cellio | Entries tagged with morning minyan

Today was Yom HaShoah and also my day to lead the morning minyan. I reviewed the siddur (Sim Shalom) in advance; there was one insertion into the Amidah (in sh'ma koleinu), and there was a section of readings in the back that seemed intended for a special-purpose service but not a general one. (That is, if you're specifically doing a Yom HaShoah service, which some communities do (usually in the evening), that would be good stuff to include, but that wasn't the intent here.)

When I arrived I consulted with the person who is more or less in charge of these things, and we agreed that we'd just do the Amidah insertion. That didn't end up being what happened, though, because members of this minyan are not shy. :-)

First, when we got to the end of the Amidah and I was getting ready to do the chatzi kaddish that goes there, someone shouted out "page 40!", which was that insertion. (I had made sure to point it out to people earlier in the service so they wouldn't automatically skip over it like usual.) I hesitated and then shrugged and said "ok", so we read that paragraph together in English. (After the fact it occurred to me that he'd probably assumed that people had read it in Hebrew, perhaps lacking comprehension.)

Then, during the torah service, as the torah reader was getting ready to do the mi shebeirach (prayer for healing), that first person came up and asked people to turn to the back and we did a couple readings there. (Ok, he must have changed his mind.) They were good choices; one was an E- Malei Rachamim specifically about the Shoah, and the other was a modified kaddish with names of camps interspersed. (It's intended for two readers, clearly. It was done responsively.) The reader, who is old enough to remember, was openly crying during both. I found that while the words affected me a little, his reaction to the words affected me a lot more. (As someone whose family was not affected, nor in a persecuted class, I realize that I have an unusual position in the community.)

In place of the usual "daf bit" I ended up using an excerpt from a sermon given in 1942 by the rabbi of a community that was then under attack. The sermon was given on Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat before Pesach. (This site does not say where he was writing from nor what became of his community.) This is the part I used:

I recalled what the great sage the Chatam Sofer had expounded on the seder song "one little kid". For the cat thought it could consume the kid but in truth, they will never consume us, because our father bought us for two zuz... So, inevitably there will always remain "one little kid"... For the Holy One will also make miracles for us. And the dog came... and the stick... all because of one little kid, Israel. And in the end what remains is the Holy One and the one little kid, after the Holy One consumes and smites all those who hate us. -Rabbi Shlomo Unsdorfer

A couple months ago I wrote about a musical issue in the weekday morning minyan. One of the regulars really likes a melody that the rabbi hates, so I was trying to find a way to make everyone happy. This is a followup.

I came up with a new melody that I thought singable enough (and perky enough) to satisfy the congregant without having the excessively-repeated text and cheesy melody that bothered the rabbi. (The cheesy melody didn't do much for me either, but that alone was not enough reason for me to change anything.) On the day I was going to spring it I wanted to take that congregant aside first to clue him in (I'd previously told him that I'd be bringing a new melody). But he wasn't there, and when we got to the t'filah I had my back to the congregation, so I didn't see him come in late. So when we got to l'dor vador I just chanted it, and I heard him say something like "argh". Oops.

He had an aliya, so I was able to whisper in his ear something like "I have a new melody but need your help; stick around after" and he said ok. After the service I told him I needed his help to get the congregation to sing a new melody; I didn't know if they'd be able to follow just me (with my back to them), but if he was also singing it that would help so could I teach it to him right now? Sure, he said, and the person sitting next to him also stuck around. (Good, I thought; this second person has a good strong voice.)

So I sang it for him, then sang it with him a few times, then asked if it worked for him. He said yes, he likes it a lot, and I said he needed to be ready to sing next week. We've now done it for several weeks; the congregant is thrilled and the rabbi is satisfied. I think most of the congregation is indifferent. (In a brief moment of inattention I let slip to the congregant that I wrote it, but I do not believe this is widely known, nor would I want anyone to feel pressured because of that.)

Edit: On reflection, one small piece of this didn't belong in a public entry. Yeah, what's out there is out there, but I'll still try to clean up what I can.

