Limmud NY Notes: Yes, I went to a Renewal service. And yes, I liked it.

I'm gonna go here on Shabbat. Who's with me?

I went to Limmud NY 2011 and wrote a lot of posts about it. Here’s a guide to them.

The word Renewal arouses suspicion in me. At Limmud NY on Friday, there was a Renewal service being offered. It was led by David Ingber, the endlessly fascinating spiritual journeyman who founded the flagship Renewal outfit in New York, Romemu. The music was by Romemu Musical Director Shir Yaakov as well as Shoshana Jedwab on the drums.

I took a lot of notes. By way of a review, here they are, polished a bit:

• Kirtan Rabbi: We began with Hareini Mekabel Alai by Kirtan Rabbi, which I love. I hadn’t expected tunes from KR to show up here, perhaps because I’ve never heard them anywhere except on his albums. I suppose it shouldn’t have been too surprising, given that I’m on KR’s e-mail list and I know that he plays at Romemu pretty regularly. It was a very nice beginning to the service.
• Things that make me suspicious: Shir says things like, “Breathe in the first breath of Shabbat. Breathe out the previous week.” OK. What is this Kol Haneshama?
• Things that make me downright uncomfortable: Shir says, “Don’t worry about the recipe book. Enjoy the meal we’re making together.” Don’t worry about the siddur? Fat chance. Also, a curious thing for him to say, as we’ll see later. This is the attitude that makes me suspicious of Renewal.
• Liturgical health check: Most present are using the copies of Sim Shalom provided by Limmud NY. Joe Rosenstein is in the front row and looks like he’s loving it. Not surprisingly, he’s using Siddur Eit Ratzon, which he edited. Also, Shir Yaakov created Joe’s website, newsiddur.org. I’m using Koren Talpiot. There’s one Koren Sacks in the crowd. And my friend’s girlfriend, rather curiously, has brought Gates of the House with her.
• 

  Seriously, though. Buy this CD.

  But the music is good: Shir then leads Higale Na, a tune from his album, “Zeh.” I can’t dislike it.

• And then the dancing starts: We move into the Carlebach Psalm 96 (Shiru lAdonai, shir chadash etc.), skipping 95. When the Psalm ends and the nigun begins, people are out of their seats dancing. We’ve gone from zero to ecstatic dancing in less than half the time and liturgical space it takes Kol Zimrah or B’nai Jeshurun. In a conversation with Ingber later, he’s pretty proud of this. Between the clapping, the stomping and drumming, the floor is shaking.
• I’m into it: We go into Psalm 29 (Mizmor leDavid etc.) with more Carlebach. Somewhere around this point, I decide to visit Romemu in person.
• Kid Friendly: This is not a kid’s service. But it is a forceful refutation of the idea that such things necessary. Right before the service, I heard to kids bargaining with their mom about how much time they’d be in the service. They Jewed her down to 20 minutes without much trouble. And then they stayed for the entire service.
• Ana Bechoach? I don’t know from Ana Bechoach. I rarely see it done at the places I go, but we did a tune that I’ll assume was a Shir Yaakov tune for the line from Ana Bechoach “Yachid ge’eh le’amecha feneh zochrei kedushatecha.” Again, it was nice. I like his music in a liturgical setting. There’s thinking to be done this week about guitar liturgy, given Debbie Friedman’s recent death.
• Kab Shab: Generally, I prefer that we do all of Kabbalat Shabbat, but I don’t feel as strongly about that as I do about some things. In a conversation later with Ingber I tell him I find Kabbalah and mysticism suspicious. Then I tell him I prefer a full Kab Shab. He rightly calls me on this and I have no answer.
• About that cookbook: The injunction to ignore the siddur is a curious thing from a guy like Shir Yaakov, who is reaching into relatively obscure pieces like Ana Bechoach, which is otherwise untouched by contemporary guitarish Jewish songwriters. The service is interestingly inaccessible to some. Given that we have no transliterations and there isn’t a lot of page number announcing going on, one friend–far less liturgically literate than I–is having a lot trouble keeping up. She doesn’t sing at all until we hit Lecha Dodi–is that another Shir Yaakov original we’re doing?–because it’s common enough in liberal Jewish liturgy that she knows a lot of the words. Musically, the service is accessible, textually it isn’t. One with out the other is not enough. The problem of access to text is too important to push aside with a quip about cookbooks.
• Krakow! I was beginning to wonder when we’d get to the Krakow nigun. At the sixth paragraph of Lecha Dodi, we begin to use the Krakow nigun melody, which is novel to me. It works. One woman in the front row is dancing again. Later, a lot of people join her. Can you spot Romemu regulars by how quick they are to start dancing during services?
• Shmooze fest: Between Kab Shab and Maariv, Ingber asks everyone to say Shabbat to people around him that we don’t know. “Careful though,” he says. “I don’t want it to become a shmooze fest.” Yeah, OK. It quickly becomes a shmooze fest.
• Call and response: Barchu is done with an unfamiliar tune. People often have a hard time discerning what to do during Barchu when it’s a tune rather than nusach because the call and response nature of it is hard to parse. That happens here.
• Shma: One, two, skip a few… aaaaaand Shma. We do the long, breathing, slow, ponderous version of the first line of the Shma. I’m impatient. We chant the second paragraph and the rest is silent.
• Rain Stick? During Mi Chamocha, Jedwab starts in with a rain stick. After two goes with the stick, I’m done with it and–thank God–she cuts it out.
• Chanting and whatever: “Ufros aleinu sukat shelomecha” in Hashkiveinu to that tune I like. I don’t know whose it is, but you know what I mean. Then we chant Shalom a bunch. Then we chant Salaam a bunch. Ingber occasionally interrupts with things like, “Peace in every heart… peace in every mind… peace throughout the world… peace out the wazoo… etc.” Then we chant, “Let there be peace” for a while. And then there’s the chatimah.
• And then the Christians show up: Oddly, “Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary” cropped up. In this instance, we did Yihyu in English to the tune, then we sang the chorus of “Lord prepare me etc,” then we niguned it for a while, then we did “Ve’asu li mikdash etc.

