On showing up to morning minyan
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanaleh
Today, I went to morning minyan for the second time in two days. I haven't been going for the past year and a half, since I started commuting out to Wellesley (given that originally I had to leave Cambridge right around the 7am start time to catch my train... so by the time I bought a car and started driving, I was off the radar). One might argue that now that I have the opportunity to sleep in, I should be even *more* reluctant to get up early... but overall I don't mind keeping to an earlier schedule. So when they pleaded for volunteers to show up these two days, I said I could.
Normally![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
tremontstshul only has an Egal minyan on Monday mornings. But it's Rosh Chodesh Nisan. -- Which means Pesach is only 2 weeks away! I can't stand it. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ablock keeps asking about Passover shopping ("You have to go now if you want to get the good macaroons!"), and I just can't face it. I can't face the pre-Pesach must-use-up-the-chametz carbo-loading diet, though, either; I think that's part of the reason I have such a hard time adjusting to Passover each year (more so even than the cleaning frenzy -- considering how much of that I don't do in the first place). So I'm trying to keep the protein and vegetables in balance for the duration so April 2 won't mark such a radical shift.
Anyway, minyan. Or, more to the point, technically not; we got up to 7 today, a sight better than yesterday's 5, but still not enough to do the Torah reading. But the good thing was that, for Rosh Chodesh, we still did (a) Hallel, which is always worth showing up for -- not only for the singing, but for some of my favorite texts -- and (b) the awesome Psalm 104 (a.k.a. Barchi Nafshi, a.k.a. "Bless the Lord, my soul," although none of the rest of it is represented in the song by that name from Godspell).
I often claim that I am strongly liturgically-minded and get a lot out of the standard Hebrew prayer service just on its own merits. The fact is, though, that this is much more true on Shabbat. For whatever reason, I find my weekday-morning prayer experience much looser and more meditative. Maybe the Shabbat liturgy is grander and more inspiring or meaningful; maybe it's that there are more people doing more singing and that's what really draws me in the most. Maybe it's that I've built up so much more familiarity with the text of the Shabbat service. Or maybe I'm just not awake enough at 7am on a Monday (let me tell you, I really miss being able to throw a sweater on over my pajamas and walk two blocks to shul...) to engage fully with the text -- half the time, I can't even follow along accurately. Instead, I start at the beginning (or somewhere more random, if I come in late and really can't figure out where they are), and then I meander. Ignoring where the shaliach tzibur is, I stop and read the English for things that catch my fancy, or stop to decode the Hebrew for a passage I haven't puzzled through before. Or I ignore the morning service altogether in favor of leafing around other, more arcane sections of the siddur -- the Tal (dew) and Geshem (rain) prayers are recent favorites.
The last time I was attending semi-regularly, I spent a fair bit of time browsing for texts to put on my tallit. I technically started it just before my conversion (that's right, just over 11 years ago...), and I made some more sewing progress on it with42itous's help a couple years ago, but that's as far as it's gotten. Thus, one of the things I need to do while blissfully self-employed is finish the thing, or it's in danger of hitting its bat mitzvah before I ever get it to a usable state -- and although I suppose that would be an appropriate time to tie the tzitzit on, I would kind of like to have it to use already. What's left is the decorating, and what I intend to do in that regard is stencil on (in gold fabric paint) "stripes" of Hebrew text using passages that use textile metaphors. Bringing it back to Barchi Nafshi, for instance:
You clothe Yourself with light as with a garment;
You stretch out the heavens like a curtain. (Ps. 104:2)
I had amassed a whole list of 8 or 10 of them. (... *sudden pang* I hope I can find the list. Eek.) It's going to be cool.
