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Sunday
Members of our group will be leading most of the services during the week, and the registration packet asked us to rank our top three choices from this list: leading prayers in English, leading prayers in Hebrew, leading singing, giving a d'var torah, and reading/chanting torah. I'd love to chant torah but not on a few days' notice (when exactly would I learn the portion with this schedule?); apparently some of my fellow participants are that good, and I'm looking forward to learning their tricks. I chose music, Hebrew prayer, and d'var torah. (Yes, a d'var torah requires prep time, but I've done that on two hours' notice in the past so I know I can. And I knew we'd get more notice than that.)
I realized after turning in the form that this week is Matot-Ma'asei, and I read the second aliya of Matot last year. That doesn't help for the weekday services (the torah reading is the first aliya of the portion), but I considered asking to read torah because scraping rust off isn't as hard as learning fresh. I didn't do it, though. They ended up dividing us into groups and assigning services, leaving it to us to divide things up (except torah readers and divrei torah, which were specifically assigned). I and two other people are doing Friday shacharit (morning service), so we have some time to figure out what we're doing. I got some good ideas from a class we had today on worship, and I got more from tonight's ma'ariv service (led by the staff).
The first of today's classes (after lunch an an orientation that was mainly introductions of everyone) was on liturgy and the siddur. The rabbi (who seems very friendly) talked about the history of the liturgy and how it evolved from individual prayer (not formal worship) in the Tanakh to the community service of the temple cult (summary: community meal with God) to words replacing that after the fall of the temple. At this point everything was still oral and the service leader spoke extemporaneously, but there was a fixed order of themes to be covered. (I took a class several years ago where we studied the mishna to tractate B'rachot, specifically about how this is done. It was interesting stuff, and I imagine my rabbi and I will get to it in a few years as we study that tractate.)
As the talmud developed the texts were still flexible, and piyutim (poems) started to get added in. (The Reform movement took these out, for the most part.) The first standardization of the text came in the 9th century CE, and only the Babylonian Jews paid attention to it. This is long before printing, so service leaders had a copy of this fixed text but no one else did. With the advent of printing in the 15th century things changed; the service leader was no longer the only person with the necessary knowledge. But this was pretty much the death blow for improvised or creative text, too (at least until modern times).
(I should clarify that you are getting my gloss on the rabbi's talk. For example, she certainly did not use the phrase "death blow".)
There is something of a tension, the rabbi said, between authenticity and connection to the past, on the one hand, and creativity and innovation on the other. Balancing this is a challenge for the sh'liach tzibur (service leader).
We also talked some about the "bracha formula", the six words that begin every blessing, with a side trip into the question of whether it is appropriate for us to bless God. (I mean, he's God -- he doesn't need our blessings. Does giving a blessing assert some sort of rank over the person being blessed, as when a parent blesses his children? We didn't go into it very much.)
Intermission
Between this class and dinner I had about fifteen minutes to visit the room with the internet connection. (This consists of a hub, extra network cables, and one laptop connected to said hub.) I was able to glance at email (didn't see it all, and it looks like a mailing list I own went haywire) and make one LJ post. Another that I also had queued up refused to post -- don't know why but I'll try again when I post this.
Dinner included a brief talk on birkat hamazon, the grace after meals, and an invitation for us to start leading this at future meals. Having semi-botched this at our congregational retreat in May (one melodic bit I didn't know, and some unfamiliar text in the specific version we were using), so I'd like to try again.
The evening class was called "the worship experience", taught by the same rabbi who taught about liturgy. This was the more affective, less academic course, suitable for the end of the day. Worship is more than just liturgy; liturgy is the text, but worship is the whole experience. (And just to throw in the third term often used interchangably with these, prayer is about your private conversation with God, and is not the same as either liturgy or worship.)
We started by having several people describe worship experiences that were particularly powerful. We had quite a range. One person described a Shabbat service in Jerusalem; I described my first shabbaton; someone talked about a Yom Kippur service shortly after a close relative died and how the sermon, from a visiting rabbi who didn't know her, touched her; and someone talked about worshipping with 5000 other people at a URJ biennial convention.
The common elements we drew out of this were:
- What you bring to it -- your personal circumstances, like the death in the one person's family and that the shabbaton came right after I'd been to the mikvah.
- Impact of the space and place -- whether it's a significant location like Jerusalem, or a space that is just not the normal space (e.g. in a cabin in the woods).
- Community -- whether it's a group of people you're close to or a group you don't know but you know to be like-minded and part of k'lal Yisrael.
- Music.