Then I had to run out to do announcements somewhere else, but ended up coming back and doing them at the Renewal service anyway when I got back. I missed the rest of the service though.

I’m curious to see more. I’m strongly considering attending Romemu on Shabbat morning this week.

And I’m gonna go with 3 1/2 Ballpoint Pens for this service: |||-

But I wanna be very careful in pointing out that this isn’t a rating of Romemu. It’s a rating of a thing that a group of people from Romemu did somewhere else without their core group.

Limmud NY Notes: Sunday musical Mincha-Maariv with BZ

I went to Limmud NY 2011 and wrote a lot of posts about it. Here’s a guide to them.

Limmud NY was enriched for me this year by the presence of “Musical Mincha-Maariv,” led by Jewschooler, Mah Rabu blogger and former Kol Zimrah/current Segulah leader BZ. Lest anyone think that this service review is nice because I know and like BZ, let me assure that I just really liked the service

Normally, at Limmud NY, there is a good effort made to provide a diverse set of service options for Shabbat evening and morning. After that, beginning with Shabbat Mincha and continuing through the end of the conference, we provide only a “Mechitza service led by men” and a “Traditional-Egalitarian” service option for each prayer time.

BZ, apparently having jumped on the bandwagon too late in the game to offer a Kol Zimrah-style service on Friday night ended up leading a similar Mincha-Maariv in the late afternoon-early evening on Sunday. It was great, not just as a service, but as a time. By that point in the conference, my brain always feels stretched pretty thing and I start feeling overwhelmed. So it was just the right time for a nice, long service with some guitar music.

As with all of my favorite services, there was some chaos. At first, we couldn’t track down siddurim, but I eventually located the bin of siddurim we needed and brought it up to the room. We were mostly using Gates of Prayer (Grey/Gender edition), but I used Koren Talpiot and also spotted one Siddur Eit Ratzon, one Koren Sacks, one RCA ArtScroll, one random little Orthodox siddur and two Birnbaums. Given the size of the crowd, that leaves about seven or eight GOGs in use.

Further chaos came from the fact that the service was moved twice, the second time right before it was set to begin. The place we ended up was in Ballroom C, which is a part of the ballroom at the hotel that can be partitioned off with a movable wall. Unfortunately, it was not partitioned off for much of the service so a lot of racket from hotel staff setting up dinner spilled over.

