cellio | our service (Wednesday shacharit)

This is unlikely to be interesting to anyone else unless you happen to have a recent draft of Mishkan T'filah lying around, but probably not even then. This is for my records, as someday I do hope to own this siddur and maybe the page numbers will even still be relevant. :-) And I think my rabbi may be interested.

These page numbers apply to the goldenrod printing of the draft weekday service.

Our service outline (as captured in post-it notes in a book I have to return now):

Birkat hashachar:

p99: English: opening reading (Anne)
106: cong sing Ma Tovu (round) (Monica)
109 bottom: English: rofei kol basar (blessing for the body) (Bob)
110: comment about breath; cong sing Elohai neshama (chant-ish melody) (Monica)
119: English: gomeil chasadim tovim (Bob)

P'sukei d'zimra:

127: English: reading (Anne)
Invite them to read silently selecting from next 10 pages (Anne), while lay down musical pad quietly with next melody (Monica) [1]
140: cong sing Psalm 150, Yemeni melody (Monica)
144: chant chatzi kaddish (weekday nusach, woot) (Monica)

Kri'at sh'ma:

Barchu ("new" melody that everyone here knows) (Monica) [1.5]
148: Hebrew: yotzeir (Anne, cong)
151: explanatory note about tzitzit choreography (Anne) [2]
150: sing Vahavienu l'shalom (about tzitzit) (student cantor)
Sh'ma (Bob)
156: Hebrew and English: V'ahavta (Bob) [3]
158: Hebrew and English: v'amarta aleihem (Monica) (I wonder what this paragraph is usually called)
162: cong sing Mi Chamocha, Tzur Yisrael (Tree of Life melody) (Monica)

T'filah:

Hebrew: avot, g'vurot (with hakol, not meitim) (Anne)
Hebrew: kedusha (Monica) [4]
Invite silent recitation for rest, sit when done (Monica)
sing yih'yu l'ratzon gently (Monica)

Concluding:

cong sing Aleinu (Bob)
kaddish names (Bob)
mourner's kaddish (repeat in English) (Bob) [5]
cong sing hinei ma tov (Bob)

[1] This was suggested by the student cantor (our group's advisor). We didn't know how many people would already know the melody we wanted to use for the next psalm. One of our group members was also concerned that we weren't giving people enough "quiet time" during the service. So instead of chanting Ashrei (with weekday nusach they wouldn't have known, by the way) or reading other psalms, we decided to let them choose something to read while I hummed (well, "oohed") the melody slowly and quietly. I used musical cues to give the "we're almost done with the silent stuff" cue.

[1.5] (Can you tell which footnote got added at the end? :-) ) Everyone learned the weekday nusach last year and I retained it, but services over the previous two days had not included it (they used this melody instead) and I felt being accessible to the congregation was more important than using the correct nusach in the very first student-run service.

[2] In the traditional liturgy, after sh'ma and v'ahavta (and a paragraph we still skip in this siddur), there is a paragraph about tzitzit, the fringes on the talit. This siddur includes that paragraph, which is new to Reform Jews, and we decided to include it in our service. There is also "choreography" that goes with it. So before we did it we (1) told them we would and (2) explained the significance briefly. The prayer right before sh'ma (also new in this siddur) includes a set-up for this and the cantorial student knew a melody, so we used her.

[3] Bob comes from an English-heavy congregation. If you're going to repeat in English what you just said in Hebrew, the sh'ma is an appropriate place to do so. (It's important text and it doesn't involve repeating a blessing, which can be problematic.) Bob didn't know the following paragraph (I more-or-less do, though I stumbled once or twice), and I repeated that in English too for consistency.

[4] The plan had been for Anne to lead the entire t'filah. However, the siddur has an error in kedusha (they included the Shabbat version instead of the weekday version) and we didn't get the inserts until that morning. Anne didn't want to read without more practice time (completely reasonable) and I know the text, so she asked me to step in.

[5] This is the other part of the service where repetition in English seems appropriate. We considered just doing it in English but guessed that people would feel that the original language (which is actually Aramaic, not Hebrew) was "mi Sinai". That turned out not to be true, we learned in the evaluation session.