adrian_turtle

Last night, I went to Rosh Hashanah services at the Hav. When I lived in Troy, I was so uncomfortable at High Holiday services it was kind of embarrassing. I went to Friday night services a lot, so/because I knew and liked the service and that set of people. The Friday Night Regulars mostly showed up because they liked it and felt comfortable there...that kind of mood is contagious. (I suspect the people who came Saturday morning felt similarly, only being morning people.) But for High Holidays, more than half the overcrowded room was full of people who were dressed up and going someplace uncomfortable and unfamiliar, because they thought it was important to be seen there. That kind of mood is contagious, too.

When I was working, I usually felt conflicted about whether to take time off for the holiday. If I went to work, I could save the vacation time for a vacation I would actually enjoy, or for the luxury of staying home when I was sick. But working on the holiday set a precedent, made a statement of my priorities, I really did not want to make. I don't have the actual conflict this year, but I can still fret about it. Fretting is what I do.

Anyhow, the Hav service started out by being so deliberately welcoming, so thoroughly warm and inclusive that I actually felt welcome despite the context of it being Rosh Hashanah. I felt like a community I wanted to be part of. (I mean something much more local than feeling part of "the Jewish people" which is a scale that's hard for me to connect to emotionally.) Not all the attempts to make people feel welcome and included worked for everyone, but I thought there was a lot of value in just having so many of them. It felt like a recognition of how difficult it can be to "warm up" to pray, or to do anything emotionally substantial in a roomful of uncomfortable strangers.

Afterwards, I went to dinner at the home of someone I had met at a Hav event last month. She found a wonderful solution to the problem of being alone for holiday meals--she invites strangers, or people she's just met, over until her little apartment is full. Unlike all the people whose lives seem to connect with mine in lots of venues, I doubt I would ever meet her without the Hav, but I like her. A few years ago, I invited a handful of people over for lunch after Rosh Hashanah services (this was back when shirad lived in Somerville) and it was a lot of fun...but when people cancelled at the last minute, we just had lots of leftovers. I didn't go looking for more people who wanted a holiday dinner, as happened last night. I'll know for next time; this way of being more open and generous is also more fun, and not really any more trouble if a person starts by saying, "there's room for 2 more, who wants to come?" rather than opening the party to an unknown group of unknown size.

As we were walking between the Havurah and the apartment, I saw ron_newman, walking home from services on Winter Hill. I'm sure it looked like I was hailing any random stranger in a yarmulke to wish him l'shana tova and invite him to dinner, but I've known Ron since the net was flat. (And he does sometimes go to services at the Hav.) We all had a good time, and it turned out that Ron had just read _Farthing_, which skewed the dinner conversation. But in a good way. Jo, I'd like you to meet Ron. He cares about public transit and walkable neighborhoods, and is generally a decent human being.