Another Shabbos

Shabbos dinner this week was due to be at Steve's place. However, I got a call asking if I could for sure join them at the same place for davening, as the location we were eating was possibly being changed. So off I went to a Reconstructionist minyan (which caused someone who came both there and to Kedem in the morning to presume that I was an RRC student at first). I think it was the first time I was at a formally Reconstructionist davening, and it was far less different than I was expecting it might be, although I got quite thrown by their having the alternate passage for the second paragraph of Shema First (so I presumed that the regular one wasn't there at all, took out my own siddur, said Shema, and then looked through and Ta Da, there it was after all. I found the alternate one an interesting selection- all "if you obey G-d, everything will be hunky-dory" in the place of "if you don't obey G-d, things will be really Bad", which really is no different in terms of accepting the notion of reward and punishment, which is what I thought they had trouble with- please feel free to correct me, I'm not too well up on Reconstructionist theology- it just sounds less unpleasant.). Dinner eventually was indeed in a different location, but meant that a friend who wasn't feeling so wonderful got to have a meal with friends rather than being on her own, as she wasn't quite feeling up to walking all the way to someone else's place. Also, it was no farther from my apartment than Steve's place would have been. So it seemed like an "everyone wins" sort of situation. It was a nice meal, just 4 of us. I made two sorts of bread, as one was new to me- I made french bread, which came out quite well. That's one I'm going to certainly want to do again. The other was a normal whole wheat with honey thing that I basically just threw together.

Davening in the morning was fairly quiet- a smaller crowd than usual, as this was a week when the "we sing everything and daven all day long" minyan was meeting. Sometime I'll have to try it, as I can like that sort of thing when I set myself in the right mood for it. However I found a spot for lunch courtesy of [Bad username or site: hotshot2000" @ livejournal.com] so lunch was starting at a normal sort of time, so I stuck to the usual this time. Perhaps next month. (Also interesting and odd to consider is one of my classmate's perspective that said minyan is a cult of personality, and he objects to such things. I see the problem, but also feel like maybe it isn't the end o the world to take advantage of it if it actually fills a useful spiritual niche.) Lunch was quite pleasant- mostly folks I didn't know, but nice people, and there were a couple of other Brandeis graduates there (one whom I knew, one whom I didn't), so our corner of the table spent a good while telling various Brandeis-related stories. After lunch I headed for home, took a wrong turn (or well, veered the wrong way), and ended up getting guided towards home by a bunch of kids whom I asked for directions. So all's well that ends well...