I am not Solomon, so I have to work harder for an answer. :-)

When I started leading the morning minyan, I did the service exactly as it was taught to me -- Hebrew here, English there, this melody, and so on. I have made a very few changes, gradually; after noticing that different people do in fact do it a little differently, I figured I could get away with that if I didn't jolt people too much. I made changes in the things I most care about.

Over time, I've learned, everyone else who leads this service has drifted away from one particular melody. Some people have asked me to kill it too. The rabbi, who is mara d'atra so may insist but knows the minyan was there before he was so he won't, hates it and said he would be delighted if I chose to get rid of it. I, personally, do not care; it would be hard to find a part of the service that I'm more neutral about. So for the last couple weeks I dropped it, just chanting that passage instead.

Naturally, there is one long-time, regular member who loves singing it and thinks people went behind his back to lobby me. He begged me to put it back. I did this morning, making a slight change to address what I perceive to be the rabbi's main complaint. (I haven't talked with the rabbi yet, so I don't know if that was effective.) Sigh. I wish I actually cared about this particular issue; then I could assert a position and go.

I might look for a different melody and see how that goes. I don't know any that fit all the criteria right now, but I haven't done any real work on this yet. (So hey, if any of you want to make suggestions, I'm open. It's L'dor vador; we currently do this one (ignore cheesy accompaniment please), which the rabbi feels is insufficiently reverent (um, yeah) and too repetitive. I suggested this one to the rabbi; the mood is much better, but he thinks it's still too repetitive. Any suggestions?)

This morning after I put a tallit on, a man I don't know approached me and asked if I'm the chazanit. I said "for today". He asked why I was wearing a tallit but not a kippah (skullcap). (In case anyone's wondering: egalitarian Conservative congregation.)

( Read more... )

This morning at the end of services the rabbi said he had a message for the congregation, and proceeded to translate from a certain postcard. Err, when I said "say hi to the morning minyan", I sort of assumed the postcard would beat me there. :-) (Two weeks.) He praised my Hebrew, I suspect more than it deserved. (I hadn't taken a dictionary with me.) But I figured it was fair to make him and Dani work a little for their postcards. :-)

Before sending it I took a picture:

handwritten Hebrew message

Thank you to everyone who responded to my laptop-versus-PDA query.

Thursday was our annual company retreat, held way the heck too far out of town. It's a nice site, but it's 40 miles from the office, and they schedule it so you're in rush-hour traffic both ways. Oh well. (Note to self: if we use this site again, bring own caffeine supply for the morning. They didn't put out pop until after lunch.)

I went late, after morning services, hitching a ride with someone else with a constraint (dropping kids off at school). I had an interesting (brief) conversation with that congregation's new rabbi after services. ( geeking )

Their new rabbi is on the bimah during morning services, but he doesn't lead. After the first time I asked him if I was encroaching (maybe he wanted to lead) and he said no, go ahead. Every week he has complimented me on something, so I'll take this as ongoing consent. (You don't need a rabbi to lead, of course, and it's not automatic that a rabbi would trump a layperson, but I figure it's polite to defer if that seems to be called for.)

The rabbi has an Ashkenazi pronunciation (and accent). Most of the congregation sits in the back third of the pews, so I'm not used to having a different-to-me pronunciation so close. It's improving my concentration skills. :-)

My "other" congregation has a new rabbi and he was there this morning (but he deferred to me for leading). Afterwards he praised me rather more than I would have expected and asked where I learned to daven. The answer to that is really the same as for most people: by showing up and doing it a lot. Most of the regulars in this group can daven at least as well as I can in most respects -- perhaps not as melodically, but that's the least-important part. I wonder if people who compliment me on leading services are really just reacting to my ability to sing.

