Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Yom Kippur: A requiem

This post will be full of relatively quick bullet points

-There is nothing that tastes better than that first sip of water after 26 hours of fasting. I could go longer, but who wants to?

-I feel like Ariel in "The Little Mermaid", my voice was not present when I needed it. Shacharit went pretty well except for the fact that I couldn't shout, even though I was as virtuoso as usual. I masked this fact by singing quieter and in lower, more subdued ending notes, with the pretense that Yom Kippur is "darker" and more severe than Rosh Hashannah in attitude (For example, Yaaleh V'Yavo, which I do in major on Rosh Hashannah, I did in minor today).

-All-in-all it went pretty well, though I did screw up at one point when I wasn't looking in my Machzor and skipped a line in Tzur Yisrael of all places (I scrambled to fix the mistake)

-Further with the voice thing, the Ritual Director, Yossi, had me do the Chassidic Kaddish once again at his Neilah. Let me first explain that there are thousands of people at two different Neilah services. It's pandamoneum in there and they don't do everything because the choir is in there. In the small Winer Chapel, however, they have ~200 people doing a gantze Neilah and Maariv which I felt was considerably more "East Coast Traditional" than the Sanctuary or Secondary Service. I should mention that there were not enough seats in this small room. It didn't matter anyway; we were standing for an hour.

-I dislike these new Machzors they use at VBS. I have to inconveniently call other pages in order to follow my melodies, sometimes many hundreds of pages at a time. Just annoyed.

-How bout dem bums? The Dodgers are going to the playoffs and are gonna face the Mets! I also heard this Dodgers Song from 1962 which I really enjoyed. Here is the chatima (sorry, still in YK mode):
So I say D, I say D-O,
D-O-D-G-E-R-S
The team that's all heart
All heart and all thumbs
They're my Los Angeles
Your Los Angeles
Our Los Angeles
Do you really think we'll really win the pennant?
Bums! Oooo dem bums!

So you see, Dodgerblues.com's' foundations predate Al Gore's invention of the Internet("Do you really think we'll really win the pennant?")

-Going full circle, the break-fast: I made four quiches (e-coli-less spinach) for break-fast. They went pretty quickly. I think that whoever hosts a break-fast is accorded the honor of the High Priest, they made a party for their friends after succeeding in gaining atonement for Israel.

Uh, that's all for now, I think. Next fast is exactly one season away, the 10th of Tevet, 3 months away. L'Shana HaBa Bi'rushalayim Habnuya!!!

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