Monica

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I did pretty much all of the service up to the torah service, except that the cantorial soloist led some stuff. I did some parts that she normally does; she was very gracious about it (and offered, in most of those cases).

I was confident, comfortable, and apparently smiling a lot. I'm told my articulation was very good, and that the 90-something-year-old who often has difficulty understanding people understood me just fine. I feel that I didn't look at the congregation while speaking (reading) as much as I wanted to, though I tried some things to make this not completely suck. (No one wants to look at a service leader who has his face buried in the book.) While reading a passage aloud you can read a few words ahead to the end of the sentence and then look up while reciting those from short-term memory; I did that a lot. Of course, that worked as well as it did because the prayerbook is familiar. I had more trouble doing this during my d'var torah even though I wrote those words.

( t'filah experiment )

( d'var torah )

One thing I definitely need to work on: rehearse the ad-libs. Yeah, contradiction in terms -- what I mean is the bits like inviting the bat-mitzvah student to lead the one prayer she did, making references to the handouts, inviting silent prayer... all the stuff that doesn't exist as words in the prayerbook. I practiced the book; I needed more practice with the other bits.

Speaking of the bat-mitzvah student, she was amazing. She was poised and knew her stuff, and she has an excellent voice. If I hadn't had lunch constraints, I would have gone to the bat-mitzvah service this morning (after my regular service) at least through the torah reading and her d'var torah.

( program inserts )

He did a very good job with the Friday-night service. He seemed at ease on the bimah, and he spoke well during the sermon. (Not reading and mostly not from notes either; I want to learn how to do that!) I know that he feels a little uncertain about his English (not his first language), but really, he did fine. Nothing to worry about there. (Hebrew aside: he pronounces the ayin. I can't quite figure out how; more observation is needed.)

He had never been to the informal morning service, so he asked the chair of the worship committee to have someone in the group lead it and the chair asked me. (I told him to give others the chance first and he did ask a couple people, who declined. Only later did it occur to me that maybe some people are nervous about leading in front of a rabbi, as opposed to when we're on our own. I, on the other hand, am not bothered by that in the least, any more. :-) )

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Friday night I met next week's bar mitzvah and his parents. They seem like nice folks, and I'm glad we got to say hello to each other sometime before the rehearsal on Tuesday. They didn't stay for the oneg after the service, so I didn't get much chance to talk with them. Because I am not quick enough on the uptake, I failed to thank them for allowing me to play a role in their simcha. Must say so at the rehearsal. After all, they are making a sacrifice and taking a chance; when they started planning we expected to have a rabbi available that week, and they only have my rabbi's word that I'm up to the task. I want to make sure they're comfortable.

Shabbat morning we had a first-time torah reader. He did a good job and had some interesting things to say about the portion (which, alas, have not cohered in my brain). Every time a new person from our minyan decides to take a shot at reading torah and leading that part of the service I do a little happy dance inside. :-)

I will be conducting the torah study next week. (I had been assuming that the chair of the worship committee would do it, but he'll be out of town.) We're in Va'etchanan, in the repetition of the ten commandments. After an animated discussion these last couple weeks about "do not murder", next week we move on to "don't commit adultery". So I have to think about how to structure that and have some provocative conversation-starters on tap. This is one part of the job I'm not very good at yet -- I can participate in study (though less effectively at 8:30 in the morning), but guiding it is something I need more practice with. So, I'm getting practice, which is good. (I've done this in this group twice before, once with preparation and once with 30 seconds' notice.)

The first draft of Friday's sermon is almost done. I need some transitional bits in a few places and a better wrap-up. Then I need to put it aside for a day or two and then revise.

The part assignments for Friday's service are all taken care of. I was surprised to learn that of the four people from the worship committee (other than me) who are involved, only one is comfortable leading the Hebrew reading of ma'ariv aravim -- and I'm already using her for the torah service. I could do that part, of course, but then it would be obvious to the congregation at large that the person leading that section couldn't, and I don't want to cause embarrassment. So I asked the cantorial soloist to do it; that'll make it look like I planned to give her a role that's a little different. (She'll already be up there, having just lead barchu.) I think I'm starting to get a little better at those "people skills" I hear so much about. :-)

I've got the torah reading pretty much under control. Tomorrow I will move from practicing with the nice, neat print-out from Trope Trainer to practicing from the sometimes-fuzzy, sometimes-sloppy calligraphy in a printed tikkun. That's more realistic. (I am also promised access to the actual scroll for practice.)

