. . . But I Digress

For those not in the know, hagbah is one of our weirder mitzvot, especially the Ashkenazi version. The idea is to show off the Torah portion. Ashkenazim keep the Torah scroll in a cloth robe, which is taken off to read, so the Torah is out there on the reader's table naked. After the reading is finished, Ashkenazim select someone (who knows what they're doing) to pick the scroll up off the table and hold it open, showing three columns of text, to the congregation, who chant a little bracha that says, in essence, "Yup, that there's the Torah."

(Sephardim and Italkim do it differently. My synagogue is Ashkenazi, so this is the version I'm learning.)

The thing is, a synagogue's Torah scroll is generally not a small, compact object. They do vary in size, but they are two large-ish wooden spindles (about 18 - 24 inches) with wooden discs supporting about 90 feet of handwritten parchment scroll. They can also weigh between 20 and 40 pounds. They are elegant, but not particularly stable, especially when you're holding the spindles shoulder width apart with just a Very Expensive piece of parchment connecting them.

Now, this can be done -- it is done in synagogues around the world, every week, without incident. There's Technique™ involved, too; it looks like a feat of brute strength, but, as our workshop instructor points out, quite a lot of it is body mechanics and balance. This is why we're having workshops, so that everyone has the opportunity to learn how to do it. The typical person chosen as magbiah (the person who performs hagbah) is a sturdily-built middle-aged man, but with the right technique, most adults can do it, even teeny tiny women in heels.

I can do a perfectly good hagbah with a lightweight scroll opened evenly. And I've done it twice for the Women Cantors' Network, with such scrolls. These last two hagbah workshops, I've been improving my skills with larger, heavier scrolls and, at the one this past Shabbat, the ones that are lopsided, like at the beginning or end of the Torah cycle, where we're in Bereshit or D'varim and most of the weight of the scroll is on one side or the other. (The secret here is modified technique.)

Our instructor was talking all about the rules of doing hagbah and all the precautions taken "for the honor of the Torah." Which I get -- we do things for honor all the time. What I don't get is . . . that's a lot of concern for honor in the details, but the mitzvah itself is an act that has approximately the same peril-to-potential-cringe-comedy rating as a kegstand. I guess a beautifully, elegantly done kegstand would be a thing of joy and honor, but it's still a kegstand.

The instructor agreed that there was in fact something fundamentally weird about Ashkenazi hagbah. But, of course, if you're going to do it, you have to do it right, both for the safety of the Torah scroll and your own personal safety. And, hey, I have successfully lifted a heavy, D'varim-lopsided scroll twice in practice now, though not in a service. All my service hagbah has been with smaller, more evenly rolled scrolls.

This is something of a rare gem, in that it's a Yiddish collaboration by two Soviet artists, one of whom (David Tukhmanov) was not Jewish (though his third wife was). It's a pretty self-explanatory song, especially noteworthy since the Soviet Union did not easily give exit visas to Jews who wanted to emigrate, either to the US or to Israel.

If you were just to look at the poetry for this song, by the Soviet Jewish poet Emmanuel Kazakevitch, you'd see a charming little sketch of Jewish beekeepers in a beautiful meadow working with their bees to produce sweet, healthy honey for everyone to eat. The tune, by Soviet Jewish composer and pianist Lev Yampolski, is simple and folky, quite appropriate to the image of happy beekeepers.

Here's the bit of information that you don't have yet. This beekeeping meadow is located in Birobidzhan. This was an enclave that the Soviet Union carved out for Jews way out in Siberia, near the Chinese border, toward the Pacific coast. It was established in 1931, as kind of a Soviet solution to the Jewish Problem -- this solution being "send all your Jews away to an ostensibly semi-autonomous homeland of their own way out in Sibera where you don't have to think about them any more." Yiddish was officially supported as a pillar of the kind of reified Jewish culture that the Soviets hoped to promote there.

The Lemba are a very small Jewish community in Zimbabwe. Current thinking is that they're descended from Jews who traveled from Yemen a Very Long Time Ago. For a long time, they were one of the more isolated Jewish communities; now, thanks to better global communication and the work of organizations like Kulanu, the Lemba and other Jewish communities are getting to know each other.

Speaking of Sarit Hadid, who composed "Shema Israel," sung by Orly Solomon . . . She is an Israeli singer of Mountain Jewish descent, her parents having immigrated to Israel from Dagestan two years before she was born. She comes from a musical family, and became a pop star around the age of sixteen, singing largely Mizrahi-style music. She was Israel's representative to Eurovision in 2002.