Thanksgiving Week
2021-Nov-24, Wednesday 15:53![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Been a bit since I had a general update post. Time to drink my tea and write another one.
Saturday was Laila's naming ceremony at Mishkan. There's a standard ritual for giving baby boys their Hebrew name, but no standard ritual for girls, because historically women did not have separate Hebrew names. One's Hebrew name was used to summon them for an aliyah, and that was only afforded to men--and still is, in some streams of Judaism--but nowadays we're more broadminded and so Sasha and I, as her parents, received an aliyah for parashat Vayishlach. I didn't read from the Torah because my Hebrew is awful and it would have taken forever--something else I need to work on--but I did get to hear the entire congregation say "awwwwww" as they saw me carrying Laila up to the bimah. The rabbis gave Laila a blessing and told Mishkan her Hebrew name, בינה בת ברק Binah bat Barak (meaning "Wisdom, daughter of Lightning"), and unlike the bat Mitzvah or the couple given an auf ruf (Yiddish: "Calling up"), they did not throw candy at us. But I got to save some for later!
I really like Mishkan's approach to tradition, which I can sum up as: they have female rabbis, but during the part of the prayer service where the priestly blessing (Numbers 6:24-26) is recited, they had the rabbi who's a descendant of the Kohanim priests do it.
A bunch of people came to the service--![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
thosesocks, britshlez, my family, and sashagee's family, but after it was over everyone went home. We put Laila down for a nap and when she woke up, we drove out to the suburbs and played games with sashagee's parents, brother, and his brother's girlfriend until Laila couldn't take it anymore and was nearly an exploding kitten herself. Fortunately, since I was the car, so when Laila got fussy I was able to put a hand back and calm her down. She was angry for maybe twenty minutes and then fell asleep for the rest of the ride home.
Monday was the end of the Scum and Villainy game thatthosesocks has been running for a while--what was originally supposed to be a simple three-session game or so turned into fifteen sessions, but a changing work schedule meant that there wasn't enough time left for game. Having crashed on a quarantined planet and recovered the ensouled hoverbikes we were looking for, we escaped the traps set by the things from the Dark Between the Stars and took shelter in a Precursor ruin, where we found a still-functional Precursor ship and learned at last what the Precursors looked like (spider-geese, basically). We took the ship and flew off into space, past the Hegemony ship that certainly wasn't expecting a flying Precursor artifact with possibly the last still-extant Precursor group-mind. It's all set up to be lead into a glorious new chapter of the game that...might not happen. Or it might?! I guess we'll see.
I've also beaten Shadowbringers andsashagee and I have been watching the Wheel of Time TV show, but I'm going to make separate posts about those.
Tomorrow we're going out to my parents for Thanksgiving and staying the night, and then the next day we'll be atsashagee's parents' house. On Saturday we're going to a parents' group that Mishkan is starting as well as visiting sashagee's old roommate who's currently laid up with an injury, and on Sunday we're going to the zoo! The last few days have been quiet, but we're entering the busy period of Thanksgiving week.
Saturday was Laila's naming ceremony at Mishkan. There's a standard ritual for giving baby boys their Hebrew name, but no standard ritual for girls, because historically women did not have separate Hebrew names. One's Hebrew name was used to summon them for an aliyah, and that was only afforded to men--and still is, in some streams of Judaism--but nowadays we're more broadminded and so Sasha and I, as her parents, received an aliyah for parashat Vayishlach. I didn't read from the Torah because my Hebrew is awful and it would have taken forever--something else I need to work on--but I did get to hear the entire congregation say "awwwwww" as they saw me carrying Laila up to the bimah. The rabbis gave Laila a blessing and told Mishkan her Hebrew name, בינה בת ברק Binah bat Barak (meaning "Wisdom, daughter of Lightning"), and unlike the bat Mitzvah or the couple given an auf ruf (Yiddish: "Calling up"), they did not throw candy at us. But I got to save some for later!
I really like Mishkan's approach to tradition, which I can sum up as: they have female rabbis, but during the part of the prayer service where the priestly blessing (Numbers 6:24-26) is recited, they had the rabbi who's a descendant of the Kohanim priests do it.
A bunch of people came to the service--
thosesocks, britshlez, my family, and sashagee's family, but after it was over everyone went home. We put Laila down for a nap and when she woke up, we drove out to the suburbs and played games with sashagee's parents, brother, and his brother's girlfriend until Laila couldn't take it anymore and was nearly an exploding kitten herself. Fortunately, since I was the car, so when Laila got fussy I was able to put a hand back and calm her down. She was angry for maybe twenty minutes and then fell asleep for the rest of the ride home.Monday was the end of the Scum and Villainy game that
thosesocks has been running for a while--what was originally supposed to be a simple three-session game or so turned into fifteen sessions, but a changing work schedule meant that there wasn't enough time left for game. Having crashed on a quarantined planet and recovered the ensouled hoverbikes we were looking for, we escaped the traps set by the things from the Dark Between the Stars and took shelter in a Precursor ruin, where we found a still-functional Precursor ship and learned at last what the Precursors looked like (spider-geese, basically). We took the ship and flew off into space, past the Hegemony ship that certainly wasn't expecting a flying Precursor artifact with possibly the last still-extant Precursor group-mind. It's all set up to be lead into a glorious new chapter of the game that...might not happen. Or it might?! I guess we'll see.I've also beaten Shadowbringers and
sashagee and I have been watching the Wheel of Time TV show, but I'm going to make separate posts about those. Tomorrow we're going out to my parents for Thanksgiving and staying the night, and then the next day we'll be at
sashagee's parents' house. On Saturday we're going to a parents' group that Mishkan is starting as well as visiting sashagee's old roommate who's currently laid up with an injury, and on Sunday we're going to the zoo! The last few days have been quiet, but we're entering the busy period of Thanksgiving week.