All together, I'm doing, in one week, several parts of the job my rabbi does so smoothly (and, seemingly, effortlessly) -- leading services (two), reading torah, giving a sermon, conducting study, and coordinating the efforts of other congregants involved in the services. Some of my preparation has been spread out over several weeks; my rabbi does this every single week. Of course, he doesn't have another job -- but he does have a family, pastoral duties, administrative duties, community duties, and more. Still, this is all providing an interesting window into (part of) my rabbi's world.

Fortunately, all the rabbis in town have cross-coverage agreements, so there is zero chance that I would be called on to do a funeral while he's gone.

jducoeur

A former congregant was just ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. She came back to visit this past Shabbat, but disappeared after the morning service within about five minutes (before I got a chance to talk with her). Sigh. So I don't know how long she's back in town, where she's staying, or what her future plans are. I last saw her in December and would love to know how she's doing now that she's finished the program.

My rabbi, the cantorial soloist, and I need to have a meeting to go over plans for the bar mitzvah in a few weeks. We've been trying to have this meeting for a few weeks, but things keep happening. Looks like later this week for sure. The soloist said in passing (Friday night) something like "it's ok; I can do that service cold", which misses the point -- even if she can and I can, that doesn't mean we can. I learned that rather thoroughly during the Sh'liach K'hilah program. If I were doing the service by myself everything would be fine; there are other people involved, however, so we need to make sure everyone knows who does what.

I got a bit of an insight Shabbat morning, when someone was talking about her child's (recent) bar mitzvah and how the rabbi had been really good to work with -- he knew how to give her son quiet reassurances during the service when he was getting nervous, but also knew when to just let him fix the problems he was having. I won't just be leading a service; I'll be facilitating a significant life-cycle event for someone, and for the kid it's probably the most nervousness-inducing thing he's ever done. There's a lot to being a rabbi that has nothing to do with liturgical fluency and scholarship. (Apropos of nothing, it sometimes seems that there's a fair bit of social work/counselling in the job, too.)

Noticed Shabbat morning during torah study: when Moshe is lecturing the people about the importance of keeping God's commandments, in Deut 5:3 he says "God did not make this covenant with our fathers but with us". I really expected to see an "only" there. God did make a covenent with their fathers (the ones who actually left Egypt; Moshe is now speaking to their children). But there is no "only" ("rak") there. Now if you believe that Deuteronomy was written later, or by men, you can just say that, well, Moshe is playing a little fast and loose with the facts for the sake of rhetoric. (It wouldn't be the only thing he says that doesn't track 100% with the earlier accounts.) If it's all divine writ, though, the problem is a little harder. I find myself wondering if the distinction is in fact important -- maybe that God attempted to make a covenant with their fathers, but a covenant requires two partners and they weren't up to the task, so maybe (in the end) it's saying that the first real covenant was with their children. I don't think that's a view that would have much support in tradition, because the image of standing at Sinai to recieve torah is so powerful and so infused in Jewish tradition, but it's what came to mind.

On the Shabbat of memorial-day weekend my rabbi always does something to acknowledge the holiday. Last night he read excerpts from a moving eulogy given at Iwo Jima by the first rabbinic chaplain in the Navy. The rabbi prepared the eulogy for a general memorial service (all religions), but chaplains from other religions objected to a Jew being allowed to speak at a combined service, so they ended up splitting people up by religion and only a small group heard the eulogy. Ah, here it is. Thank you, Google.

It turns out that my rabbi will be away that Shabbat. Our new associate rabbi won't yet be there. So I will be leading that Friday service with the cantorial soloist (that hasn't changed), albeit without the rabbinic feedback I'd been hoping for. (We'll just have to find another way to do that.)

But in addition, I'll be conducting the bar-mitzvah service that Shabbat morning. Wow!

Saturday night as we were trying (and failing) to go to Chaya for dinner, we walked past a new restaurant called Susheli. It looked open and not busy, so we walked in. They said they weren't actually open yet; they'd be open in half an hour but if we didn't already have reservations we'd have to wait. So, some other time -- but does that timing strike anyone else as odd? It did to me, so I looked at the hours posted on the door -- closed Friday for dinner, open Saturday an hour after sundown (demonstrably not true, by the way, but that would be quite ambitious if my guess is right). Could it be? I looked at the menu posted in the window; it included entries like "shrimp (mock)". No immediately-obvious certification, but Dani was getting impatient so I figured I'd check later. So I'm not yet certain, but it's possible that there's now a kosher Japanese restaurant in Squirrel Hill! Whee! (I failed to look for a mezuzah.) Currently, the only place where I can order a sushi platter, as opposed to individual pieces, is Chaya, because they understand kosher versus non-kosher species. But part of the appeal of sushi is letting the chef choose appropriate combinations based on what's fresh, his own creativity, and whatever else. I miss that at restaurants other than Chaya.

