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shiva minyan
Last night's shiva minyan (see previous entry) went ok. I had to change a couple things on the fly and I made one stupid mistake that, fortunately, wasn't too hard to correct. (I had failed to ask for the Hebrew name of the deceased before we started, and when I got to El Molei Rachamim and needed it I had to stop and ask. Oops. I had her secular name.)
During the Amidah I noticed that almost no one was chanting along with me on the Hebrew for Avot, so on the fly I decided to switch to English for the rest. (Our congregation's convention is that everyone recites together.) I'm not sure if that was the right call; they might have just preferred to listen and say "amein".
During Aleinu (which I led in Hebrew anyway; more people seemed to know it, oddly) I almost launched into the second paragraph on auto-pilot while turning a page, only to discover that the second paragraph wasn't there in this siddur. It was there in English, but not in Hebrew. Weird. So I stopped myself and read it in English; I could do it from memory, but I wasn't going to assume anyone else could.
(My goal had been to get there 5-10 minutes early so, after giving condolences to the family, I could take a quick flip through the siddur, which I'm not very familiar with. But weather and parking problems conspired to cause me to get there about 2 minutes before the start time, so I didn't get this chance. So everything that is additional for a house of mourning, rather than standard liturgy, I was doing cold.)
I think I did ok, but things like the Hebrew call and the name make me feel like I didn't do a good job. But the family appreciated it (or at least was polite enough to say so), so I guess it worked out.
During the Amidah I noticed that almost no one was chanting along with me on the Hebrew for Avot, so on the fly I decided to switch to English for the rest. (Our congregation's convention is that everyone recites together.) I'm not sure if that was the right call; they might have just preferred to listen and say "amein".
During Aleinu (which I led in Hebrew anyway; more people seemed to know it, oddly) I almost launched into the second paragraph on auto-pilot while turning a page, only to discover that the second paragraph wasn't there in this siddur. It was there in English, but not in Hebrew. Weird. So I stopped myself and read it in English; I could do it from memory, but I wasn't going to assume anyone else could.
(My goal had been to get there 5-10 minutes early so, after giving condolences to the family, I could take a quick flip through the siddur, which I'm not very familiar with. But weather and parking problems conspired to cause me to get there about 2 minutes before the start time, so I didn't get this chance. So everything that is additional for a house of mourning, rather than standard liturgy, I was doing cold.)
I think I did ok, but things like the Hebrew call and the name make me feel like I didn't do a good job. But the family appreciated it (or at least was polite enough to say so), so I guess it worked out.