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cellioI am sharing the Friday shacharit service with two other people (for reference, Steve and Diane). We had a huddle at lunch today, where we talked broadly about the style we'd like and decided which siddur to use. (HUC has several.) We ended up deciding to use the latest draft of Mishkan T'filah (yes, they're doing weekday too and not just Shabbat), which has the advantage of being equally unfamiliar to all of us. This should involve pushing some boundaries, after all. We're all a little concerned about learning the weekday nusach (melodies) in time; I ended up telling them that I think I can do it and they said "ok, you do that then". I hope I can deliver. (The weekday nusach we use at my congregation is different from what they use here. I should check with the cantorial staff member about that.)
We were going to meet tonight after ma'ariv to discuss the service in more detail, but the organizers declared a group run to Graeter's ice cream, and a little casual social time sure seemed like a good idea. It was after 10:30 when we got back, though, so I'll find Steve and Diane at breakfast.
The instructors so far have all been great. Some of the classes have had problems of pacing and going off-topic (some rabbis are just too polite to curb conversation, it appears), but the people are great and there's still plenty of good material.
(Someone remind me later that there's some stuff I want to say about program organization and credentials, but it's too late to get into tonight.)
Today's services were led by staff members. Starting tomorrow evening, we take over. So no one had to learn to read torah on one day's notice, which is for the best. :-) We had a complete shacharit service with torah reading (it's Monday, one of the two weekdays when torah is read). The service ran very long, with most of the over-run being in the torah service (waiting for people to move, long d'var torah, assorted logistics). I don't think their goal was to provide a negative example for pacing. :-) It all worked out in the end, but it was a distraction during the service.
I had not previously realized how important being able to participate in some way in the torah service is to me. They used mostly unfamiliar (and un-intuitive) melodies, and I felt a little alienated. They are deliberately exposing us to a variety of styles of worship, so we'll (1) see them and (2) experience them as congregants do, so I don't object to that in the least. I'm just reporting how I experienced it.
The first class of the day was "Texts: Tanach". The
instructor was Rabbi David Komerofsky (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
murmur311 knows him),
and he was a lot of fun. (Jenny, I said hi from you, but I didn't give
him a hard time on your behalf as you asked. Sorry.) Most of the
"intellectual" content of the class was familiar to me, but there were
some nice side bits.
Thing I knew but hadn't exactly articulated: every translation is a commentary. Yup. Seen that.
We talked about the question (IIRC also raised by Rashi, though the rabbi didn't say) of why the Torah starts with creation. You could make a case for it starting with the exodus, or at Sinai, or at the first verse containing a law. So why creation, when this is not a book for all peoples? The story begins as a story of the whole world and narrows to a text for Yisrael. Doing this shows that God is the god of the whole world, not a tribal god. I pointed out that it also establishes his credentials; it answers the question "so who are you to be giving us orders?".
Passing reference: the rabbi suggested that we should read an essay by Echad ha-Am (that's a pen name :-) ) called "Prophet and Priest", written in 1890. No citation for where it's collected though, so a future research project (unless I can email him).
Early liberal Judaism somewhat resembled prophetic Judaism, he pointed out, focusing more on behavior in the world than the minutiae of ritual.
The (Hebrew) root of the word "torah" is yud-reish-hey, not taf-reish-hey as I would have expected. Some aspects of Hebrew grammar continue to elude me.
The mishna (and later, gemara) assumes a high degree of fluency in the Tanach; quotes and proof-texts are not cited, just quoted. He had a good illustration of this: we all (in the US) immediately recognize the phrase "four score and seven years ago" and know that it's more than just a speech; we have cultural associations with the entire war, with slavery, and so on. It's kind of like that; when the mishna says "as it is written: [something]" there is a context there that you must understand if you are to understand the mishna. This is certainly something my rabbi and I have seen in our talmud study; we chase those references frequently so we can read the broader context and not just the quoted fractional verse. The writers of the talmud had it all committed to memory.
The first class after lunch was on how to lead worship, taught by the same rabbi who taught yesterday's worship classes. We talked about how it's not about the service leader; you're there to facilitate, not be the center of attention. Somewhere in there I asked the question I came here with: how does the service leader actually pray, when he's paying attention to the congregation, the choreography, the other people involved in leading the service, and so on? She acknowledged that it's a very good question that rabbis and cantors struggle with all the time and that we'd revisit it later, but we didn't. (After dinner she apologized for that and suggested I grab her at breakfast. Meals are largely working meals, it seems; our groups also use them to organize our services, and there's other administrivia that happens then.) My rabbi and I discussed it briefly recently, particularly about how ironic it is that those who are most moved to do this, and who enter the field professionally, are the ones least able to just pray for themselves. But I digress.
She pointed out that you really need to plot the service in advance. It's not enough to just say "we'll say this prayer in English, that in Hebrew, sing that" and so on. You actually need to plot where the high and low points are energy-wise, and think about what music enhances that flow, and how to do transitions smoothly, and the Hebrew/English and traditional/creative and responsive-reading/solo-reading balances. Lots to think about. (She also highly recommends the post-it note in the siddur as a memory aid.)
A major chunk of the class involved each of us sharing one idea (well, a few got greedy and went twice) for something non-standard that works well for us. I have a long list of ideas from this. (Ask me later.) It was a good exercise. I talked about the part of our informal Shabbat service where we go around the circle and (1) say our names and (2) answer some random question from the rabbi. This really does help us get to know each other better, and it doesn't take long. (You tailor the question to the size of the group, saving questions that will have more involved answers for weeks when you can spare the time.)
