Friday, Shabbat
Jul. 18th, 2004 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioAs I wrote Friday, our morning service ended up going well. We had a couple glitches, and I realized we had not discussed or planned for that sort of thing. Some of these ended up being visible to the congregation as a result (for example, someone giving a page cue that skipped over what someone else was about to do -- and it mattered). I got tripped up by one wording change in the new siddur even though I had inserted a prominent reminder into my copy. So I had to start a phrase over. This was bad. (To add insult to injury, the handout in the talmud class a couple hours later included the passage in B'rachot that talks about people who screw up and have to repeat text. We didn't study that part, though; it was just on the page. And no, I am not stressing about this; it was just a weird coincidence.)
But the readings were very good, leading the congregation in reading was ok (there was one wording change they got tripped up on too), and the music was (I believe, and have been told) very effective. I wanted to have a thread that ran through the service, so I used a particular niggun (that's a tune without words; you sing on something like "la") in three different ways: first, at the beginning as a way to signal "we're starting soon" (moderate pace); second, during the silent prayer at the end of the Amidah (slow pace; very quiet with gradual crescendo to signal "you might want to finish up soon"); third, at the end of ths service (after kaddish, before final benediction) in a way that encouraged the congregation to sing along. (I started at a slightly slow pace and not too loud, in keeping with the mood of kaddish; on the second time I picked both up and gestured for people to sing (they hadn't done so on their own), and on the third time through I bumped pace and dynamics up again and had people stand. This worked well.) In case my rabbi is reading this: it's the one you taught at the Shabbaton.
I bailed on chanting the Avot and G'vurot due to lack of confidence with the (new to me) nusach (melodies), so we read them instead. I did sing the Kedusha; the custom here seems to be to use a melody that we use for Shabbat, with some tweaks due to text changes, and I was able to make that work fine. (This is also a point in the service where it's appropriate to be a little more intense.)
I've got to learn two things about a lot of the music I know: who wrote it, and how to link those names to the melodies mentally. My reminders notes for "Ma Tovu", "Mi Chamocha", and "Sim Shalom" were, respectively, "new", "bim bam", and "amecha". That's not particularly meaningful to anyone other than me, which makes it hard to discuss melodies without demos. I ought to be able to do better.
The other two people in our group are very good readers. They read expressively, could be heard, and had a good feel for things like pace and cadence. (And their articulation was good without being overdone in that way beginners often do.) I wish we had been able to persuade one person to take a larger share of the service; she was feeling kind of crispy on Thursday so we didn't push, but the parts she did were very good and I would have liked to see more. (In case you're wondering, I consider myself to somewhat suck at this kind of reading in English; for some reason I can do it reasonably in Hebrew. Maybe the cadences of the language are just more natural; I'm not sure.) I convinced the other person to lead the v'ahavta and Aleinu in Hebrew; he was shying away from Hebrew in general, though I know he can do it. (He also didn't want to sing, but I convinced him that he surely can do Aleinu confidently.) So I nudged him a little. I ended up leading (in Hebrew) Yotzer and the opening and closing blessings of the Amidah (Sim Shalom was sung). Most of the rest was English. Aside from Aleinu, I led all the singing. (Aside from what I've mentioned already, that was: Chatzi Kaddish (I used the nusach I already knew for weekdays), Barchu, "Open up our eyes" (a pre-Sh'ma meditation by Jeff Klepper), Sh'ma.)
I am vindicated on two points that caused disagreement during the planning sessions. First, the service was not too long (we finished with five minutes to spare) and second, people (at least in this group) are smart enough to turn to the right pages for milestones, even in Mishkan T'filah, without being told every single page cue.
As I mentioned before, I got a lot of compliments. (We all did, but this is my journal. :-) ) In terms of technical skill I do not have the best voice here by a long shot, but I seem to have a good feel for how to use what I've got (without being a primadonna). I was kind of surprised by the comments about expression (or however you characterize that), I guess in part because one of the most basic tools for connecting with listeners is something that I have to completely fake (eye contact).
Friday's classes were all very good (in different ways). First up was a class on talmud. The rabbi ended up spending about half the class on a review of rabbinic history, because not everyone in class had that already. (That's a pity. In particular, if they were going to teach that in a class, it would have been better before the midrash class.) We did look at the different ways that the mishna and the gemara approach the problem and I learned some neat things there. For those who are curious, the mishna is all about stating what is true, while the gemara/talmud is all about arguing the point. You don't go to either for the answer, though at one point in time you could have gone to the mishna for that. You go to the talmud to learn how to examine a problem and argue it. Why bother to record all the arguments you're going to shoot down, when the editors of the talmud knew how it would turn out and could have left them out? Not just to record minority opinions, but also to show people what arguments they should be coming up and how they should then address them. The talmud is a model students should use in analyzing halacha.
