Jewish doings
Aug. 30th, 2008 10:56 pmThis weekend the Stockholm Progressive group invited movers and shakers from various Scandinavian communities to join us in Stockholm for brainstorming and networking and such. It was very successful; we'd thought we would have to get people warmed up and encourage mingling between the groups, but in fact everyone was so enthusiastic we could hardly get them to cease chatting long enough to make official announcements.
I led a little mini service Friday night, and gave a short talk about this week's Torah portion this morning. It went so well that both communities (the Norwegian contingent is one couple, the Danes have a fully fledged serious community with a budget and long term plans and everything) have invited me to come and visit them and lead services / educational events for them. This is very cool, except that the Danish crowd want me to lead their Passover Seder, and I'm really not sure I can do that. I have only been away from my family for one Pesach in my life, and I know I would be horribly homesick if I miss it. Also, it's going to be only a few weeks before the end of my contract, which is a bad time to be taking significant time off work (they want me to come the weekend before, and stay for most of a week). I have already half-promised I'm going to teach the same course I did this year, which might clash. So I'm really in a dilemma about whether I should agree to do this. It would be a fantastic opportunity and a huge favour to a community who really need support, but it would disrupt two quite important parts of my life.
I volunteered to make a mailing list where we could discuss future collaborations and keep communication relatively centralized. And now I find this is actually harder to do than I thought. So can anyone recommend me a system? I need: ( requirements )
Having finished the business, we went out to dinner at Fåfängan, mainly for the sake of the most amazing view of Stockholm and the harbour; as EBH warned us, the food is fairly mediocre. But all in all it was a delightful day, and there are some fascinating people running the various Progressive communities.
I led a little mini service Friday night, and gave a short talk about this week's Torah portion this morning. It went so well that both communities (the Norwegian contingent is one couple, the Danes have a fully fledged serious community with a budget and long term plans and everything) have invited me to come and visit them and lead services / educational events for them. This is very cool, except that the Danish crowd want me to lead their Passover Seder, and I'm really not sure I can do that. I have only been away from my family for one Pesach in my life, and I know I would be horribly homesick if I miss it. Also, it's going to be only a few weeks before the end of my contract, which is a bad time to be taking significant time off work (they want me to come the weekend before, and stay for most of a week). I have already half-promised I'm going to teach the same course I did this year, which might clash. So I'm really in a dilemma about whether I should agree to do this. It would be a fantastic opportunity and a huge favour to a community who really need support, but it would disrupt two quite important parts of my life.
I volunteered to make a mailing list where we could discuss future collaborations and keep communication relatively centralized. And now I find this is actually harder to do than I thought. So can anyone recommend me a system? I need: ( requirements )
Having finished the business, we went out to dinner at Fåfängan, mainly for the sake of the most amazing view of Stockholm and the harbour; as EBH warned us, the food is fairly mediocre. But all in all it was a delightful day, and there are some fascinating people running the various Progressive communities.