On the other hand, during the Sh'liach K'hilah program many of my classmates told me that I (to paraphrase) ooze spirituality, that I can create the right setting and draw people into prayer. I think I do that instinctively when I lead on Shabbat mornings, and I actively work on that on the rare occasions when I lead on Friday nights, but I don't explicitly try and don't know how successful I am in doing it at the weekday minyan. (I don't know how to tell, from way up on the bimah while they all sit in the back rows.) This is, largely, not a group that lingers over prayer and reflects; most people have places to be after services are over. It's a weekday, after all.

It's possible that I am better at some of the simple mechanics -- navigation (page cues), flow, consistency in pace, and that sort of thing. I suspect that being both an adult learner and an analytical sort help there -- for as long as I've been going to services I've been both participating and observing what's going on and how it's put together. I didn't absorb "how it's done" before I was old enough to be cognizant of it. I notice things (my rabbi has commented on this) and analyze the heck out of them. Maybe that has paid off in ways I hadn't noticed.

Mind, I kept all of this inner dialogue away from the rabbi, who I thanked for the compliment. :-)

( weekday minyan )

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.

It's good to sit in the congregation every now and then. I've been leading the morning service for something over a year now. A couple days ago I got a phone call -- would I be willing to defer to another leader on "my" day for a special occasion? Yes, of course -- not a problem, I said. So this morning I heard someone else lead, and picked up a few nuances. And they gave me an aliya, too. :-) (They've never given me one while I was leading, nor would I want them to. Leading is already an honor; give the honor of an aliya to someone else.)

The t'filah (aka the amidah), the central prayer of the service, is said silently. It is customary for the leader to wait until everyone has finished before going on with the service, but the morning minyan doesn't do that. As a congregant I found this frustrating but eventually learned to live with it; as a leader I'm now a little frustrated from the other side. So this morning I raised the issue for the first time. (I don't have the authority to make the change unilaterally, but I want to get people talking about it.)

Pro: This is broad Jewish custom. (Halacha?)

Con: But not here, and not only that but their rabbi so ruled. (This isn't just a property of the morning minyan; it's true of all their services.) That makes not doing it "local halacha".

Pro: Slower people feel rushed and/or stomped on now.

Con: If we wait, the last person to finish may feel self-conscious (like he's holding the rest of us up).

Con: It may be hard for the leader (or at least this one) to tell when people are finished, because some just stay standing rather than sitting down only to get back up for the chatzi kaddish and torah service when everyone's done. (Remember that this congregation doesn't do a chazan's repetition of the t'filah, so if you sit down after the silent one it's brief. Some don't bother.)

Obviously, because their rabbi has made a ruling, this discussion isn't about making the change directly but about approaching the rabbi -- which I'll only do if this group agrees on the proposal.

I pried myself out of bed this morning to go to minyan; while normally I would have slept in on a day off from work, as the leader I didn't have that option. There were two other people when I got there (five minutes early). By the start time we were up to six, but unfortunately we topped out at nine. I often have to skip the first kaddish or two; a few times I've had to skip barchu; once I had to skip kedusha. I've never had to skip the torah service and mourners' kaddish before. That was weird, and unsatisfying. (The torah reader wasn't thrilled either.)

(I mean this is the first time in this congregation. I had to skip a torah service once at my home congregation.)

(For those who don't know, the parts of the service I listed are ones that require a minyan, ten adults, to do.)

The group has apparently talked about starting services later on secular holidays, but there were objections -- from people who were not there this morning. I predict that they will revisit the question. :-)

There's a point in the morning service where we study a little bit of torah. For reasons unknown to me, the weekday morning minyan almost always reads something from Pirke Avot in that slot, rather than the usual text called for in the siddur. So I've been doing that since starting to lead that service because, well, that's what they do. But I've sometimes seen variation from this norm, and these readings didn't really seem to be doing their job, so I decided to try something new -- short bits about the weekly parsha. (Yeah, I should have started last week. Didn't think of it then.) This is supposed to be study, not a d'var torah, so my plan is to repeat something from a source, not add my own layer of interpretation. We'll see how this goes over (no noticable reactions today).

