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Shabbat
We're in the process of renovating the sanctuary, so services are being held in the chapel at the moment. I love the chapel; it's a beautiful room, and as long as your crowd isn't too large it's great. I knew, intellectually, that the reading desk in the chapel is rather smaller than the one in the sanctuary, but somehow it didn't hit me just how small until I was actually reading torah on it. It was, um, cramped. And the desk is high and the portion started near the top of a column, so I was standing on tip-toes and leaning forward to read the first few lines. I probably looked kind of goofy, but if so people had the good grace not to say so to me. :-)
The other challenge Friday night was that the cloth on the desk must have been bunched up or something, because the parchment of the scroll was not lying flat. At one point I missed when going to the next line and needed to be prompted, and there were a couple other times when the curvature made things "interesting". But I got through it and I got lots of positive comments.
Shabbat morning the environment was familiar and I had no trouble seeing the scroll. And there was enough room that when I needed to go to a new column I could do so easily. Note to future self: bring a hair tie or something on torah-reading days; while my hair didn't get in my way as it hung down and reached for the parchment, it would be better to not do that. I wonder why I haven't noticed that before. I think I was having a fluffy-hair day, so maybe that was it.
Both times we did this with interspersed translations: I would chant a few verses and then pause while my rabbi translated, and then I'd pick it up again. (So this was all one aliyah, as opposed to breaking it up.) I think that worked really well; people who aren't fluent in Hebrew didn't have to go too long without help, and I got to pause during the reading. I wasn't sure if pausing would be an advantage or disadvantage going in, but it worked reasonably well. I wouldn't recommend it for someone who's nervous about reading or who isn't strong musically, though. I didn't have to think about start pitch for each segment; I was just there.
One person told me Saturday morning that my torah chanting helps her focus -- it's the combination of going more slowly than when just reading and my voice, she said. That's always nice to hear. One other person said I should do this some Friday night because I'm obviously good enough; I said "this was the rerun; I did that last night". :-)
My rabbi was right about soemthing Thursday night: I seem to have learned one of the trope symbols (gershayim) a third down from where it should be. Hmm. Must fix that for next time. I'm not actually sure if I've generally mis-learned it or if I somehow just goofed in this particular portion. (It only shows up twice, so not a lot of data.) And yes, my rabbi correctly identified the interval by which I was off. And no, we don't correct readers for trope errors unless they affect phrasing.