Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in 5774
Sep. 22nd, 2013 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI davened with Minyan Tehillah. This year, they arranged space
near Cambridge Common, at a campus that seems to be shared by Lesley University and the Episcopal Divinity School. Davening was in a basement room, with childcare on the ground floor. That suited me fine, because the space was quite good: plain white walls, good lighting, decently-sized windows high up on the walls (read: natural light, but not very distracting at eye level), and reasonably good acoustics.
This was my first year using Koren machzorim, and I like them, even though I'm still not used to the Hebrew being on the left and the English on the right. There were useful stage direction sorts of notes, including little markers where the sha"tz should say the end of a prayer, or bowing, things like that. And while sometimes the layout seemed a bit arbitrary for line length (mostly not using rectangular paragraphs in the Hebrew), other times it showed the internal structure of the prayers quite well.
On the davening itself: I'm still not quite in the right place. Which is to say, my aesthetic about davening is not the prevailing aesthetic there, so I can get frustrated, as I have for years. Of note to me, however, is that the level of intense annoyance is less than in the past (heck, the ability to frame it this way, rather than just saying "they're all wrong" is advancement :-). I'm not sure how much of that is resignation to what is, versus lower levels of hormones or something, or looking at the benefits of not feeling as tied to the davening.
Some of my discontent is because I am very much of the "say it once" school of davening, which means not repeating phrases to fit tunes ("lalala" is ok, a different kind of less annoying for not being efficient....). This seems to be no one else's concern. Some of my discontent is because I don't find using rest-of-year tunes anywhere they fit at all compelling for RH and YK; the feel of these days is so different that I don't necessarily want a rousing happy tune when I can have one that's more evocative of the balance of somber and hope (or possibly, none at all). Of course, what's evocative for me may not be so for someone else.... Which was the problem I had in some of the slichot parts of davening. I think of there being two tunes for the 13 attributes, one of which is a general yom tov tune, the other being slichot-in-particular. That latter is more rushed, not really a tune, so I understand why no one chose that, but it brings a different mood for me, and I missed it here.
One of the differences that Tehillah has for RH/YK is that there are two sha"tzes for the main services: the man leads the main parts of shacharit/musaf/neila/etc and repetition, while the woman leads some of the added-in paragraphs that don't have brachot in repetition. This year I realized that it can be a very powerful combination, always having a leader as well as the other person being rather like the leader of the congregation, bouncing that back and forth between them (there are a lot of prayers said pretty much annually, so knowing when, say, the congregation says a line first v. when the sha"tz does is helpful). However, it didn't always work like that, and I've started to notice when it worked well and when it didn't work so well. One of the times I got particularly annoyed was when the leader got the congregation repeating one word as a kind of percussive backdrop to the piyyut the sha"tz was saying. It was musically beautiful, and would have been great at a concert, but from a prayer perspective, I hated it: too much performance, not enough soul.
Also of note: while my knees/feet weren't really happy with me given all the standing (for kriat haTorah and for repetition, which is most of davening), they weren't nearly as bad as previous years. I think walking home and back again during the (too short to nap) break on YK helped.
For the record: I hosted two RH meals during the 3-day yom tov, and got a last-minute invitation out to one. It felt like a good balance of social time and quiet time, though the challenge for me is that when I'd choose to eat and when there is time to eat on RH is not very much in alignment (too long until "lunch," which is often functionally breakfast for me, then not enough of a break until dinner, though longer this year with the holidays so early, the day that much longer).
(Why yes, we're already halfway through Sukkot now. Perhaps I can write about that next :-)
near Cambridge Common, at a campus that seems to be shared by Lesley University and the Episcopal Divinity School. Davening was in a basement room, with childcare on the ground floor. That suited me fine, because the space was quite good: plain white walls, good lighting, decently-sized windows high up on the walls (read: natural light, but not very distracting at eye level), and reasonably good acoustics.
This was my first year using Koren machzorim, and I like them, even though I'm still not used to the Hebrew being on the left and the English on the right. There were useful stage direction sorts of notes, including little markers where the sha"tz should say the end of a prayer, or bowing, things like that. And while sometimes the layout seemed a bit arbitrary for line length (mostly not using rectangular paragraphs in the Hebrew), other times it showed the internal structure of the prayers quite well.
On the davening itself: I'm still not quite in the right place. Which is to say, my aesthetic about davening is not the prevailing aesthetic there, so I can get frustrated, as I have for years. Of note to me, however, is that the level of intense annoyance is less than in the past (heck, the ability to frame it this way, rather than just saying "they're all wrong" is advancement :-). I'm not sure how much of that is resignation to what is, versus lower levels of hormones or something, or looking at the benefits of not feeling as tied to the davening.
Some of my discontent is because I am very much of the "say it once" school of davening, which means not repeating phrases to fit tunes ("lalala" is ok, a different kind of less annoying for not being efficient....). This seems to be no one else's concern. Some of my discontent is because I don't find using rest-of-year tunes anywhere they fit at all compelling for RH and YK; the feel of these days is so different that I don't necessarily want a rousing happy tune when I can have one that's more evocative of the balance of somber and hope (or possibly, none at all). Of course, what's evocative for me may not be so for someone else.... Which was the problem I had in some of the slichot parts of davening. I think of there being two tunes for the 13 attributes, one of which is a general yom tov tune, the other being slichot-in-particular. That latter is more rushed, not really a tune, so I understand why no one chose that, but it brings a different mood for me, and I missed it here.
One of the differences that Tehillah has for RH/YK is that there are two sha"tzes for the main services: the man leads the main parts of shacharit/musaf/neila/etc and repetition, while the woman leads some of the added-in paragraphs that don't have brachot in repetition. This year I realized that it can be a very powerful combination, always having a leader as well as the other person being rather like the leader of the congregation, bouncing that back and forth between them (there are a lot of prayers said pretty much annually, so knowing when, say, the congregation says a line first v. when the sha"tz does is helpful). However, it didn't always work like that, and I've started to notice when it worked well and when it didn't work so well. One of the times I got particularly annoyed was when the leader got the congregation repeating one word as a kind of percussive backdrop to the piyyut the sha"tz was saying. It was musically beautiful, and would have been great at a concert, but from a prayer perspective, I hated it: too much performance, not enough soul.
Also of note: while my knees/feet weren't really happy with me given all the standing (for kriat haTorah and for repetition, which is most of davening), they weren't nearly as bad as previous years. I think walking home and back again during the (too short to nap) break on YK helped.
For the record: I hosted two RH meals during the 3-day yom tov, and got a last-minute invitation out to one. It felt like a good balance of social time and quiet time, though the challenge for me is that when I'd choose to eat and when there is time to eat on RH is not very much in alignment (too long until "lunch," which is often functionally breakfast for me, then not enough of a break until dinner, though longer this year with the holidays so early, the day that much longer).
(Why yes, we're already halfway through Sukkot now. Perhaps I can write about that next :-)