Today's bit:

We might ask: why was it necessary for God to destroy the whole world with the flood? Was there no possibility of redemption? We learn in Midrash Tanchuma that when Noach was commanded to build the ark, he began by planting cedar trees. The people asked him what he was doing and he told them about the coming flood, but they ridiculed him. Later, he cut down the grown trees to make planks, and again the people asked him and ridiculed him when they heard his answer. Noach then built the ark, and only after all of that did God send the flood.

Meta: When we were doing Pirke Avot I just read out of a siddur; with this my choices were to carry a book in with me (the one where I found the passage), make a copy, or do it from memory. I opted for the last. I was a little nervous, but I think it'll be fine next time.

( Why do this? )

( Read more... )

Then we came home and watched West Wing, thanks to a coworker's tape. Yup, we both thought we'd correctly identified the leak. And is it my imagination, or is more of current-day American politics creeping into that show? I mean, it always rang true or it wouldn't have worked, but it feels a little more like I'm seeing last week's newspaper stories on the show this week, and that feels different.

During the torah service it's traditional to say a prayer for healing for specific, named individuals. (The congregation keeps a list or allows people to speak up.) This morning someone spoke up and said "can we say something for the bombing victims?" and David, who leads the torah service, said "we'll do that later". I immediately wondered two things: (1) what bombing? and (2) what does he have in mind?

(I know about the bombing now, but I don't routinely look at news before leaving the house. And it was probably too late for this morning's paper anyway, and I certainly didn't have time to check the web.)

While other people were preparing the torah scroll to be put away David took my siddur, hastily flipped through it, and pointed to a page of supplementary prayers for healing. It was just a psalm (I think -- I didn't see a label, though I noted a page number to check later), which we read in English. I asked him when to do this, and he said between the end of the torah service and Aleinu. So I did.

My instincts didn't go in that direction at all. I would have been looking for another misheberach to insert into the torah service, right after the one for individuals. I never would have thought to look where he did in the siddur. Actually, at my own congregation we would have just added the unnamed bombing victims onto the other prayer, on the theory that even if we don't know their names God does. (I believe the misheberach is also intended specifically for Jews, while this other reading was probably more general, but in our congregation we don't strictly enforce that either. We've certainly added known non-Jews to our list, like the head of the local Islamic center when he was ill. He's a friend of our communtiy.)

This is not the sort of thing that comes up often, so I was impressed by David's agility in immediately coming up with an answer. I wonder how much was knowledge and how much improvisation. I hope this is something I get better at in time.

I also hope I get better at faking that knowing look when I really have no idea what people are talking about. :-)

Disclaimer: this has nothing to do with my employment. If it did, I wouldn't be posting it for the world to see. :-)

Recently I was talking with someone about moonlighting, and the question came up: what exactly is wrong with moonlighting, anyway? In trying to sort out my answer to that question, I've concluded that it's "it depends".

One issue is conflict of interest. If you're the CTO of Google and you pick up a job as lead programmer for an up-and-coming search-engine company on the side, I'd argue that you have a problem there. At the other end of the spectrum, if you're working shifts at both McDonalds and K-Mart, or even if you're the CTO of Google and you're also working at a local restaurant, who cares?

But quite aside from that are the questions of the type of work and your own abilities. Specifically, if you have a job that requires some sort of creative energy (Google yes, McDonalds no), then you have to ask if the second job is drawing effort you "owe" to the first. I'm not saying an employer owns you 24x7, of course, but if you're, say, a salaried lead programmer, you're probably thinking about architecture, algorithms, and your particular problem domain at times other than when you're billing your time. That's a good thing; personally, I have some of my best ideas either in the shower or while driving in to work. (And sometimes Shabbat afternoon, but if I find work thoughts popping up then I try to banish them.) So if you're a full-time programmer with another gig on the side, do you have enough creative juice to go around so that you're giving them both the level of effort that you would have otherwise given the one? For some people the answer is yes and for some it's no; you have to know yourself here. (And in some ways you can benefit from re-use; yes for architecture and no for specific domains.)

