Yom Kippur
Sep. 29th, 2009 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuOverall, it was a day of meaningful reflection and prayer. As I did last year, I used my great-grandfather's machzor for kol nidre; Tani noticed that it was German but I didn't get a chance to explain the background.
I was honored with the tasks of leading the pesukei dezimrah (first thing in the morning) and minchah (mid-afternoon) services. At minchah I had a moment where the text and my mind and my voice all came together: at the passage that begins "mah anu, meh chayeinu" (What are we? What are our lives?) I stopped projecting my voice but continued to support it. This wasn't a conscious decision on my part, some part of me just did it. The part of my brain that is constantly analyzing the rest of me went into overdrive --- "My soul has taken over. OK, I don't know what it's doing, but it's working, so don't stop!"
There were maybe 50 people in the room at the time, and it got very very still until I was done with the passage. As I said to Tani later, most of the time when a person prays, it's by rote, but every once in a while we are privileged with a transcendent moment like this --- and you never know when it's going to happen, so you have to put up with the boring keva to allow the moments of kavanah to happen.
I suspect part of what set me up for this moment was re-reading William Safire's commentary on the book of Job. Although Jonah, not Job, is read on Yom Kippur, it seemed like an appropriate way to perform Torah study l'iluy nishmato, for the elevation of his soul. And he does contrast the two men; but Safire spends a lot of time talking about how Job accuses God of abusing God's power, and God responds by basically saying "I'm powerful" -- which is at best nolo contendre on the charge of acting unfairly, and is perhaps even a guilty acknowledgment. In any case, after spending the break reading about the omnipotent Deity and the trivial human, I was probably primed to find the passage of "Mah anu" particularly resonant.
This is the first time I did the whole service without referring to the sheet music that I've taped over the English translation. I've been doing minchah for four or five years now, and I finally feel like I've internalized all the shifts in mode and I can let the nusach control me instead of singing it as a memorized performance piece. I think that's also partly why I was able to have the moment of transcendence.
Because of a few logistical snarls that were outside of my control, though, I lost about 5 minutes that I couldn't make up, so I handed off to the baal neilah a little late, which I felt really bad about, especially since this was his first time leading neilah. (Neilah is the final service of Yom Kippur and you really really really want to finish it exactly at the time the fast ends.) This is the first time that's happened to me; next year I will ask for a ten-minute buffer. While I try to avoid elongated chazzanut (elaborate chanting) when I'm leading, I don't like to feel like I'm rushing, and I do like to give the traditional melodies a chance to be sung in full and appreciated. I had to cut the Lewandowski "v'al kulam" and do both "ki anu amecha" and "avinu malkeinu" much faster than they deserve.
I was honored with the tasks of leading the pesukei dezimrah (first thing in the morning) and minchah (mid-afternoon) services. At minchah I had a moment where the text and my mind and my voice all came together: at the passage that begins "mah anu, meh chayeinu" (What are we? What are our lives?) I stopped projecting my voice but continued to support it. This wasn't a conscious decision on my part, some part of me just did it. The part of my brain that is constantly analyzing the rest of me went into overdrive --- "My soul has taken over. OK, I don't know what it's doing, but it's working, so don't stop!"
There were maybe 50 people in the room at the time, and it got very very still until I was done with the passage. As I said to Tani later, most of the time when a person prays, it's by rote, but every once in a while we are privileged with a transcendent moment like this --- and you never know when it's going to happen, so you have to put up with the boring keva to allow the moments of kavanah to happen.
I suspect part of what set me up for this moment was re-reading William Safire's commentary on the book of Job. Although Jonah, not Job, is read on Yom Kippur, it seemed like an appropriate way to perform Torah study l'iluy nishmato, for the elevation of his soul. And he does contrast the two men; but Safire spends a lot of time talking about how Job accuses God of abusing God's power, and God responds by basically saying "I'm powerful" -- which is at best nolo contendre on the charge of acting unfairly, and is perhaps even a guilty acknowledgment. In any case, after spending the break reading about the omnipotent Deity and the trivial human, I was probably primed to find the passage of "Mah anu" particularly resonant.
This is the first time I did the whole service without referring to the sheet music that I've taped over the English translation. I've been doing minchah for four or five years now, and I finally feel like I've internalized all the shifts in mode and I can let the nusach control me instead of singing it as a memorized performance piece. I think that's also partly why I was able to have the moment of transcendence.
Because of a few logistical snarls that were outside of my control, though, I lost about 5 minutes that I couldn't make up, so I handed off to the baal neilah a little late, which I felt really bad about, especially since this was his first time leading neilah. (Neilah is the final service of Yom Kippur and you really really really want to finish it exactly at the time the fast ends.) This is the first time that's happened to me; next year I will ask for a ten-minute buffer. While I try to avoid elongated chazzanut (elaborate chanting) when I'm leading, I don't like to feel like I'm rushing, and I do like to give the traditional melodies a chance to be sung in full and appreciated. I had to cut the Lewandowski "v'al kulam" and do both "ki anu amecha" and "avinu malkeinu" much faster than they deserve.