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Dancing last night was a surprisingly good time, considering that I didn't know many folks there besides Steve, and the others certainly not well. But folks at this session were very friendly, and I don't think that they are terribly used to having young people who've been dancing for a while show up: I got a series of compliments on my posture (which is not fabulous as far as I know, although it's better when I dance than other times), my knowledge and my ability to follow dances I don't know.
I also had a series of really funny interactions. I had a few conversations with a very sweet lady who had been performing Balkan dance for 8 years, who works in a nursing home and along with music therapy, also helps out the rabbi. She asked me, after dancing Yedid Nefesh, whether or not it was ok to be dancing to a song intended for services- something that somehow hadn't registered about the fact that before that we'd been dancing to an arrangement of Mi Chamokha... That was a reasonable question, but then we got into this discussion where she was telling me about the times she's been to BJ (B'nei Jeshurun, a very active and musical and dancy sort of shul) versus Temple Emanuel (very very Classical Reform), and she kept talking about letting the music wash over her and just sitting back- and I had no way of communicating that I had no idea how that was prayer- that's going to a concert, not making an active effort to be in communication with G-d, or even to fulfill a halakhic obligation, which I think would have actually been a much harder concept to communicate. A very sweet lady- but I left the conversation with a feeling of rather saccharine New Age-y fluff.
My other really interesting conversation was with an older gentleman who commented on my kippah. (even wearing a kippah, let alone being a rabbinical student really is like whose ever comment it was that I read that said that being a rabbi is like being a stripper- you do in public what everyone else keeps private, in this case spirituality. Especially at Israeli Dance stuff, I've gotten more religious and spiritual discussions and arguments since I started at JTS than in years beforehand.) He went on to say that he'd grown up in a religious home and now belonged to the Church of the Waiters- people who were waiting to hear G-d tell them what they should be doing. And somehow we got to talking about contradictions in religious text, and I was trying to explain why I saw contradictions as such profound opportunities to reach at a more profound truth and spirituality, which threw him for a loop: I need a better explanation for it. So he asked Steve (with whom I've had a 5 year running correspondance about nearly everything under the sun) if he'd ever argued with me, and of course the answer was that yes, we've discussed all sorts of things. As it is, I think I gave him a rather quixotic image of what a Conservative rabbinical student thinks and believes- but it was amusing.
Before I even got to dancing, I think I had what must have looked like a very funny interaction. I walked down there with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
margavriel who had been at JTS and come by for a snack, and ended up walking me to dancing, and we were standing at the door finishing up a discussion of grammar and artificial divisions between different pronunciations/ideas of precision in speech, but as I was walking in to dancing, I realized that since I had a beret on (no one could see my kippah) and slacks, and he was there with a black hat and dark suit, it must have looked like a kiruv attempt. I must admit that the idea amuses me a bit. Possibly because the couple of kiruv attempts that I have been subjected to have been more than a little clumsy.
I also had a series of really funny interactions. I had a few conversations with a very sweet lady who had been performing Balkan dance for 8 years, who works in a nursing home and along with music therapy, also helps out the rabbi. She asked me, after dancing Yedid Nefesh, whether or not it was ok to be dancing to a song intended for services- something that somehow hadn't registered about the fact that before that we'd been dancing to an arrangement of Mi Chamokha... That was a reasonable question, but then we got into this discussion where she was telling me about the times she's been to BJ (B'nei Jeshurun, a very active and musical and dancy sort of shul) versus Temple Emanuel (very very Classical Reform), and she kept talking about letting the music wash over her and just sitting back- and I had no way of communicating that I had no idea how that was prayer- that's going to a concert, not making an active effort to be in communication with G-d, or even to fulfill a halakhic obligation, which I think would have actually been a much harder concept to communicate. A very sweet lady- but I left the conversation with a feeling of rather saccharine New Age-y fluff.
My other really interesting conversation was with an older gentleman who commented on my kippah. (even wearing a kippah, let alone being a rabbinical student really is like whose ever comment it was that I read that said that being a rabbi is like being a stripper- you do in public what everyone else keeps private, in this case spirituality. Especially at Israeli Dance stuff, I've gotten more religious and spiritual discussions and arguments since I started at JTS than in years beforehand.) He went on to say that he'd grown up in a religious home and now belonged to the Church of the Waiters- people who were waiting to hear G-d tell them what they should be doing. And somehow we got to talking about contradictions in religious text, and I was trying to explain why I saw contradictions as such profound opportunities to reach at a more profound truth and spirituality, which threw him for a loop: I need a better explanation for it. So he asked Steve (with whom I've had a 5 year running correspondance about nearly everything under the sun) if he'd ever argued with me, and of course the answer was that yes, we've discussed all sorts of things. As it is, I think I gave him a rather quixotic image of what a Conservative rabbinical student thinks and believes- but it was amusing.
Before I even got to dancing, I think I had what must have looked like a very funny interaction. I walked down there with
margavriel who had been at JTS and come by for a snack, and ended up walking me to dancing, and we were standing at the door finishing up a discussion of grammar and artificial divisions between different pronunciations/ideas of precision in speech, but as I was walking in to dancing, I realized that since I had a beret on (no one could see my kippah) and slacks, and he was there with a black hat and dark suit, it must have looked like a kiruv attempt. I must admit that the idea amuses me a bit. Possibly because the couple of kiruv attempts that I have been subjected to have been more than a little clumsy.