Rob Scheinberg, a Conservative Rabbi was there. When offered something other than GOG, he said, “When else do I get to use Gates of Prayer?” Caryn Roman, a former boss of mine at Kutz, and I looked at each other and said, “Get to?”

We began with a chant to of the first line of Ashrei, the Shefa Gold version I think. This went on for a while and set a nice mood. Then we read the rest of Ashrei silently to ourselves. We did the last line of Ashrei to a tune I’m not familiar with, but my notes say it’s a Debbie Friedman tune. I can’t recall if BZ said it was or if I was speculating. Oh well. the handout said it was another Debbie tune.

I’m pretty sure we did Chatzi Kaddish to “Lord Prepare Me.” Which I still can’t figure out if I object to. I think I only do if we use the original words. More on why one might object to such a thing here. One thing that I love about BZ’s style is that every time I attend a service he’s leading, he uses something creative for the various Kaddishes (not Yatom, though).

In the repetition of the Amidah, BZ was saying Retzeih and I was jarred to hear him say “lechol korav etc,” a GOGP original (or is it from the Union Prayer Book?) that I haven’t heard in a long time. It brought me back down to Earth and I realized that everyone around me was using GOG. It’s a good example of the fact that as much as I care about a good siddur, a good leader with a good plan can overcome a lackluster siddur.

The repetition of the Amidah proceeded at breakneck Ashekenazi nusach pace, but that ended abruptly when we hit Shalom Rav, which BZ slowed down to a Debbie Friedman tune for. (OK, so the tune isn’t actually by Friedman. More on that in the comments.) The combo was jarring, but good. Also, the pace of the repetition reminded me of the luxurious pace that we had proceeded at so far, odd for Mincha, but not bad.

To begin Maariv, BZ did Vehu Rachum to a tune that I am only familiar with for Barchi Nafshi from Chavurat Lamdeinu and Hadar. He continued this tune into Barchu. This mostly worked, but as usual, I find anything other than the standard Barchu clumsy because where call ends response begins starts to become musically unclear. It is the only misstep of any size I noticed in the service.

Maariv Aravim was ordinary, Ahavat Olam to Friedman’s tune.

We did Ve’ahavta to the Friedman tune, which I’m used to hearing with English words only. BZ, however, did it all in Hebrew, which made things interesting.

Strikingly, I don’t think the tune for Mi Chamocha wasn’t Friedman. Rather, it was Carlebach.

Somewhere around this time, a very funny thing happened. Ethan Tucker, one of the leaders of Yeshivat Hadar, whom I am used to only hearing very nusach-sounding things around, appeared with kids in tow. His wife, Ariella, had been at the service since the beginning. The sight of Tucker singing along to Craig Taubman’s Hashkiveinu, while attempting to get his son to follow long in GOG was one of the more incongruous things I’ve seen at Limmud NY, but part of what makes Limmud NY so unique and special.

Chatzi Kaddish was another novel experience this time–I’m pretty sure it was the gospel song, “Down to the River.” In my head we all sounded like the women who sing it on the “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack.

We wrapped up with a few more Debbie Friedman tunes and called it a day. It was good day of Limmud NY and a nice break in the middle for some good davening.

Interestingly, BZ used a handout to avoid the need for announcing page numbers and a few other things. The handout included some notes about how to use the handout, about Friedman and explaining that there would be no stage directions. Because GOG lacks Vehu Rachum at the beginning of Maariv, BZ included that on the sheet as well. It strikes me that Reform shuls could use this technique to remove a lot of the extra talking that tends to bog down Reform services, especially the now-ritualized explanation of how to use Mishkan T’filah that some have adopted.

||||| I give this service FIVE ballpoint pens!

A review of a new minyan in Austin–and how a Christian gospel tune wound up there

I have previously written about this tune’s use by Jews here.

The review of Minyan Kol Zimra at Congregation Agudas Achim is toward the bottom. I begin this post with some history about the bizarre liturgical wanderings of this song:

I first heard “Lord Prepare Me” at Kutz, the Reform movement’s high school-only summer camp, in the summer of 2006. A girl’s cabin was leading services and they sang this song to begin services:

Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary / Pure and holy, tried and true / With thanksgiving, I’ll be a living sanctuary for you / etc.

