Yom Kippur notes
Sep. 25th, 2004 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livWell, I got through Yom Kippur with no worse effects than a headache. And the service happened and was appreciated by the community. It didn't happen quite the way I'd hoped it would happen, mind you, but it worked.
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papersky's recent post on plot shapes made me think about the shape of the Yom Kippur liturgy. I was missing the Reform liturgy as I have found myself doing the past half dozen Yom Kippurs that I've spent in various non-Reform synagogues. It's probably not surprising, that at such an emotionally intense time one misses the familiar nusach one grew up with. But even apart from that, the Reform High Holy Days prayerbook is a truly wonderful work. My Dad always says it's literally inspired and however much I don't presume to know these things I can't help agreeing with him. It has just the right balance between preserving what is powerful from tradition and speaking in a modern, relevant voice which evokes an emotional and spiritual response. And it's scholarly and has loads of source material and it's also easy to use. In fact, it is a symbol of everything that is good about Reform Judaism, even though we don't always get quite that perfect balance.
So anyway, the Reform Yom Kippur liturgy has a very obvious, very simple shape. I suspect that this is because R Magonet, who headed the editorial team, is the sort of person who thinks about plot shapes. It's a shape which mirrors the shape of the Temple; it brings you in from the outside world, through successive inner courts to the Holy of Holies. And then you return from the centre changed so that at the end you are left hammering at the great gates as they close. Then the gates shut you out and you have to carry what you can of holiness back, away from Jerusalem and into ordinary life.
And this year I'm leading from Birnbaum, which is one of the most common Orthodox High Holy Day prayerbooks (there is, unfortunately, no standard Orthodox prayerbook for the High Holies). Pros: it's well laid out, so easy enough to use, you can follow most of the way through the service without having to jump around, and it's in a single volume. Cons: awful, awful, faux-archaic translation (and it was written in the twentieth century, so there's no excuse for trying to be the KJV!) which is neither even slightly faithful to the Hebrew nor remotely easy to read. I have a congregation who would object violently to dramatic changes in what they're used to, but who at the same time want a service that is personally meaningful without having to be a scholar of Mediaeval Hebrew poetry or accepting very unmodern religious dogma. That's not an easy line to tread.
The first thing you come up against, coming into an Orthodox context from a Progressive background, is that the Orthodox liturgy is fantastically repetitive. The Reform liturgy has motifs which repeat throughout the day (the Temple courts are concentric and perhaps have repeating architectural features), but it doesn't require you to say exactly the same prayers over and over again, a dozen times or more in some cases. And there's layers and layers of repetition, the successive services repeating the same structure, the same prayers being repeated within each service, the prayers and especially the hymns themselves are repetitive within their individual structure, and you have several different prayers expressing the same concepts in most of the same words and illuminated with the same Biblical verses. It took me a long time to see all this as anything other than mind-numbingly dull. But thinking aboutpapersky's ideas this year, I concluded that the Orthodox Yom Kippur liturgy is shaped like chromatin: it has an underlying repetitive but meaningful structure (Shroedinger's information-bearing crystal), and it's double helices wrapped round eachother to form coiled coils and the coiled coils wrapped around spools and the middle-range 'beads on a string' structure folded into a superhelix and that superhelix folded in on itself so that the whole thing fits into an impossibly small volume.
Anyway, what happened in practical terms was that we had a fairly steady minyan throughout the day, the congregation size fluctuated between about 8 and 12 and it wasn't always the same people the whole time. And someone who's never led any kind of service before led Kol Nidrei (the commencing service the evening before), and I led Shacharit, the morning service, and it was all going well. Then it turned out that the person who had said he would do the Torah service had understood this to mean that he would read the Torah rather than take the service, so I said, ok, I'll do that, since the Torah service isn't really very difficult, it's just a question of stage-managing the processional bits really.
But then we came to Musaf, the additional service, and it turned out that the person who had said he would do Musaf had completely forgotten having agreed to this. Musaf is hard. It's without a doubt the most difficult bit of the service, it has a lot of unique stuff, and it's theologically difficult, and intellectually difficult, and musically difficult. It represents, and also directly portrays, the heart of the mystery of the Temple service of Atonement, when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies to plead for pardon for the whole people. So here we are, it's the middle of the morning, people's stomachs are starting to remind them that it's lunch time, and nobody has prepared Musaf.
