liturgical choreography (geeking)

A question came up after services this morning about choreography rather than text, and I realized I don't know where to look such things up. Ok, some (most? all?) siddurim from Artscroll contain some instructions for choreography ("bow here", etc), but I'm looking for a bit more than that. Ideally there'd be discussion, as I'm interested in intended symbolism, history, and variation. Elbogen is text-centric (though I haven't looked for choreography info there so maybe those bits are there too), and Klein doesn't cover liturgy much at all.

The specific issue that prompted the question is this: In most congregations I've been in (including my own), the barchu is done thus: chazan says "barchu..." while bowing, congregation responds "baruch..." while bowing, and then you go on. In Sim Shalom, though, they specify chazan, then congregation, then the chazan repeating the congregation's response. So when I'm the chazan I've been deferring my bow until that repetition, because it makes sense textually -- first I say "let's praise", which is a call to worship, and then we all bow when we actually praise (the next line). When there is no repetition by the chazan the chazan has to bow during the call because otherwise he'll be left out (unless he joins the congregation in the response, which I haven't seen anywhere). (Hmm, I wonder which approach is older -- is Sim Shalom innovating or returning to an earlier practice?) So that was my assumption and my reasoning, but this morning someone suggested that I should be bowing during the first part. Hmm. (I have, by the way, seen both in this congregation -- there's no strong minhag. And this person only brought it up because I'd raised a different question with him and he said "oh by the way if you're interested in these questions...". So not being pushy at all.)

my lemon-scented Volkswagen

"Malfunction indicator light" is an awfully general indicator, don't you think? The manual reports that it's probably engine-related and important but not absolutely time-critical -- unless it's blinking, which it's not (yet). (Blinking means the catalytic converter.) Oh goodie.

That's the third failure in under a year, though the PA lemon law applies only to failures in the first 12 months. I've had the car 17 months, so I'm out of luck there.

Now, to see if a dealer other than the one I bought it from will do the work under reasonable conditions. Reasonable conditions include either a specific appointment time or transportation to and from work. (Sunday hours don't exist.) It appears that the closest non-Rohrich dealer is in Murrysville, which is kind of far from the South Side. My new developer starts Monday, so I'd really like to put this off a few days.

By the way, I never did get any response from the national office of VW after last year's problems. I know they received the letter. So even if I got unlucky with a specific car (and most Golfs aren't lemons), and even if I got unlucky with a scumbag dealer, VW itself has demonstrated a lack of concern for its customers. They will not get my future business.

War of the Worlds

We saw the new War of the Worlds last night. This had the potential to go one of two ways, I thought. They might have decided to make a thriller action flick (which would not have been very interesting to me), or they might have made more of a character story. Wells provided a foundation that could go either direction -- not that movies necessarily take much from the books they're based on, of course.

( here there be spoilers -- but c'mon; the movie's been out for two months )

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. I haven't seen any other movie/video versions of this story to compare it to. (I only know the book, the Orson Welles radio version, and Jeff Wayne's musical setting.) My favorite telling of it is probably still Jeff Wayne's; it and this movie are so different, though, that comparing them wouldn't really be feasible. That said, though, it's been years since I've listened to that recording and I should do something about that. And maybe dump it to CD if I can, since I currently have it only on vinyl.

chanting torah this week

I'm chanting torah tomorrow night and Shabbat morning at my synagogue. Chanting Friday night is kind of a big deal, because lay people almost never get that opportunity. (I last did this two years ago when both rabbis were away.) Yes, most Reform congregations read torah on Friday nights, because for many folks that's the main service. Some congregations only have a morning service if there's a bar mitzvah, and the community as a whole doesn't go to those. I'm glad that we have a regular morning service every Shabbat.

So anyway, my rabbi had said he was open to me chanting on Fridays occasionally, because he knows I'm good enough, so I asked if the next week for which I was already signed up to read on Saturday would do. :-) The portion is long and we'd discussed me not reading the whole thing; I'll read some and he'll read some. The part I am reading -- and remember that this is one aliya, not all seven -- runs over four minutes, and is about half of the aliya. (Eikev slishi.) Division into portions, and aliyot within them, is not what you'd call uniform. I'm reading almost an entire column in the scroll, which is the longest portion I've chanted so far.

He asked me how I felt about chanting a few verses, then having him translate them, chanting a few more, and so on. The congregation is used to "inline" translation, so almost no one follows the reading in a chumash, so asking them to sit and listen to Hebrew in a vacuum for four minutes might not go over well. I said "let's try it" and it ended up working fine when we practiced it. (And I even held pitch through the pauses, which matters to my inner musician.) Tonight I got to practice from the scroll, which is always different from practicing with the tikkun. This is also not the scroll I'm used to reading from on Shabbat mornings.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow night; I think it'll go well. Hmm, I better come up with something to say about the portion for Saturday morning, when the reader traditionally talks for a couple minutes.