Rosh Hashanah

I have now officially led Rosh Hashanah services! It went really well, I think - or at least people seemed happy. When I arrived on Tuesday I checked into the motel, had dinner with the president of the congregation and his wife, and then we went over to the Center. It's a house, a little run-down on the outside but absolutely beautiful on the inside, with Judaica everywhere, chairs set up in the living room and the ark in an adjoining room. There are two classrooms, a bathroom, and kitchen, very homey overall.

I had done a lot of prep for what to actually read from the prayerbook, but as the both services wore on I found that I was a bit short in time, so I improvised some extra readings to make the services last until they were supposed to (about an hour for Erev RH, an hour and a half for RH day). I still have lots of bugs to work out, like the Torah service choreography, and I forgot to tell people to sit down a couple of times (oops!). But everyone was very nice, completely welcoming, and as non-intimidating as you could get. There were about 20 people there at night, and 10 people exactly in the day, and for Tashlich at the lake.

Rolling the Torah by myself was hard, as it was in Deuteronomy and I needed it to be in Genesis - but I managed. My sermons went over well, and my shofar-blowing was actually a little better than I had expected. I was especially happy with my new suit, bought last week, for a grand total of $22! I love consignment stores.

As far as getting there and back, the drive was beautiful. Four and a half hours on a 4-lane highway through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. I only got lost at the end, amongst the cornfields, and at one point I even had to stop on the gravel road, lest I run over the family of deer in my way! I wish I had brought my camera. Jonathan's going to come with me for Yom Kippur, and we'll take pictures of the scenery then.

When I got home we celebrated in style, with Haagen Daaz. Yesterday, for Shabbat, we had four people over and watched this awful, historically inaccurate, gory movie (300, about the battle of Thermopylae – you can tell it was Jonathan’s turn to pick!). But the conversation afterwards about what makes “democracy” was highly stimulating, and one can never go wrong with good desserts. The only bad thing was that Jonathan had to be part of a conference call at work at 11pm, for a computer update thing that they do in low volume times. He was up til 4am, I passed out at about 3.

Now it’s off to clean up a little and start thinking about Yom Kippur!

Me in front of the ark. I read from the yellow Torah (it was smaller and I could lift it better). I wore Zadie's tallit from Romania (Zadie is Yiddish for grandfather, my father's father), Jonathan's tallit clip, and a beaded kippah that a friend made, courtesy of my mother. So everyone from all sides of my family was with me in spirit. :)