Summary? Abstract? - *laughs* I'd written about the Retreat in December, and never posted. So, here's some old and current thoughts - the Retreat in December, thoughts about food and kosher (and health), and being "caught between dialects" which includes observations about communities, languages, and customs. Enjoy.

Weekend Retreat - When I was at the synagogue for Sukkot, the Harvest festival in fall after all the high holy days, I got to chatting with Linda about spinning. I spin yarn from fiber, and I often teach at demo's about how to spin on a drop spindle and information about the history of textiles and spinning in general. She was really intrigued, and suggested I should bring spinning to the retreat coming up in December.

This, of course, got us talking about "what's this retreat?" and within a few weeks, I'd completed my registration for the retreat. It meant missing a local holiday celebration with my history club, but since I go to those all the time, and this was my first opportunity to go somewhere with my synagogue, I knew where my priorities were this time.

So the first weekend in December was the retreat, at a Jewish campground run by the Wilshire Temple, up in the hills above Malibu, California. And wow. The site is breaktaking. Here's the photos I got on my cell phone of the sunrise on Saturday, sunset Saturday, and afternoon clouds on Sunday. I still need to work on the photos from the people and activities, but enjoy the nature shots for now.


I brought my spinning, after debating and debating whether I should, and I'm glad I did. It was very well received, and I did small demonstrations and hands-on teaching on-and-off all weekend. It was interesting, discussing how spinning is actually one of the "33 39 things you're not supposed to do on the Sabbath." (Apparently I got the number wrong, as I was calling it "33 Things" all weekend.) Our conversations wandered over "things you do to relax and enjoy a weekend or enjoy a retreat" being different from "things you do for work" or "for a salary" or "for a price." We also talked about the attitude that you would refrain from "creating something" on the sabbath, since that's when G-d rested from creation. But since I was *asked* to share spinning at the retreat, I opted to bring it and share the experience with friends. I personally chose to do "production spinning" after havdalah on Saturday night, so I only worked on spinning to make lots and lots of yarn Saturday night and Sunday morning. I only did small demonstations for discussion and enjoyment on Saturday before sunset. It made the Sabbath feel different for me, by making this choice.

The retreat, as a whole, was wonderful. The drive up was scary, because the last part of the road is just barely 1.5 car-widths wide, doesn't have guard rails, winds a lot, has huge cliff drop-offs, and is REALLY scary in the dark. But I shared a cabin with my friends Pamela and her daughter Amanda (who also plays Quidditch with me). Two other ladies I see at services all the time were in our cabin, and it turns out one of them is a really good guitarist, and happens to sing and write original folk material, too. There were probably 40+ people there, all ages, and I made tons of fantastic friends. At services on Saturday morning, the rabbi asked one of the men and me to hold the Torah scroll (eep!) while he did the Torah portions. It was nerve-wracking, and a huge honor too, to hold up a hand-calligraphed parchment sacred piece of artwork ... and exhausting, as the scroll is fairly heavy. For those of you who are not Jewish and have never seen one, the Torah Scroll in a synagogue is a LARGE item.

It was a fantastic weekend, and worth every moment and every penny.

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More Thoughts about Food - Now, many of you read my "normal public journal" and you may have read about how my tongue had gone numb for a couple of weeks. I began to suspect the problem was nutrition based, or more accurately, lack of nutrition. Yup, I was being lazy and stupid, partially rooted in a life-long battle with food anyways, and partially rooted in some worries about how I approach kosher choices. My watchphrase became Less Dumb, More Food Variety, More Vitamins and within a week I was bored out of my skull trying to recite all the foods I was cooking and/or eating. Results more than six weeks later: I'm occasionally still lazy about shopping and cooking (I can only maintain hyper energy for food for so long), but I have dutifully taken my vitamins every morning, I actively try not to be as lazy, and I've felt healthy ever since.

I'm still occasionally plagued with minor worries about how to eat kosher, but I'm happy with my primary leading rule: In all things, celebrate life. Sometimes my friends make me dinner, and although only one family keeps a kosher kitchen and buys kosher meats, all of them know I cannot eat beef (it hurts me) and they either make certain there are vegetarian options for me or they serve me chicken. I've relaxed a little bit about chicken, when prepared by my friends. My scare with my tongue going numb reminded me that if I'm too legalistic, I just don't eat anything at all and that's not healthy and it doesn't promote anything good (physically or spiritually). So if I'm in charge of buying something, I can take the effort to head over to the kosher grocery store, and stock up on kosher chicken, lamb, and turkey. We were camping for 4+ days over President's Day weekend, and so I just packed a bunch of kosher meats to add to the kitchen group meal plan. But if I'm not in charge of the shopping, like when Rae and Renata have a half dozen of us for dinner, I will be happy to eat the chicken they so lovingly prepared with me in mind. I didn't pour a cream sauce over the chicken and potato, but I'm not big on sauces anyways even before I started to observe kosher.

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Caught Between Dialects - The strangest thing about this whole experience in finding my own path in these many Jewish communities usually comes to the forefront for me in the vowels of the language. Huh? Allow me to explain. My college degree is in Linguistics. I've always *ADORED* language acquisition, study, analysis, and observation. I couldn't have found a greater wealth of language variety if I'd tried, than all the different things I'm noticing in the various Jewish communities. First, there's the modern influence of the Hebrew language, which really developed differently in Israel than anywhere else. Then there's the heavy influence of Yiddish in a variety of parts of the world, and in the large number of American communities. Then there's the study of Biblical Hebrew, and how that experience varies in Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox communites (in addition to non-Jewish scholarly pursuits of Biblical Hebrew that are out there).

