Shabbat Pesach
Apr. 27th, 2008 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidShabbat morning I made it to services early. I was nervous: this was going to be my first time laining in front of the whole minyan (on Simchat Torah it was just one of the revolving Torah readings, so it was just me and the gabbaim paying any attention).
I'd agreed to read this short (four pasuk) aliyah a couple of weeks ago, but with all the Pesach prep and all, only bought a tikkun* this past Friday. Friday night after dinner, I sat down to learn those four psukim.... and promptly panicked, looking at the first pasuk, which I was having a bit of trouble parsing. Great. I read through the words a bunch of times aloud, then started working on the chanting, last pasuk first (partly because I had a bit of a block on the first pasuk, partly because it meant always singing towards the more familiar, instead of trailing off into the less familiar). I sang, and I sang, and it finally started coming together.
Still, I wasn't going to shul without bringing the tikkun; there'd likely be some time I could go over it a few more times. I needed it; I'd had a stress dream about it the night before. So, I got to shul, before davening started, and the gabbaim were soothing at me (they'd like to get me laining more, of course). We had to wait for two more women, and I went out to the library to practice. (I was amused that the gabbai got people to sing seder songs while they waited.)
It's long davening, with the regular extra stuff for holidays, plus Shir haShirim** before Torah reading, which was split among three readers. I'm particularly fond of Shir haShirim because it reminds me of Brandeis, where the Friday night egal minyan would read one perek a week between mincha and maariv. We were also lucky during my time to have some excellent readers, who knew the special trope*** cold. It's gorgeous language, all incredibly sensual. Except in the ArtScroll translation, which is not a translation at all, but an interpretation that has the dialog between the people of Israel and G-d, rather than two (human) lovers. Which is a legitimate interpretation, but not the basic meaning of the text. (One classic example: "shaddayim," usually translated "breasts," in one place becomes "twin hills of Moses and Aaron.") It annoys me that they cannot bring themselves to give a simple translation of this megillah.
And I was fine, until the Torah came out, and my stomach started roiling. I went up for revi'i****, took the beautiful yad (I've never seen it up close before, but it's lovely, silver and blue, and satisfyingly heavy in the hand. Plus I always like the little hand with the pointing finger at the end.), and looked in the scroll. Amazingly, I found the beginning of the aliyah (in the middle of a chunk of text) immediately, which made me feel a tiny bit better. After the woman getting the aliyah said the bracha, I started, and while the leading on the lines was much smaller than in the tikkun, and the words weren't in the same places in the line*****, it flowed, and nothing went noticeably wrong. Whew! I had to go out for a few moments to regain a measure of calm, though. Plus one of the gabbaim told me my voice hadn't shown my nervousness, which I'm glad about.
A side note about names: another woman was called up, giving her name as [X] bat Ariella v'[Y], where Y was another female name I'm not remembering. The gabbai changed this to [X] bat Ariel v'[Y], making her the daughter of a male and a female. She corrected the gabbai to Ariella v'[Y]; I think this is the first time I've heard anyone called up with two parents of the same gender.
Before musaf, there was an interesting d'var Torah about how only when the seventh day of Pesach is on Shabbat do we have three shirim on the same day. There is Shir haShirim, sung on the Shabbat of Pesach, and Shirat haYam******, sung on the seventh day of Pesach (as well as in the regular Torah reading cycle), and the shirah of David (in Shmuel B). These three shirim are very different in character, and model different relationships with the Divine. Shirat haYam has people as passive observers who give thanks for their delivery, while David instead cries out, asking for intervention, petitioning for what he needs. And Shir haShirim is a dialog between equals. Interesting food for thought.
I was starting to lose focus, but stayed until the end because I didn't want to miss birkat cohanim, which is always a shivery sort of thing.
Despite my nervousness, I found it had been a pretty good davening experience, even without the intensity of focus I generally am aiming for.
* A book with parallel columns of punctuated, voweled, cantillated Hebrew print and scribal writing (no vowels, no punctuation, no cantillation marks), designed for people to practice reading Torah without getting an actual Torah scroll.
** The Song of Songs.
*** The same cantillation marks are used in the five books of Torah, the Prophets, the Megillot, and so forth. However, there are different sounds assigned to those marks depending on what the piece is. Lamentations has very sad notes (no surprise there), for instance, while Shir haShirim is more longing. This is made a bit more complicated by the fact that different communities have their own versions of all of these. Sephardi trope is rather different than Ashkenazi, and there are many permutations within each.
**** The fourth aliyah.
***** I tend to remember where words are on a page, and it was only while learning this aliyah that I realized this might have been one of the things that made it much harder for me previously, because a scroll is not going to have the words in the exact same place. The only thing that's definitely going to be the same is the breaks in 'paragraphs,' which are either open (to the end of the line) or 'closed' (a long open space, but some other word(s) by the end of the line).