If you are the sort of person who can manage that, then there's still the issue of appearances. Often appearance is more important than reality in the professional world; if your peers or employers think you're shortchanging them, it's going to be a whole lot of hassle to convince them otherwise. So you have to decide if it's worth it.

I've been couching this in terms of employment, but it can apply in other areas too. The consequences are less severe in a volunteer or low-pay millieu; if I sing in a congregational choir and play dance music once a week for the SCA and play blues every Saturday night in a club (to choose three things I'm not currently doing), it may be that I'm spending less time rehearsing any one sort of music than I would otherwise, but so long as I'm meeting the minimum obligations no one's going to argue that I should be kicked out. On the other hand, if it appears that I'm shorting the dance band because I'm hoping my blues career will take off, that could engender bad feelings even if it's not true.

( practical applications )

In an odd twist of timing, the rabbi emeritus of the other synagogue showed up to services this morning. This is, I'm pretty sure, the first time I've seen him this year; he travels a lot and doesn't always come to minyan even when he's in town. But he was there today (with a guest).

He hadn't seen me lead that service before, and he said lots of complimentary things to me afterwards. He also said he was heading off (with said guest, who turned out to be someone from JNF or UJF or some other Jewish TLA) to a meeting with my rabbi and he was planning to say nice things to him about me. Heh -- I'm glad I had that conversation yesterday. :-) Later in the day I got email from my own rabbi commenting positively on this.

So I think my rabbi is supportive. Time will tell how this affects my leadership opportunities in my congregation. (The worship committee is meeting next week; I don't yet know if lay leadership for Friday nights is on the agenda.)

I talked with my rabbi today about my leading services at the other shul. He already knew that I've been going there for shacharit for years (not every day); I told him that this was because of ties to a particular group of people, not to that synagogue or movement in general, and if that minyan were to disband I would not seek out another. I'm committed to my movement, my synagogue, and my rabbi; I just don't see a conflict with also participating elsewhere in small doses. (My synagogue does not have a daily morning minyan.) I then told him that I'm leading that service once a week, that this was because they had asked me (I didn't initiate), and that I'd said "no" for a good long time before agreeing. I asked if this was a problem for him. (I also apologized for not coming to him about this much earlier.)

The discussion went in two main directions. There were the liturgical questions -- how do I feel about praying for the restoration of the temple sacrifices, resurrection of the dead, and so on? I work around the first [1] and am comfortable viewing the second metaphorically, so those aren't problems. We are going to discuss the liturgy more next time, when I actually remember to bring a copy of that particular siddur along.

The other part of the discussion had to do with appearances. How large is this minyan? Could I be seen as being the leader of the group in general, which has implications beyond the service? We concluded that there is not an issue here; I'm one of several people who leads (and I'm not the main one), I'm on a short leash liturgically, I'm not doing anything else in that congregation, and the group is small (we usually have a minyan by Barchu, but usually not by Kaddish d'Rabbanan).

We also talked about my motivations and whether this fits with my educational path; everything appears to be fine there after discussion.

So everything's fine, but I really should have had the clue to talk with him when it first came up. I find it really hard to initiate conversations sometimes; with luck I'll get better at this. I really feel close to my rabbi, but there's also this professional arm's-length separation that prevents us from just being friends who talk about things. I wonder how I can change that.

( footnotes )

The job of a service leader is to lead the congregation in prayer. In other words, the leader serves the rest of the group. In my limited experience, this means the leader himself usually doesn't get to immerse himself in prayer in the same way he would out in the congregation. But if he does it right, he can help buoy the congregation, making it a little easier for them to pray.

This morning I was really tired (Dani snores), and I didn't have high expectations for my ability to lead. But I did, 'cause that's my job, and anyway, Dave (my mentor in that minyan) wasn't there. (I knew I was still competent, or I wouldn't have.) And you know what? Sometime during p'sukei d'zimra the congregration was helping to support me, which doesn't usually happen. I don't think they even knew it. Things went swimmingly from that point. It was pretty neat. While I've experienced that feeling in my congregation, I've not previously experienced it in this minyan.

