Shabbats (future and past)

[cellio]

This Saturday is the Shabbat service where I'll be chanting Torah. I have the first piece. (There are, I think, five readers total.) This should be nifty. I went over the portion with my co-worker again today and things seem to be in order. (I also went over it with Aya, a fellow congregant, at the shabbaton.) I think my plan to chant Behar at Tree of Life the following week might fail, though; the portions are too similar, and I'm getting cognitive dissonance. (When I first set out to do this I thought the portions were two weeks apart, not one.) Oh well; if not this year, then next.

The shabbaton featured some very good conversations that I find myself unable to summarize. We spent some time in the morning studying Pirke Avot (particularly talking about discipline in study and observance), and some time in the afternoon talking about how we relate to God and why we're uncomfortable talking about God. Friday night included a lot of music and storytelling.

A while ago I noticed a big difference in approaches to ritual between the liberal and traditional Jews I know. The shabbaton provided another example with havdalah, the ceremony marking the end of Shabbat. I've done this with traditional friends who've done it quickly and matter-of-factly, not because they were rushed but because that's just the way you do things. At the shabbaton, havdalah extended for a good 15 minutes (maybe more), with music. We were relaxed about it. It is the difference between fulfilling a specific obligation, because you have to, and infusing a ritual with meaning (or at least making it fun). You can see something similar with prayer sometimes; we say fewer words than they do, but we don't rush it as much as some of them do. (Far be it from me to generalize to all traditional Jews. I'm talking about trends I've seen, nothing more.) When you've got so much text that it'll take you 40 minutes to get through (daily) morning prayers touching every word, you don't have much incentive to linger.

I sometimes wish that the Reform movement would put a little more of the traditional content back, but I don't want to end up in a tradition of speed-davening at the expense of paying attention to what the words actually mean. There must be a balance point.