Ever had one of those days?....
Oct. 30th, 2004 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_ytToday I went to visit Beth Zion-Beth Israel, the Conservative congregation I will be studying for my thesis. Instead of taking the train I accepted an offer from someone in my Anthro Senior Seminar to ride in her car. She's a nice person but her driving (lots of speeding and near-misses) makes me nervous. Next time I'll take the train.
I walked from where she dropped me off to the synagogue. I was a bit nervous walking in that part of Philly by myself, but nothing happened. It was a nice walk and I crossed over the bridge at sunset, so I got a great view of the river.
The synagogue itself was in a converted church. They kept the original Gothic stonework and such on the inside, though they replaced the stained-glass windows with Jewish-themed ones (one problem with church windows is that they feature people in their imagery, which is taboo in a synagogue). I talked to the cantor, a very nice man who gave me contact info for the rabbis and regular Torah readers in the synagogue.
Then I went down to the main sanctuary so I could write a description of it. It looked a bit weird to me because there were plaques dedicated to founders, presidents and funders of the synagogue, as well as memorial plaques and yartzheit (or anniversary-of-death) plaques on the rear wall, which we do not have at Adat Shalom (then again, Adat Shalom hasn't had its own building for long enough to accumulate such things). I went up to look at the ark where the Torahs are kept. They were behind a curtain.
Here's the stupid and embarassing part. I pulled back the curtain to see the Torahs - I meant to count them - and I ended up setting off an alarm. Now I'd never heard of alarms on arks before, and I didn't think there would be alarms anywhere because everything was open and there were lots of people in the building at that hour. I talked to Dad on the phone about it later and he told me that Torahs are quite valuable ($30,000 dollars and up), and people steal them to sell on the black market, hence the alarms.
Nobody rushed into the sanctuary. That would have been REALLY embarassing. I went into the main hall, apologizing to everyone I saw for setting off the alarm. Someone finally entered the code to turn it off and called the security company to tell them it was a false alarm. He didn't seem too ticked off about the whole thing - nobody did - but that didn't make it any less humiliating. The guy who turned off the alarm also happened to be the senior rabbi of the synagogue, who I want to talk to at some point (I discovered this when he spoke to the security company on the phone). I decided that it was not a good time to introduce myself and I left.
I got a salad at 30th Street Station and took the train back to Bryn Mawr. From there I went to the library to look through the Encyclopedia Judaica and flesh out the glossary I'm planning to attach to my thesis. I'm going to head back to my room soon and eat some of my Halloween swag.
Since my brother's home for election day, I'll have to call him. My absentee ballot didn't come in the mail, so I think I just missed my first Presidential election because I used a pen instead of a pencil to fill out the ballot. Oh well, Kerry's got Maryland firmly in hand anyway.
Tomorrow will probably be very tense. If Bush wins then I shall make plans to move to England or Canada.
I walked from where she dropped me off to the synagogue. I was a bit nervous walking in that part of Philly by myself, but nothing happened. It was a nice walk and I crossed over the bridge at sunset, so I got a great view of the river.
The synagogue itself was in a converted church. They kept the original Gothic stonework and such on the inside, though they replaced the stained-glass windows with Jewish-themed ones (one problem with church windows is that they feature people in their imagery, which is taboo in a synagogue). I talked to the cantor, a very nice man who gave me contact info for the rabbis and regular Torah readers in the synagogue.
Then I went down to the main sanctuary so I could write a description of it. It looked a bit weird to me because there were plaques dedicated to founders, presidents and funders of the synagogue, as well as memorial plaques and yartzheit (or anniversary-of-death) plaques on the rear wall, which we do not have at Adat Shalom (then again, Adat Shalom hasn't had its own building for long enough to accumulate such things). I went up to look at the ark where the Torahs are kept. They were behind a curtain.
Here's the stupid and embarassing part. I pulled back the curtain to see the Torahs - I meant to count them - and I ended up setting off an alarm. Now I'd never heard of alarms on arks before, and I didn't think there would be alarms anywhere because everything was open and there were lots of people in the building at that hour. I talked to Dad on the phone about it later and he told me that Torahs are quite valuable ($30,000 dollars and up), and people steal them to sell on the black market, hence the alarms.
Nobody rushed into the sanctuary. That would have been REALLY embarassing. I went into the main hall, apologizing to everyone I saw for setting off the alarm. Someone finally entered the code to turn it off and called the security company to tell them it was a false alarm. He didn't seem too ticked off about the whole thing - nobody did - but that didn't make it any less humiliating. The guy who turned off the alarm also happened to be the senior rabbi of the synagogue, who I want to talk to at some point (I discovered this when he spoke to the security company on the phone). I decided that it was not a good time to introduce myself and I left.
I got a salad at 30th Street Station and took the train back to Bryn Mawr. From there I went to the library to look through the Encyclopedia Judaica and flesh out the glossary I'm planning to attach to my thesis. I'm going to head back to my room soon and eat some of my Halloween swag.
Since my brother's home for election day, I'll have to call him. My absentee ballot didn't come in the mail, so I think I just missed my first Presidential election because I used a pen instead of a pencil to fill out the ballot. Oh well, Kerry's got Maryland firmly in hand anyway.
Tomorrow will probably be very tense. If Bush wins then I shall make plans to move to England or Canada.
