Whew!

OKay, the חגים (holidays) are over It's official (well. really it was official at the beginning of shabbat), the high holiday season is over. We have repented, the rains will, בעזרת השם (God willing), fall in Israel, and replenish the Kineret (at least a little), and maybe cool everyone's tempers down for a while. Not that I dislike them; actually I always have thought of the season of repentance as the culmination of the year, rather than its beginning ( both of which are true, in some respects), but it will be nice to go a full week and be able maybe even to catch up - or even better, get a little (I don't want to be too ambitious here, but I have my hopes) ahead.
The weirdest part - at least for me- was trying to figure out how to work in pumping milk while being up on the bima.
Who else has this problem? Maybe stage actors. Normal people can take a coffee break and go off to their closet or whatever, without anyone noticing. Now, maybe that was true for me too - after all, there are usually three rabbis including me (- obviously the stuff I was running was an exception, and I couldn't leave at all - had to figure out how to schedule around it, but luckily so far, I've managed to have only services that have been up to, but not over two and a half hours - sufficient that I can do before and after, and don't need to go during) , not to mention an assortment of cantors, so maybe when I sneak off, not a soul - other than the other rabbis who know where I'm going- notices, but it feels like there's a big blinking neon sign over my head flashing impertinent information as I skulk off.
On the other hand, I feel pretty priveleged that I can do this without anyone complaining. To the contrary, aside from the occasional comment in wonder about how strange modern life is - surely a sentiment with which it is difficult to disagree- I have been supported wholeheartedly, and I am very grateful for it.
Here would be a good place to ramble on for a while about the findings of the Conservative movement's study on gender and the rabbinate, but I think I'll hold off for another time.