What happened to that month?

[liv]

Eek, I seem to have accidentally abandoned DW for several weeks! I've been somewhat busy, and travelling, and had visitors. But mainly I've been feeling more in the mood for consuming than producing; I think it's partly that I've been blessed with some really great in person interactions recently, so I've felt less need to splurge my thought processes over the internet. Anyway, I am here and I am reading, just more lurking than usual.

It's been a really good few weeks, actually; I'm feeling refreshed and re-energized by taking odd days off and long weekends here and there, rather than a long summer holiday. Workwise, things have been relatively gentle anyway; I've put in a couple of grant applications, which is always stressful, but a lot of the process involves locking myself in a room with a computer and pouring out words (probably another reason I've been less post-ish, actually), rather than having to do things and meet people at specific times. No money yet, but it's all good experience. jack was very supportive and uncomplaining when I was in full deadline panic mode! And doing bits of admin for the upcoming resit exams and the section of the course I'm nominally running next term.

Weekends have included things like: hanging out with shreena, quizcustodet, loreid, kathrid and wychwood, eating tasty veggie food and drinking colourful drinks. Bringing our community's Torah scroll into a park in Stafford and being the explainer of Judaism to curious passers-by (it was really good fun talking to the Sikh contingent who have an instinctive grasp of what a holy book is). Following an urban walking trail from the centre of Stafford through a little wetland nature reserve, in the excellent company of jack and mathcathy, and coming home to play Dominion and eat curry.

End of July I attended a four-day intensive Talmud course. It was everything I hoped for, brain stretching and inspiring and full of good networking with the kind of young, keen, post-denominational Jewish crowd most useful for me to know. I should write it up properly; there was kind of an emerging theme of community and inclusivity versus boundaries, and it was just wonderful. I was in the advanced Talmud class with R Weiner, learning about laws for how you make a quorum if you don't quite have ten people. Edge cases like a slave, who doesn't count as a person but can be turned into a person by freeing him; a child, who doesn't count as a person but eventually transforms into one, and you have to define where exactly the borderline is, and a woman, who doesn't count as a person (and in most cases, her status can't change) but isn't exactly not one either. This of course ran smack into R Janner-Klausner's fascinating session on the Women at the Wall issue (Israeli women face increasingly violent antagonism for praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem). We looked at the original laws about women's participation, as well as when it's acceptable to use violence in a religious argument, and had a whistle-stop tour of how these have been interpreted at different times, and discussed how these relate to current Israeli religious politics. Learned a little taste of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah with Rafi Zarum, who is always amazing, and participated in a panel discussion on 21^st century Judaism with some of the above teachers as well as R Rosen-Berry and R Wittenberg.

There were lots of good things apart from learning with such fantastic (and genuinely diverse) teachers. The group has expanded from last year when it was mainly just a group of friends, and so there were participants of all ages and a range of backgrounds. So I managed to end up doing chevruta with a really impressive young woman who has just returned from a gap year at a hardcore yeshiva in Israel, who is passionately Orthodox and passionately feminist and has the makings of a really brilliant Talmud teacher. And a lady from the Oxford Masorti community who brought me up to date with news from there and was generally great fun to learn with. The venue was lovely, a Quaker Meeting House in Finchley with a wonderfully peaceful atmosphere, yet near to all the kosher shops (yay bagels!)

There were some downsides, though. For one thing the venue is in no way accessible, which isn't the Friends' fault, it's a historic building not really amenable to being adapted, but I do wish the organizers of the event had taken that into account when choosing a place to hire. Plus, it wasn't really big enough for the 40 or so participants; it's all very well to make romantic noises about how a traditional yeshiva should be noisy, but having two classes in the same room, or indeed trying to study with people wandering in and out, doesn't work extremely well. There was the assumption that all the Jews worth knowing live within a few miles of Finchley, which I found really frustrating; for example, several evening events were planned at absolutely the last minute, which meant disrupting plans I'd already made with friends from outside the group.