Somehow or other I found myself apologizing for the miscommunication that had led to this situation (though it wasn't supposed to be solely my responsibility to make sure that every part of the service was accounted for). And given there wasn't really much choice, I volunteered to lead Musaf. Leading Musaf, unlike leading most other services, isn't just a matter of making sure the congregation knows what page they're supposed to be on; you are the 'representative of the congregation' and you partially reenact the rôle of the High Priest from the Temple ceremony. "Poor in worthy deeds, I am horribly afraid as I stand before the Throne of the Most High... The congregation of Israel have chosen me to be their representative, though I am in no way qualified nor adequate for the task."
Luckily I happen to have to hand a copy of the notes I made for Musaf last year, and a vague clue of how I want that service to work and how to make it emotionally engaging. And I do the whole prostration bit, which manages to astonish me every time I do it. The physicality of bowing, and kneeling, and touching your face to the floor (there's no English word for it because it's not something that happens in our culture; it's the same gesture as Muslims use in prayer though), and prostrating yourself completely as you say the words. I've no doubt it looks absolutely ridiculous, but it feels an amazing thing doing it (and nobody openly laughed at me at least!)
So yeah, Musaf happened somehow or other. The rest of the day went more or less according to plan; Prof S ran a very enjoyable and interesting discussion on Jonah in place of Mincha (the afternoon service). We got a bit bogged down because one of the people participating was insisting that free will was invented by the Enlightenment. But apart from that, we talked about Jonah as a story, and the idea of repentance and forgiveness, and whether we really sincerely want forgiveness for utterly depraved evil, and how we can address the fact that, superficially against the message of some of the Yom Kippur liturgy, no matter how good and religious someone is, random bad things can still happen to them.
Then we had a long break, as planned, which I mostly slept through since my head was hurting too much to try to pray or make up for having spent most of the day leading rather than engaging in personal prayer. We reconvened for the memorial service, which I'm not crazy about leading; there's essentially no liturgy, so it's not theoretically difficult, but it is extremely likely to make most of the congregation, including me, cry, and it's hard not to feel that one is being emotionally manipulative. But someone has to stand up and say, now it's time to remember all our loved ones who have died. And I got to be an ordinary member of the congregation for Neilah, the concluding service, and JS, who led it as arranged, knows the right tune to the Neilah song ('As the gates of mercy close') so it felt at least a little bit like a familiar, proper Yom Kippur.
We underran slightly, mainly because I'd forgotten, in my planning, just how short the memorial service is. Somebody suggested that since we had half an hour to kill before breaking the fast, we might as well pray Ma'ariv, the evening service that begins the day after Yom Kippur. So I did that. It's what you're theoretically supposed to do, go straight from the end of Neilah into the ordinary daily liturgy, but it rarely actually happens because people are understandably in a hurry to break the fast by then. It felt like the right thing to do today though, and I suppose I'd always known, but it struck me particularly this time, that the Ma'ariv service opens with "And He is merciful to forgive sin and not destroy..." There's some sort of continuity of the Atonement theme there, I suppose, something which was reinforced because when I came home and logged in to LJ, the first thing I saw on my friends page was that someone had posted the Kaddish, (the memorial prayer, which also acts as a section break in the Orthodox liturgy, so I don't know how many times I'd recited it over the course of the day) in her journal.
