The Chavurah continues, just barely

Okay, so after that initial "housekeeping" meeting of Chavurah liaisons at Beth El, I arranged for our first planning meeting. Given that only six people, including Ilan and me, had signed up in our "demographic," (read: late twenties and early thirties, no children) I didn't know what to expect. We met at Caffe Trieste on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland and. . . only two people, Dan and Jill, showed up. And they were a couple. So, essentially, it was a double date.

We did the best with what we had and planned to meet again as a group, hopefully with our two missing members, for a Tu B'Shevat garden clean-up at Beth El and lunch at Cheeseboard. (Tu B'Shevat, according to Anita Diamant in Living a Jewish Life, is a holiday that celebrates "the relationship between people and the natural world, or in contemporary parlance, the ecology of the planet. In Jewish tradition, the primary symbol of this relationship is the tree.") Dan and Jill planned to be there, but our two additional members either didn't respond or couldn't make it. So we canceled. Sad, but true. We're working on reaching out to the congregation to get additional members and breathe some life into the group, so we'll see what happens.

On a more positive note, this has freed Ilan and I up to celebrate Tu B'Shevat in other ways. Namely, by gathering a group of friends to head toward Ano Nuevo to scope out the elephant seals in all of their mating, fighting glory. (Hm, mating and fighting. . . always closely related.) And maybe on Saturday we can pot some new house plants, too. And eat some fruit. Indeed.