![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cremainsTsion is a guard at a kindergarten where in the course of my secretarial duties I often put up posters. We never spoke until one day when he let me in he stopped and asked me, "Are you wearing tefilin?" It was like the moment in some stock fantasy novel where the protagonist asks the old man "Why do you have a dragon" (or some shit like that) and the old man is amazed he can see it because normally mortals don't perceive these things at all.
Tsion wanted to know: 1) why am I wearing tefilin while walking around, and 2) why am I wearing tefilin while being a woman. I answered that most aharonim agree that the mitswah is to wear it during daylight hours, and that this indeed seems to have been the practice of Chaza"l. He then answered the second question himself, saying that if a woman wants to he supposes there is no law against it and that he begrudges no one.
This began a conversation that lasted 45 minutes as the both of us were standing there on the general theme of religious law as it pertains to women. He said that it was forbidden for women to go up to the Torah, and I, surprised, explained that this is honestly the least classically problematic part of egalitarian services and the Gemara itself permits it. He wasn't buying it. Tsion, although it didn't seem like he was very learned, had a strong instinct for what he thought was forbidden and permitted - like the old saying, "They may not be prophets, but they are children of prophets."
Anyway I thought the conversation might have made it weird for me to encounter him week to week, but actually he's been very friendly and also stops me to say hi on the street. The last time I went, he was with another guard friend, and they both took my posters to put them up for me. I had one more to deliver inside, and asked him if the door was open. "For you, Yonah, every door is open!" he laughed. That actually made what had been a pretty shitty day.
The other guard, who had been taping the poster on the other side of a chainlink fence, asked Tsion, "Hey, read this out to me." Tsion began: "RAIN. Learn all about rain this Wednesday..." (I deliver posters for children's programming at an egalitarian synagogue.) I left to go deliver the remaining poster, and when I came back, they were walking to their guard hut, saying goodbye to me with the phrase "For a blessing, for a blessing!" (something you traditionally say about rain).
A couple of nights later, when the Jews in Israel began praying for rain (hence the timing of the posters), there was a terrific thunderstorm. I was at work, loitering around until a late-night class finished so I could clean and lock the building up. The minute they heard the sound of raindrops, the people in the class jumped up and started chattering happily to each other, running over to the windows. "Just give me two more minutes," begged the lecturer in vain.
I walked home an hour later when it was quietly dripping, lightning flashing silently every few steps. But by the time I was near my apartment, it was like the ocean was falling from the sky. Worried about my tefilin (which I was carrying in a cloth bag) I ran into a store and asked for a plastic bag. The store was full of strangers crowding in to stay dry, laughing and making acquaintance. Outside, a teenager screamed over and over again, like a kid in a haunted house. Hareidi couples stuck with one umbrella huddled immodestly close.
That series of events left me feeling uncharacteristically optimistic about the fate of the world, but fortunately the feeling has worn off.
Tsion wanted to know: 1) why am I wearing tefilin while walking around, and 2) why am I wearing tefilin while being a woman. I answered that most aharonim agree that the mitswah is to wear it during daylight hours, and that this indeed seems to have been the practice of Chaza"l. He then answered the second question himself, saying that if a woman wants to he supposes there is no law against it and that he begrudges no one.
This began a conversation that lasted 45 minutes as the both of us were standing there on the general theme of religious law as it pertains to women. He said that it was forbidden for women to go up to the Torah, and I, surprised, explained that this is honestly the least classically problematic part of egalitarian services and the Gemara itself permits it. He wasn't buying it. Tsion, although it didn't seem like he was very learned, had a strong instinct for what he thought was forbidden and permitted - like the old saying, "They may not be prophets, but they are children of prophets."
Anyway I thought the conversation might have made it weird for me to encounter him week to week, but actually he's been very friendly and also stops me to say hi on the street. The last time I went, he was with another guard friend, and they both took my posters to put them up for me. I had one more to deliver inside, and asked him if the door was open. "For you, Yonah, every door is open!" he laughed. That actually made what had been a pretty shitty day.
The other guard, who had been taping the poster on the other side of a chainlink fence, asked Tsion, "Hey, read this out to me." Tsion began: "RAIN. Learn all about rain this Wednesday..." (I deliver posters for children's programming at an egalitarian synagogue.) I left to go deliver the remaining poster, and when I came back, they were walking to their guard hut, saying goodbye to me with the phrase "For a blessing, for a blessing!" (something you traditionally say about rain).
A couple of nights later, when the Jews in Israel began praying for rain (hence the timing of the posters), there was a terrific thunderstorm. I was at work, loitering around until a late-night class finished so I could clean and lock the building up. The minute they heard the sound of raindrops, the people in the class jumped up and started chattering happily to each other, running over to the windows. "Just give me two more minutes," begged the lecturer in vain.
I walked home an hour later when it was quietly dripping, lightning flashing silently every few steps. But by the time I was near my apartment, it was like the ocean was falling from the sky. Worried about my tefilin (which I was carrying in a cloth bag) I ran into a store and asked for a plastic bag. The store was full of strangers crowding in to stay dry, laughing and making acquaintance. Outside, a teenager screamed over and over again, like a kid in a haunted house. Hareidi couples stuck with one umbrella huddled immodestly close.
That series of events left me feeling uncharacteristically optimistic about the fate of the world, but fortunately the feeling has worn off.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-11 01:55 am (UTC)I like your guard, and I'm glad you are friends even while disagreeing.
I wish I could have experienced that thunderstorm! It reminds me of one my mom and I were caught in in Orlando when I was 9.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-11 01:22 pm (UTC)(Thanks for the cool explanation of your wedding ceremony way back, by the way)