I also found some of the panel discussion a bit facile; some people were talking about how Judaism just isn't equally open to everyone, and were dismissed by being told (by a married, Orthodox, male speaker) that feeling everyone is against you is "a natural phase in human development" and "nobody is ever turned away from a synagogue". He's not at all a bad person; the fact that, as an Ortho professional, he was prepared to teach at a cross-denominational event at all says quite a lot about him. But really and truly, being Queer or disabled (let alone having doubtful Jewish status) are in no way comparable to teenage rebellion, and to say that nobody is ever turned away when the very room you're speaking in makes entry impossible for many people shows a distinct lack of empathy.

Anyway, what made the event even better (indeed, what made it possible for me to attend in spite of the slightly short-sighted planning), was the wonderful hospitality of lethargic_man and angelofthenorth. It was really great to spend an evening talking to lethargic_man about anything and everything, and angelofthenorth turns out to be even more fascinating in person than I'd realized from knowing her online. I rounded things off with an evening in the Pembury, where it was remarked that I was "glowing" (presumably all that delightful brain-stretching and superlative company has a visibly uplifting effect!), and I played Ticket to Ride with purplecthulu and abigailb and chatted to hairyears, pfy and khalinche briefly. Also, there was perry from the tail end of the beer festival, yay, and timeplease briefly emerged from behind the bar to socialize.

Then I had a couple of days in Cambridge to relax and see family and jack. Thuggish Poet came up with his partner, and I joined them and Mum at the Sassoon exhibit currently running at the University Library. It was really interesting to see some of Sassoon's stuff that isn't WW1 poetry, as well as some of his original drafts of poems with his own illustrations. I was slightly taken aback to discover that he wrote a sonnet on Belsen in 1945, among other things. UL exhibitions are always small but perfectly formed, and Thuggish Poet is a very erudite companion at a poetry based exhibition. In the evening jack took me out for the most romantic Tu b'Av meal ever, at the Anchor; I won't go into details or you'll all hate me, but the food and the event were highly memorable.

This weekend I went to shreena's birthday party, which contained many wonderful and fascinating people, notably darcydodo, who came back to Stoke with me for a couple of days after the party. I was really glad to see khalinche and timeplease and elemy and of course the hosts themselves as well as D, though. jack drove me from Stoke to London, which was quite a feat, and then drove the three of us back to Cambridge via Spitalfields market, where we stopped for a somewhat uninspiring meal. In Cam we visited pseudomonas and went for a walk across the fields, picking the first of the season's blackberries and plums. Then darcydodo and I spent an evening the following morning at the parents', where Mum fed us extraordinarily well and we had lots more good conversation and a walk in the village.

darcydodo's visit gave me a good excuse to do touristy things in the local area. We saw the collection of a few items from the Staffordshire Hoard of Saxon gold, and some of the ceramics that form a major part of the permanent exhibit at the museum. The gold is really amazingly impressive, even just a small selection which hasn't even been cleaned up, let alone classified, yet. Then we had lunch at the wonderful Hanging Mangoes, a south Indian restaurant which I am assured by colleagues is highly authentic. Anyway they have really lovely service, and food which is incredibly tasty and not like anything I've ever eaten anywhere else, and I would eat there all the time were it not in a slightly insalubrious and difficult to reach area of town.

Finally we made it to see the monkeys, which was an amazingly endearing way to spend the afternoon. There's a bit of an uncanny valley thing going on with how human-like they are; for example, the sit cross-legged or hugging their knees just like humans, but then they stand up and walk on all fours. Also I sometimes felt a bit embarrassed to be watching them, as if they were people who deserve privacy. Still, there are tiny babies (less than six weeks old) which are about 10 cm long and fuzzy yet amazingly independent (they can jump and climb and all sorts), just completely heart-melting.

Anyway, it's back to normality and work for a couple of weeks at least from tomorrow. I've also read some books I want to review, such as Do androids dream of electric sheep? and AS Byatt's recent Children's book, and I also saw Inception with jack and plan to review that now that I'm back online.