I hope that everyone who fasted managed to do so without being too uncomfortable, and I wish everyone the best of new years.
papersky's recent post on plot shapes made me think about the shape of the Yom Kippur liturgy. I was missing the Reform liturgy as I have found myself doing the past half dozen Yom Kippurs that I've spent in various non-Reform synagogues. It's probably not surprising, that at such an emotionally intense time one misses the familiar nusach one grew up with. But even apart from that, the Reform High Holy Days prayerbook is a truly wonderful work. My Dad always says it's literally inspired and however much I don't presume to know these things I can't help agreeing with him. It has just the right balance between preserving what is powerful from tradition and speaking in a modern, relevant voice which evokes an emotional and spiritual response. And it's scholarly and has loads of source material and it's also easy to use. In fact, it is a symbol of everything that is good about Reform Judaism, even though we don't always get quite that perfect balance. So anyway, the Reform Yom Kippur liturgy has a very obvious, very simple shape. I suspect that this is because R Magonet, who headed the editorial team, is the sort of person who thinks about plot shapes. It's a shape which mirrors the shape of the Temple; it brings you in from the outside world, through successive inner courts to the Holy of Holies. And then you return from the centre changed so that at the end you are left hammering at the great gates as they close. Then the gates shut you out and you have to carry what you can of holiness back, away from Jerusalem and into ordinary life.
And this year I'm leading from Birnbaum, which is one of the most common Orthodox High Holy Day prayerbooks (there is, unfortunately, no standard Orthodox prayerbook for the High Holies). Pros: it's well laid out, so easy enough to use, you can follow most of the way through the service without having to jump around, and it's in a single volume. Cons: awful, awful, faux-archaic translation (and it was written in the twentieth century, so there's no excuse for trying to be the KJV!) which is neither even slightly faithful to the Hebrew nor remotely easy to read. I have a congregation who would object violently to dramatic changes in what they're used to, but who at the same time want a service that is personally meaningful without having to be a scholar of Mediaeval Hebrew poetry or accepting very unmodern religious dogma. That's not an easy line to tread.
The first thing you come up against, coming into an Orthodox context from a Progressive background, is that the Orthodox liturgy is fantastically repetitive. The Reform liturgy has motifs which repeat throughout the day (the Temple courts are concentric and perhaps have repeating architectural features), but it doesn't require you to say exactly the same prayers over and over again, a dozen times or more in some cases. And there's layers and layers of repetition, the successive services repeating the same structure, the same prayers being repeated within each service, the prayers and especially the hymns themselves are repetitive within their individual structure, and you have several different prayers expressing the same concepts in most of the same words and illuminated with the same Biblical verses. It took me a long time to see all this as anything other than mind-numbingly dull. But thinking about
papersky's ideas this year, I concluded that the Orthodox Yom Kippur liturgy is shaped like chromatin: it has an underlying repetitive but meaningful structure (Shroedinger's information-bearing crystal), and it's double helices wrapped round eachother to form coiled coils and the coiled coils wrapped around spools and the middle-range 'beads on a string' structure folded into a superhelix and that superhelix folded in on itself so that the whole thing fits into an impossibly small volume.Anyway, what happened in practical terms was that we had a fairly steady minyan throughout the day, the congregation size fluctuated between about 8 and 12 and it wasn't always the same people the whole time. And someone who's never led any kind of service before led Kol Nidrei (the commencing service the evening before), and I led Shacharit, the morning service, and it was all going well. Then it turned out that the person who had said he would do the Torah service had understood this to mean that he would read the Torah rather than take the service, so I said, ok, I'll do that, since the Torah service isn't really very difficult, it's just a question of stage-managing the processional bits really.
But then we came to Musaf, the additional service, and it turned out that the person who had said he would do Musaf had completely forgotten having agreed to this. Musaf is hard. It's without a doubt the most difficult bit of the service, it has a lot of unique stuff, and it's theologically difficult, and intellectually difficult, and musically difficult. It represents, and also directly portrays, the heart of the mystery of the Temple service of Atonement, when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies to plead for pardon for the whole people. So here we are, it's the middle of the morning, people's stomachs are starting to remind them that it's lunch time, and nobody has prepared Musaf.
Somehow or other I found myself apologizing for the miscommunication that had led to this situation (though it wasn't supposed to be solely my responsibility to make sure that every part of the service was accounted for). And given there wasn't really much choice, I volunteered to lead Musaf. Leading Musaf, unlike leading most other services, isn't just a matter of making sure the congregation knows what page they're supposed to be on; you are the 'representative of the congregation' and you partially reenact the rôle of the High Priest from the Temple ceremony. "Poor in worthy deeds, I am horribly afraid as I stand before the Throne of the Most High... The congregation of Israel have chosen me to be their representative, though I am in no way qualified nor adequate for the task."
