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Simchat Torah
Lots of kids means lots of noise, especially when you factor in today's trend toward permissive/oblivious parenting, and that continued through the first two aliyot of the torah reading (read by our two rabbis). As I went up to read the third and fourth aliyot (from B'reishit), I mentally braced myself for the distraction.
I should mention that the previous aliyot were read, not chanted. I began chanting -- and everyone shut up, just like that. Wow! I don't think they were just being polite to the layperson; I must conclude that it was the unexpected music that did it. I won't complain. :-)
I got compliments that night (and the next morning when I repeated it), which is not uncommon (it's polite, after all). The person who stopped me on the street to compliment me was a little unusual, and the rabbinic student who told me Shabbat evening that he was especially pleased with the way I'd chanted one phrase made me happy. It's nice to know that those little details matter to people other than me. :-) (This was, in fact, a passage I'd worked on to get the expressiveness right.)
The hakafot (dancing, or at least parading in a somewhat-perky manner) were more lively this year than in the past. We've been attracting more Israeli members (I suspect because of our Israeli rabbi); maybe that's part of it, as they bring in the enthusaism that (I'm told) characterizes this holiday there. Some of it is coming from the rabbis and cantorial soloist, for sure. I think we've got a fair number of congregants who will follow a lead to cut loose a little but won't lead, which isn't surprising.
Thursday morning during one of the hakafot I had a sefer torah that had silver crowns on it (not all of ours do), and the crowns had bells on them. So I could produce sound effects in time to the music. :-) (The scroll was too heavy for me to safely hold over my head, alas, especially as it was wound to one end. At other times I had smaller ones that I could do that with.)
Learned in passing: we are one of three (Reform?) congregations in the US that has a complete set of Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings) on scrolls. (I do not know how this came to be.) We pretty much only use these on Simchat Torah and Kol Nidrei, alas; most bar-mitzvah students want to read their haftarot with the permitted vowels, which you can't really blame them for. (While we read torah on Friday nights, we do not read haftarah then.)
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Maybe we're hardwired for it... who know?
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I go to Sinai regularly, so chances are we'll meet if you go. We now have two services on (most) Friday nights, a less-formal one at 6 and our conventional one at 8. I haven't been to the earlier one yet, but will check it out soon. Shabbat morning we have an informal, participatory, music-filled service that I love, starting at 9 (torah study at 8:30). If that's your kind of thing, I hope you'll overcome the "how early?!" factor at least a couple times to check it out. :-)
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I had no idea TS had a full set of Neviim & Ketuvim scrolls. Up here in Anchorage we have 3 Torahs, Megillat Esther and Megillat Ruth. When our new Rabbi came, he said it was the first congregation he'd heard of that had a megillah other than Esther--(We have the Ruth because a woman who is a convert bought it on a trip to Israel as a gift for the congregation). I loved hearing about all the services back in Pittsburgh. I don't know how you manage to get all your stories out so regularly. I hope to be posting about holidays up here, soon.
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I'd like to hear/read more about how things are going in Alaska for you.