In which a blog accounts for itself, Part I

I figure it's as good a time as any to address the name I chose for this weblog. There's a good chance my readers already know, but I look forward to the day when people will discover this site who aren't actually friends of mine. Then maybe they'll check the archives.

The Hebrew words for bridegroom and cantor are, respectively, hatan and hazzan. (Terminal emphasis in both cases.) The Yiddish pronunciations of these two are chassn and chazzn. (Both sometimes spelled without the C; both with primary emphasis.)

At Ashkenazi Jewish weddings, it's a custom to have a chassns tish, or bridegroom's table, at which various marital contracts are signed and much merriment is imposed upon the husband to be.

So it's a pun, you see.

Q: What's a cantor?
A: In a Jewish context, a cantor is the public prayer leader in a synagogue service. Cantors also tend to be charged with whatever musical education a synagogue wishes to impart upon its congregants. I'm currently training for the job.

Q: Why do you spell it tish? Yiddish is a German dialect, so wouldn't tisch be more appropriate?
A: If we were working with true German, yes. But one does not typically write Yiddish using the Latin alphabet, and there are no widely accepted conventions for doing so. In any case, the solid and efficient German orthographic system would rather closely resemble a load of overcooked spaghetti squash after just one encounter with a voiced sibilant spelled out as a double-Z, and I see no need to be the agent of metamorphosis.

Twice and Thrice a Year

The Yamim Nora'im* present a lot of difficulties. The obvious ones include planning and preparing lots of meals (for one holiday, anyway), going 25 hours without eating or drinking (for the other), and navigating a liturgy notable for its daunting length. I may deal with those in a future post, but probably post-facto, as there's much to do between now and September 25th.

Even more than they find the services to be too long, many people find them outright boring. If you've never had that experience, here's a demonstrative exercise:

1. Pick an alphabetically recorded language about which you know absolutely nothing. (Given our likely audience, Tamil should suffice. If not, old script Mongolian.)
2. Learn its orthographic system in full, but not so well that you can read at a natural pace.
3. Learn between five and twenty vocabulary words.
4. Get up early one morning and put on a suit (if male) or semiformal attire of your choice (if of another gender).
5. Locate an extremely patient speaker of the aforementioned language and ask him to chant words out of a complicated philosophical text while you follow along in your copy. He should occasionally switch to equally complicated poetry, of which he should sing the odd-numbered lines while leaving the even lines to you. He should instruct you to stand or be seated from time to time, but must never explain why you must do so. At least one standing period should be uncomfortably long, and the total duration should not be under four hours. (If you want to do it right, go for at least six.)

Done? Great. If all went well, what you've just endured is analogous to what most American Jews experience two to three times every fall, depending upon whether they attend a left-wing Reform synagogue (two days) or a Conservative or right-wing Reform synagogue (three days).

I could be smug about this, given that I personally find a great deal of meaning in the High Holiday mahzor†. In fact, I'm just nervous. Once I get a student pulpit, I'll be the one chanting gibberish for a well dressed audience. They will want me to make the ritual meaningful for them, and it's highly unlikely that many will accept their share of the burden by learning what the book says regarding kingship, sin, repentance and atonement.

I think I can manage as a shaliah tzibbur‡. My concern is that someone may ask me to be a magician.

*lit. "Days of Awe"; Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur**. Also called the "High Holidays."

**The name "Yom Kippur" makes very little sense. Literally, it means "a day of an atonement." More accurate would be "Yom Hakippurim" ("The Day of Atonements," the holiday's official but unpopular name) or "Yom Hakapparah***."

***Which could, in turn, be translated as "the day when distressed chickens get twirled around people's heads in a semi-magical rite." Which would be inaccurate, since that actually happens the day before.

†Prayer book composed for a specific Jewish festival.

‡lit. "congregational emissary." The public prayer leader.

A note to my faithful readers

Like, both of them.

I've been slow to post of late. Yeshiva orientation has taken up most of my time, and I'll be away — up north, but not serious north — until Sunday.

As always, there are things going on here, most notably a pigua* in which 16 people, at last count, were murdered in Be'er Sheva. I have plenty to say, but I lack the time in which to say it.

Posts will hopefully become more regular once real classes start.

*lit. "hit" or "blow." Colloquially, a terrorist attack.