Luckily I happen to have to hand a copy of the notes I made for Musaf last year, and a vague clue of how I want that service to work and how to make it emotionally engaging. And I do the whole prostration bit, which manages to astonish me every time I do it. The physicality of bowing, and kneeling, and touching your face to the floor (there's no English word for it because it's not something that happens in our culture; it's the same gesture as Muslims use in prayer though), and prostrating yourself completely as you say the words. I've no doubt it looks absolutely ridiculous, but it feels an amazing thing doing it (and nobody openly laughed at me at least!)
So yeah, Musaf happened somehow or other. The rest of the day went more or less according to plan; Prof S ran a very enjoyable and interesting discussion on Jonah in place of Mincha (the afternoon service). We got a bit bogged down because one of the people participating was insisting that free will was invented by the Enlightenment. But apart from that, we talked about Jonah as a story, and the idea of repentance and forgiveness, and whether we really sincerely want forgiveness for utterly depraved evil, and how we can address the fact that, superficially against the message of some of the Yom Kippur liturgy, no matter how good and religious someone is, random bad things can still happen to them.
Then we had a long break, as planned, which I mostly slept through since my head was hurting too much to try to pray or make up for having spent most of the day leading rather than engaging in personal prayer. We reconvened for the memorial service, which I'm not crazy about leading; there's essentially no liturgy, so it's not theoretically difficult, but it is extremely likely to make most of the congregation, including me, cry, and it's hard not to feel that one is being emotionally manipulative. But someone has to stand up and say, now it's time to remember all our loved ones who have died. And I got to be an ordinary member of the congregation for Neilah, the concluding service, and JS, who led it as arranged, knows the right tune to the Neilah song ('As the gates of mercy close') so it felt at least a little bit like a familiar, proper Yom Kippur.
We underran slightly, mainly because I'd forgotten, in my planning, just how short the memorial service is. Somebody suggested that since we had half an hour to kill before breaking the fast, we might as well pray Ma'ariv, the evening service that begins the day after Yom Kippur. So I did that. It's what you're theoretically supposed to do, go straight from the end of Neilah into the ordinary daily liturgy, but it rarely actually happens because people are understandably in a hurry to break the fast by then. It felt like the right thing to do today though, and I suppose I'd always known, but it struck me particularly this time, that the Ma'ariv service opens with "And He is merciful to forgive sin and not destroy..." There's some sort of continuity of the Atonement theme there, I suppose, something which was reinforced because when I came home and logged in to LJ, the first thing I saw on my friends page was that someone had posted the Kaddish, (the memorial prayer, which also acts as a section break in the Orthodox liturgy, so I don't know how many times I'd recited it over the course of the day) in her journal.
I hope that everyone who fasted managed to do so without being too uncomfortable, and I wish everyone the best of new years.
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Prostrating, or something like it
Date: 2004-09-26 11:48 pm (UTC)Hurray for liturgy that can turn you inside out :) Happy New Year!
Re: Prostrating, or something like it
Date: 2004-09-27 02:57 am (UTC)Hey!
Date: 2004-09-27 03:06 am (UTC)Re: Hey!
Date: 2004-09-27 05:17 am (UTC)Re: Prostrating, or something like it
Date: 2004-09-27 12:14 pm (UTC)As for crying, one of the things about doing a lot of leading is that I can't cry. Not only can I not cry at the time when I'm actually reading the prayers out loud, but I can't cry at all and expect to have any voice left if I need to lead stuff later on.
Hurray for liturgy that can turn you inside out :)
Yes, that, absolutely. No matter how much I grumble about it, I'm glad that I made sure my community had a Yom Kippur service this year.
Re: Prostrating, or something like it
Date: 2004-09-27 12:50 pm (UTC)For several years I was an altar server in my parish, so I was also not in a position to be able to cry if I wanted to be able to fulfil my rôle properly. It's something that I don't believe many people realise, at least not in my experience - that is, how by being so embroiled in the ceremonies you're more vulnerable to emotions, and yet being that close to things means that it's all the more important that you can retain some semblance of calm.
