Tiferet Bet Israel. Ready, go.

The synagogue was big. Walking in, it at first reminded me of a hotel. Short rugs, clean walls, pretty but demure sculpture on the walls. Wide halls. We headed right over to the . . . what would you call it? Chapel? The place where folks gather for services. Everybody was dressed super-duper nice. I was the only fellow not wearing a jacket; even the wee'uns had jackets. I wondered what would happen if someone came who was dressed informally. I have not the slightest clue. A lot of middle-aged and older men and women were wearing prayer shawls (tallits?). Some of the kippahs and tallits folks were wearing were very beautiful and creative.

All men had to wear kippahs, so Nathan and I grabbed some from the boxes they had and put 'em on. It felt comforting somehow. Some women had kippahs on, and others had lace-looking things in the shape of a kippah in their hair, others had fedoras, and others had nothing. The room was big, and there was a lot to look at. Behind the two podiums at the front center, there was a room with shiny things in it obscured by a veil (the ark, I guess), and a wall made of sandstone blocks that was made to look somewhat old. There were big throne-y looking chairs around the walls. That area was elevated. The room had theater-style chairs for people to sit in, and then some movable chairs set up behind them. Without the menorahs, sandstone wall, and Stars of David, it could have just been a conference room.

I don't know what to say about the services themselves. As we were walking in, a big lady (a rabbi?) was singing with accompaniments by a younger, littler lady (the cantor). Each had her own podium at the front. The cantor mostly seemed to be leading the service. She read a lot in Hebrew, as did two bat mitzvahs. There was a lot of singing, and the congregation joined in frequently. There was a lot of sitting and standing; I wondered how the cantor knew when to stand and when to sit.

Initially, I mostly focused on reading the English translations of the passages that people were reciting. Then I realized that for me to be placing my focus there was to be missing quite a lot of data, and was probably the problem for a lot of early comparative religion scholars. You want to just look at the words, and you miss people's experiences. Nonetheless, it seemed significant that a lot of it just seemed to emphasize again and again that God was the only God for the Jews, and that things would turn out right so long as one didn't lose sight of that. So much about protection and shared identity under God. I wondered about that: Why is it being stressed so deeply? Is it just to distinguish them from other groups? Is it to bring one to a deeper consciousness of what it means to be dedicated to the one God? How does hammering the same point again and again do that? I imagine that sitting for hours and hours and hours hearing the same thing over and over again, one does, indeed, have to give up the voice in one's own head which might want to be doing something else. Pretty good practice in accepting God's will instead of one's own. Perhaps there's more subtlety than I was picking up at the time.

Church/synagogue-attendance strikes me as a fairly ascetic activity. I was thinking of Nathan's back as we sat down and stood up a lot, and my own bodily discomfort. Similarly to how on a meditation retreat when we make the firm resolve not to change posture, and to relax into the pain, you stay in the same seat for the whole time. Though I guess we did stand up. Maybe the standing's just to give your ass a break. Nonetheless, there's something very self-denying about sitting around for a three-hour service. It must be very powerful for the 70- and 80-year-olds: they must be in agony at that age.

I really loved the singing. It was really beautiful. I wish I could have sung along. It feels very good to sing. Hebrew is a gorgeous language, too.

The two gentlemen sitting in front of us talked almost the whole time. I found that interesting. I wondered what they were talking about, but I was usually paying attention to other things.

I'll write more later.