I wondered about the name. "Sheli" means "for me" in Hebrew, so if "su" meant something (that implied good food) that would have been neat. But according to Dani, "su" doesn't mean anything, so I guess it's "sushi for me" but only sort of. Assuming that they're trying to do something clever with Hebrew, of course.

After dinner we went to a party at Chez Melton (lorimelton and ralphmelton). We had a good time. There weren't as many people I already knew as at past parties; the Claritech crowd was largely absent (us and two others). It was good to see Kevin again; since the end of the D&D game I almost never see him.

We ended up in a large game of Apples To Apples, which is a good party game. Each player has a handful of cards with nouns on them; in turn, each player draws and plays an adjective card, and other players each pass in a noun that goes with it. The person who drew the adjective chooses the noun he likes best, and the person who played it gets a point. Iterate until a score threshold is reached. It's a fun game that usually moves pretty quickly. This was the first I'd played with the expansion sets, though, and I think they are a net loss. There were a lot of rounds where I felt I didn't have anything plausible and tossed junk, and it was clear this was happening to others too. I suspect that the original game was well-thought-out and then in the expansions they just threw more words into the mix. Part of what makes the game fun is seeing all the clever or funny submissions that show up; when half the submissions are, essentially, discards, it's not as much fun. But even so, a fun game (and we should pick up a copy to have on hand when we host gaming days).

This morning our power went out again, with no obvious reason, but we found that it was out for several blocks, so it wasn't just us. This time it was out for almost two hours. Dani recently deprecated a UPS (not big enough for the computer/monitor he's currently using), so I appropriated it for the VCRs. I've had to reset the VCR clocks three or four times this week; this was the first outage long enough to also take out the programming. (Apparently the model is that the VCR will just get the time from the cable service, so it doesn't need to dedicate battery power to that. But I don't have the right kind of cable service for that.) I wouldn't buy a UPS for the VCRs, because that seems extravagant, but with it just sitting there, neglected... :-)

Most of my bulbs have sent up green bits, it seems, but no crocuses in bloom yet. It seems late for them and early for everything else.

It appears that many in the congregation interpreted my problems as nervousness. Nope. I chanted the climactic part of the binding of Yitzchak in front of 900 people on Rosh Hashana; I think I'm over nervousess in my own congregation.

But I also got a lot of positive feedback; chanting is not common in our congregation and it was a longer portion, and I guess that impressed people. I actually find that the chanting makes it easier for me, not harder, but I've got a knack for music and not-yet-adequate Hebrew comprehension. The music provides hints about the phrasing, which makes for a more coherent reading than if I just read the words without knowing what each one meant. Mind, I do go over a portion pretty thoroughly when learning it, first attempting my own translation and then studying a translation alongside the Hebrew, but that doesn't mean I can retain it all at the word level.

The associate rabbi said some nice things about me in the context of the Sh'liach K'hilah program. (They took the opportunity to tell the congregation at large that I've completed that program.) This generated some nice comments at the oneg.

Reading on Shabbat morning went much more smoothly. I tried, for the first time, giving my d'var torah without using notes; it turns out I'm not ready for that yet. Well, you don't know if you don't try, and it's a forgiving group. But there were things I meant to say and didn't, and things I didn't say as eloquently as I'd planned, and I'll just have to do better next time.

On Shabbat morning my rabbi also brought up the Sh'liach K'hilah program briefly, and mentioned that I'd read the previous night (many of the morning people hadn't been there). He also said something to the effect that he'd be giving me increasing opportunities to read on Friday nights; woot! I have hopes of eventually parlaying that into helping to lead worship too, but I'll take any advance.

I didn't connect so much with last night's service, but I really did this morning. At several points I felt I was truly in the presence of the divine king, and I spent a lot of time thinking about things in the past year that I ought've done differently.

My torah reading went really well, and I got many compliments -- including two people telling me that they'd gotten chills listening to me. Those are good chills; I was reading the climax of the binding of Yitzchak and trying to do it expressively. I guess I succeeded. :-) I backed off a bit when I got up there and found a mike right there in my face, only an inch or two from my mouth; I was worried about overblowing it when the angel shouts to Avraham. But still, it worked.

( sermon )

lefkowitzga came for lunch and we got to spend a couple hours chatting. That was very nice; we haven't been able to just sit down and talk in a while.

( we ate... )

I've heard a little informal talk in the congregation about possibly going to a two-day Rosh Hashana at some to-be-defined future time. If that suggestion makes its way to the worship committee it should make for some interesting discussion. There are several points of view to consider:

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