From there we went to the chapel, where we talked in detail about the choreography of the torah service. Not much new there for me, given that I see the torah service, on average, thrice weekly. But it was a worthwhile review, and the annotated siddur copy is a valuable reference (and maybe something I will share with some of my torah readers, who also lead that part of the service).
The chugim, as I mentioned yesterday, are the "electives". I signed up for trope, which runs through the week. (Some others are one-shots, and there are also two on Hebrew reading.) Today's session was mostly review for me, but that's just fine. We'll probably get to the phrases I can't sight-read tomorrow.
The instructor recommends a particular tikkun called Tikkun Simanim, which he says has many advantages that we will see over the course of the week. Eh; I have an adequate tikkun and an excellent piece of software, so I probably won't be buying it, but maybe I'll see something to change my mind.
(Aside: the store has very limited hours, which pretty much fall during our sessions. The person who runs it has agreed to stay open later one night this week, which will probably be Wednesday. I do want to make it there to see what they've got, both books and ritual objects.)
After the chugim today was a visit to an incredible Reform synagogue, known just as "Plum Street" to most people. HUC holds its ordinations there. It was built in the late 1800s and is based on Moorish architecture. The place is visually stunning and I'm sure the pictures I took won't really convey the sense of it, but I did what I could. Later (like next week) I'll post annotated pictures.
We got back about five minutes before dinner time. I decided to try to touch base with LJ and email and go late to dinner; I don't think I missed any critical announcements. As I posted earlier, I finally figured out why my attempts to post from here were mostly failing. (I was confused by my one successful post on Sunday and thought for a while that LJ was having problems.) I've pretty much given up on the idea of being able to read anything electronic from here; this is a write-only medium for me this week. I find the restricted network access frustrating; they lock the room except during program hours, so I don't know how much use it's getting -- which may cause them to decide that even that much is not needed in the future.
Class: how to write a d'var torah
The most inspiring class I've taken so far was tonight, on how to write a d'var torah (think "sermon"). I've done this maybe a couple dozen times (if you include the informal "mini-sermons" at our weekday evening service), and I have always approached it by reading the torah portion, looking for something that I can work with (teach about, or that resonates for me, or whatever), and then seeing where it leads me. I thought this was what everyone did.
The instructor, Rabbi Ken Ehrlich, recommends pretty much the opposite: think about a problem you want to address (which must be a problem the congregation has and perceives, not your own personal crusade), read with that in mind and look for answers in the parsha, and examine how those answers can be turned into a solution. Then -- and this is very important -- you make it relevant to the listener with specific scenarios or connections to their lives, and let self-interest do its thing. It's not enough to talk, say, about supporting education in the abstract; you've got to tie it to the listeners' kids and grandkids, and the kids they spend time with, and the kids who would otherwise be hanging out on street corners doing drugs, or whatever. Make it personal.
We talked about rhetoric and Aristotle's three key points:
- ethos: integrity (manifests here as your knowledge and personal practice -- that you practice what you preach and are otherwise worthy of respect)
- logos: reason -- the argument, which must not contain logical flaws if you want to persuade people
- pathos: emotion -- it's not enough to present a logical argument; you have to move the listener to action, and the best way to do this is what I said above, which the rabbi called "painting the picture"
A great quote from one of his teachers, Rabbi ? Marcus: "The mind can absorb only what the tuchas can tolerate". Make your case and then sit down, in other words. :-) (This isn't only about elapsed time; we've all sat through the three-hour sermon that was only 15 minutes on the clock, right?)
By the way, he admits that you can't always apply any particular torah portion to a particular problem. But that's ok; a congregation has lots of problems or issues. He said if we could identify 8-10 to keep around on a standing list, he is confident that for any torah portion we can find something to speak to at least one of them. He gave us his email address in case we think he's wrong and want him to prove it. :-)
Rabbi Ehrich is, as you might expect for someone who specializes in homolitics, an engaging speaker. I don't see his name on the schedule for anything else, which is a shame. I would enjoy learning more from him.
I also don't see on the schedule anything that addresses the practical side of sermon delivery. I am not a skilled public speaker, and I'd love to learn some of the tricks of the trade that kick in once you've written the talk and are ready to deliver it. I have done all of the following at different times and none have been completely satisfying: reading a prepared text; speaking from an outline; speaking without notes. (These last two especially involve a fair bit of rehearsal; I do not have the chutzpah and skill to speak extemporaneously.)
The evening service was from Mishkan T'filah, and the leader (single, this time) did a very good job of navigating while keeping things flowing. People who say that this siddur offers too many choices and people will get lost need to attend a service led by Jeff Brown. One technique: don't keep announcing page numbers, but instead be very visible about turning pages. We'll try that.
This was a participatory service using an idea similar to what Wise Temple did on Shabbat. Each siddur had a post-it note in it somewhere (sticking out a bit so you saw it immediately) with instructions like "read one from this page in either Hebrew or English". Everyone read something, but the service kept moving. (I got one of the intermediate blessings in the Amidah, which I'm not as comfortable with in Hebrew, but I did it anyway. I want to be better, after all. I did make the mistake of glancing at the transliteration that was so conveniently provided. Note to future self: it is better to stumble and read slowly than to try translit that is by its nature counter-intuitive, at least when in a supportive environment like this is.)
I usually dislike the creative readings, because far too many of them are "fluffy" or "earthy crunchy new-age", but one of the alternative readings in particular struck me at two levels: "No one ever told me a change of heart might be as quiet as new-fallen snow". Dunno why, but it did. It was at the end of the Amidah, during the silent meditation.
And now, it is late and "laptop neck" is setting in, that kink in the neck that comes from hunching over to be able to see the monitor, so I'm done for tonight.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-13 02:54 pm (UTC)