According to the talmud instructor, one of the rabbis (I'll have to look up who) said that one was not qualified to sit on the Sanhedrin (think supreme court) unless he could argue 150 ways why a certain kind of lizard (or bug?) is kosher. (The subject is treif, of course.) The point isn't to justify a lenient ruling; the point is to demonstrate versatility in arguing a case. Because if you can do that, you can probably find all possible explanations that would free someone accused of a capital crime.
There were two sessions called "outreach"; the first focused on the topic in general and the second was about conversion. The first class got us thinking about what types of people within our congregations might be feeling alienated and what resources we can go to for help. Some handouts that I haven't had time to look at yet provided some specific suggestions; the class time was spent on the meta-discussion. While we did talk about intermarriage, it was not the sole focus of the discussion as I had feared it could be.
A lot of people skipped the second class. I hope the rabbi wasn't too upset by that; I thought her first session went well and I assume we were seeing Friday-afternoon fatigue, not utter disinterest, but if you're in that situation there's got to be a nagging feeling that you did something wrong. (The program organizer ended up distributing small gifts to those of us who stuck around.)
So there were about ten people in the class, which was actually a good group for the kind of discussion she wanted to have. She had us do an exercise where we each plotted a "spiritual timeline" of our lives, listing events that shaped who we are religiously. (Limited to one piece of paper and 15 minutes, in case you're wondering. :-) ) I may share mine here later (maybe not publicly). We then paired off to discuss pivotal events; I described that seder that drew me into Judaism. My partner was also a convert, and he too had a precipating event. Some converts are "religion shoppers" who know they want a religion but don't know which and sample different ones looking for a fit; that did not seem to be the case for anyone in the room. The rabbi (also a convert) told some interesting stories from her past. (By the way, one of the rabbinic interns is also a convert, as are at least seven of the students. This makes sense to me, actually -- none so enthusiastic as a convert, regardless of domain.)
We talked about process and stuff, but I knew all that already. :-) The rabbi had a few copies of the CCAR guide for rabbis on conversions; she didn't distribute it broadly because it's long, but she offered those few copies and I took one. It looks like it will be interesting reading.
I now see an advantage to flying to this program (or taking bus/train where an option) over driving. I've got a large pile of handouts that I'm looking forward to reading; planes are good for that. I'm really glad that most of the instructors have a good handle on what to put in handouts, what to cover in class, and what to do both with. We have not had people reading us the handouts.
The group that led evening services did a good job. They had a very good singer, which fits well with kabbalat shabbat (more songs than usual for an evening service). He's been acting as the cantorial soloist at his congregation for something like 18 years, so I'm not surprised he has clues. :-) There was one piece of music that I thought didn't work so well, but it was a minor point.
After that we had a nice dinner, and after that a fun song session. I need to get myself a good songbook. I've heard people mention something called "Shireinu" (which means "our songs"); must investigate. (The book we used was apparently put together for a camp program. It had words but no melodies.)
Later a bunch of us sat around gabbing for a while. This was valuable decompression/social time. We also got to sleep in a little the next morning, which was very welcome to just about everyone.
Shabbat was a much-needed break in the frenzied schedule. Morning services and lunch took us to almost 2:00, at which point we had sessions on holidays. The idea was that there were eight "stations" where someone would teach us something useful about each of several holidays. No, no one is going to teach everything about a holiday in 20 minutes (the alloted time before we moved on), but the focus was on things we could take back to our congregations to improve (or in some cases introduce) observance of those holidays in an engaging way. Most of these were very good. The covered holidays were:
- High holy days: we talked about tashlich, the symbolic casting away of sins
- Sukkot: we talked about ways to make a congregational "sukkah hop", with built-in learning in a fun environment, work.
- Simchat torah: try introducing a program on Israeli dancing as a tie-in, and doing some fun things around unrolling the whole torah scroll (like giving a "guided tour" -- look, here's the song of the sea, and there's the Sh'ma, and so on).
- Chanukah: we looked at three very different sources for this holiday (Macabees, Josephus, Tractate Shabbat); this would make a good adult-ed topic.
- Tu Bishvat: we talked about history, symbolism, and the seders that have become trendy (the instructor says). I think some other stuff too.
- "New" holidays: Yom haZikaron (memorial day), Yom Hatzma'ut (independence day), Yom Yerushalyim (Jerusalem day), and Yom haShoah (Holocaust day). This was a quick tour.
- Shavuot: tikkun leil shavuot, confirmation, maybe other stuff.
- Rosh Chodesh: miscellaneous information.
According to the schedule Sunday is shacharit, wrap-up, and lunch, and then we leave. It sounds like I won't have net access to post this before I get home.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-19 05:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-19 05:43 am (UTC)As you point out, self-defense is not murder, and under some circumstances killing a rodef (pursuer) can be required. (This is the argument that the guy who murdered Yitzchak Rabin used -- incorrectly in the opinion of pretty much everyone, of course, but that was his argument. So this area of halacha can be massively dangerous stuff.)