JWC Shabbat service

This morning I participated in the annual Shabbat service held by the (Pittsburgh) Jewish Women's Center. I'm not really a member of the group (been to a couple functions, on the mailing list, don't pay dues), but several women in my congregation are and they recruited some of the rest of us.

I chanted torah, and it was the longest portion I've done to date (about three-quarters of a column in the scroll). I was a little worried about that, but apparently I wasn't the only one so they told us "do as much as you can and we'll fill in from a chumash as necessary". However, I really wanted to meet this challenge.

( torah-reading stuff )

The service overall went pretty well. There was a lot of singing, and I knew about two-thirds of the melodies (but picked up most of the others trivially). They handed out percussion instruments; next time I will do predatory choosing and take the large loud tambourine to keep it out of the hands of someone sitting next to me. :-) The song leader was very good (she's a pro) and the service leaders in general were good.

We used what I gather is the latest draft of Mishkan T'filah, the forthcoming Reform siddur. (Y'know, the economics of publishing have really changed. They've published a bunch of draft editions; I don't think that would have been feasible a generation ago.) They were on loan from URJ so I couldn't borrow one for a few days to look it over more closely; oh well. They've fixed some of the things I considered to be bugs in earlier drafts, but they've introduced some things that really annoy me. Oh well; I guess that's an inevitable consequence of committee-produced products.

The service was long (almost three hours, without musaf), and also started late. It was funny -- at 9:30 (the scheduled start time) the organizers were huddling in the front of the room, and all of the people from my congregation were exchanging glances. We start on time, always (barring something really unusual). Others present made comments about "Jewish standard time" and thought nothing of starting (ultimately) 15-20 minutes late.

( liturgical minutiae )

All in all, it was a pretty good service, with some things I liked and some I didn't care for. People were very friendly and everyone was working together, which made a big difference.

If they ask me to participate in a future service I'm not sure what I'll say. On the one hand it was fun, but on the other, it was a lot of work to learn the portion and I didn't get to put that work to use for the benefit of my own congregation. Maybe that means I should focus on chanting torah in my own congregation and ask to lead a part of the service if JWC invites me again. Leading doesn't require nearly the preparation that chanting torah does.

After I got home Dani and I headed out to an SCA event. More about that later, but I will mention the Jewish tie-in here. Halacha holds that if a negative consequence of keeping Shabbat is merely financial (and not of the will-be-out-on-the-street-if-this-goes-wrong variety), you keep Shabbat. This is one of the reasons that we don't conduct business on Shabbat even though you could make more money by keeping your store open on Saturday. More personally, it was the basis for my agreeing to let Dani drive my car -- with its previously-pristine clutch -- to the event, though Dani normally drives an automatic. Ouchy ouchy ouchy. :-)