News Chum Non-Stew: A Melange to Tide You Over

In deference to Yom Kippur, we’re not serving up stew today. Instead, here’s a melange of articles to tie you over that period between your morning and afternoon services. Hopefully, you’ll read this instead of eating your lunch, and enjoy intellectual fullness even as your stomach growls.

• Typewriters. Here’s an interesting look at the history of typewriters — in particular, looking at the relationship between typewriters and their owners, with some lovely pictures.
• S.T.O.P. Plates. CSUN is now selling S.T.O.P. plates, which are a theft deterrent for electronic devices. The plates are sold and installed by the CSUN PD for $10. Students, faculty, and staff can participate in this program by buying a plate to discourage theft. Users can also install the plates themselves by purchasing an installation kit through S.T.O.P.’s website for $20. The plates are designed to alert potential thieves that the device is registered with the national S.T.O.P. database. The database contains the identifiable information of a user’s registered device, such as an address and telephone number, and the device’s unique serial number, make, model and type.A code printed on the plate allows police or S.T.O.P. to access the identifiable information, even across state lines.The program is available for any technology that has a serial number.
• Are They Ugly to Their Mothers? Lots of people have been writing about the blobfish, the “worlds ugliest animal”. But there are more — here’s a report on a number of different ugly animals.
• Useful Websites. Here’s a Buzzfeed list of 44 unique and useful websites.  Now I already knew about some of these websites, and some mean nothing to me, but I’m sure you’ll see one or two that are useful.
• Promoting Various Things. A number of little promotions. First, Windows XP is nearing end-of-extended-life. You can evidently still upgrade to Windows 7. I need to explore this for our remaining XP machines. Second, Bitter-Lemon’s LemonHeadMeter kickstart is still ongoing. It is well worth supporting, as it helps get word-of-mouth out there from audiences as well as professional reviewers. Lastly, a wonderful artist from our congregation, Isaac B-B, is having an exhibition in October. We’re going to try to make it to the opening after the October MoTAS meeting, but it runs through mid-December.

 

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The Role of Criticism

The place where I work has as its underlying goal “mission success”. Our goal is to help ensure that the mission (which I don’t need to state here) succeeds, and we work with the parties on both sides to make that happen. This means that we often point out flaws in reasoning or performance. Yet that isn’t criticism, because the goal is not to tear down, but to build up — to help the other parties succeed.

I’ve been musing about this as the service swelled around me last night. It relates to my discussion yesterday about the growth of sadism on the Internet and Internet bullying. It also relates to some discussion on Bitter Lemons (here, here, and here) about the roles of critics, the roles of professional critics, and whether certain individuals have been behaving appropriate.

What is the role of a critic? For that matter, what is the role of a troll? Often, what I see is that the role is perceived to be one that tears down. You’re not a critic unless you can see the flaws and highlight them. You’re not a troll unless you attack and hurt. But does simply identifying problems — whether out of love for the craft or the joy of hating — help in the long run? I don’t believe so.

To me, our goal in whatever we do should be mission success — that is, to ultimately help the mission succeed. If you are at work, you work to make your organization’s mission successful. When I write theatre reviews, it is to make the product better — I try not to just indicate a problem but to suggest (either direct or implied) ways to correct a problem. I won’t say — this show is bad. I will say — this is how this show can be better. The same is true of anything I write. When I wrote about the trolls, my goal was to find ways to make the problem better. When I write up high holyday sermons, it is not to find fault, but to indicate how they can be better.

Far too often, I see folks that believe criticism must be negative. Over at Bitter Lemons, there has been a touch of this — the implication that critics must not only see shows they like, but must have some they hate. I disagree — which is why perhaps I’m not a professional critic. I think that if you are going to write criticism, you must remember to put the adjective “constructive” before it. We must work together to build things up, to make people better, to make society better — to do better in everything we do.

This relates directly to today, Yom Kippur. At services, we enumerate our flaws and failures. We do this not to tear our selves down and belittle us in front of others, but to acknowledge where we can do better, and to vow to — in the upcoming year — work on correcting those failures. I know this has always been a goal for me: acknowledge what works well, work to fix the failures.

Let us work together to battle those whose goal is mission failure — who just want to bring down the mission, who just want to tear down people, who just want to make themselves superior by making others feel inferior. Let work together to make things better.

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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Learning from Political Compromise

For the past umpteen years, when I go to High Holyday services, I bring additional reading with me. No, it’s not a paperback novel. It is companion books like “Gates of Understanding 2“, S.Y. Agnon’s “Days of Awe“, the Pirke Avot. Gates of Understanding 2 is particularly interesting, as it is “A religious commentary to help High Holy Days worshipers unlock the message behind the liturgy. Covers the history and tradition of the prayers, music in the service, synagogue poetry, the role of God, sin and repentance and much more. Also includes comprehensive notes to Gates of Repentance and a thorough index.” In particular GoU2 describes how this particular machzor (prayerbook) came to be in its present form — what was included, what wasn’t, and why.

This was highlighted for me last night when reading the history behind Kol Nidre, and its inclusion — or non-inclusion — in the Reform prayerbook. Kol Nidre is a mystical prayer dating back to the 12th century in Germany that nullifies vows made in anger or in haste. It was controversial for Reform because it implied to the larger community that Jews could not be trusted with their vows. So controversial was this discussion that in 1949 it was included in the first printing of Union Prayer Book (UPB) II, and then removed. Just that page was replaced with a double spaced prayer, the hebrew words for “Kol Nidre”, and in small type “The Kol Nidre Chant”. Even today an exact translation of the prayer in English is not in the prayerbook.

So today at services I brought with me the usual GOU2, but also a collection of older High Holyday Prayerbooks: UPB II, the Hillel prayerbook “On Wings of Awe”, and two prayerbooks produced by Temple Emet in the early 1980s. As we went through the service, I discovered that the current prayerbook was drawn from hither and yon (for example, Unetaneh Tokef was only in the YK Afternoon Service in UPBII), and many things were not translated the same.

So why am I telling you this? Any prayerbook — any service — is a political compromise. What you see on the page is the product of committees wrangling about what should be in or out to express a particular dogma or political point. Essentially, this means that you can’t pray wrong. If you don’t say the words, that’s OK. If you omit a particular prayer, that’s OK.

So what do you do? Again, the answer is in the prayerbook. The Torah portion from Deut. 30 (at least for Reform; traditional uses Lev. 18) emphasizes the need to make the right choice. The Haftorah, from Isaiah, does similar. Actions speak louder than words. Don’t just mouth the political compromise words about correcting failures. Change how you act and you behave. Don’t believe that sitting in a building twice a year will do it for you. Work to improve every day.

[And, to tie this back to the other themes I've discussed: Don't just talk about a congregation being friendly and welcoming. Go out and welcome a stranger. Go out and make a friend. Don't just talk about the connections that exist -- make new ones, and strengthen existing ones. Let your actions be your prayers, and you can remake the world.]

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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