Shabbat services
Jul. 26th, 2003 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioFriday night the worship committee led services. This involved a small herd of volunteers, with its attendant logistics hassles, but overall things went well. Notes for next time: (1) teach people how to use microphones effectively, (2) teach people about voice projection, and (3) make sure notations to stand up or sit down are written into leaders' copies of the service.
Our congregation reads one aliya's worth of the Torah portion on Friday nights. (This year we're doing the first aliya. After Simchat Torah we'll switch to the second, and then the third the following year, and so on for the seven-year cycle. Yes, there's a method to it. :-) ) This week's double portion was on the long side (28 verses total), so we had three readers. I got the long chunk, at 12 verses, though I wasn't trying to do that. The other two read; I chanted. I like chanting, and chanting rather than reading actually helps me with memorization and phrasing even if it takes longer to learn in the first place.
All of the torah readers did a great job. I had my part nailed, and I received many compliments -- including one person who told me I was giving the cantor a run for her money, another one who said I should just go to rabbinical school already, and a third who assumed I was a native speaker of Hebrew. Wow!
There were some logistics challenges, mostly due to the fact that not all of the participants are as familiar with the service as I am. The down-side of having an inclusive service where you call for volunteers is that you sometimes get people who aren't regulars and don't know, if not told, to tell people to rise for such-and-such prayer or whatever. Given the reality that many people who would like to participate are not going to start coming every week, I'd like to find some way to improve the overall level of knowledge among people likely to do this in the future (like members of my committee). Gotta figure out how to do that.
The rabbis will both be away next week too, so the cantorial intern and I had discussed just doing the service ourselves. (I didn't want to have a large logistics challenge two weeks in a row.) She said something about getting volunteers for next week within the hearing of many of last night's participants, though, so I have to change that plan slightly. One person (who is also quite knowledgable) asked to help, so my current plan is to have just the three of us do it and tell anyone else who contacts me that it's all taken care of. (Well, four of us; we have a guest Torah reader.)
I ended up leading this morning's service, because the person I had asked got stuck out of town and couldn't make it. All of last night's Torah readers are part of the morning minyan, so we repeated the Torah reading. (This is why I chose those particular people; I knew we'd need Torah readers twice, so why not get double use out of the learning effort?) This morning I tripped over the reading in a couple places, but there was nothing catastrophic. Aya helped lead parts of the service that I'm a little weak on, which was handy. I got lots of compliments this morning, too. There was one problem I'm not sure how to solve, though: the rabbi plays guitar for this service but I don't, so he's got an easy way to keep people together while singing, signal beginnings and ends of songs, and so on. I had some problems with this, but didn't want to start waving my hands like a choir director. Hmm.
All in all, I'm very happy with both services and I'm looking forward to doing more of next Friday's service. I have to write a sermon, which I'm not as excited about, but it'll be ok. (The rabbi asked me specifically to talk about Tisha b'Av. Hmm.)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-27 06:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-28 06:19 am (UTC)Not really on topic
Date: 2003-07-28 01:09 pm (UTC)Just in case this is useful (I remember you mentioning wanting Hebrew lessons at one point), Hebrew College (local to me in metro Boston) offers classes online, including Hebrew classes, apparently with some audio component included (hooray for technology). More info here. (http://www.hebrewcollege.edu/html/hc_online/courses.htm#modern)
Re: Not really on topic
Date: 2003-07-29 06:44 am (UTC)