Background: Often, the publishers of a prayer book also publish a "pulpit edition", a larger copy with larger type but otherwise identical. A few times I have noticably stumbled when leading morning services; it's obvious to everyone that the regular siddur is right at the limits of my vision (as modified by available lighting). A few weeks ago I casually asked if we were going to buy a pulpit edition and I was told one didn't exist yet. We have a "pulpit copy" of the regular edition that's been marked up with highlighter pen, but the first time I tried to use it I found that the highlighting caused problems for me (too dark, so reduced contrast making it harder to read the text). I made a comment to that effect and ever since have used a regular copy. It's not like I don't know all the cues by now anyway.

So, this morning I was surprised to find, when I got onto the bimah, a shiny new pulpit edition in the larger size. Woot! I opened it up to a random page and marvelled at the crisp, clear, Hebrew. This would make it much easier for me. The joy was short-lived, though; I turned to the beginning of the morning service to find that someone had highlighted all the leader's parts in blue. That's even worse than the pink they used previously. And even with the larger print size, it looked dicey and I didn't use it for fear of making mistakes. Some of those blue sections were dark -- even in the English I would have had trouble in places, let alone the Hebrew.

I really really hope that this is something they were going to get anyway, and that they didn't specifically get a book for my use and then mark it up in a way that makes it unusable for me. I would feel bad about causing them that expense, even though the markup isn't my doing and I would have said something if I'd known. Other people will certainly get use out of it; I only lead one morning a week, after all. But... ack.

For the record: if text must be highlighted directly, yellow is best. But better than marking over the text is to put highlighting (of any color) in the margins, with a tick next to the first word if that's ambiguous. The only time I've marked up a leader's copy of a siddur that's what I did, and it worked fine. (And, by the way: orange. When it's not going over text it's better for it to be a nice obvious color.)

Someone called a meeting for next Thursday morning. Initially I thought "hmm, I could get here in time for that if I skip the minyan's breakfast after services". Then I looked more closely at the calendar and realized that, it being the day before Purim, it's a public fast day -- so no breakfast after services. Ok, one problem solved.

Another problem created: I need to make sure I'm familiar enough with the insertions into the liturgy for public fast days to be able to lead them next week. Either that or get David to lead that part. (I know we insert Avinu Malkeinu after the Amidah; I can't remember if there are other changes. Fortunately, I own a copy of the siddur we use, so there shouldn't be any surprises.)

I happened to glance at next month on the calendar and noticed that the fast of the first-born (before Pesach) also falls on a Thursday, my day to lead services. This one poses more uncertainty -- it's a public fast day but only for some people. Breakfast will be held, taking advantage of a rather dubious rules hack, but I don't know what liturgical changes are implied for a day on which some people must fast and others not. Fortunately, I have a month to find out. :-)

There are five minor fasts in the calendar. Three have to do with the destruction of the temple and one falls before Purim (commemorating Esther's call for a fast before she tried to save her people). These apply to everyone, but they don't resonate for me at all. I can't say exactly why, at least in the case of Purim. Maybe it's this nagging question of why this attempt to wipe out the Jewish people in a particular area warrants special treatment when it's not a singleton -- just the first that the rabbis noted. I don't know; I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

But the fifth of these minor fasts is the fast of the first-born on the day before Pesach (or earlier if that would cause it to interfere with Shabbat, like this year). This fast exists because of the tenth plague, the one that killed the first-born malees. Jewish first-born were spared but this is later given as a reason that first-born men belong to the temple for service to God. (There is a redmption mechanism, called pidyan ha-ben -- which is good because otherwise those people would be stuck today.) And of all the minor fasts, this one resonates for me. Isn't that odd? I'm a first-born woman whose ancestors were never endangered by this plague, though obviously had I been there I would have been.