After that, I heard it multiple times in Reform youth settings. I have heard it sung in English, sung as a nigun and I’ve heard it used as a tune for Hinei Mah Tov–and as combinations of all of the above. I’ve also heard a version where the line “V’asu li Mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham (Build me a Temple so I can dwell among you)” is used as the lyrics.

Recently, I started hearing it in the indie minyan world. According to notes in the margin of my Koren Talpiot Siddur, I heard it on Nov. 19 at Kol Zimrah on the UWS of NYC. It was used as a tune for Mi Chamochah. A quick survey of two people sitting with me found that neither of them knew the origin of the tune. A bigger survey at dinner revealed that no one I asked about it knew where the tune was from.

I’m also pretty sure I’ve heard it in some other indie minyan setting, but I can’t recall where.

This week, my dad and I went to check out Minyan Kol Zimra (no relation), a new chapel minyan at our local Conservative shul, Congregation Agudas Achim. Rachel Kobrin, their young new assistant rabbi, started the monthly minyan a while ago (meaning she’s been there a year, I became aware of the minyan this summer, but I have no idea when it started). She bills it as a musical, community-led minyan. Clearly, she’s trying to replicate the feeling of an indie minyan.

To some extent, it works. To some extent, it doesn’t. She tried to get people to get up and dance with her twice, with very limited success. She said at one point that people often shout out a new tune or nigun and the leader will adjust to follow the spontaneous change. Yet, I observed that on the couple of occasions that this happened, it was just Kobrin starting up with something and leader following suit.

One of the nigunim that she lead (and there were many) was a nigun of “Lord Prepare Me.” She also used it as the tune for the Musaf Kedushah, which only kind of worked.

Overall, I liked MKZ. It was spirited–mostly. There were a few stumbles where the majority of people–including myself–seemed complete confused as to where we where in the tune or the nusach, which was mostly because tunes from anywhere and everywhere in the Carlebach-indie-etc-whatever repertoire were being applied to pieces of liturgy they weren’t necessarily made to fit. But that was fine.

The level of chaos was off the charts. My dad and I love chaos in a service, especially in Shabbat morning, but even we were surprised by the level of chaos achieved by this group. Which isn’t a criticism. We loved that aspect of it. And the group was as warm and welcoming as a high level of chaos usually indicate.

I have one major criticism: The service began with Shacharit. We skipped right over Morning Blessings and Pesukei Dezimrah and went right to Nishmat. From there on out, it was a full Conservative service–though we did use the “Heiche Kedushah” business where you don’t do a repetition of the Amidah or Musaf. You might think that excluding the whole beginning of the service and the Reader’s Repetitions, only doing Shacharit, Amidah, Torah Service and Musaf would shorten the service. Yet, MKY managed to drag the service out from 9:40 or so all the way until noon! This is probably because of excessive niguning and the terrific chaos.

EDITED 12/21/10 around noon: Apparently, for the first nine months of Minyan Kol Zimra, they did Pesukei Dezimra. It was a new experiment this week to replace is with some niguning.

I give Minyan Kol Zimra at Congregation Agudas Achim three ballpoint pens.

Shir Chadash–a new egal minyan in Crown Heights

Crossposted to Jewschool. More liturgical minutiae from the first meeting of Shir Chadash here.

We were planning on heading out to the Kane Street Synagogue on Friday night, but a last-minute email from Jewschooler Kung Fu Jew had us heading out into unfamiliar territory–Crown Heights–for the first ever meeting of Shir Chadash, a new egal minyan. I called KFJ to ask for details. He didn’t have many. He didn’t know if musical instruments would be allowed. (He didn’t even know if my ballpoint would be allowed–luckily, no one seemed to mind.)

For future reference, my answer to the question, “Do you want to go to the first meeting of a new egal minyan?” is always yes.

A perfect storm of Jewschoolers, former leaders of Kol Zimrah and some former leaders of at least one DC minyan are now living way the hell out on the far reaches of the 2 and the 3. For a long time, folks have been talking about starting a new traditional egalitarian minyan for the area.

Finally, last week, after a lot of talk, one guy–Brian Immerman, a fourth-year Reform rabbinical student and a former teacher of mine–decided to just go for it. He e-mailed some people and by the middle of Lecha Dodi, about 20 Jews were in his living room to daven.

