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Feb. 6th, 2006 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theyellowhobbitI finally wrote something.
The Day the Music Died
A long, long time ago I was forced to go to Sunday school and Friday night services in order to learn for my bat mitzvah, just like the majority of Reform youth. I always resented it then, and even now I wonder if anything valuable came out of those 7 years of Jewish education. I always thought Judaism was that boring thing you do because your parents made you because their parents made them back all the way to Abraham. That is until I started NFTY- the Reform youth group.
At my first event we had a few song sessions and services, and much to my surprise, everyone was singing and having fun. And I started learning all of the songs, and I started to connect to prayer through the beautiful melodies that we used.
At Penn, the Orthodox and Conservative minyanim also had beautiful melodies. Once I had davened at their Friday night services instead of Reform for a few weeks, I went back to Reform, and realized there that I missed the songs from kabbalat Shabbat that the Reform minyan always skips. There were also tisches and shalshuddises and meals that had more songs for me to learn. Even now I don’t have all the words to every song memorized.
Eventually I stopped being comfortable without a mechitza and started davening Orthodox full-time. Which was fine in Israel when there were tons of places like Yikar and Shir Chadash where they sang all of Kabbalat Shabbat and most of Ma’ariv. But then I got back to Penn, and sadly I learned that many people in the OCP [Orthodox Community at Penn] would rather get to dinner quickly than sing Kabbalat Shabbat. I always wonder how anyone can have kavanah when they just mumble through the words...
Wow, I'm mean, only giving you half an article. :-p
The Day the Music Died
A long, long time ago I was forced to go to Sunday school and Friday night services in order to learn for my bat mitzvah, just like the majority of Reform youth. I always resented it then, and even now I wonder if anything valuable came out of those 7 years of Jewish education. I always thought Judaism was that boring thing you do because your parents made you because their parents made them back all the way to Abraham. That is until I started NFTY- the Reform youth group.
At my first event we had a few song sessions and services, and much to my surprise, everyone was singing and having fun. And I started learning all of the songs, and I started to connect to prayer through the beautiful melodies that we used.
At Penn, the Orthodox and Conservative minyanim also had beautiful melodies. Once I had davened at their Friday night services instead of Reform for a few weeks, I went back to Reform, and realized there that I missed the songs from kabbalat Shabbat that the Reform minyan always skips. There were also tisches and shalshuddises and meals that had more songs for me to learn. Even now I don’t have all the words to every song memorized.
Eventually I stopped being comfortable without a mechitza and started davening Orthodox full-time. Which was fine in Israel when there were tons of places like Yikar and Shir Chadash where they sang all of Kabbalat Shabbat and most of Ma’ariv. But then I got back to Penn, and sadly I learned that many people in the OCP [Orthodox Community at Penn] would rather get to dinner quickly than sing Kabbalat Shabbat. I always wonder how anyone can have kavanah when they just mumble through the words...
Wow, I'm mean, only giving you half an article. :-p
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Date: 2006-02-06 12:35 pm (UTC)Hey I should tell you at JITW about this email thing I got into due to a comment I left on BBT
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Date: 2006-02-06 01:01 pm (UTC)Ooh! Intriguing start! You'll get the discussion going with this one as usual!
BTW, have you listened to the MP3 of Rabbi Lam yet? He's HILARIOUS! It's no exaggeration to say he had the room in stitches.