- D. and I had a very nice seder last night ... but the haggadah was again a disappointment. We've used a different one for each of the last three years, and we've been unhappy with each of them in different ways. Clearly the time has come for us to create our own! D. and I have committed to creating our own for next year, and we're looking forward to it.
- I had an ugly series of interactions with another temple member this week. A former temple president lashed out at me over email over a perceived conflict between our respective committees, and cc'd the current temple president, clearly confident that he was in the right and I was in the wrong. The current president and I then had a phone conversation that night, during which I think I made clear to her that this perceived conflict really isn't a conflict at all. She agreed, and also agreed that this former president was "a bit of an outspoken man," but urged me to soothe his ruffled feelings. I was going to do that anyway, because I do feel bad that I clearly hurt his feelings, even though that was never my intention. I didn't in fact insult him at all, but the important thing is that he felt insulted. So I emailed him the next day, sincerely apologizing and saying that I'd like to talk so that I could repeat my apology in person. He wrote back with his phone number and the invitation to call him any time. So far, so good. But then yesterday I called him (the day after his email) ... and he lit into me. My version — and of course his will be different — is that he interrupted me constantly, yelled at me, told me that I didn’t understand the temple culture, consistently and deliberately misread what I said, told me that my attitude was in opposition to the temple’s emphasis on kindness, and was a bully throughout. By the end, I was crying hard, told him that he was being a jerk and that I didn’t need to sit there and listen to him ranting to me, and wished him and and his wife a good seder before hanging up the phone as he was still yelling. It was pretty awful, and in fact I was still crying about it an hour later. Now the current temple president wants to talk again tomorrow, but I'd much prefer to let things lie for at least a week or so. There's no hurry on this at all -- there's no crisis, and I've already suggested a solution to our difference of opinion, which would fully address his concerns as well as mine, but he was too busy yelling and insulting me to hear it. I completely understand that these things happen in communities, but it's the first time it's happened to me at the temple, and it was really upsetting.
- My unhappiness over all of this took up a lot of emotional and mental energy these past few days, to the detriment of other work, but I got back to my Hebrew studies today. I'm going slowly, and repeating things when I'm not totally confident. My goal is to go about this in a completely different way than I did during my bat mitzvah studies, when I was trying to keep up with the rest of my group and was thus moving quickly and just trying to hang on. I think of my Hebrew studies the way I think of Betsy's math problems in Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Understood Betsy, one of my favorite childhood novels:
Betsy was reciting her arithmetic. She was getting on famously with that. Weeks ago, as soon as Miss Benton had seen the confusion of the little girl's mind, the two had settled down to a serious struggle with that subject. Miss Benton had had Betsy recite all by herself, so she wouldn't be flurried by the others; and to begin with had gone back, back, back to bedrock, to things Betsy absolutely knew, to the 2x2's and the 3x3's. And then, very cautiously, a step at a time, they had advanced, stopping short whenever Betsy felt a beginning of that bewildered "guessing" impulse which made her answer wildly at random.
After a while, in the dark night which arithmetic had always been to her, Betsy began to make out a few definite outlines, which were always there, facts which she knew to be so without guessing from the expression of her teacher's face. From that moment her progress had been rapid, one sure fact hooking itself on to another, and another one on to that. She attacked a page of problems now with a zest and self-confidence which made her arithmetic lessons among the most interesting hours at school. (Ch. 9)
- I've been working my way through Shai Cherry's "Introduction to Judaism" course, one of the Great Courses, on Audible, and it's been fabulous. I read through the published notes beforehand and then listen to the half-hour lecture as I cross-stitch a new pattern that I started this week and that is making me happy. There are only seven lectures remaining, and then I think I'll need to find a new course to work my way through!
- I'm also listening to Joseph Telushkin's Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History. I know zilch about the Chabad movement, but I'm sure that will no longer be the case in 19 hours.