No matter how much I grumble about it, I'm glad that I made sure my community had a Yom Kippur service this year.
Yes. And your community hold you as all the more precious to them because of it. We're rare folk who are intelligent/stupid enough to take on this kind of thing, but we wouldn't find ourselves doing it unless we were able to, physically, intellectually and emotionally.
Now, go finish your PhD, and then sort out some ongoing liturgy classes for people :)
Re: Prostrating, or something like it
Date: 2004-10-15 01:00 pm (UTC)I meant to reply to this ages ago, to say that I'm really, really glad to have you on my friends list. You really seem to empathize with my experience of religion, which is lovely, and I think it's especially lovely that we have this understanding even though our specific religions are very different in important ways.
We're rare folk who are intelligent/stupid enough to take on this kind of thing
I like the way you put that, yes. It's something I can contribute to the community, which is a real privilege. This feeling that I don't want anything to do with the world right now, I don't want to have obligations, I don't want to socialize, is not a good impulse, I think. I mean, I got through GCSEs and A Levels and a university degree without cutting myself off from humanity completely, so I can do the same with my PhD, and I'll be better for it.
Now, go finish your PhD
Yes ma'am!
sort out some ongoing liturgy classes for people
I actually do have plans on this front. So yes, the bits that are good about having responsibility continue good and I'm gradually whittling away at the aspects that are less good. Your insightful advice is much appreciated, though.
Re: Prostrating, or something like it
Date: 2004-10-15 01:09 pm (UTC)I have no idea what to say in response to this little gem; I never thought that I was being insightful, but rather that I was just babbling. I'm pleased, however, that to you at least this is not true, and that you value me :)
Yom Kippur
Date: 2004-09-27 06:59 am (UTC)I think I'd like to see this at some point...
And this year I'm leading from Birnbaum, which is one of the most common Orthodox High Holy Day prayerbooks
Well, it was twenty years ago; it's largely been replaced by Artscroll nowadays. In Yakar they gave page numbers for the Artscroll and Routledge only.
awful, awful, faux-archaic translation (and it was written in the twentieth century, so there's no excuse for trying to be the KJV!) which is neither even slightly faithful to the Hebrew nor remotely easy to read.
Hear hear! I hate the translation in the Birnbaum. He tries to justify it in the introduction -- and does a good job, too, IMO -- but the result is still horrendous (and would not translate backwards to anything like what it came from). Moreover, when pushed for space he'll miss out anything up to whole sentences from the translation without saying so.
And given there wasn't really much choice, I volunteered to lead Musaf. Leading Musaf, unlike leading most other services, isn't just a matter of making sure the congregation knows what page they're supposed to be on; you are the 'representative of the congregation' and you partially reenact the rôle of the High Priest from the Temple ceremony.
Well yes, but in general that's what being chazan is all about: you are the שליח ציבור, the representative of the congregation. I've seen siddurim in which the chazan's parts are not labelled "חזן" but "ש״צ".
And I do the whole prostration bit, which manages to astonish me every time I do it.
I've never been able to bring myself to do that. My excuse in עלינו is that it only says "We bend the knee and bow and give thanks", but I don't really have that excuse in the Yom Kippur Mussaf, where it explicitly says "they [...] fell upon their faces." (I'm reminded of the nineteenth-century British ambassador to China who got in trouble for refusing to kowtow to the Emperor, where the other European ambassadors had swallowed their pride in the name of diplomacy.)
Then we had a long break, as planned,
We had a three hour break in Yakar, as against forty-five minutes in Newcastle. They miss out a lot of fairly mainstream (but evidently not dispensable) piyyutim.
We reconvened for the memorial service,
Bit of an odd timing; it's normally done after layning. Most unusually, I was present for it. I normally go out amongst the others with all close family members living; but they'd given me Hagbahah and I was holding the Sefer Torah at the Bimah, so I couldn't really leg it. They had people say their prayers silently; I don't know if that's normal because I've only been at Yizkor once before.
