(no subject)

[richardf8]

Today, at our congregational "service in the round" I had an Aliyah, i.e, I read from the Torah before the congregation. I'ne spent about the past three weeks rehearsing for this, learning how to read trope markings, using a .wav file I ripped from a tape our cantor made for me. After I learned the first couple of verses from the tape the trope marks began to make sense to me and I could read them on the fly. Trope, in this case, means the little snippet of melody with which one chants a given word. By the time I got to the synagogue this morning, I knew my verses cold, and felt confident and eager. I made this aliyah in honor of what I guess must be the 15th anniversary of my father's death (yahrzeit, in yiddish).

It went well. It was not a big deal, and that was something that I appreciated. When I was done most of the people present took the time to comment on how well I had done. I was pleased by this because I spent some time working on delivery and performance. I wanted to be able to deliver my chant from my diaphragm, to fill the room with a confident voice, rather than the stage fright-induced waver that so often attends these things. I delivered, my voice only mildly restrained by having to bend over a slightly too-low table while I read. Most gratifying were the words of praise from Rabbi Glaser, the member of the clergy I hold in the highest regard, during kiddush.

This is one of the great joys of being an adult - the ability to have an Aliyah and not have it be a big, anxiety loded deal, like my bar-mitzvah was.

"Getting Bar Mitzvahed" is a bit of a strange thing. Or at least it was for me. I barely remember the event itself, but I understand it went well. But the runup itself was a trauma. No discussion of how the trope system worked (I learned more about the trope system from about 20 minutes of an overheard hebrew school class at the beginning of this year that rabbi Wildstein was teaching than I ever learned in my own Jewish training). Instead I was sent to our synagogue's Bar-Mitzvah trainer who handed me a tape, a few pages of tikkun , and had me back every week to drill me, harangue me, and give me the general impression that if I screwed the smallest vowel point up, God himself would appear before the congregation to call me a fool while the Angels wept for me. All this from a man with a perennial booger hanging half out of his left nostril - a source of disturbing distraction for a 12 year old.

In many ways, over the past four years or so, I have been reclaiming my Judaism, rehabilitating it from the small, weird traumas of growing up Jewish in a decidedly neurotic family (My mother treated the Dars of Awe almost like lent, giving up Bacon, which if she were making more than a pretense of observation, she should not have even been eating in the first place). I have been doing this within the reformed movement, whose values better reflect my own than do the conservative or orthodox. And today, I feel particularly triumphant, because I have performed that most quintessentially Jewish act, reading the Torah, because I chose to and having studied for it in a way that involved no duress, harangues, or boogers, but was rather intellectually rewarding in its own right.

So today, I feel quite happy, and very much like I have taken ownership of a faith that I, at first, and thrust upon me, and then avoided. Living that faith is going to be a worthy challenge, but one I must undertake, as the life I have right now is not filling anything I would describe as a compelling need in the world, and I need to consider how to go about answering a call that came to me 2 1/2 years ago in a northwoods lake. Things seem to be clicking in the right direction though. In a couple of weeks there is a seminar being offered by some of our local clergy on life in the rabbinate, I will go, filled with questions.

Comments

[timtylor.livejournal.com]

Glad it went well, and I hope the seminar's useful. :) It's not quite the same thing, but I'm eager to go back and learn properly a lot of subjects I had a bad time with at school.

[kevinjdog.livejournal.com]

[He] had me back every week to drill me, harangue me, and give me the general impression that if I screwed the smallest vowel point up, God himself would appear before the congregation to call me a fool while the Angels wept for me.

And, what, that wasn't enough to make you feel the spirituality of Judaism in your soul?

I always have to shake my head at gurus/priests/rabbis/teachers who treat documentations of spiritual evolution as some kind of point-by-point instruction manual to inner awakening. Some of it is an attempt to record history; others are letters of advice. People take what they need from these documents in order to make themselves better people. If it's rammed down their throat without any additional context or meaning, it's a cipher in terms of their growth. Parroting it back may make the parents and teachers happy, but it's not getting the job done.

I'm glad you took the experience in a bull-by-the-horns way. If nothing else, you may have cleansed any negativity that you had attached to the faith due to mishandled intentions. I'm curious, though... are you looking to become a rabbi per se? I find the idea fascinating. (I can't help it... I have a built in admiration for people who pursue more ascetic goals than I have.)

[richardf8]

Well, this was never about Context or meaning. I wasn't expected to understanded it, just to get in front of the congregation and make the right noises to the right tune. And it was all about the parents being able to say they raised their kid right, not about the child. It was more a cultural event than a religious one.

I'm happy to report that the temple that I now attend makes sure that the kids grasp the underlying form, not just the phonetics of the thing. Indeed, at a Bar Mitzvah in my congregation, in addition to the reading, the youngster is expected to deliver a commentary on the piece. Rabbis often have to give a great deal of support to children who find themselves faces with having to give a commentary to a modern audience, on the instructions on preparing sacrifices for the altar. (There are social justice commandments buried in these passages, but they can be difficult to draw out when you're 13 years old).

As for becoming a Rabbi, I don't know that its more ascetic than what I'm doing now. My current pay forces a more ascetic lifestyle than I'd like in any case. But I am considering it largely because I don't feel like I'm doing very much toward tikkun olam, repairing the world, by being a schnook who fixes computers. I've been feeling this way for about three years, and its time to start taking that seriously -- otherwise I will find myself on my death bed (many decades from now, God willing) wondering what the hell the point of my life was.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

I considered having a bar mitzvah, having seen one the year before, and chickened out. I'd need to believe pretty strongly in it.

[richardf8]

Were you Jewish before you became catholic?

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

I am circumcised and my Jewish father is far more observant than my Protestant mother. By the age of 12, I had overcome my hostility toward Judaism and, as is common among half-minorities, identified primarily with my minority side.

(My former hostility was due to an impatience for the solemn formalities and expected sacrifices. By contrast, today I have no problem preparing for Lent once again without having been baptized.)

[childings.livejournal.com]

I've been interested in getting back to the roots of my own spirituality as well... but being Christian and because of the way I was brought up I have no idea which church I want to attend, or if I even want to attend since my religion is more of a personal thing for me (also I've never been very outgoing or social). I was thinking about the Episcopal Church, because my mother (although she's never been religious and never took me to church, my grandmother did all that) was brought up in it, and so was her mother, etc. I was also leaning towards it because I don't want to be a Catholic but I wanted something more ritualistic than what most Southern churches have to offer.