I know what I know, and perhaps more importantly, I know what I don't know...

I noticed something in the torah reading yesterday in the passage about the ben sorer u'moreh, the stubborn and rebellious son:

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, that will not hearken to the voice of his father, [or? and?] the voice of his mother, and though they chasten him, will not hearken unto them; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of his city: 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he doth not hearken to our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.' And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die; so shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. (D'varim 21:18-21, JPS translation, bracketed text mine)

(Spoiler alert: it never happened.)

I know from previous study that the rabbis placed so many restrictions on this that it couldn't actually happen. The son has to be old enough to be culpable but still a "son" and not a "man", which they narrowed down to a span of three months. The parents both have to be present and capable in various ways (for example, able to walk and hold onto him, able to speak, etc), and if either parent bails, it's over. Because it says "our voice", not "our voice*s*", their voices need to sound as one. There's more (mishna in Sanhedrin chapter 8 is a good place to start), but you get the idea -- lots of restrictions making it very unlikely that it could be carried out, and some key sources say it never happened at all.

The thing that struck me this past Shabbat: they didn't disqualify the mother as a witness. Pretty much everything judicial requires two witnesses, the parents are the only witnesses described by the torah, and in other matters the rabbis are clear that "witnesses" means "adult men". Yet here, rather than say that there aren't two valid witnesses for the son's transgressions, the torah says to proceed to a capital case.

So can women be witnesses or can't they? If not, they why here?

Last August I left my previous synagogue, which had just voted to merge with another and move out of the neighborhood, and joined Beth Shalom, the large Conservative synagogue in Squirrel Hill. This has been a great move for me.

Shabbat morning services feel very comfortable, with a lot of singing. Most of the service is led by lay people and there are melodic and style variations; this feels interesting, not disruptive. I'm not fluent in everything yet but I'm getting there. I aspire to leading the torah service, probably the most accessible place to start. (It's also what they have b'nei mitzvah do, so I'm probably not the only person who sees it that way.)

Beth Shalom gets a lot more people on Shabbat morning than my previous minyan. I worried about getting lost in the sea of people, especially as someone who is, uh, not socially adept in crowds. But Beth Shalom also has a sit-down kiddush, every week, and the mere act of sitting at a table with about seven or eight other people helps break that down. The first time I went I ran into people who'd left Temple Sinai a few years before I did, so naturally we sat together. They introduced me to some people, and then a week or two later I ran into another Sinai person who introduced me to some people, and, well, so it goes. Also, Beth Shalom prints nametags for its members -- mine came in my new-member welcome packet -- and that helps. (They're worn on lanyards and tuck easily into a tallit bag.)

The lay leaders, rabbis, and staff I've met have all been welcoming and pretty accessible. The first time I asked the rabbi, at kiddush, a question about something technical that had been in that morning's service -- I'd thought it was a simple question but he was enthusiastic, said "let's grab a siddur and look at it!" -- I felt like I really fit. (I apologized for taking more of his time than I'd meant to and he brushed it off.)

(Geek alert: some extra prayers are inserted on Rosh Chodesh. In one of them, there was a note in the siddur about including a word or two only if it's a leap year. And I was like (a) what the...? and (b) uh, is it currently a leap year? I'll share the answer to (a) later in this post.)

When there is a bar or bat mitzvah, it's integrated into the service but isn't a "family takover" like at my previous (Reform) synagogue. The student gives a d'var torah that is short but real, and it's in addition to, not replacing, the longer d'var torah usually given by the rabbi (occasionally a congregant). The kid isn't on the hook for a 15-minute talk, the congregation isn't "cheated" of a meaty talk on bar-mitzvah day, and we can just share and it's good. The parents speak briefly, and the rabbi also speaks about the student. Nothing gets cut from the service to make room for a big family "thing", and a bar-mitzvah service is only about 15 minutes longer than a regular one. It's refreshing.

I'm talking a lot about services because that's the week-to-week routine, but there are other aspects to synagogue membership too. I was pleasantly surprised to be invited to a brunch and orientation for new members after the high holy days last fall, where a bunch of us newcomers got to meet each other and start making connections. (I suggested that they give us each others' contact information too, if no one objected, but that didn't happen.) There is a "havurah" program where they match up interested people into small groups that do things together outside of the synagogue; they did a round of matchmaking a few months ago and the one I've been placed in will have our first get-together in a couple weeks. There are various gatherings like a brunch during Chanukah and cookouts during the summer. I haven't joined the weekly talmud class (scheduling...) but I did join the rabbi's monthly class this year and look forward to more. There's a torah-trope class and the "yad squad" of chanters; several people have asked me when I'm going to join them. (I think those days are past me, alas, and at the speed they go, I can't even be a reliable checker, even with a large-print copy to check from.)

Coming from Reform -- even Reform that I usually felt was deficient -- I'm still getting used to some things. Second days of yom tov don't feel right to me yet, and I've moved from having probably the strictest kashrut in the minyan to a synagogue where my kitchen might not be good enough. Still navigating that one -- only comes up for potlucks or if I invite someone over, neither of which has happened yet, but I suppose the havurah will talk about food.

I feel really comfortable here. The Conservative movement is a much better fit (I joined Sinai despite it being Reform, not because it was), and Beth Shalom in particular feels like a great fit.

(Geek redux: there's a passage where we ask for a good month for X and Y and Z and... and one of the items was in brackets, leap-year only. Why? There are 13 things in the list and somebody decided that means one per month; if it's not a leap year there are only 12 months, so one of the clauses gets left out. I really need to get my own copy of the siddur we use (Lev Shalem) but I haven't yet, so I can't be more specific right now.)