I suppose I'd always known, but it struck me particularly this time, that the Ma'ariv service opens with "And He is merciful to forgive sin and not destroy..." There's some sort of continuity of the Atonement theme there,
<nods> And less than an hour after the last וידוי, you're back beating your breast again at "Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned intentionally; Pardon us for we have sinned unintentionally." (Has it ever struck you how the word used for "sin" in speech does actually mean "sin", and never occurs in the liturgy (with the single exception to my memory of the prayer in the Kil Nidre service permitting congregational prayer in the presence of sinners)?)
Re: Yom Kippur
Date: 2004-09-27 01:02 pm (UTC)I think I'd like to see this at some point...
You're more than welcome; the only practical difficulty is that it's obviously very long. I've actually shown it to you before, but only got as far as pointing out the deeply devious and out-of-context use of a Kafka passage.
Birnbaum, which is one of the most common Orthodox High Holy Day prayerbooks
Well, it was twenty years ago; it's largely been replaced by Artscroll nowadays.
Ick. That's really not what we need. I guess I'm judging by Oxford, who would be far too intellectual to contemplate using Artscroll.
I hate the translation in the Birnbaum.
I don't think Birnbaum has the same aims that you or I would have in translating. The lack of faithfulness to the Hebrew is a deliberate editorial choice, but if you're going to simplify to make your translation more readable, there's really no excuse for using archaisms to make your English sound more flowery and hence, less readable. Gah.
Well yes, but in general that's what being chazan is all about: you are the שליח ציבור, the representative of the congregation.
I agree in principle, but it's not so emphasized. You don't pray that the community not suffer through my failings nor be held guilty for my sins, for example. And I guess that to an extent you're used to doing priestly stuff; I'm not, and I find it shocking to be the one who describes the High Priest's actions and repeats his words.
the whole prostration bit
I've never been able to bring myself to do that.
I don't generally do it when I'm not Shlicha Tzibbur. LG tried to talk me into it at one point, but then she also tried to talk me into feminism. Though apparently there's a Gemara that if you refuse to bow at the appropriate points, your spine turns into a snake after you die.
We had a three hour break in Yakar
There's something to be said for it. If you don't break in the afternoon, it can feel like a real marathon, which may be the point, but I'm not convinced of this. OTOH it's easy to find yourself at loose ends when that happens; obviously it wouldn't be appropriate to do anything particularly entertaining during that gap.
They miss out a lot of fairly mainstream (but evidently not dispensable) piyyutim
I'd always pick missing out piyyutim over having to gabble through the liturgy so fast it's impossible to concentrate. We left out rather more than just dispensable piyyutim, I'm afraid; not doing a full mincha at all cut quite a lot, and we had one Torah reading rather than four, and I more or less ignored Pisukei deZimra, and cut the Avodah bit down to the bare bones by means of taking the lowest common denominator between the Orthodox liturgy (which has lots of elaborate description and incomprehensible piyyutim) and the Reform liturgy (which has lots of mini-essays about how we as modern Jews can relate to the Temple stuff).
continued since my previous comment exceeded the length limit
Date: 2004-09-27 01:04 pm (UTC)Bit of an odd timing; it's normally done after layning.
Ahhh, you're the first person I've met who does it the way the Birnbaum says. I've asked around, including Orthodox friends, why on earth does Birnbaum put Yizkor in the middle of the Torah service? and always got the answer, no clue, I've never done it in that place. The practical advantage of doing Yizkor just before Neilah is that people who can't manage to take the day off work can make it (I suppose in an Orthodox shul you wouldn't make concessions to those people, but anyway). And if there's a break in the afternoon, those who don't want to be present for Yizkor can simply come back a bit later.
Most unusually, I was present for it.
Yes, I would probably have expected you to skip Yizkor.
I normally go out amongst the others with all close family members living
I've always regarded that custom as little more than pointless superstition. There are people I mourn even though I'm not a Mourner officially, and even if there weren't, I want to part of the community that supports those who are grieving. There's no halachic reason against it and several in favour, and the idea that I'm somehow ill-wishing my parents by attending Yizkor is simply ridiculous. I would of course leave if I thought my presence would offend the community, but it wouldn't be out of my own choice.
you're back beating your breast again
I don't generally do that other than on YK, for no better reason than that it embarrasses me.
the word used for "sin" in speech does actually mean "sin", and never occurs in the liturgy
When you say in speech, you actually mean in Yiddish, don't you? It took me a while to work out what on earth word you were referring to, since it's not a natural part of my vocabulary. My guess would be that the word is Aramaic rather than Hebrew (hence its inclusion in the introduction to Kol Nidrei), and that Yiddish happens to have picked up the Aramaic word.
