hatam_soferet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hatam_soferet) wrote2007-07-24 01:10 pm
hatam_soferet) wrote2007-07-24 01:10 pm
(no subject)
Last night at Big Egalitarian Minyan: mincha wasn't planned, but someone saying kaddish wanted a minyan, so they cobbled together mincha - all good so far - what did they get? Eleven guys and two women. What was outside in the lobby chatting? Women. This is an issue egalitarianism has yet to address. Beautiful Eicha reading, though. Competent, audible, lovely to listen to, almost all women.
This morning at Open Orthodox Shul, depressing contrast between the rabbi's introduction to each kina (=dirge) and the kina itself. He gets bouncy and excited about the words, the poetic structure etc, and then the kina is a godawful inaudible mumble.
Talking of poetic structure, kinot bring up my peeve with poets putting their names into their poems. A poem structured on the alphabet? Great. Lovely. But structuring it ABC...XYZJOHNWOZERE is a bit much, I think. Liturgy is supposed to be timeless, it's the massed nameless voice of Am Yisrael before God, wherein each individual merges into the of others who came before him, over centuries each adding his voice to his people's call to the Divine. It's not supposed to be a little ego-fest, ooh look at me I can write my name into this poem.
The Earnest Assistant Rabbi also waxed lyrical about the old-time community in Europe which would print liturgy for this day in special small books and then bury them, on the assumption that Jerusalem would be rebuilt by next year so the books wouldn't be needed any more. "They really believed it!" he said several times. Isn't that beautiful? Such faith! Such emunah! It's just so beautiful!
Leaves me cold, I'm afraid. I bet they didn't really believe it, any more than we believe dropping your clothes on the floor turns them into "dirty laundry."* But, Earnest Rabbi, why not credit them with some sense and assume that they didn't actually believe the Temple was going to be rebuilt before next year, and talk about why they might do it anyway? Turn them into real people and bring something human from their story into ours, so that instead of being rather sweet, credulous, and irrelevant European hicks they seem like intelligent people who are doing a ritual act with a rich symbolism we can learn from? Compare it to how people send wedding invitations for weddings "in Jerusalem unless the Messiah is late in which case it'll be in Teaneck"? Why leave it at "isn't that beautiful" and then launch into another godawful indaudible dirge?
* The custom is not to wear freshly-laundered clothes in this period. So, when they come out of the wash, we drop them on the floor (we vacuum first) and jump on them before ironing them and hanging them up.
This morning at Open Orthodox Shul, depressing contrast between the rabbi's introduction to each kina (=dirge) and the kina itself. He gets bouncy and excited about the words, the poetic structure etc, and then the kina is a godawful inaudible mumble.
Talking of poetic structure, kinot bring up my peeve with poets putting their names into their poems. A poem structured on the alphabet? Great. Lovely. But structuring it ABC...XYZJOHNWOZERE is a bit much, I think. Liturgy is supposed to be timeless, it's the massed nameless voice of Am Yisrael before God, wherein each individual merges into the of others who came before him, over centuries each adding his voice to his people's call to the Divine. It's not supposed to be a little ego-fest, ooh look at me I can write my name into this poem.
The Earnest Assistant Rabbi also waxed lyrical about the old-time community in Europe which would print liturgy for this day in special small books and then bury them, on the assumption that Jerusalem would be rebuilt by next year so the books wouldn't be needed any more. "They really believed it!" he said several times. Isn't that beautiful? Such faith! Such emunah! It's just so beautiful!
Leaves me cold, I'm afraid. I bet they didn't really believe it, any more than we believe dropping your clothes on the floor turns them into "dirty laundry."* But, Earnest Rabbi, why not credit them with some sense and assume that they didn't actually believe the Temple was going to be rebuilt before next year, and talk about why they might do it anyway? Turn them into real people and bring something human from their story into ours, so that instead of being rather sweet, credulous, and irrelevant European hicks they seem like intelligent people who are doing a ritual act with a rich symbolism we can learn from? Compare it to how people send wedding invitations for weddings "in Jerusalem unless the Messiah is late in which case it'll be in Teaneck"? Why leave it at "isn't that beautiful" and then launch into another godawful indaudible dirge?
* The custom is not to wear freshly-laundered clothes in this period. So, when they come out of the wash, we drop them on the floor (we vacuum first) and jump on them before ironing them and hanging them up.