Normally
tremontstshul only has an Egal minyan on Monday mornings. But it's Rosh Chodesh Nisan. -- Which means Pesach is only 2 weeks away! I can't stand it. ablock keeps asking about Passover shopping ("You have to go now if you want to get the good macaroons!"), and I just can't face it. I can't face the pre-Pesach must-use-up-the-chametz carbo-loading diet, though, either; I think that's part of the reason I have such a hard time adjusting to Passover each year (more so even than the cleaning frenzy -- considering how much of that I don't do in the first place). So I'm trying to keep the protein and vegetables in balance for the duration so April 2 won't mark such a radical shift.Anyway, minyan. Or, more to the point, technically not; we got up to 7 today, a sight better than yesterday's 5, but still not enough to do the Torah reading. But the good thing was that, for Rosh Chodesh, we still did (a) Hallel, which is always worth showing up for -- not only for the singing, but for some of my favorite texts -- and (b) the awesome Psalm 104 (a.k.a. Barchi Nafshi, a.k.a. "Bless the Lord, my soul," although none of the rest of it is represented in the song by that name from Godspell).
I often claim that I am strongly liturgically-minded and get a lot out of the standard Hebrew prayer service just on its own merits. The fact is, though, that this is much more true on Shabbat. For whatever reason, I find my weekday-morning prayer experience much looser and more meditative. Maybe the Shabbat liturgy is grander and more inspiring or meaningful; maybe it's that there are more people doing more singing and that's what really draws me in the most. Maybe it's that I've built up so much more familiarity with the text of the Shabbat service. Or maybe I'm just not awake enough at 7am on a Monday (let me tell you, I really miss being able to throw a sweater on over my pajamas and walk two blocks to shul...) to engage fully with the text -- half the time, I can't even follow along accurately. Instead, I start at the beginning (or somewhere more random, if I come in late and really can't figure out where they are), and then I meander. Ignoring where the shaliach tzibur is, I stop and read the English for things that catch my fancy, or stop to decode the Hebrew for a passage I haven't puzzled through before. Or I ignore the morning service altogether in favor of leafing around other, more arcane sections of the siddur -- the Tal (dew) and Geshem (rain) prayers are recent favorites.
The last time I was attending semi-regularly, I spent a fair bit of time browsing for texts to put on my tallit. I technically started it just before my conversion (that's right, just over 11 years ago...), and I made some more sewing progress on it with
42itous's help a couple years ago, but that's as far as it's gotten. Thus, one of the things I need to do while blissfully self-employed is finish the thing, or it's in danger of hitting its bat mitzvah before I ever get it to a usable state -- and although I suppose that would be an appropriate time to tie the tzitzit on, I would kind of like to have it to use already. What's left is the decorating, and what I intend to do in that regard is stencil on (in gold fabric paint) "stripes" of Hebrew text using passages that use textile metaphors. Bringing it back to Barchi Nafshi, for instance:You clothe Yourself with light as with a garment;
You stretch out the heavens like a curtain. (Ps. 104:2)
I had amassed a whole list of 8 or 10 of them. (... *sudden pang* I hope I can find the list. Eek.) It's going to be cool.
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no subject
Date: Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 10:46 pm (UTC)ugh. don't remind me about passover shopping.
Well, probably do remind me. You just did. But I know what you mean. =P
no subject
Date: Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 01:55 am (UTC)I'm a little ahead this year because I don't know when my deadlines are. :) The little boy to be gets to decide that and isn't sharing. At least the brisket is done so we'll have *something* to eat until we can get something else made.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 02:24 am (UTC)Also, I'm with you on the Passover shopping. I can't quite bring myself to do it. Of course, I also went to a concert Sunday night, which brought home to me that I am spending way too much time doing way too many quiet/work-related activities, and Passover shopping seems like one of the few that can actually get shifted. After all, normal grocery stores have enough for me to get through Passover...
no subject
Date: Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 02:18 pm (UTC)I've also been going to minyan a lot of mornings this week... at some point I determined that it is very hard for me to be motivated to say shacharit by myself. At the same time, over time, yes, minyan becomes a less intense experience as one becomes more familiar with it, which I guess is the point. If you had to rely on being in a spiritual mood at 7 am, it would be hard to ever want to do it. But the buzzing works for me... and I always find tachanun cathartic as well.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, March 23rd, 2007 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, March 23rd, 2007 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, March 26th, 2007 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 02:23 pm (UTC)That said, I really should get out there again. My davening in general has slipped recently, even on Shabbat.