Rosh Hashana

[cellio]

(I hear you saying: what, in May? :-) )

This 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.)

Comments

[kayre]

"creative" sounds a lot like "cool" in my worship planning sessions. "Cool" has resulted in things like plastic butterflies all over the church, or passing out chocolate candy. Not my style, that's for sure.

[jeannegrrl.livejournal.com]

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

I'll double check w/ Hillel, but I thought Rosh Hashana is a 2-day holiday in Israel as well.

[magid.livejournal.com]

That's what Cellio said: they did one day at her synagogue, which is not what the Israeli calendar is, because in Israel it's two days.

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

May makes sense. Isn't the month of May is the unofficial start of saving to purchase High Holy Days tickets? :-)

[runs away]

[cellio]

magid is right. We follow the Israeli calendar -- so, for example, we're going to be off by one parsha for a few weeks after Shavuot because we don't do a second day, which is Shabbat this year -- but we only did one day of Rosh Hashana. (No stated reason beyond "that's what we do".) So this year we're going to try changing that so we can be consistent with what we say our practice is.

[cellio]

Or congregational membership, which gets you the tickets as a by-product. :-)

[magid.livejournal.com]

With a very traditional machzor, I think of the two days' services as related in the core structure, but with enough differences in the piyyutim to be noticeably different. I'll be interested to hear what sorts of things get chosen.

[cellio]

Wow. I'm glad that "creative" in my congregation usually doesn't mean anything wilder than bad poetry and the occasional electric guitar (for the one the high-school students do each year).

[cellio]

And, of course, the torah and haftarah readings are different. I would expect that to influence choice of piyyutim at least a little.

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

Someone on the committee asked if we could do some "creative" readings instead of just repeating the previous day's service.

My first reaction was that the readings are different for the two days, and the fact that (some of) the piyutim are different didn't even occur to me until I read your comment. It then occurred to me to wonder what is/isn't different and why it doesn't bother me that so much is the same, especially in years when there are 3 days in a row with very similar davenings (i.e. 2 days of yom tov right before/after shabbat).

[jeannegrrl.livejournal.com]

Gotcha - that's what I get for replying after a quick vs. thorough read. :-)

[cellio]

I suspect that part of what has happened is that the Reform movement, in general, has stripped out a lot of the readings that were considered acretions, like most of the piyutim. The original goal, to get down to basics and shorten the service, made sense, but then over time people started adding some stuff in -- but not adding back the stuff that was dropped, necessarily. The result is that I can't trust our current siddur or machzor to give an accurate picture of what's what in the service. I have enough knowledge from other sources to be able to assess what's going on in the siddur, but I don't have so much outside machzor experience.

Our machzor, Gates of Repentance, has two service options for RH morning. (They're just labelled "1" and "2"; it's not a first-day/second-day division.) The second is much shorter than the first. The group wanted to use it as the basis (because it's shorter and because we read the first on the first day), and I was the only person there who objected to the omission of almost all of birkat ha-shachar and p'sukei d'zimra. I insisted and got some of it put back -- but the point is that I was the only person there who had enough liturgical clue to notice. (Actually, I suspect one other person had the clue but didn't have the objection.) So would any of us notice key omissions in, say, the shofar service? That's what concerns me.

Dang. I completely forgot to ask at Tree of Life this morning about borrowing a machzor. I hope I remember next time I'm there.