I had picked up a copy of The Story of Yiddish, and within a few pages wanted to throw the book across the room. There's only so much "see our depreciating humor?" that I can take in a discussion of a language, but after I grit my teeth and kept reading, I gave in to the idea that I was observing something else about the language and the community, besides an analysis of Yiddish. It wasn't really a linguistic analysis at all, or even a social history, but more a skewed sense of what passes (in this author's mind) for analysis and history, giving me a different observation of how this author was shaped by the community, language, and history around him. I'm still not done with the book (it's living in my car as a backup time filler), and I may have to re-read portions of it to get back into the flow. But it did start to fill in some assumed history that I was missing out on, about American Judaism. Much of American Judaism *did* come out of the Yiddish communities and the Eastern European experience, which is something I can stand to learn about and understand further.

Now, on a good note, I've also been reading Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler. I'm only about two-thirds through the book, but I just ADORE the narrative. I also have Walking the Bible: A Photographic Journey, which I just flip through occasionally, after reading the main book. Oh, and I simply cannot recommend more highly The Red Tent: A Novel by Anita Diamant -- it's another FANTASTIC book.

After finding the music of the group Blue Fringe, I subscribed to the Sameach Music Podcast and have been working my way through the archives over time. I'm on episode #38 this morning, and each episode is usually around an hour long. It only finally dawned on me this morning to look up some things about the community where this music comes from. I looked up simply "Crown Heights" in New York, and found this is in the middle of Chabad-Lubavitch, one of the largest Hasidic movements in Orthodox Judaism. Now tons of what I've been listening to makes more sense, but again, I feel like I've missed out of so much of American history somewhere in my education. I mean, sure, I'd heard of Chabad. I had heard the word "Lubavitch" before, but I hadn't really understood how rich that community is in its own resources.

Here's where I start to feel "caught between dialects." Imagine if you'd grown up in some other language, in some other part of the world. Now you have an interest in learning English. Forget for a moment all the normal language problems with English. Picture being exposed to Shakespeare theatre and text. Then all the broadcast media in America centers around the "mid-western accent of Cleveland, OH" (this is actually true, newscasters are sent to Cleveland to clean up their accents, if they have one). Then have a mixed number of English-speakers in your neighborhood who are British, British-Indian, Australian, New Zealanders, Californians, Texans, Bostonians, Chicagoans, New Yorkers, and Minnesotans. Can you imagine the confusion, trying to learn the "correct" vowels (and even consonants) in the language?

Some days that's how I feel about Hebrew. There's the "pure Biblical" classroom pronunciation that I'm occasionally taught from classes, textbooks, and audio-recordings. Then there's the experience in synagoge, when different readers, leaders, and singers participate in the service. Some of the T's are pronounced as S's (like Shabbat versus Shabbos). Some people have tons of "Oy" vowels in their words, yet others have almost none. I'm still not even sure which vowel that "Oy" is supposed to be, in print. Oh yeah, and the print version of Hebrew may or may not indicate vowels. Then mix in various usage of Yiddish, a language I've never studied at all but which peppers much of the history and experience of many American Jews.

Mix this with the community and religious approaches and experiential differences between Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. Add a few friends going to Israel for the year, and having *wildly* different experiences. Add in a few friends who are married and both are Jewish, versus a few friends who are Jewish and dating / engaged to (or likely to marry) non-Jews.

Top it all off: I'm single and female. And I sing.

In the Orthodox community, there's limitations of what women are allowed to do or pursue, based on the gender of the audience (which means pretty much *everything* on Sameach Music Podcast is ONLY male singers, either adult men or boys choirs). Sure, they have recordings of women's music on their website and in their catalogue, but it's not featured on the podcast (well, yet... I'm only up to episode 38).

If I could design a dream life, I would enroll in Cantorial training, to learn what it takes to be a Cantor in a synagogue. But at the same time, I'm an unmarried female, which means I wouldn't be welcome in every Jewish environment as a singer. (Not that I've been looking to participate in Orthodox Judaism, but I'm noticing the parity.) Of course, I'd also enroll in Scribe training, to learn what it takes to be a calligrapher (and illuminator) of Jewish texts, but I imagine that this might also have gender restrictions in some contexts.

But at the same time, I enjoy my participation in the SCA, so I know my personal pursuit of Judaism *will* include that not all my Saturdays will be spent at the synagogue. I *will* be often in medieval costume on the weekends, promoting (as I describe it) "learning and teaching history through hands-on participation, as seen through intentional communities, artistic and martial pursuits, and volunteer service." And my Judaism is intricately woven into just who I am as a person, as a woman, and as an unmarried person. And I'm a musician at my heart, and I composed new music and perform it everywhere I go.

I don't really have any conclusions about all these issues. Sometimes, I don't really even know if I have any questions about them. Just observations for today. And lots of vowels to ponder and play with, as I learn to figure out my own accent.

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Best. Family. EVAR! - On a final note, my family completely rocksors my socksors. My mom gave me the cutest Chanukkah gifts all through the season, including sending me funny Chanukkah cards a couple of days. My sister and nieces filled a blue-and-white bag with tons of blue-and-white gifts, and I nearly fell over laughing, enjoying them all. I even received two "Christmas ornaments" that were blue and white snowflakes, but if you look carefully, they're really six-pointed stars. They make me giggle and laugh so much, and I just adore my family.

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: All my language instructors over the years, who's influenced me, including but not limited to: grade 7&8 Spanish, grade 9 Italian, grade 9-11 Spanish, grade 12 Spanish, college level 1 Italian, college levels 1-3 Russian summer immersion, college levels 1-3 Mandarin Chinese, the Tritt family and their church for ages 12-14 American Sign Language, college level 1 ASL, summer crash courses in Hebrew I and II, and Hebrew I and II last year