Shabbat

[cellio]

Shabbat went pretty well. Friday night my committee led services; I did most of the music, and we had several readers (one per section of the service), lay torah readers (two), and a sermon by a lay member. All of them did good jobs, and I think most of them enjoyed it. Walter, another member of the committee, sang the opening song and the anthem (the latter goes after the sermon). He has a wonderful voice and is a good orator (with speech and song).

My music mostly went well, and I received many compliments. Our cantorial soloist was there (with her two-week-old child), and she complimented me too. That felt nice! There were some glitches, all of which can be chalked up to "Monica is not used to working with an accompanist", and sadly, some of them were obvious to the congregation. One was not, because the aforementioned accompanist is very good. (There are a bunch of different settings of one song out there, and we had discussed which one to do. He played an intro that sounded to me like one of the others, I concluded that he had goofed and started to sing that one, and he concluded that I had goofed and followed me -- without music in front of him and while tranposing into a different key. As it turns out, the intros really are that similar but we hadn't noticed.)

The committee as a whole received a bunch of compliments; we were widely perceived as relaxed, comfortable, and competent, and a couple people told me they found the service to be moving because the leaders were obviously engaged -- praying and not just reciting. I hope some of them tell these things to the rabbi. :-)

My rabbi had asked me to lead torah study Saturday morning with some materials he had prepared, so I got an advance copy to review and scribble on. (I was trying to plan the conversation -- where to pause for discussion, what points to try to tease out of the group, and so on.) We usually have 10-20 people for study; today we had four. I expected the group to be smaller, but not that much smaller. Fortunately, the other three participated rather than just sitting and listening, and they were generally supportive, and things went fine.

The low turnout was foreshadowing, alas. This is only the second time I have seen this group not get a minyan. (The other time was on a cold, snowy winter day with hazardous roads.) We had eight people. I did a good job of leading the service, I think (many of the people who showed up thanked me later). We couldn't read torah without a minyan, but the two people who had prepared the portion (the same ones who read Friday night -- re-use is good) read it out of a chumash (that's allowed) and led a discussion of the parsha, which most people participated in. So that worked out. We read haftarah without the blessing, which I think was correct. (Reading it is fine, as reading the torah text was fine. What I'm not sure of is whether the blessing requires a minyan, so I erred on the side of caution, and for parity with the torah reading.)

Noted in passing: there is one prayer (kedusha) where if you don't have a minyan you say a different version. (Other things you just omit in the absence of a minyan.) Our siddur doesn't have the alternate text; it assumes a minyan. It turns out I have it memorized, though, so no biggie.

There are a few reasons for the low turnout. A lot of people are out of town for various reasons; I knew that. Attendance is always a little lower (but still higher than this!) when it is known that my rabbi won't be there but the associate rabbi will. (My rabbi built this service and is very strongly connected with it.) It's clear, though, that at least some people who will come for the associate rabbi won't come for a layperson, even a layperson who is a regular who knows the service inside and out. That attitude could be a hurdle if we try to increase lay involvement in our services more generally -- it's the whole "no one but the rabbi is good enough" problem. We need to figure out how widespread that attitude is and what to do about it.

Comments

[cellio]

It might be more correct to do the full Shacharit and then have the Torah/haftarah bits as a study session afterwards, to emphasize the separation.

Good point. The one other time this happened the rabbi suggested the solution (that we could replace the torah service with the reading from the chumash), so I just did that again. I couldn't remember what we did about haftarah the previous time, though.

(Does your shul make a division between Shacharit and Musaf?)

A very big one. :-) (Reform doesn't do Musaf.)

Another thing you could do (I think) is to use the lack of a minyan as an opportunity to teach someone new how to lead a Torah service.

That's a great idea! Thanks; I'll ask my rabbi how he feels about that approach.