S'lichot

[cellio]

Technically the high-holy-day season began with the first day of the month of Elul a few weeks ago, but some think of it as starting with S'lichot, the recitation of penitential prayers that begins (for Ashkenazim) several days before Rosh Hashana. That was last night.

Until now I had only ever gone to Reform services for this, and this year I was feeling the need to experience something more traditional. My Orthodox shul of choice for such things is Young People's Synagogue, which I've visited a few times on Friday nights. They didn't publish a time for S'lichot on their web site, so I sent email to the president of the congregation to introduce myself and ask. I got a nice, prompt reply welcoming me and giving me the information I needed. He mentioned that Dan Leger would be speaking; Dan is a member of Dor Chadash who I know from the Tree of Life morning minyan (yeah, Pittsburgh is like that), so that was an extra bonus.

The people I met there last night were very nice, and it's the first time I've seen other women there. (Women don't generally come on Friday nights.) I think there were about 25 people there, about 25% women. One man who greeted me said he'd seen a video of me on YouTube, which I wouldn't have expected as a primary search result. (I think it's the only public video that names me, actually.) He didn't mention this journal, which I would have thought to be the more-likely search result. But I just checked Google, and wow have things changed: the video is #2, my user page on Mi Yodeya is #3, and this journal is #4. (Someone else from there visited this journal after I wrote about them another time, BTW. If any of y'all are reading this, hi!)

Dan's talk was enlightening but doesn't summarize well (now, at least). After the talk and some Q&A, the service began. The service was in a small booklet just labelled "S'lichoth" (or maybe "Selichoth") from Birnbaum. I'd like a copy of this service but Amazon and Google are failing me, so it's probably out of print. I assume I can find the traditional liturgy in several other places, including as part of some machzorim, though the smaller stand-alone format is nice. Suggestions welcome; a complete and reliable English translation is an important feature. (No transliteration please; I don't need it and it takes up space.)

As I expected, the service was all in Hebrew. I was running about 25% on comprehension (with some 100% passages that I know from other places, including the Yom Kippur service and torah), so I switched between the Hebrew and English as needed. The chazan did a good job of signaling where he was, and somebody occasionally called out page numbers. (I wonder if that's usual or was for my benefit (visitor of unknown skill).)

Even with my imperfect understanding, I found I was really engaging with the traditional liturgy. The melodies for the sung parts were easy to pick up, and those parts tended to be the ones where I knew what the words meant, which certainly helped. I had not previously realized that the traditional liturgy repeats the list of divine attributes more than once; that provided "mileposts" in the service the way the kaddishes do in other services. Each time through the context was a little different and it seemed like my reaction should be a little different (and would be, with practice and fluency). The service had a level of gravitas that I've found lacking in other s'lichot services I've been to, without feeling overdone.

After the service I was chatting with someone while helping to clean up the nosh from earlier, and after asking about Yom Tov services I was given a bulletin listing all their upcoming events. My congregation joins together with another for festival morning services; Sukkot will be at their place and I'm not sure I really want to walk two miles each way for that. YPS is just down the street and seems like a friendly place. The "main" service (for any day) is the morning one and I have a Shabbat morning minyan I'm very attached to, so Sukkot is an opportunity to visit them when much of their community will be there. They've invited me to come, and I plan to accept that invitation.

Community-anthropology notes for my own future reference: More than one man who greeted me offered me a handshake. All women were wearing skirts/dresses, but some had short sleeves. Some hats, some not.

Comments

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

Community-anthropology notes for my own future reference: More than one man who greeted me offered me a handshake. All women were wearing skirts/dresses, but some had short sleeves. Some hats, some not.

That sounds like what you'd see at most places I've spent time at, so I'm guessing they're Orthodox but not what a lot of outside media label/present as Orthodox because it's not obviously different enough.

Re repeating the divine attributes: We went to a Conservative synagogue for rosh hashana and/or yom kippur for most of the past decade, and one thing I noticed in ne'ilah was that while they repeated this section a few times it wasn't nearly as often as in the Orthodox service. (This comparison wasn't based just on my memory - G used the Conservative machzor that the rest of the congregation was using while I brought my own Orthodox machzor and peeked at G's as necessary to make sure I "stayed on the same page" as everyone else.)