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.