Re: continued since my previous comment exceeded the length limit
Date: 2004-09-27 02:24 pm (UTC)I'm used to it being there. Where do you do it for other yomtavim?
I've always regarded that custom as little more than pointless superstition.
That it is, but I don't feel comfortable being there nonetheless, because I'm used to going out.
I don't generally do that other than on YK, for no better reason than that it embarrasses me.
And prostration doesn't?
When you say in speech, you actually mean in Yiddish, don't you? It took me a while to work out what on earth word you were referring to, since it's not a natural part of my vocabulary. My guess would be that the word is Aramaic rather than Hebrew (hence its inclusion in the introduction to Kol Nidrei), and that Yiddish happens to have picked up the Aramaic word.
The word I was referring to was עבירה, which looks like pretty pure Hebrew to me. The word I was referring to in the Kol Nidrei introduction is עברינים, from Which is also pretty pure Hebrew (though with the telltale Mishnaic-era plural ending).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-09 01:44 pm (UTC)I'm used to it being there. Where do you do it for other yomtavim?
Now you ask, I'm not sure. We've only recently (last few years) started doing Yizkor for the Pilgrim festivals at all. I think it ends up being between Shacharit and Musaf, which I suppose does rather put it in near enough the equivalent place to where Birnbaum puts Yizkor in YK.
I don't feel comfortable being there nonetheless, because I'm used to going out.
Well, this is fair enough. And if you don't feel any particular positive reason to want to take part, if there is a reason against you might as well go along with it.
The word I was referring to was עבירה, which looks like pretty pure Hebrew to me.
You're right, it is indeed, I was being dopey. But I still maintain that the word that people use in general speech is actually Yiddish. The other place where it shows up is in Pesukei deZimra: Let us not come into the power of sin or wrong-doing (עבירה). I think that prayer is lifted from the Orthodox liturgy and it's not one of the extra ones that we add in, but I don't have a copy of an Orthodox siddur to hand so I could be wrong.
עברין is a fairly late word though, even if not actually Aramaic; the earliest citation Jastrow gives for it is Gemara. It seems to mean something more specific than just 'sinner', incidentally; Jastrow gives 'renegade; backslider; apostate; one who returns to idolatry'.
the Kol Nidrei introduction [...] Which is also pretty pure Hebrew
Again, you're right. I'd stupidly assumed it was Aramaic because it's part of Kol Nidrei in my mind.
עבירה
Date: 2004-10-16 03:04 pm (UTC)You're saying the word people actually use is that word, just in a different language? It's Yiddish insofar as that people pronounce it in a sloppy Yinglish manner; otherwise what difference does it make what language it's in?
The other place where it shows up is in Pesukei deZimra: Let us not come into the power of sin or wrong-doing (עבירה). I think that prayer is lifted from the Orthodox liturgy and it's not one of the extra ones that we add in, but I don't have a copy of an Orthodox siddur to hand so I could be wrong.
It is indeed.
עברין is a fairly late word though, even if not actually Aramaic; the earliest citation Jastrow gives for it is Gemara. It seems to mean something more specific than just 'sinner', incidentally; Jastrow gives 'renegade; backslider; apostate; one who returns to idolatry'.
It ought to mean transgressor, but when has language ever behaved how it ought to, I suppose...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-27 07:45 am (UTC)This is a beauty of concept and sentence for which, in another branch of universal probability where our mutual attendant circumstances are different, I may well be asking you to marry me.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-27 08:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-27 10:40 am (UTC)You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
Get in the queue!