I'm a woman, so traditional Judaism would say I'm not obligated. But a consequence of being egalitarian is that I don't get out of it that easily; if I believe men are obligated, then I am obligated too.

I don't know if we are obligated, but I should give this one more thought. I've tended to non-observance in the past, or going along with that rules hack I mentioned, but I'm beginning to think that the correct thing for me is to (1) keep the fast and (2) not use the rules hack. I've got a month to figure that out, too.

Overheard Thursday morning after services, from someone who comes very occasionally: "Wow, who's the new cantor?" I'll take that as a compliment. :-)

Back when I was first discussing the Sh'liach K'hilah program with friends, someone wondered if the Conservative movement has anything similar. Someone on a mailing list today mentioned the IMUN program, which seems related. Based on the sample syllabus they give, IMUN is much more focused on liturgy and related skills, while the Sh'liach K'hilah program is more focused on the full spectrum of tasks that might fall to a rabbinic assistant.

Ok. I get it now.

When I had been going to morning services for not very long, I noticed a pattern: people in the congregation were given aliyot (saying the blessings for torah reading; this is an honor) in a very rough rotation, but the guy who led services every day never got one. I think, in the 6+ years I've been going there, I've seen him get one once. (Granted, I only go once a week and there are torah readings twice a week plus a few. But still.) The torah reader almost never gets one either, because he's, well, reading. (While historically the person who said the blessings would also read, that hasn't been routinely true for a very long time. The convention now is that the reader and the blesser are two different people except under special circumstances.)

So anyway, that seemed ironic: the aliya is the usual and customary way of honoring someone just a little bit, even if you know it's going to come around to you eventually because you need three per torah reading and there are only 25 people in the minyan, but it's still an honor. And the people who serve the community so there can be a service at which to hand out aliyot never get that honor themselves. I felt bad for the folks in this situation.

But now I am that person (in small scale). I led the entire service this morning; next week the regular guy is going to sit in the congregation rather than up on the bimah (where he was today just in case I needed him to bail me out). I've been gradually working up to this for months, and now I'm there. The training wheels are off and I'm still vertical.

And y'know what? I haven't had an aliya in months and that's just fine. I feel no lack. Getting to lead the service is also an honor, a huge one in fact, and I don't need to be the person who says those blessings when I say so many others and get to spend the entire torah service in close proximity to the sefer torah every week anyway.

That a community is willing to (collectively) say "we entrust you as our representative in prayer" is a pretty darn big honor in its own right, after all. I won't turn down an aliya should it happen in the future, but I'd be just as happy to see it go to that quiet person in the back row.

Whew. This morning I led the "entire" morning service (see clarifications below) at Tree of Life for the first time. It didn't suck, though I stumbled in some places. People were complimentary.

This minyan reads a mix of Hebrew and English. I switched to English for one paragraph that's traditionally done in Hebrew, because I just don't have it yet. (It's the final paragraph before Sh'ma, not something critically-Hebrew like the Amidah.)

During the "kedusha-ish" section of kriat sh'ma (a few paragraphs earlier), I read rather than chanted. This made things a little awkward because the congregational responses are chanted. I did clear that with the usual leader in advance and he thought it would be ok, but it's clear now that I need to learn to chant it. Not a big deal in the long term; I just had trouble allocating enough mental buffer space for both melody and text.

The torah reader conducts most of the torah service, but the service leader leads the opening and closing parts (taking the torah from the ark and returning it). I had the regular leader do those bits not because of any liturgical problems -- I'm fine with the text of the torah service -- but because I don't know if I can hold the sefer torah in one arm like he does. (The other hand holds the siddur and I need that.) The scroll is kind of heavy and I should get them to let me practice with it or something. I mentioned this to the regular leader afterwards and he said "so just have someone else carry it". That option didn't occur to me.

My Hebrew is still shaky in places. I got through it, but I'd like to do better. That'll come with more practice.

