Shabbat report
May. 10th, 2003 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioLiterary Device: So, how were services?
Inner Voice: Remember, we're working on being positive.
Me: It was certainly better than that fourth-grade service at my congregation would have been.
IV: That's not what we meant by "positive" and you know it.
Me: It was educational.
IV: Umm... coming from you that's probably positive, but keep trying.
Me: It is. I value education, even if I don't want to repeat the specific experience. Ok, more... No one said anything negative to me.
IV: Better.
Me: No one said anything to me at all.
IV: No one?
Me: No one. Not even a "gut shabbos" in response to mine. There were no other women there at all.
IV: But the service itself was good, right?
Me: It's hard to tell. I presume they did mincha, and it seemed like something resembling kabbalat shabbat was happening, but with all the chatter and a pretty obstructive mechitza, it was pretty hard to follow. But the noise died down for ma'ariv to the point where I could hear the chazan.
IV: Well that's something good.
Me: Yes, and I didn't have any trouble following ma'ariv just on audio. I can read a siddur well enough for that.
IV: And was there a lot of singing and merry-making like you expected?
Me: Hey, stop it. It's hard to stay positive when you bait me.
No, actually, there wasn't. There was one song during kabbalat shabbat that had a lot of singing and hand-clapping. I couldn't make out the words, though, so I don't know which one it was and couldn't join in. Unless it was really weird it wasn't Lecha Dodi -- and if you were going to pick exactly one part of kabbalat shabbat to do up, that's the part I would have guessed. So, beats me.
Otherwise, services were pretty normal Orthodox. Well, they have some stuff in their siddur that's different from Birnbaum and Artscroll, but that's not surprising. A fair bit of kabbalistic stuff -- meditations on the s'firot and stuff like that.
IV: So what about the oneg?
Me: I saw no evidence of one. I felt pretty awkward and out of place by then, so when I didn't see any hints in the first few minutes after the service, I just left.
Oh well. It would have presumably gone much better if I'd had a (female) "native guide", but I don't know any. Saturday morning is probably a much better bet than Friday night, and I'll try that someday, but I had the Friday night available so I figured it was worth a try. I've got a Saturday-morning minyan that I'm very attached to.
Maybe I had unrealistic expectations; I don't know. You hear a lot about the joy in chassidism, and I guess I expected something similar to the "singing minyan" in Passaic NJ, which was sort of Carlebach-esque in feel (though I didn't know about Shlomo Carlebach's music until later). At that service there was singing and even a little dancing IIRC, and the community really felt inclusive. I somehow thought that Chassidism was that plus more. (And, of course, I don't know if Friday's service was representative of the larger community.)
This morning's service went very well. It also had much
more ruach (spirit) and community than I expected (and
about as much singing as I expected -- which is to say,
a fair bit).
I got there early so I could get a look at the sefer torah (scroll) I'd be reading from. Good thing I did; the calligraphy was very hard to read, with more of the "widened" letters than I've seen elsewhere. (The text is justified, and rather than mucking with white space the way printers do, certain lettrs are permitted to be written wider than usual to fill in the space. Sometimes they're very wide. It can be distracting.)
I was the first of five torah readers. I was nervous, but it went well. I made one "invisible" trope error and am pleased that I didn't stumble when I realized it had happened; I just fudged things and went on, and I don't think anyone but the checker noticed. And she didn't stop me for it, which is good. I made no pronunciation errors, and I think the checker would have corrected me if I had (based on what I saw with another reader). I think my pronunciation was spot-on, actually, and my trope was pretty good. (Certainly musically sound; whether I had any glitches within that scope, I can't say.)
I learned three lessons, two of which I've learned before and had forgotten. So I will write them down this time:
- Practice chanting while leaning over a table, not while standing up straight. Breathing and vocal support are very different in that posture. (I was out of breath in places where I shouldn't have been, and hadn't been in practice.)
- Don't get too attached to the calligraphy in the tikkun (practice book); the scroll might be different (already discussed).
- Both of your hands will be occupied, so don't plan on using hidden gestures to aid in memorization. (I had two sections that were the same text and different trope, and I practiced with gestures under the table to help me memorize which was which. But I had to use one hand to hold a roller on the scroll and the other was holding the yad (pointer), leaving no hands free. And that's the trope I got wrong.)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-11 06:09 am (UTC)In the US, many Orthodox women just don't go to Friday night services. This is not an absolute, but it's pretty common. After "making Shabbos" - shopping, cooking, cleaning, setting up the house, preparing for overnight guests and making the kids presentable, most women just want to collapse after lighting candles.
So. They do. They put on a pretty robe and maybe even a matching snood instead of a wig, and just collapse until the men come home from synagogue. This is true even in households where the husband do their fair share of the work.
It's not polite to talk to a strange woman, so the men would not say gut shabbos to you. They would assume you would not welcome such attentions, either. Here in Flatbush, if I'm out walking on Shabbat and I pass other women, they say Good Shabbos. If I pass men, we don't say anything. If I'm walking with my husband, and we pass other couples, the woman greets me. The man greets my husband. It's all part of the sexual segregation.
And, honestly, unless there is synagogue Shabbat dinner, I've never been to an O synagogue who had an Oneg. Everyone wants to go home to dinner, after all, and there are people waiting at home to eat.
The lack of ruach you described - that varies intensely from synagogue to synagogue and congregation to congregation. I will say that, according to
The best time to go to a black hat place is Shabbat morning. There will still be chatter, and you're in for a fairly long service, but there will also be other women and a nice kiddush afterwards.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-11 09:36 am (UTC)Thanks for all the information. I've been to Orthodox services that were attended by women, so I thought this would at least be plausible here. (Mostly Modern Orthodox, plus a couple that I don't know how to characterize.) And I didn't realize the sexual segregation extended that far; I knew not to offer a handshake, of course, but I didn't realize that speaking was considered improper. (Does that mean that I was out of line in greeting the men I encountered? I didn't mean to offend anyone.)
And now, something that happened five years ago and puzzled me then clicks into place... I'd gone to an O tikkun leil Shavuot -- at a place that seemed to the right of MO, but I don't know what they call themselves -- and during the breaks most of the women talked to me and none of the men did (except the rabbi, who had a special reason to do so). Now I finally understand what was going on!