Superfluous Judaica Post

[debka_notion]

Anyone else ever notice how petikha and glilah seem like they're in their own category of honors? Especially petikha. I'm not sure why (it often scares me stiff- especially if I'm not terribly familiar with that particular ark- finding the cords, dealing with the idiosyncracies that may have crept in, etc is rather nervewrackign with All Those People watching you), but petikha seems to be given out as one of those honors that doesn't quite live up to the others- it seems to be a favorite, at least around here, to be given to women who don't count themselves in the minyan, folks who may not know how to do other things, or only show up on occasion. Somehow this strategy seems a little odd- it's frightening, especially when your siddur doesn't have exact directions on when to open and close the ark, and for the second or third category of folks, they may not know when that's supposed to happen. But since it isn't a speaking role, it seems less significant somehow. Or maybe that's just my misconception- quite likely.

And yes, I am aware that petikha in some contexts is given to the husbands of pregnant women as a charm of some sort for a safe delivery. One wonders if in egalitarian contexts it is given to the pregnant women themselves? Or is egalitarianism associated too strongly with modernity and a lack of such superstitions in the synagogue? It seems like an odd concept to me, but well- superstitions are fun to play with... I'm rarely in contexts where that's an issue, at this point in my life, but well- just a thought.

Similarly, someone doing glilah (the golel or golelet) seems less likely to put on a tallit (assuming that they wear one in general) than someone doing hagbah. Not sure the relevance of that, but there seems to be one, if only that people tend to put on a tallit for honors in general- so if they would for others, but not for this, it seems like a natural lack of empahsis on the behavior at hand. Of course, there's a gender imbalance here, since few women want to lift a torah in the air. Most of us believe that we can't, although I've seen women prove otherwise- I'd do it myself, I think, if I had any upper body strength at all. (Maybe someday when I've graduated to real pushups rather than the easy variety, plus learning to work on all those other arm muscles.) But even disregarding that- glilah seems to somehow be an honor-light: often given out sort of last-minutely, or, in some contexts, because one is paired in some way (spouse, sibling, close friend, SO) with the magbiah/magbihah. It's a much nicer one for the beginner- there's generally gabbay-assistance, and people aren't paying so much attention, although the first few times one doesn't notice that. (or at least, I didn't: I was convinced people were staring at me, and laughing when I was kind of confused about what went where. But that's general confusion-generated-paranoia.) Possibly for that reason, it seems to have gotten relegated, at least around here, to honor-light status.

Dunno, just a thought that came to mind.

Comments

[thevortex.livejournal.com]

Actually, a lot of people feel that way about p'tikha.

"...it seems to be a favorite, at least around here, to be given to women who don't count themselves in the minyan, folks who may not know how to do other things, or only show up on occasion."

And does not require any knowledge of reading Hebrew, like g'lila.

Huzzah!

The Vortex

[nuqotw.livejournal.com]

When I was in the process of converting, I wound up opening the ark. There's no mitzvah involved, so I guess it wasn't a problem, though I was still confused enough in shul that I had no idea about what the halakhot might be. I felt very weird doing it because I wasn't Jewish. Anyway, I hadn't a clue what the associated choreography was.....

I think there is some sort of mitzvah attached to hagbah/g'lilah.

Hagbah is largely about form.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

Yesterday, a woman who was visiting the Yeshiva for a week actually declined g'lillah on the grounds that it's too hard to do.

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

I'd rather an aliyah than any other honor at an unfamiliar shul, because there really aren't a lot of ways you can screw up an aliyah. (I mean, different places have different standards about which side you stand to for the subsequent aliyah, but otherwise not so much.)

Gelilah (golelet) is firmly in my mind as a Girly Honor; unlike petikha, I have never actually seen a man do it at CBB. (As a result, I feel a very faint urge to put myself forward for magbiha one of these days. Very faint, because I do not much care for pushups.) But I think you're correct in saying that both are basically Outsider Honors, and that whether outsider/inside defaults to female/male really depends on the congregation.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

They do both have the advantage that you can walk someone through them, regardless of their level of previous knowledge. Zoos was I think the best at this I've seen, always going up along with the person doing p'tichah and guiding them step-by step on what to do and when to do it. Without that sort of help it is of course totally scary, because it depends on the structure of that ark and the custom of that synagogue. It does, when done right, seem like a good option to give someone whose level of background you don't know (though when I asked R. Lehmann once, he counseled against giving it to someone whom you know for a fact not to be Jewish, since it really is a part of the service). Many of these people I think tend to be women because there are often more women of ambiguous background at a conservative service, especially if you tend to assume that anyone davening with a tallit has at least passing experience with taking an aliyah. (Interestingly, when I went to KI for Tisha Ba'av afternoon and forgot my tallit and t'fillin, they gave me p'tichah.)

I think g'lilah so often is an afterthought and goes to women because hagbah requires so much thought in the assigning and for practical reasons usually goes to men. I tended to assign it by looking around the room and thinking, "Who here looks least likely to drop the Torah?" taking into account both build and handedness. I know a lot of women who would love to do hagbah, and a few who have, but with one memorable crew-team exception, most can't manage it on a middle-to-large Torah (this is why Brandeis egal has the smallest of the standard campus ones). Of course, over time this leads to silly assumptions about gender default, though there were certainly guys I was careful not to give hagbah to (on the basis of past experience); I usually did give them g'lilah, if by that point in the assigning they still hadn't received an honor (this is not to say there was a hierarchy in what I assigned; I just tended to go in order of the service itself).