We talked about factors you have to consider when setting out to lead a service, to balance what the congregation needs and what you're comfortable doing. While it's kind of crass to talk about it as a performance, you do have to bring some of the same considerations to bear. In addition, if you're not a solo leader (e.g. you're working with a cantor or a bar-mitzvah student), you have to coordinate everyone's contributions. The rabbi used an evocative phrase -- "worship whiplash" -- to describe what happens when, for example, music tempo and reading tempo are way out of whack. Preparation (whether alone or with others) is key.
We are having twice-daily services this week, but it's not just so we can worship. We are to take on the role of participant-observers, which inherently limits the extent to which you can immerse yourself in the experience. I'm actually pretty good at balancing the two; I've been doing that sort of analysis while participating at services every time I experience something new. (You've seen some of my "service anthropology" notes, no doubt.) The goal is to understand the impact of specific worship components, because once we understand them we can manipulate them.
Ma'ariv service
Then it was on to the ma'ariv service. We are to fill out a brief questionnaire (a "service diary") after each service, ideally before leaving the chapel.
For tonight's service they seated us in a circle. The rabbi who taught us today and a cantorial student led the service (he used a guitar to accompany). Many of the melodies were unfamiliar to me and "cantorial" in style (performance, not participatory); I initially found it off-putting but it didn't last long, because (1) other aspects of the service drew me in and (2) he's good. We began with a niggun (a tune without words), which set a calming mood, and then went into barchu. (Aside: we chanted the v'ahavta pretty much according to the trope, which is not the way I'm used to. I don't know where the prevalent melody, at least in Pittsburgh, comes from.)
After v'ahavta the rabbi read an alternate reading rather than the standard text. I admit to some prejudice against creative readings, because they're usually (in my experience) very tenuously connected to the prayer they replace and are often on the fluffy side. This one was quite powerful, though, and I hope to score a copy. It helped me relate to being freed from Egypt by using modern examples, and this just might be the first use of the Shoah in an analogy that didn't make me twitch. And from there, we went into a lively, participatory singing of mi chamocha -- which is exactly right, if you consider the text. This is "yay God, who freed us!". It should be happy, but I hadn't realized before just how ponderous some of the settings out there for this text are. Something to think about as I choose music for the service in a couple weeks.
For the t'filah they warned us that the nusach (melody) would be unfamiliar because it's weekday, not Shabbat. One of our rabbis does weekday nusach on weekdays, so I thought I was ready for this, but this was completely unfamiliar. I'm now a little nervous about leading this in our service on Friday morning. (My two cohorts signed up to read, not to sing; I haven't yet learned whether they are willing/capable of singing but just didn't prioritize it, or if they will want to leave all the singing to me.)
We did the first three blessings of the t'filah together and the rest silently and individually. I am mindful of the fact that I was the last person to sit down, and I was not dawdling. Hmm. Ok, my Hebrew certainly isn't as good as that of some of my classmates, but I didn't realize the discrepancy was that wide. On the other hand, several people are interested in the chugim on beginning Hebrew, so maybe they were reading in English while I stumbled through Hebrew. That would explain it, I guess.
They did something nifty for mourners' kaddish. We were all seated. They asked for people in sh'loshim (first 30 days of mourning) to rise and share the names, then everyone in the first year of mourning, and then anyone observing a yahrzeit (anniversary). Finally, they invited everyone else to rise. I've heard that idea before, but this was the first time I'd seen it.
We finished with a tune for Adon Olam that I have never heard before and probably could not reproduce.
Other notes
An interesting bit from the introdutions at the orientation: of the 25 participants, six are converts and another (roughly) eight or nine returned to Judaism later in life (many from Orthodox childhoods). I knew that this group would not be representative of the Reform population in general, as it takes a certain degree of commitment and enthusiasm to enter a program like this, but I was still struck by the numbers.
The chugim that are on the schedule (four days) are, basically, electives. Some meet every day and some are one-shots. They haven't given a complete list of the one-shots; the ones that meet every day are two levels of Hebrew and a cantillation class. I'm going to do the cantillation; it'll be nice to get some formal structure there. It may also give me ideas on how we can teach this topic in my congregation.
The building containing the internet access was already locked right after the ma'ariv service. Sigh. Tomorrow's schedule is pretty full, but maybe there will be some breaks at useful times. I'm just going to carry the laptop with me tomorrow, since the dorm is not all that near the classroom space. (Not far, but making a round-trip could be the difference between useful time and not.) All I really need to carry is the laptop and the mouse; for short bursts I don't need the power cord, and they've got network cable.
no subject
Also, (gasp) not everyone stands up for the entire Amidah, or goes through the entire Amidah. Although I'm not sure if this group is different...
Very interesting posts!