Well, hence the alternate universe bit; 'twas an attempt to phrase the appreciation and suchlike without appearing to assert place in a metaphorical queue.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-27 02:05 pm (UTC)I'm full of admiration at the precision with which you conveyed that you weren't speaking literally, without losing any of the melodrama of the random proposal concept! (An ex once similarly mock-proposed because of something I'd said, and then got all paranoid when we subsequently started dating that someone might take him seriously with hindsight.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-27 11:01 am (UTC)Bah, humbug!
Date: 2004-09-27 12:54 pm (UTC)*ahem* Exhibit A (http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22Will+you+marry+me%3F%22+queue+group:alt.fan.pratchett&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=27&as_maxm=4&as_maxy=1996&selm=f8a7c446%40afawcett.demon.co.uk&rnum=1), m'lady. And lots more where that came from. With the archetype buried within Exhibit B (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4egc5a%24o54%40cyber.tn.tudelft.nl&output=gplain).
And that's from House of Cards (http://www.tvheaven.ca/fu.htm), a TV series I only saw one of, but should read the book it was taken from some time. The opening episode depicted the downfall of Margaret Thatcher at the machinations of her Chief Whip, Francis Urquhart, and by a stroke of luck Margaret Thatcher really did fall from power just days before the first episode was broadcast, making the series serependipitously topical.
"You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment" was Urquhart's standard line for replying to allegations from the press, usually seeded by himself, concerning other people it would not be politically expedient for him to confirm outright.
Re: Bah, humbug!
Date: 2004-09-27 02:17 pm (UTC)Thank you. I am still a little confused, but the links were amusing and unconfused me quite a bit!
"You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment" was Urquhart's standard line for replying to allegations from the press
That is also helpful to know.
*relents*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-27 01:58 pm (UTC)I'm lost for words. I can't describe my reaction to such a compliment without sounding as if I doubt you, which is not at all the point. But I'm very, very happily surprised by that. Thank you!
This comment makes me very glad I decided to make this account into an LJ post rather than a private email. I had estimated that there would probably be about two people who would have any idea what I was doing with that image, and I wouldn't have predicted you to be one of them. I suppose that spending a whole day immersed in beautiful language has done me some good on a creative level if nothing else.
I'll confess though, most of the description comes from the fact that at some point in my life I was in danger of having to draw a schematic of the various levels of structure in chromatin for an exam, so I composed a verbal description that I could memorize rather than actually attempting to remember anything visual. (In the event I got away without; I drew the structure of a bacterial flagellum instead, for which my mnemonic sentence was largely it has an S&M ring to it.)
asking you to marry me
Well, considering that the kernel of the idea comes from
*hug*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-27 02:05 pm (UTC)Right, that's one "laugh so loud several people in the office give you weird looks" I owe you.
*hug*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-01 12:55 pm (UTC)What a wonderful notion.
It makes me happy to see someone from a Reform background who's capable of leading an Orthodox-style service. I was raised first Conservative and then Reform, myself, and it always frustrates me when people assume that Reform Jews don't know the "real" liturgy or don't have "real" Jewish educations. :-)
The prostration is pretty intense -- it's one of the things I've come to love most in the HHD experience. I blogged about it here (http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2004/09/the_great_alein.htm)...
- Rachel (VR)
Welcome!
Date: 2004-10-15 12:45 pm (UTC)It makes me happy to see someone from a Reform background who's capable of leading an Orthodox-style service.
It's a mixture of good luck and necessity. I spent several years in a really lovely pluralist community (Oxford) and therefore acquired some familiarity with various styles of liturgy not from my own background. And then I found myself in this odd, out of the way little community where the consensus is for some sort of approximately "traditional" liturgy even if it's not quite what an Orthodox person would be used to!
it always frustrates me when people assume that Reform Jews don't know the "real" liturgy
Absolutely! And it seems to come as much from the Progressive end of the spectrum as the Orthodox; even though it's meant as a compliment, it rather annoys me when Reform people say "Wow, your Hebrew is really good, are you Orthodox really?"
The prostration is pretty intense
Yes, that's what I was trying to talk about. I'd love to see your thoughts on it, but unfortunately your link is broken, and I can't find any article that looks like it might be the one you mean on Velveteen Rabbi.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-13 07:44 pm (UTC)