Shabbat services

[cellio]

Our rabbis and cantorial soloist are all away at a convention this week, so I led services both Friday night and this morning. It went really well.

The first Friday of the month is "mostly musical shabbat" -- more singing, no d'var torah, earlier start time (to appeal to families with young kids), and a band. It always gets a large turnout. Because of the large numbers of kids it can be chaotic, which is a challenge.

The cantorial soloist had arranged for a substitute who is not a member of our congregation and thus isn't as familiar with how we do things. Providing that knowledge was an unstated part of my job. (I hope someday we will stop hiring folks from outside when we have congregants with the relevant skills, but I understand that there are perils down that path.) Now when our cantorial soloist is there she does the vast majority of this particular service (all the singing and chanting), so there's not actually a lot for the rabbi (or rabbi-proxy) to do. But the sub was perfectly happy to have me do the chanted parts (e.g. v'ahavta and the beginning of the amidah), while she led the actual songs, and that was a good division.

We had one potential monkey wrench: about a week ago we learned that we were going to have pulpit guests. This is pretty much the worst service of the month for that; every other week people expect a d'var and fewer disruptions. But the scheduling was beyond our control; there was a city-wide effort involving our sister city in Israel, and everyone was getting speakers this week, the week that clergy and many members from every Reform congregation in the city were out of town. There were people who were pretty worried that this would get out of hand. Fortunately, the two people they sent us were pleasant, easy to work with, and capable of staying within the specified time limit. Yay, monkey wrench averted. :-)

I expected a low turnout because of the convention and, more importantly, the secondary effects of the convention. By which I mean: there are a lot of people who don't come if they know the rabbi isn't going to be there. We only had about 40 people going to the convention (though, of course, they're 40 of our most active people), but I wouldn't have been surprised if we'd had 50 people instead of the usual (for mostly musical shabbat) of about 300. I'm lousy at estimating crowd sizes, but I think we had 150 to 200 people.

Aside from almost accidentally skipping the soloist's anthem (the guests' talk, not part of the usual pattern, distracted me, I think, oops), which was easily fixed once she pointed it out, everything went very smoothly. People seemed to be engaged. I got lots of compliments afterward, and a few friendly accusations that I'm bucking for the rabbis' job. :-) (We all know that leading services is the least part of a rabbi's job, right? But it's the most visible part, so people can miss the rest.)

This morning another congregant led torah study before the service. He did a great job; his years of teaching experience show. (Someday I hope to be a tenth as good as he is at facilitating discussions.) He was also today's torah reader, meaning he led from the torah service on, read, and gave a d'var torah (which was excellent). I led the first part of the service, up to the torah service.

I was worried that we wouldn't get a minyan (we usually have 25-30, on non-convention, with-rabbi weeks), but we were fine there -- even had one at the start of the service! We also had a decent turnout for torah study, which helps a lot; I've been in the situation of leading study with only three people present, and that's hard. In the end we had 16 people for the service and everyone was engaged, singing and otherwise participating, so that was just fine. One of our members had called me last Sunday to ask if she could play guitar on two songs, and she did a great job. (The rabbi leads on guitar; I lead by strength of voice and will. :-) ) It was particularly nice to have an instrument for Psalm 150, where we sing about praising God with instruments.

I've written before about the "question" tradition in this minyan; it's an excuse for people to say their names, mainly, but rather than just introducing ourselves the rabbi has us answer some question each week, sometimes serious and sometimes goofy. So it fell to me to come up with the question. This week we read Vayeira, which begins with Avraham welcoming the strangers, and we read in eilu d'varim every week that one of the obligations without measure is hospitality, so I asked people to talk about a time when they either received or gave hospitality when it wasn't expected. (So I don't mean family visits and stuff like that, where people pretty much have to invite you; I meant the optional cases.) We heard some interesting stories, and one person said she loved the question because it made her think about whether she gives as much as she gets. (Me too; I don't invite people for Shabbat or holiday meals as much as I'd like to. I love the idea in the abstract; I need to get better about making it concrete.)

I talked about the time, back when I was starting to explore Judaism, that Micha Berger (now a rabbi, but he wasn't then) invited me to his house for a weekend, stayed up until 3 in the morning talking torah with me, took me to a variety of congregations (and one family Chanukah party), and generally made me feel very welcome. He was a prominent figure on a Jewish newsgroup (which is where I met him), but I was a nobody. I knew he was pretty likely to be safe, but what could he know about me? And yet he (along with his wife) invited me into his home, disrupted his routine for me, answered those of my questions that he could, took me seriously even though I was not leaning toward his movement, and never once disparaged the other options I was considering. Explained why he disagreed, sure, as I would expect and want, but he was respectful and considerate, traits I strive for in my own discussions.

(He is far from the only person who has helped me on that journey and shown me hospitality, of course. Some of the others are likely reading this. You guys were already friends, so this was a little different. Besides, the goal of the question is to pick one thing, not to catalogue everything. :-) )

Anyway, the service went well; I led definitively (and usually in keys people were ok with) and was able to get some personal kavanah anyway. (One of the hardest things for a service leader can be to achieve that state where you yourself can pray effectively.) The flow was good even without a guitar to provide certain cues, and the pacing was good. The torah reader did an excellent job, as he generally does, and the post-service socializing was pleasant as usual. I enjoyed myself and think I served the congregation well.

Comments

[cjsherwood.livejournal.com]

I've been told there's a feminine for Yasher Koach! but I don't know it... so consider it said, whatever it is (at least that's what one of my Conservative friends says, though I can never remember how to pronounce it; my friend who was Editor at Transcontinental Music Publishing says there isn't, and my Conservative friend is the only one who ever corrected me about it so who knows?)!

That's a LOT of service leading. Very cool to read about it.