cellio | Shabbat

(I attempted to post this Sunday but LJ didn't seem to like it. Hmm.)

I spent part of Shabbat with the gracious murmur311, who took me to services at her congregation Friday night and another Saturday morning. (Hers doesn't have Saturday services this month. Lack of critical mass, I gather.)

Friday night we went to Valley Temple. Their rabbi was away so I didn't get to meet him, but they have an intern (who has finished the first three years of rabbinical school). He seems like an interesting and accessible person. He did some teaching during the service; he's new enough that he's probably still figuring out what the congregation already knows and what it needs to be taught.

Service anthropology: Gates of Prayer (gray), service 1 (which we don't usually do), some familiar melodies and some I've heard zero or one times and could work out easily. It's nice to be able to participate. :-) No chatzi kaddish at the end of kabbalat shabbat; don't know why. V'ahavta in English and not Hebrew, which in a way is better than doing both but I wasn't used to it. (My own preference is Hebrew and not English.) Aleinu in English (mostly). No torah reading, which is unusual for Reform congregations.

There were about 20-25 people there, I'd guess, and people stuck around for a while at the oneg. The people I met were friendly, and one in particular seems to be a good-natured trouble-maker. (He and Jenny are in the same Hebrew class and both show up at lots of things, and apparently they're used to giving each other a hard time. It was fun to watch. :-) )

Saturday morning we went to Wise for their informal service and torah study. They, like my own congregation, have a home-grown siddur (theirs is called Avodat ha-Lev; ours is Shirat ha-Lev). Theirs resembles the format of Mishkan T'filah; I didn't get a chance to ask about its history. So they have Hebrew, transliteration, and translation on one page, with alternative readings on the facing page (mostly). They have members of the congregation read parts of the English; we used to do this by going around the circle, but they have a clever idea. They have a set of cards that say things like "choose one reading from page 42b", and when you get to that page that person reads something. There's no fumbling over whose turn it is like there can be in a circle, and people know what they're going to do ahead of time so those who like to read through the text silently first can do so. In addition, with the cards you can ensure that only those who want to read do so, rather than having people jockey for position in the circle to avoid, or get, reading parts. We aren't currently doing the go-around-the-circle reading, but I'm going to take the card idea back anyway in case we do in the future.

There were, I think, around 30-35 people there, so pretty similar to my own congregation's informal service. Almost everyone stayed for torah study.

I was amused that the first person to whom I've mentioned my rabbi's name knows him. The associate rabbi who ran this service looked like she couldn't be more than a few years out of rabbinic school, so I thought the odds were low. But my rabbi was one of her teachers at camp when she was in junior high school. :-) (Rabbi, if you're reading this, I'll tell you the name privately.)

The service was pretty bare-bones (under an hour) but hit all the key points, including a short torah reading. There was a small kiddush, and then we sat down for torah study.