Pesach services

[cellio]

We were in Toronto for the first days of Pesach. I had previously had an excellent experience at Beit HaMinyan (not just the one, but that's the one I wrote about), so I was looking forward to going there for Shabbat/Pesach morning. I checked their web site before leaving Pittsburgh to make sure they were in the same place; thus reassured, I went there Saturday morning to...an empty, locked building. They're very friendly and welcoming when they're there, but maybe not so great at updating their web site. Bummer. :-(

So I fell back to the Village Shul (Aish HaTorah), a place I'd been once before. This time, as last, I found them to be not too welcoming; this time I knew where to go in the building so the indifferent man standing at the entrance didn't hinder me, but nor did he respond to my greeting. At the kiddush (which was a standing-around affair this time, not a sit-down one), not a single person greeted me, even when I made eye contact. It can be hard for me to approach random people and start conversations; I greeted some and usually got responses but no one engaged. I don't know what (if anything) I was doing wrong; I think it was fairly obvious that I wasn't a regular, but I wasn't inappropriate in any way I could determine.

But all that said, I'm very glad I went for one reason: Tal.

Ok, I need to back up. T'filat Tal, aka the prayer for dew, is said exactly once during the year, on the morning of Pesach, in the musaf service. I had never heard it before. The Reform movement doesn't do musaf and didn't import that part into another part of the service (like is done with some other parts), and when we're in Toronto I don't always make it to Yom Tov services (but I insist on Shabbat). It's possible that I was at a Conservative service for Pesach once, and if so either they didn't do it or they didn't do anything special with it and I didn't notice.

So, this is either the first time I've encountered this prayer or the first time it registered. And it did in fact register. A resonant text (which I am unable to find online, help?), a beautiful and fitting melody (which I can't find a good version of online), and just the right amount of congregational engagement (a few words sung together at the end of each stanza) all came together into a heartfelt but not over-the-top prayer that felt entirely right to me. Wow.

And I think it needs all of those. As I said, the Reform movement doesn't do this text -- but let me predict how it would go down if we did. Because it's unfamiliar and people can't be assumed to be fluent, we would read (not sing) it, in English. Perhaps responsively, alternating stanzas. And it would fall completely flat, done that way. I'm not fluent and I'd never seen this text before either, but I listened to it in Hebrew while reading the English translation, and that worked. If I didn't need the translation then that'd be even better, but the text I read and the text I hear don't need to be the same language and that's just fine. Alas, mine seems to be a small-minority position in my movement, so I will probably not get the opportunity to experience this prayer in that setting, which makes me sad.

Back to Village Shul, a little service anthropology: this time, as the last time I visited, they had a class concurrent with the torah service. About half the women left for it; I didn't see how many men did. I was kind of underwhelmed by the class last time; Aish teachers seem to have a tendency to want to prove that torah is true by using "bible codes" and other such constructs, and that's not my thing. I don't need somebody to prove torah to me. So this time I stayed for the torah service instead.

On holidays there is a special torah reading (shorter than usual this time). I found the right passage in the chumash on my own; they did not announce chapter/verse or page number at the beginning of the reading, but they did for every aliyah after the first so I conclude that this was an oversight, not policy. (They had been announcing page numbers in the siddur from time to time, and always when there was a jump.) The reading was pretty fast, and while each aliyah got a misheberach (an individual prayer from the service leader), which isn't part of my usual experience, it was efficient -- we were never stuck waiting and wondering, like I have been in some services that draw this out.

Throughout the service the melodies were recognizable (usually Carlebach) and usually not the ones I'm used to. I have retained none of the specifics, alas.

Comments

[goljerp]

I think the Reconstructionist prayer book imports Tal/Geshem into their prayerbook, even though they, like Reform, don't do Musaf. Although maybe it's a sephardic Tal/Geshem; I don't recall.

This year, we were at the Conservative shul near Joy's mom's house, but I was wandering around the shul with a bored JD during Musaf. (I can't wait until he starts really reading, so we can just load him down with books and keep him in the sanctuary, even if there isn't anything he's feeling particularly connected to. Of course, what I really would like is for him to feel engaged by the adult service, but since it took me 'till I was around 18, I'm not holding my breath.)

[cellio]

JD should be getting close to reading age, right? That will certainly help. (And yeah, you'd rather he engage with what's going on in the service, but while you're waiting for him to reach an age where he can do that, sitting there reading is better than not going.)

[goljerp]

Yes, JD is starting to read. He's not at the "sit and read a book by himself" stage yet, though.