theyellowhobbit

Rosh Hashana in Cambridge was quite enjoyable. I ended up davening at Harvard Hillel for Wednesday night, and meeting all the nice people at the Student Conservative Minyan. Of course, most of the people there for Rosh Hashana were either freshmen or people running the services, since most upperclassmen left to go home. I was offered a line in one of the responsive piyutim for the Thursday morning service, as well as any leining on Saturday morning since IC (one of the gabbaim) knew it all, and he said that if I wanted to learn a few aliyot he was fine not leining them.

Also, at TBS (the Tremont Street Shul, aka Temple Beth Shalom) there were not many people my age, since people also went home there. I forgot that people actually go home for these things, being someone who herself can't go home for holidays.

I was a bit apprehensive about walking home alone from Harvard on Wednesday night, but got home fine. I thought about coming back for the daytime services so people would know I was okay, but-

Thursday morning

adlight kindly woke me up at the very reasonable hour of 8:45, but I was still tired and went back to sleep. Thus I actually woke up around 10 and ended up staying home.

Thursday night I was at the Trad minyan for TBS since we were hosting dinner that night. TBS egal uses a microphone for the high holidays, and I'm not cool with that. I'm also not cool with sitting next to men while I daven, and with a space that full it was pretty inevitable. That and I don't like full spaces most of the time. Or pews. So Trad was the better choice.

Friday morning we were so pleasantly awoken by the fire alarm going off at 8:30 am for no good reason. So I ended up going to TBS Trad again. I made it in time for the Torah reading. They had a kiddush before musaf. Yay food!

Friday night I decided to go to trad at TBS again, which formerly being in the Youville hospital was now back to the shul, downstairs. I informed the upstairs minyan that I counted myself if they needed me. And lo, and behold, they did! (Trad was also minyan-less and ended up not happening.) On the way up, B., the man who had got me, asked how well I knew Rosh Hashana mincha. I asked if he meant in terms of liturgy or nuisach. He said he was planning on leading it but was going to fake it. So I told him I new the nuisach pretty well if people didn't mind me faking the Rosh Hashanah specific paragraphs. He was fine with that, since I was still the person there who knew the service the best.

Thus I led mincha. I did a decent job considering I have a cold.

Compared to the 20 people we had at Thursday night dinner, Friday night was small, with only 4 of us. We had leftovers, which were still quite good.

(Also that afternoon T and I were talking about me considering reading Torah at Harvard on Saturday, and he was like "we might still need people to lein!" And then he offered me kohelet! Score!)

Saturday I got up late and skipped shul again and read. All day. That's all I did. Read, read, read.

currentlee has a great library. I'm all set for reading material this year!

And then Shabbat ended and I still haven't knit yet.

I did get my smaller yarn package from AK. It's perfect!

After Shabbat I considered IMing PG, the other gabbai at Harvard, to tell him I had gotten home okay. He ended up IMing me first. I still feel bad about not making it back to Harvard. I really should have pulled myself out of bed/stopped reading on Thursday morning. Services went until 1 so I would have been there for a good portion. But no. I'm lazy. At least I made it for Friday!

I plan on attending all of YK davening. Probably at Harvard. Definitely at Harvard for mincha!