But first, the cantor was cracking us up in choir rehearsal this evening. He asked Jean (short for Evgenia), our accompanist, for the first chord of the song - oops! “No, major, not minor. See the sharp? Where did you go to school, Moscow conservatory, was it? Accidentals! Around here that means sharps and flats. There, it's Chernobyl!”
Arlene & I did a stamping workshop for a synagogue sisterhood group on Monday night over in Brighton. That's on the edge of Boston proper, not a center-city neighborhood but not an affluent suburb by any means. The meeting room seems to double as the sanctuary of the synagogue, with folding chairs rather than pews. The building seems to have been adapted to the purpose, with additions in various directions over the years, but not much evidence of an overall plan. I was trying to figure out how you would know you weren't in the fellowship hall of a church, like the places we've gone to hear folk music shows all around the area. Probably you'd have to get into the details of decoration and posters. The overall look of well-worn floor, lots of layers of paint, big window opening onto a kitchen, was about the same.
Before we got going on the workshop, one of the sisterhood women gave a d'var torah, bible study sermonette, about Noah. She focused on the different orders of names in the lists of who was on the ark when they got on and when they got off -- gettting on, Noah, his sons, Noah's wife, and his sons' wives; getting off, Noah, his wife, his sons, their wives. Paired up getting off, because it's time to repopulate the world. Drawing conclusions from that kind of detail is typical of Jewish Bible study.
Whatever, the d'var torah probably helped set a mood and get the people ready to listen and pay attention to our presentation. Arlene did most of the work, stamping an apron with fabric ink and showing some examples of greeting cards she had made. Then we distributed ink pads, stamps, decorative paper punches, and blank greeting cards and postcards around the tables and let people go to work on their own.
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