Rosh Hashana
May. 9th, 2006 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThis year, for the first time, my congregation is going to have services for the second day of Rosh Hashana. Our not doing so was the only way in which we veered from our policy of following the Israeli calendar, and the rabbi brought it up with the worship committee recently and we decided to try it. That the second day of RH is on a Sunday, rather than a weekday, this year will not hurt. :-)
Someone on the committee asked if we could do some "creative" readings instead of just repeating the previous day's service. "Creative" can be a code word for "fluffy" (usually is, IMO, but there are exceptions), so when the rabbi asked a subcommittee to make proposals I asked to be in the group. As I privately told the chair of the worship committee, my goal here is to keep things from getting weird. (I don't know if these particular people are prone to weird, but better safe than sorry.)
The subcommittee met for the first time last night. It's a good thing I'm part of it; some of the other members were all too willing to cut out required parts of the service and I was able to talk to them about what's core liturgy that we Do Not Mess With, what can tolerate variations, and where our machzor already made adaptations so we can make different adaptations if we like. I wish I had a more traditional machzor to use as a reference, though I don't wish it enough to spend money. Hmm, I wonder if I can borrow one from Tree of Life; I'll try to remember to ask on Thursday. The problem is that sometimes Gates of Repentance (our machzor) made changes -- they're clearly changes -- but without knowing what they replaced, it's hard to know how to react.
I think we'll be able to produce a service that's true to what it's supposed to be. I've mentally identified areas where I can give the other members free rein, which should give me karma points to apply to the parts of the service I really care about. We'll see. Of course, the full committee has to approve and the rabbi has final say.
We talked a little about the balance of Hebrew and English, and congregational reading versus readings by the leader. We were looking at something that's specific to the RH liturgy and someone said (without looking at it) that the congregation could read this in Hebrew. I said the congregation can be relied upon to read in Hebrew what is familiar, but I wasn't sure about this. On further investigation, we determined that I could read it but not confidently and quickly, and I'm apparently a sort of congregational canary: that I can read something doesn't mean anything, but that I can't is significant. Interesting; I didn't know that's how some people view me. :-) (I can read anything slowly, but I don't do unfamiliar text at typical reading speed yet.)
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Date: 2006-05-10 12:18 pm (UTC)