Chagim b'Yerushalayim

Wow. Being in Jerusalem for the Chagim (high holy days) is exhausting! But also wonderful, rejuvenating, and so very different than last time I was here for them. And, they're not even done...Sukkot starts in some 26 hours or so...

First off, let's talk davening. The structure of davening during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is not all that different from any other service, particularly Shabbat. But as most Jews can tell you, it's a hell of a lot longer. But how many "high holy day Jews" can tell you why they're so long? Not to delve overly into specifics but with some additional prayers, blessings and psalms here and there, mostly the services of the chagim are simply the usual prayers "filled out" by extra oomph as we transition from the past year into the new year.

In particular, the repetition of the Amidah, in which the Hazzan (person who is "leading" the service) vocally repeats the entirety (and then some often) of the personal Amidah the entire congregation has individually recited softly. This takes some time. And if one doesn't realize this is what's happening (and I can't even count how many years I went without knowing this) then essentially you're just sitting there in schul while the hazzan recites pages and pages of hebrew.

Two essential bits of knowledge really changed my davening experience this year:

a) The hazzan's repetition of the Amidah really is important, not just fluff. Why? There's a good chance that during our individual recitations of the Amidah, we've made a mistake (or several). While understandable, this is rather worrisome if you subscribe to the belief that the prayers you recite during the Chagim, and their delivery, are directly responsible for whether you get written into the Book of Life (vs the Book of Death) for the upcoming year. Enter: the Hazzan, whose repetition of the Amidah serves to represent the entire congregation, meaning in case you made a mistake during your individual Amidah, the hazzan has you covered. Multiply that by a couple hundred congregants though, and the hazzan has a huge responsibility! He or she is responsible for covering the mistakes of the entire congregation for which he or she is davening...no pressure. This means you should thank your hazzan, because while you sit there tuning in and out of pages and pages of hebrew, the hazzan is busy getting your back. It also means he or she had better know what they're doing.

b) Important as the repetition is, it's really long. And it's totally legit to bring in some supplemental reading (as long as it's relevent...harry potter maybe not so much...one teacher recommended Sh.Y. Agnon's Days of Awe which I found perfect) to occupy yourself while the hazzan is chanting away. Maybe even preferable, since if you're not reading there's a good chance you're just sitting there thinking bored thoughts about, well, whatever, whereas if you bring in some relevant reading you're keeping yourself engaged in the spirit of the chag.

Knowing this, I was able to prepare myself in a very different way than ever before. I had a much better idea of what was happening during t'fillot and was to able to keep myself engaged when before I would just have been bored. And, as I hopped around to different schuls, which is impossible in Spokane, I also got to experience several different styles of davening, which was also really nice.

The other really great chag experience: community. For every meal (except breakfast) there is a gathering. Which means two dinners and two lunches...and since I was at a different friend's meal for each (mostly either Dorot friends or Pardes friends and extended), it meant I got to spend some great time with many different friends at each meal (with of course a bit of overlap, but really a lot of different groups for each meal), eating good food, drinking wine and enjoying good company. This is something really only possible in Jerusalem.

Also, so completely different from Nativ, because these were my friends, inviting me to their homes for these meals. Contrast this with Nativ, when meals were either with the entire program at our homebase, or if you went to someone's home it was likely because you were set up through the program. That was great for what it was then, but it just reinforces how different my life is in Jerusalem now, and how very worthwhile it is to spend this time living here again, though I spent half my Nativ year living here.

A final note on Kol Nidre, perhaps the most important individual service for me of all the chagim because of my personal connection playing one of the recitations on cello for my home schul in high school. I always hope to find a Kol Nidre experience that will really take me somewhere...and sadly this hasn't happened for most of my Kol Nidre experiences in the past 7 years. This year, I heard some great things about the Leeder Minyan, so I decided to check it out. And it was really, truly a wonderful experience. Leeder Minyan is mostly young to middle-aged Jews, very Carlebach-y davening (lots of niggun singing, harmonization, longer melodies, etc), and while it has a mechitza it's very informal with just a table between the sections (rather than a full-height curtain) and a fair amount of mixing around the peripheries of the seating areas. With all the singing, it's also very long - about 3.5 hours - but it's Kol Nidre in Jerusalem...what else are you going to do? And since I didn't even bring my watch, I really barely noticed the time.

Something in particular that really did it for me was that as we got to the kaddish prayer just before the start of the Amidah, we began singing a beautiful, spirited niggun (a niggun is a melody sung without words, a classic form of Jewish musical expression whose roots are mainly in Hassidic Judaism) that lasted for probably ten minutes, with two or three upswells and downswells before quietly settling out as people began their individual Amidah prayers. As we began singing the niggun, I had pulled my tallis over my head (Kol Nidre is also the sole evening service in the entire year when the tallis is worn) and found that by the time the niggun came to an end I was completely in my own spiritual space, carved out in the midst of this community surrounding me, completely ready to daven my personal Amidah, completely in the moment. It was perhaps the most intense spiritual moment I've ever experienced in an indoor "schul" setting.

So, all in all a really wonderful chagim experience thus far...and Sukkot is yet to come! Someone mentioned a day or two ago that while Yom Kippur is about being inside, with community, Sukkot is about getting outside the synagogue and community walls, going out into the world and being present not only in our small communities but also the greater community. As such, a few of us are going backpacking, which of course is really exciting for me. Probably the Negev, but maybe up north in the Galil...check back in a week or so from now for the update on how that went :-)