cellio | kallah: (some) services

I attended a variety of services at the kallah (though I did not manage all three each day due to schedule complications). Here are some thoughts on some of them.

Shabbat morning had about six different options. I went to the service led by Rabbi Marcia Prager and Chazan Jack Kessler. I had been planning to go to one described as "standard renewal" to see what that was about, but I was in Jack's class all week, I was impressed by him, and he asked the class to help with something during the torah service, so I went there. It was an interesting service with a lot of good singing and a very unusual torah service.

The siddur was a subset (labelled "kitzur") of a siddur edited by Rabbi Prager (forgot the name, sorry). We did not tend to do entire prayers for most things; either we'd do key phrases (often sung) or there would be some creative English reading. So that didn't appeal so much, but the really important parts, including a silent Amidah so we could do what we wanted, were there. There was one unusual bit in the earlier prayers: when we got to Nishmat she told us to each pick (randomly) a single line, and then she had us walk around the room saying our lines to each other. Her theory was that we'd collectively get everything. I felt awkward doing this and I would have preferred to just read the text myself. (For context, that pairwise Ashrei I wrote about earlier in the week did not bug me nearly as much; that was a little uncomfortable at the beginning, but this was uncomfortable all the way through.)

The torah portion was Balak, mainly known for Bilaam and the talking donkey. Bilaam tries to curse Yisrael three times and poetic blessings keep coming out of his mouth instead. One of them, Mah Tovu, is part of the morning liturgy. Jack had one of his cantorial students do the torah reading; she chanted the blessings and he informally (and humorously) translated the surrounding text (without it also being read in Hebrew). Instead of translating the blessings, though, he had asked those of us in his class to chant the translations. This was interspersed, a couple verses at a time, with the torah chanting. It worked pretty well. (Someone later asked me why this didn't bother me when chanting prayers in English does bother me. I'm not sure. Perhaps because the torah reading is a performative act while prayer is a personal, devotional one?)

After all of that we got to the really unusual part. After the torah reading we read the haftarah, a passage from (usually) the prophets that's tied to the weekly torah portion. Sometimes the regular haftarah portion is displaced by a special day on the calendar (holiday, first day of the month, fast day, etc). When we got to the haftarah, another rabbi (I think Art Waskow) got up to speak, starting with "good yontif" (happy holiday). It was July 4; it got a chuckle. He then explained that the themes of the day are pretty similar to those in our torah, citing the passages from D'varim about the limitations on kings (he can't have too many horses (cavalry), too much money, too many wives, etc, nor can he over-burden the people). And with that introduction, Jack chanted the preamble to the Declaration of Independence in haftarah trope. It was nifty, and I'm thinking of trying to reserve the date six years from now (when it next comes around on Shabbat) in my morning minyan. (Text with trope at the bottom of this page.) And chanting that text in English definitely didn't feel weird to me, presumably because it's the source language. So maybe my previous characterization of my feelings about nusach (chant melody) were wrong: I think the nusach belongs to the Hebrew when there is a Hebrew text, but maybe if there isn't one I don't mind? Still trying to work that out.

Friday night there were two options, one obviously "main" and one more specialized. I went to the main one, which was led by an Israeli music group named Navah Tehila. (Locals, they'll be at Rodef Shalom in a couple weeks.) The music was generally good and powerful, once I got (back) into the right frame of mind. I had been in the right frame of mind when I walked into the room, but something there threw me out of it and it took about an hour to recover.

What was that something? The absence of siddurim in favor of the not-very-large PowerPoint projection on the front wall. Gah! I'm going to post a separate, more general, rant about presentations that are hostile to those of us with vision problems, but I'll sum up this case here: the image was small, and there was basically one spot (of a few seats) in the room from which I might be able to see. Right in front of the drum set, yay. So I sat in the optimal seat... and no one sat in the 15 or so seats nearest me until the room filled up. Yeah, I really felt like part of the community there... Quite aside from the Shabbat issues of running the computer and projector, the whole setup is off-putting, alienating, and downright offensive. And it happens far too often in other settings, hence the general rant later. I understand not wanting to shlep 400 books or kill trees making that many photocopies; fortunately, that's not necessary. Have ten or so copies available for those who need. Is that so hard?

But other than that it was a good service. We touched all of the psalms in kabbalat shabbat; my congregation doesn't, so some of this was new text for me. (Well, not completely new; I've been to traditional services. But not my norm, anyway.) I say we "touched" all the psalms because we tended to sing just a few lines from each. But we did all nine verses of L'cha Dodi, go figure. The music enhanced the text, being contemplative where it should have been and lively where it should have been. We spent something like an hour and a quarter on kabbalat shabbat. Ma'ariv was quick by comparison. (Still, we ended half an hour late, which complicated things for the folks serving dinner.)

I also went to some weekday services. These were very much a mixed bag. Shacharit tended to have half a dozen options, but mincha and ma'ariv had just one in each slot. If I were organizing a schedule like that I'd make sure that those singleton mincha and ma'ariv services were fairly mainstream (for the target community, I mean), but that wasn't my experience at the kallah. They tended to be heavy on the creative readings, chanting, meditation, and whatnot, and light on core liturgy. Shacharit had a variety, including drumming services, chant services, nature-oriented services, meditation, yoga, and dance, along with more conventional services. I sought out the more-conventional services when they were available because so much of the rest wasn't. I needed the anchor.

I do regret missing the one shacharit where they were specifically trying to teach people how to put on t'fillin, because I've only done that once and I didn't quite get it. But unfortunately I didn't make it to that.

It's no secret that I am generally down on creative English readings. I have seen this work well (I still remember a particular one from NHC last year), but it's not the way to bet. One problem (to me) arises if the author of the English reading (or editor of the siddur, if the text was adapted for that purpose) misses the point of what the prayer that goes in that slot is there for. There was a stunning example of this in one service at the kallah: the leader was leading the congregation in an English chant based on the Amidah, and for the 13 petitionary prayers in the middle, the texts all began "we need...". No no no. Three-year-olds who haven't learned manners yet say "I need" when they mean "I request". This is not how we talk to God (at least not here). This part of the Amidah is where we make requests of God; we are not entitled to anything, and it's rude to make demands. So that kind of threw me off in that service. (That, and this artistic chant for the Amidah was more than 15 minutes long.)

In many ways I think the very first weekday service I went to, about which I wrote briefly before, was the best for me. (I'm not counting Shabbat here.) The service was grounded in tradition while bringing in new elements, including the meme where the congregation chants one phrase while the leader chants the whole text. I saw that several times and it worked well for me.

kallah: (some) services

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