Kesher Talk

Hanukkah - dos kandelikas. This morning I led the whole service up to the Torah reading, for the first time. (I've led the second half of the service a number of times, but it's shorter.) At this particular minyan that includes: Birkot haShachar, Psukey D'zimrah, Shacharit (with a repetition of the Amidah, including Al-haNisim, and this pretty piyyut which I found while googling for something else and added at the last minute), Hallel, and Taking the Torah out of the Ark. Whew! Large water bottle on the bima time!

I asked for the date because there aren't that many opportunities in the year to chant Hallel in a minyan which only meets two Shabbats a month. There are many opportunities during the daily morning service, but I would only feel it was appropriate to volunteer if I were a regular minyan participant, and I haven't gotten back into the habit after moving to NYC.

And I love Hallel. And I know so many Hallel melodies by now it was way fun trying to choose among them, kind of like making a set list for a concert where people are going to chime in on most of the songs.

It went well, considering I was fighting a cold and was short on sleep. I stayed on pitch fairly well, which is an achievement for me, since the traditional Shacharit nusach has so many changes of key, and I was throwing in melodic Hanukkah references as well, not to mention all the Hallel melodies. My voice is pretty but not particularly strong. I have a hard time being loud and on pitch at the same time, but I do well in the chapel where we meet because it's a small space and I don't have to try to project. (An upcoming challenge will be to lead musaf in February at another minyan, in an echo-y church basement with 3x the attendance.) The only time I really lost it was when I started one Sim Shalom melody, everyone thought I was starting another one, so I let them carry it forward, but they stopped in the middle waiting for me to pick up the next line. So I had to fake it since I didn't really know the melody they were using, and to add to the fun both melodies were of the type where to get it to scan right you have to know when to repeat certain words. So there was general confusion for about 15 seconds while we groped our way to the end of the paragraph.

But all will be smoother next time, and I can concentrate more on kavannah than on pronouncing words right.

More on the Al HaNisim insert in the Amidah.

UPDATE: And I didn't get laryngitis until the next day. (Not related to singing for an hour with few interruptions - related to this sort-of-flu thing that's been hovering in the back of my throat since the temp settled into the 30s.)

posted by Judith @ 12/20/2003 08:25:24 PM