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Simchat Torah
I waffled briefly about going to evening services but decided to do so. (It's not like there was anything I could do about Johan on Monday night, after all.) Services were good; there were a bunch of teenagers there, uncharacteristically, and I later learned that they'd been taught Israeli dancing and told to show up. They did participate, though I didn't see them doing much dancing.
For the hakafot (processions with the torah scrolls) our rabbi usually calls groups. Sometimes it's stuff like "native Pittsburghers" or "new members of the congregation"; more often it's family-focused stuff like "grandparents", "mothers and daughters" (meaning groups of people, not everyone who is someone's daughter), and so on. This time was about par for the course; a good thing is that he included "men" and "women" as two of the early groups, ensuring that no one had to be an also-ran ("anyone who hasn't come up yet") for the last one. (Having spent my first six Simchat Torah services as an also-ran, let me just say how irritating that can be.)
Everyone gets an aliya on Simchat Torah, and for as long as I've been there they've called people in groups based on birth months. That works well as it ensures that everyone has exactly one chance.
There was a lot of singing during the hakafot and the cantorial soloist tried to get some line dancing going, but she didn't get a lot of takers. Still, it was a nice bouncy occasion.
Tuesday morning the turnout was much lower; I think there were about 40 people there. For the hakafot they didn't bother with groups; they just kept it going until everyone had done as much as he wanted. That's the way to do hakafot, in my opinion, and I hope they do that again in the future. Just let people figure it out on their own.
After I'd gone around once the cantorial soloist grabbed hold of me and one other person and started dancing, so I joined in. Eventually we had about eight people dancing in a circle in the front of the sanctuary while other people continued circling around the room. That was fun! In retrospect, though, I think I can competently do any two of the following three: dance, sing, and carry a sefer torah. It's ok; the cantorial soloist was singing enough for both of us. :-)
A few times a year, toward the end of the morning service is Yizkor, a memorial liturgy. I suspected that I was going to want to leave the room, so I sat near the back of the sanctuary (uncharacteristically). In traditional congregations it's customary for people whose parents are alive to leave during Yizkor, but our congregation doesn't have that custom. I slipped out anyway, hoping not to draw attention to myself, and waited. I could hear parts of the service in the hall, and twice I kind of lost it -- Shiviti and ...Malei Rachamim -- so I made the right decision. Yes, our rabbi says that Yizkor is for both those with fresh wounds and those whose losses are more distant, but I don't think he meant that fresh.
Oh, for whoever was asking after Yom Kippur: 17 minutes this time.
I slipped back in at the start of Aleinu. Afterwards one person said to me "I didn't know you had the custom of leaving" and I said usually not but today I did. I left it at that.
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What do you do for seventeen minutes? Ours was so short that Jonathan was late coming back (both his parents being, thank God, alive.)
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I'm working from the siddur and memories from Shavuot (which are by now fuzzy), as I mostly wasn't there this time. (Overheard some parts but not others.)
All singing here is by the cantorial soloist (not congregational), and tends to be slow and flowery.
- Psalm 23 (sung, then read together in English)
- Psalm 121 (excerpt?), read in English
- English reading, about a page (simply labelled "meditation")
- G-d, mah-adam vateida'eihu? (Hebrew, I think sung)
- excerpts from Psalm 90, English, probably responsive
- Shiviti, definitely sung (Hebrew) (it's a haunting melody)
- about a page and a half of English reading, again source unknown (the Reform movement seems to go in for alternate readings)
- the actual Yizkor prayer (time for people to read silently)
- another not-quite-page of English reading
- ...Malei Rachamim, sung/chanted (Hebrew)
Ok, looking that over, I'm not sure how you get to 17 minutes. Maybe there's another song. Maybe the rabbi spoke for a minute or two right before the Yizkor prayer; if so he probably talked about family ties or something. (I don't remember him doing so at Shavuot, though.) But that's everything in the siddur for this section.
I'm curious what a traditional format looks like.
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Orthodox yizkor varies per synagogue, but.
Yizkor is preceded by a speech about giving the money pledged during yizkor to the synagogue, either by the rabbi or the president. Our shul will say a prayer for victims of the Holocaust and for members of the Israeli Defense Force. Then the people not saying yizkor file out. At this point we say the private prayers - a paragraph for each specific person according to how they are related., or group ones. For example, I say the one for fathers and then two group ones - one for male relatives and one for female relatives. We get five minutes to finish this, and everyone always does in plenty of time.
Some synagogues will then say group Kel Mole Rachamins (Hashem should have mercy) with people giving names - one for men and one for women. That takes two minutes, tops. Ours does not. And that's it. In our shul, we call everyone back in and say kel moles for Rav Kook and Rav Soleveitchek.