In my gushing over Rabbi Ada Zavidov's sermon last week at Kehilat Har-El, I neglected to mention anything musical about the service. The cantor at Har-El is Evan Cohen. He does play guitar, though the service had a very different vibe from the services I'm used to at home and elsewhere. We used many melodies that I am quite familiar with: Debbie's Shalom Aleichem, that Mizmor Shir that I've been singing since first grade and we always do at Valley Ruach (no idea who composed it and Shireinu says "unknown"), the "traditional" Ahavat Olam that I also learned in first grade, if I remember correctly a bit of Carlebach, and the Sufi chant psalm 150 (all of it), among other things. Speaking of which, psalm 150?????????? It was in the siddur before all of the traditional Kabbalat Shabbat psalms, but I have no idea how it got there, as it is traditional morning liturgy. Could this have just been an addition to the siddur to give them something additional to sing (it is a really nice psalm), or is there something I don't know about? Are there any cantors reading this who might have the answer? Also, there was a LOT of Hebrew reading in this service. For example, we sang the first line of psalm 95, L'chu Neranenah, then read the rest in Hebrew, and then the cantor chanted the last couple of lines. Same thing with psalm 96, Shiru L'Adonai. And a lot of other things too. There was not really an emphasis on davening, but more on reading together. But going back to the endings of the psalsms. . . the nusach was completely unfamiliar to me. I learned Kabbalat Shabbat nusach straight from Katchko blue. While I know many different people have written down Kabbalat Shabbat nusach or made up something they didn't write down, and I very well admit to not having delved very deeply into the world of nusach yet, I have looked over or heard a couple other versions of the nusach, and I remember the last three notes as fa mi do (or 4 3 1 depending on how you learned to read) on a major scale, or occasionally so do (or 5 1). I don't remember what this was, but it was not that. Super interesting. When they got into ma'ariv, it sounded a bit more familiar to me. There was still a lot of Hebrew reading, though, which is something I've only seen at home during very specific parts of the service. The emphasis seemed to be on making sure that everyone said every word of text. It was a very communal type of prayer, in a very different way from what I am used to. It does make a lot more sense to do something like that in Israel, where people speak Hebrew natively. Also of note is that they sang pslam 121, Esa Einai, as one of the closing songs, but it was that Israeli pop/hip hop melody. Anyone know what I'm talking about and who wrote it? It added something uniquely Israeli to the service, which was wonderful.
And now we move onto this week. Tonight, I went to Kol Haneshama for services. Very different musically from Har-El. The rabbi definitely sounded American and conducted the service bilingually. He talked a lot about taking a deep breath and thinking about Shabbat, the past week, and the week to come. Very meditative. It makes sense considering the name of this congregation. Neshama, soul, has the same root word as neshima, breath. This congregation has no cantor and no instruments. It does seem to have a very sing-y congregation, though. Or maybe that's just because I was sitting with a bunch of HUC students. Anyway, despite the lack of instrumentation, I was pretty familiar with some of the things they did musically. They definitely used at least one Debbie melody, and also some Carlebach, and nusach that I was more familiar with than I was last week at Har-El. The siddur was very Progressive in the sense that it took a lot of liberties with the text. I even saw "Brucha At" instead of "Baruch Atah"(feminine instead of masculine) there at one point. Pretty cool, but never seen that in a siddur at home. There were times, especially during the Amidah, where I had no idea where some of this text came from. Mostly a few words here and there, but it threw me for a loop. Because I went to Jewish day school as a child and almost never went to Shabbat services at my home synagogue, I grew up praying from siddur Sim Shalom, which is a Conservative siddur, and I'm pretty aware of how that text differs from that of Mishkan Tefilah, and I have never seen some of this before. Based on how it translated, I'm 99% sure it didn't come from a traditional siddur. One of these days, I'll need to sit there and analyze it. Also, there were a lot of random psalms in the siddur after psalm 93, which I'm pretty sure were there in place of where we would put English readings in an American siddur, and we read psalm 15 together. But then we started singing Ilu Finu (the three-part one by Miriam Margles, if you haven't heard that one, definitely Youtube it), which definitely wasn't written down anywhere on the page since it's from Nishmat Kol Chai. But there were also many elements of tradition in this service. For example, there was a lot of space for individual davening. I liked that, since it's something I want to get better at. We also sang Magein Avot, which I don't think I've ever heard at a Reform service before. It's a nice piece of text. They also sang that Israeli pop/hip hop psalm 121. I have a feeling that if I keep attending Israeli Progressive services, it's going to end up becoming something that I will want to find use for in my own service leading one way or another. I enjoyed the service overall. One of my classmates was telling me that once a month they have something which he described as a "Jewish renewal" service. I'll have to check that out too.
I will definitely go back to both of these congregations at some point. There are also many Orthodox congregations that I would like to check out. Stay tuned for more of these posts, and I will also keep posting about my general Jerusalem adventures. Shabbat shalom!
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