire synagogue, which is a lovely drive through countryside looking extra pretty in the autumn sunlight. And the community is really lovely, welcoming and friendly without being overbearing. I enjoyed the service, and there was a really impressive kiddush (making up for the fact that it would otherwise have been awkward to fit lunch into the day). There was a new discussion group starting up, and we had a mostly cool and energizing debate about the opening of Pirke Avot and where do we as Reform Jews look for religious authority. The less cool bits were several of the participants simply venting their resentment at a local Orthodox community which has swung heavily to the right in recent years and treated them badly. I sympathize very much and it does sound like this community is being really thoughtless; in fact one of the things about Cheshire Reform is that it has a high proportion of ex-Orthodox folk rejected by their neighbouring community, who are shaping a really interesting community which is to the right of the Reform spectrum in terms of observance but full of people who are really energized and excited by the possibilities of Progressive Judaism. However, it is not at all fair to generalize from this that "Orthodoxy" is all about pilpul and being excessively legalistic and telling people they can't do things.
I managed to catch the train in plenty of time, and speedily zoomed to London, and then fought my way through slightly scary Saturday night crowds to get to the incredibly exciting Amazonian housewarming. That was just about the ideal party, absolutely loads of lovely people that I either strongly wanted to talk to or was delighted to meet, and no expectation of doing anything beyond having lots of fun conversations. I did something I never do, which is stay till the bitter end (2 am or so) when we really had to leave cos even the hosts were falling asleep. By that time I was somewhat giggly with tiredness and being hyper from extrovert energy, but never mind. Many, many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pplfichi for waiting up for us!
Stayed over atdoseybat's parents' place, and woke up surprising early for a fun conversation with the Batmother. Then to ewtikins' church to seize the opportunity of hearing her perform for the first time. It wasn't exactly a concert, more providing background music while the community mingled, but it had the Serpent and some really tasty cake and was generally cool. The Batmother fed us a truly fantastic lunch, and I finally had a chance for some proper conversation with doseybat, over lovely Russian lemon tea. I felt slightly sorry for our respective sweeties as Bat and I have known eachother forever and were getting deep into women in academia rants, but hey.
khalinche joined us for a walk round the heath in the last of the daylight, then we somehow managed to acquire hairyears and pseudomonas and briefly fluffymark and his sweetie and crammed into the wonderful Batflat for more tea. I travelled back to Stoke-on-Trent First Class due to ticket booking annoyance, but that did mean that having internet on tap made up for the train being very late.
But yes, that was very well worth the slightly excessive trip to London. And now I know that I can do London over a weekend, if there's a good enough motivation, I hope to get back into seeing some of my circle there more regularly.
AF's parents very kindly offered to drive me to the Cheshire synagogue, which is a lovely drive through countryside looking extra pretty in the autumn sunlight. And the community is really lovely, welcoming and friendly without being overbearing. I enjoyed the service, and there was a really impressive kiddush (making up for the fact that it would otherwise have been awkward to fit lunch into the day). There was a new discussion group starting up, and we had a mostly cool and energizing debate about the opening of Pirke Avot and where do we as Reform Jews look for religious authority. The less cool bits were several of the participants simply venting their resentment at a local Orthodox community which has swung heavily to the right in recent years and treated them badly. I sympathize very much and it does sound like this community is being really thoughtless; in fact one of the things about Cheshire Reform is that it has a high proportion of ex-Orthodox folk rejected by their neighbouring community, who are shaping a really interesting community which is to the right of the Reform spectrum in terms of observance but full of people who are really energized and excited by the possibilities of Progressive Judaism. However, it is not at all fair to generalize from this that "Orthodoxy" is all about pilpul and being excessively legalistic and telling people they can't do things.
I managed to catch the train in plenty of time, and speedily zoomed to London, and then fought my way through slightly scary Saturday night crowds to get to the incredibly exciting Amazonian housewarming. That was just about the ideal party, absolutely loads of lovely people that I either strongly wanted to talk to or was delighted to meet, and no expectation of doing anything beyond having lots of fun conversations. I did something I never do, which is stay till the bitter end (2 am or so) when we really had to leave cos even the hosts were falling asleep. By that time I was somewhat giggly with tiredness and being hyper from extrovert energy, but never mind. Many, many thanks to
pplfichi for waiting up for us! Stayed over at
doseybat's parents' place, and woke up surprising early for a fun conversation with the Batmother. Then to ewtikins' church to seize the opportunity of hearing her perform for the first time. It wasn't exactly a concert, more providing background music while the community mingled, but it had the Serpent and some really tasty cake and was generally cool. The Batmother fed us a truly fantastic lunch, and I finally had a chance for some proper conversation with doseybat, over lovely Russian lemon tea. I felt slightly sorry for our respective sweeties as Bat and I have known eachother forever and were getting deep into women in academia rants, but hey. khalinche joined us for a walk round the heath in the last of the daylight, then we somehow managed to acquire hairyears and pseudomonas and briefly fluffymark and his sweetie and crammed into the wonderful Batflat for more tea. I travelled back to Stoke-on-Trent First Class due to ticket booking annoyance, but that did mean that having internet on tap made up for the train being very late.But yes, that was very well worth the slightly excessive trip to London. And now I know that I can do London over a weekend, if there's a good enough motivation, I hope to get back into seeing some of my circle there more regularly.
