Be'Chol Lashon Weekend/Conference

I spent this weekend at my internship's annual Think Tank. It was fascinating, and sometimes baffling. Every time that I think that I have a handle on what they do, I find that there's this other goal, some of which seem like very messy matches with the rest of it. This conference was yet another piece. It was this odd mixture of people who work with unusual Jewish populations, and members of some of those populations, some of whom I have a hard time figuring out how to handle. In other words, many of them were well, of doubtful Jewish status, which I in theory knew to expect, but in practice, it was a bit harder to figure out than I thought it would be.

For example, at shabbos davening, while we had more People than we expected, identifying whether or not we had a minyan was difficult to do. On the other hand, besides the leyning, it was a perfectly kosher service, otherwise. (Torah reading was a mix of competent leyning, terrible leyning without any tune- just reading, incompetently, from the scroll, and one guy who pulled the trick my rabbi growing up did- read a phrase from the Torah, then translate, then back to the original text. It's effective, but oh Lordy, is it problematic.)

Still, having come there forewarned, I could push most of those sorts of doubts and concerns to the back of my mind, for the time. On the other hand, H couldn't, which gave me a way to sort of deal with the issues as I went, although it also took up a bunch of my emotional energy, in between what I was expending on not getting bothered, somewhere down below. The whole thing was exhausting, but quite interesting. I'm not quite hitting the place to Really process it yet, but hopefully soon...

Further In and Farther Up

I've finished (I think) the cloth flowers for the wedding centerpieces. That is, unless we decide that we didn't buy enough fabric/ribbon and should be getting more. Still, I think it'll be enough.

Now, back to kippot for our families, and an atara for H's tallis. (I've done a good amount of work on this one, but am not sure I like how it's turning out- I may restart with just a plain background with a crochet over-layer. Perhaps this is my time to try fillet crochet...)

In other words, progress abounds. (But then again, so do tasks remaining to be done.)