some people's children

I went to services Friday evening, as I occasionally do. The community is very welcoming in a lot of ways, so I've been going off and on for 11 years now. They try hard not to trigger scent allergies, which makes them more physically comfortable than any other synagogue I've attended--more comfortable than most gatherings of any kind. And they're feminist, and concerned about poverty and fairness. So I go there when I want to go to services, even though I usually feel stupid, between how much of the service is in Hebrew, how much the grammar changes to reflect feminism, and how much language-learning ability I've lost. (I never had much. But it bothers me to confront the loss of pattern recognition that doesn't usually matter that much to me.) I go, even though the singing doesn't sound familiar, and the group is so small there's not a reliable minyan. A welcoming community that shares my values is IMPORTANT.

A couple of new people showed up in the middle of services on Friday. It shouldn't surprise anybody when people turn up half an hour late this time of year, considering that services started at 7 in the summer (and early fall) and start at 6:30 in the winter. It still makes me smile when the front door opens in the middle of L'cha Dodi so the congregation is getting up to welcome Shabbat just as strangers are coming in to be welcomed.

After the service, we all introduced ourselves, and stood around making friendly conversation. ( Some people are better at making friendly conversation than others, as I )

Before the difficulty had been completely sorted out, I lost patience, thanked heaven she wasn't MY kid, and went home. What a tangle. As I said, I don't know the parents at all well, but I know them well enough to be reasonably confident they didn't teach her the appalling stuff above on purpose. It just didn't occur to them to teach her it was wrong until she put it together in that cringeworthy form.