(no subject)

[hatam_soferet]

Following the departure of our cantor, I'm now the person who's responsible for making sure all the Torahs in our shul are rolled to the right places at the right times. This morning, rolling for tomorrow's readings, I found that two of the Torahs had broken seams right in the middle of the readings. So, being the resourceful soferet that I am, I whipped out my Torah thread and sewed them up. How good is that? :)

I'm also learning a bit of the reading for the second day. There's a special tune for the High Holy days, which I learned last year teaching my student Sarah (may-she-rest-in-peace). It is much more ponderous and almost-mournful than the regular tune, and it's very odd: no matter how high in my range I place it, the heavy nature of the melody is giving me a headache. This fits the solemn nature of the day.

Relatedly, insofar as the season's theme is healing and repentance, cleaning is proving cathartic, and I think it delightfully symbolic that my first acquisition as a single woman should be a stepladder.

At this time of year, one is also supposed to attempt to mend breeches breaches with one's fellows. I expect I have some breaches I ought to be working on, but honestly right now I'm having enough trouble stabilising all my internal breaches; in order to hold together, most of the available energy for repentance and forgiveness is directed within. I hope that if anyone has any burning issues with me, they'll compromise enough to let me know about it, because this is the time for cooling issues but this year I haven't much energy over for identifying them.