Random observation: I have a copy of the siddur at home (that's what I've been practicing with). It has a red cover instead of a gray one but the same publication date (2002, IIRC), so I assumed that was just a quirk of a differenr print run. This morning I noticed one place where the layout of the text is slightly different between the two. I was startled, because my visual memory had gotten used to the idea that such-and-such word (a local landmark) comes at the end of a line and this morning it didn't. Weird!

Non-Jewish readers probably don't care.

( explanation of relevant part of liturgy )

Ok, all that said...

This morning I was leading the service and when we got to kaddish d'rabbanan there was no minyan, so I skipped it and we went on. Most of the way through the following section a tenth person arrived, and a mourner called out "go back to the kaddish". I declined to do so because we were already past it and other kaddishim would be coming up. (I don't think you're supposed to go back in the service, in general.) Someone else suggested a compromise: instead of saying chatzi kaddish at the end of that section, say kaddish d'rabbanan instead. So we did that.

I wonder about two things. One is whether that was an appropriate thing to do; consensus of the group is that it was, but there was no rabbi or scholar present. The other is about the motivation of the person doing the asking. He knows, because he's been there every day, that there would be a mourners' kaddish at the end. Why did he consider the kaddish d'rabbanan important? It wasn't his only chance; is there some tradition that says that it's especially meritorious to say kaddish more than once in a single service? (He left immediately after the service ended, so I didn't get a chance to talk with him.)

I haven't seen this situation before, so when it first came up I turned to Dave (the usual leader) and he shrugged. It turns out he hadn't seen it come up before either and he didn't know the local custom.

( footnotes )

Edited to add: this morning service was at the Conservative shul I attend regularly, not my own (Reform) shul.

I've been leading part of the service at the weekday morning minyan (on Thursdays), and a couple of the folks there have been really encouraging me. I know, though, that I'm not as good as the person who would otherwise be doing this, so I took him aside to make sure it's ok. I figure that if people are going to complain (or just grouse) they'll do it in his direction. He said he's heard no complaints and I should just keep working on it. There is one page of dense Hebrew that's blocking me now; if I can get past that, I should be able to do most of the service. (That is, I can do most of what follows it, but I don't want us to be bouncing back and forth between two leaders. So I start and when we get to that point the regular guy takes over.) I'll get it in time. I wish I could read more smoothly.

Tonight my rabbi had to teach so he asked me to lead the evening service. For a while there were just two of us (sigh) and the other person is fluent, so I invited him to lead. He's very good with Hebrew but hasn't been around long enough to pick up some of the nuances of leading, which I didn't really think about (so not his fault). So when five more people (one family, in mourning) showed up partway through the Amidah, I found myself wishing for telepathic powers so I could tell him to drop some English in for them. (I could tell that some members of the family were struggling with the Hebrew.) But he didn't notice, so that didn't happen. I hope we didn't alienate them. There's a natural break point between the end of the Amidah and the next part (Aleinu), where the rabbi often puts a two-minute talk, so I stepped in at that point and improvised a bit.

After the service one of the members of that family took me aside. He had this book of Tehillim (Psalms) that he had been given in 1936, and he didn't need it any more and wanted to donate it to a synagogue. I tried to very gently push back on that "don't need" part, but he was firm. So I accepted the donation and told him we would add it to our library. If he changes his mind in the future, I assume we would be happy to return it to him. There's got to be a story there and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious, but he didn't offer and I wasn't going to pry. I hope I did the right thing.

Monica

this morning's service

morning minyan and melodies

splitting the baby

wearing a kippah?

Ivrit

work retreat, morning minyan

dissecting a compliment

assorted congregational doings

morning minyan

changing minhag

this morning's service

parsha bit: Noach

Sukkot (mostly)

I wonder if they teach this in seminaries

moonlighting

morning minyan

my rabbi and the morning minyan

oh, it does go in both directions

good news, bad news

public fasts, liturgy, and obligations

two quickies (Jewish stuff)

honors in the synagogue

morning minyan

liturgical uncertainty

leading services

Expand Cut Tags

Syndicate