My notes on the first meeting of Shir Chadash:

Let’s do Stage 3 in the morning; P’sukei D’zimrah; Etc.

Crossposted to Jewschool

Fellow Jewschooler BZ over at Mah Rabu has put up the long-awaited Part VIII of his Hilchot Pluralism series. HP is a series of case studies in what BZ calls Stage 3 Jewish pluralism. In Part VIII, he covers a novel solution to the issue of one and two-day yom tov observances. Tikkun Leil Shabbat, a DC group, celebrated Simchat Torah this year in such a way that people who believed it to be chag and people who believed it to be a weekday could participate equally within their own frameworks. It’s fascinating. You should read Hilchot Pluralism.

All of this had me re-reading all of HP. Re-reading it, combined with my slightly unsatisfactory recent experiences in a couple of different New York City prayer communities had me giving serious consideration to a big new project. I’ve also been thinking about less than a year from now when my NJ chavurah is not going to be an option for me every week. (And yes, Larry, I’ve also been thinking about your admonishments about creating vs. criticizing).

HP paints such a perfect picture for me. The only place I’ve ever been (not that I don’t know of others) that lives up to BZ’s vision of Stage 3 pluralism is Kol Zimrah. KZ meets once a month and only on Friday nights. But I want what is on offer at KZ every Friday night. And then I want it again in the morning. And I want it in a daily minyan. And I want it on holidays. This is a tall order.

So this week, I began starting to think toward creating one more element of this.

For some, like me, what draws them to KZ is the pluralism. I like the singing, but I like the ideas more. However, most of the people who come are probably more drawn in by the singing and spirited atmosphere. The spirited singing is thanks to two liturgical developments. First, we can thank some Medieval Kabbalists for giving us Kabbalat Shabbat. And second, we can thank Shlomo Carelbach for giving us some great tunes to make Kabbalat Shabbat a fun, engaging prayer experience. In essence, KZ without a Carelbach Kabbalat Shabbat would be a shell of itself.

So maybe what we need to create is the same kind of big singing, big fun prayer experience on Shabbat morning.

Luckily, much like Kabbalat Shabbat, we have hefty section of psalms to sing in the morning too! P’sukei D’zimrah usually gets shafted in shul. Most people don’t even show up until its over. It’s also long, so if we actually sang all of it, we wouldn’t be done with services until it’s time for Minchah.

We’ve got tunes for all of these psalms, but some may not work for the kind of spirited experience I’m talking about here. Especially if Carlebach (or Carlebach-esque) music is what is needed, we’re in trouble. For Psalm 150 and for 92 and a few others, we’ve got no problem.

But for some pslams, this will take some work. I chatted with Russ, our chazan (OK, our JTS student chazan, but he’s our chazan) at Chavurat Lamdeinu here in Jersey, about it this morning. I’m a bit melodically-challenged sometimes, so the obvious hadn’t occurred to me. Russ pointed out that Carlebach (and others) have a gazillion nigunim out there that could be laid on top of some of these psalms. This will take some work, but it’s doable.

Of course, as others have pointed out to me as I’ve rambled about this idea off and on this week, there are also some significant practical challenges here. Getting a minyan together on a Shabbat morning is harder than on a Shabbat evening because you need a Torah. You also need people to read Torah. This stuff is infinitely surmountable, but it’s there nonetheless.

The biggest challenge would be time. At its fullest, by my count, P’sukei D’zimrah includes 16 full psalms, the entire Song of the Sea, two prayers and a whole host of ancillary biblical passages. This is a more than twice as much material as Kabbalat Shabbat, which only has 8 psalms and a few extra piyutim/songs (usually between one and three songs, though it depends on who you talk to).

So there would probably need to be cuts. Personally, I’d probably start with the ancillary biblical passages, but I wouldn’t want to make these decisions alone anyway.

There would also have to be some discussion of how to do the rest of the service, with very careful attention paid to the requirements of Stage 3.  Issues like the number of aliyot and the triennial cycle would certainly be up for discussion. Other parts of the service would need discussion too, such as the Amidah, where a Heiche Kedushah (leader does Amidah aloud through the Kedushah, everyone continues silently on their own, no leader’s repetition after) would probably merit discussion. And Birkot Hashacar etc, despite being a favorite of mine, would probably be right out because that can all be done at home before arriving or individually by people who arrive early.

