Haven't written very much lately, but I've been busy--with life, and chanting as well. This morning at the minyan I read a short section from the beginning of Mas'ei, all that going forward from place to place. On Shabbat Pinhas I chanted about sacrifices from Pesah through Yom Kippur, mostly all the same except for an extra "and" and inexplicably changed trope now and then. I guess the Masoretes wanted to make sure we didn't fall asleep when reading it for the 5,000th year in a row. I was worried I'd screw up my old friend the Pesah maftir, which became much trickier when paired with similar but slightly different other sections, but everything went well until the end of Rosh Hashahah and I made up a bunch of trope. I ended in the right place, however, so all was well. I'm very glad these hiccups no longer give me heart attacks.
The summer is officially here--98 degrees as I sit in Starbucks typing into Evernote on my iPhone with the ancient, collapsable Bluetooth keyboard that never quite worked years ago with my Treo (it does now, perfectly) and Yo-Yo Ma in my earphones drowning out generic 40s jazz--and it will be short one. The holidays start right after Labor Day, so rehearsals will need to be sometime in August. This logistically annoying earliness is probably why the cantor asked myself and the other hazzanim just last week if we wanted to sing again this year. (Duh.) The subject line of his email was "High Holy Days 5761," leading me to wonder if time travel was among his many talents (since we're about to enter the year 5771). Details, details. The early notice was welcome, even though I've finally stopped angsting (much) about whether I'll be asked back each year.
The email also reminded me that I need to finish writing about last year's High Holy Days, which were lovely but not without drama. I will do that before something else eventful happens that's worth chronicling (donating bone marrow, for example; still on hold.)
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