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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