****** The song at the Red Sea, sung by the Israelites when the Egyptians are drowned, saving them from the military might being brought against them.
I'd agreed to read this short (four pasuk) aliyah a couple of weeks ago, but with all the Pesach prep and all, only bought a tikkun* this past Friday. Friday night after dinner, I sat down to learn those four psukim.... and promptly panicked, looking at the first pasuk, which I was having a bit of trouble parsing. Great. I read through the words a bunch of times aloud, then started working on the chanting, last pasuk first (partly because I had a bit of a block on the first pasuk, partly because it meant always singing towards the more familiar, instead of trailing off into the less familiar). I sang, and I sang, and it finally started coming together.
Still, I wasn't going to shul without bringing the tikkun; there'd likely be some time I could go over it a few more times. I needed it; I'd had a stress dream about it the night before. So, I got to shul, before davening started, and the gabbaim were soothing at me (they'd like to get me laining more, of course). We had to wait for two more women, and I went out to the library to practice. (I was amused that the gabbai got people to sing seder songs while they waited.)
It's long davening, with the regular extra stuff for holidays, plus Shir haShirim** before Torah reading, which was split among three readers. I'm particularly fond of Shir haShirim because it reminds me of Brandeis, where the Friday night egal minyan would read one perek a week between mincha and maariv. We were also lucky during my time to have some excellent readers, who knew the special trope*** cold. It's gorgeous language, all incredibly sensual. Except in the ArtScroll translation, which is not a translation at all, but an interpretation that has the dialog between the people of Israel and G-d, rather than two (human) lovers. Which is a legitimate interpretation, but not the basic meaning of the text. (One classic example: "shaddayim," usually translated "breasts," in one place becomes "twin hills of Moses and Aaron.") It annoys me that they cannot bring themselves to give a simple translation of this megillah.
And I was fine, until the Torah came out, and my stomach started roiling. I went up for revi'i****, took the beautiful yad (I've never seen it up close before, but it's lovely, silver and blue, and satisfyingly heavy in the hand. Plus I always like the little hand with the pointing finger at the end.), and looked in the scroll. Amazingly, I found the beginning of the aliyah (in the middle of a chunk of text) immediately, which made me feel a tiny bit better. After the woman getting the aliyah said the bracha, I started, and while the leading on the lines was much smaller than in the tikkun, and the words weren't in the same places in the line*****, it flowed, and nothing went noticeably wrong. Whew! I had to go out for a few moments to regain a measure of calm, though. Plus one of the gabbaim told me my voice hadn't shown my nervousness, which I'm glad about.
A side note about names: another woman was called up, giving her name as [X] bat Ariella v'[Y], where Y was another female name I'm not remembering. The gabbai changed this to [X] bat Ariel v'[Y], making her the daughter of a male and a female. She corrected the gabbai to Ariella v'[Y]; I think this is the first time I've heard anyone called up with two parents of the same gender.
Before musaf, there was an interesting d'var Torah about how only when the seventh day of Pesach is on Shabbat do we have three shirim on the same day. There is Shir haShirim, sung on the Shabbat of Pesach, and Shirat haYam******, sung on the seventh day of Pesach (as well as in the regular Torah reading cycle), and the shirah of David (in Shmuel B). These three shirim are very different in character, and model different relationships with the Divine. Shirat haYam has people as passive observers who give thanks for their delivery, while David instead cries out, asking for intervention, petitioning for what he needs. And Shir haShirim is a dialog between equals. Interesting food for thought.
I was starting to lose focus, but stayed until the end because I didn't want to miss birkat cohanim, which is always a shivery sort of thing.
Despite my nervousness, I found it had been a pretty good davening experience, even without the intensity of focus I generally am aiming for.
* A book with parallel columns of punctuated, voweled, cantillated Hebrew print and scribal writing (no vowels, no punctuation, no cantillation marks), designed for people to practice reading Torah without getting an actual Torah scroll.
** The Song of Songs.
*** The same cantillation marks are used in the five books of Torah, the Prophets, the Megillot, and so forth. However, there are different sounds assigned to those marks depending on what the piece is. Lamentations has very sad notes (no surprise there), for instance, while Shir haShirim is more longing. This is made a bit more complicated by the fact that different communities have their own versions of all of these. Sephardi trope is rather different than Ashkenazi, and there are many permutations within each.
**** The fourth aliyah.
***** I tend to remember where words are on a page, and it was only while learning this aliyah that I realized this might have been one of the things that made it much harder for me previously, because a scroll is not going to have the words in the exact same place. The only thing that's definitely going to be the same is the breaks in 'paragraphs,' which are either open (to the end of the line) or 'closed' (a long open space, but some other word(s) by the end of the line).
****** The song at the Red Sea, sung by the Israelites when the Egyptians are drowned, saving them from the military might being brought against them.
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Date: 2008-04-28 02:55 pm (UTC)All of my practicing was aloud; it made a huge difference. There's still time to practice...