That’s about as far as my thinking on this has taken me so far. Thoughts, anyone? Who’s with me?

Trip to Kol Zimrah; ambitious mistakes made

I’ve previously written about Kol Zimrah here.

As has become my custom during this, my junior year, I spent a good deal of the beginning of Shabbat on trains getting to and from Kol Zimrah on the Upper West Side. KZ meets on Friday night once a month and it’s a nice breather from school. There’s singing, good davening, good people (including many blog-y or internet-y friends and many Limmud NY friends) and a generally pretty good pot luck after.

Miscellaneous observations from this month’s KZ:

Finally got to meet Ben Sales, editor of New Voices Magazine. I’ve been running New Voices’ twitter account for a couple of months now and I’ll be at NVM’s National Jewish Student Journalism Conference next month attending sessions and speaking in one about balancing coverage of local and national/international news in student media. If you’re a Jewish student journalist, whether you’re journalisting about Jewish news/content or not, you should think about registering. Just about every time I go to KZ, I end up meeting someone in the meatspace who I know here, on the internet or on a blog.

Speaking of people like that, internet friend-turned real life friend Aharon Varady, creator of the Open Siddur Project was there. We chatted about Judaism (or potential lack thereof) in fantasy, Harry Potter in particular.

Positive, independent self-definition: Something I can’t do at the moment.

Blogger’s note: The following post is only half of a real thought. I haven’t thought of/found the other half yet.

Required reading: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out and Reformim at the Conservative shul

In my junior year of high school (I’m estimating here), I think I can safely say that I was at my most entrenched position in the Reform Movement. I was on the board of trustees of a URJ synagogue, I was the president of a NFTY youth group, I was about to spend a second summer at Kutz,  I went to one of the RAC‘s L’taken seminars and I went to the URJ Biennial. I was really into this stuff.

And back then, one of my Reform obsessions was using positive statement to define Reform practice. I heard a lot of, “Reform Jews don’t do X” or “Reform Jews don’t believe Y.” And I was on a little crusade to come us with positive statements like, “Reform Jews do A” and “Reform Jews believe B.” The merit of such a crusade within the Reform sphere is a discussion for another time–though I won’t be surprised of the comments on this post get into that discussion anyway!

I find myself in the midst of two similar lines of thought now, one very different from the one I remember from high school and one only subtly so.

1. The one that’s only subtly different–Non-URJ Reform

Reform Jews began life (I’m talking 19th century Germany) by defining how they were not like other Jews, hence the negative statements of identity I discussed above. As time went on, we were able to move away from that and begin to define ourselves positively and independently, by what we do, rather than by what we reject. I think I’m facing that entire struggle all over again on a personal level. If, as I announced in this recent post, I am a Reform Jew, but not a URJ Jew, I am forced to go back to the beginning of the entire Reform endeavor. I must now begin again by defining myself in opposition to the URJ, through negative statements and must work my way up to the kind of ideological and intellectual self-sufficiency that will allow me two begin again the project of positive, independent identity statements.

2. The one that’s very different–Indie Minyans

I’m spending a lot of my time these days not only places that aren’t affiliated with the URJ, but in places that aren’t affiliated all. I’m talking about the organization I work for and I’m talking about places I pray, places like Chavurat Lamdeinu, Kol Zimrah and Kehilat Hadar. One of my problems in all of these places, as someone who is a little obsessed with ideology and intellectual honesty, is that I have trouble identifying the ideology. In many cases, there probably isn’t one, which I guess is okay, but it still troubles me. And in trying to articulate why I go to these places, I find myself relying on negative statements about traditionally-structured synagogues.

As Larry Kaufman pointed out in the comments on this post, “Half the fun of going to indy minyans is thumbing your nose at the shul you walk past on the way.” I recently met someone at a party who made me want to tear my hair about because this was essentially the level discourse that she achieved in explaining her love for indie minyans to me. Maybe it angers my because it hits close to home and I have some fun with thumbing my nose too. But that bothers me a lot and that’s a type of fun I want to get away from.

Whew. Moadim l’simcha.