I went to a Moroccan restaurant tonight, along with a friend. It was a fundraiser for Temple Sinai.
"Why do people come to these things?" I earnestly asked Dawn. She replied, because the rabbi wants us to. And we would never disappoint the rabbi.
And so we found ourselves, 50 of us, all middle-aged whatevers, huddled under a tent on a cold winter's night in Oakland. Waiting for the five courses and, of course, the belly dancer.
Rabbi Chester made a point of telling us that there would be prizes for the best male and best female belly dancers, amateurs all. "And the prize," he chortled, "is from the Temple Sinai Gift Shop, of course!"
Food kept coming, brought in by the largely Oriental staff. They were very nice to us, eager to please. Red wine? Of course. White wine? Of course. Coke? Sure. And lots of food I couldn't identify if my life depended on it. The bread was good. The vegetables, surprisingly, were spicy but not too much, and were very good. I found myself saying something I never thought I would: this cooked carrot is delicious!
I tended to find the chicken and stick with that, although I did have one of the pieces of lamb off the skewer. It was okay.
The woman next to me was the editor of the Sinai bulletin. What were the odds? Seeing as how I had a camera, she practically ordered me to take photos. I did, gladly. But then at one point, she wrestled the camera out of my hands, jumped into the fray, and took more photos, yelling, "Closeups! I need closeups!" Hey, I understand. I'm a newsletter editor myself. I transmitted the photos to her as soon as I got home. I was pleased to see that I got one photo of her out there dancing.
Sure, we go to these events because the rabbi wants us to. But, obviously, there's a feeling that we'll have a good time in this, our safe community.
And the belly dancer wasn't bad, either.
No comments:
Post a Comment