Giving People More of a Stake in High Holiday Services
15 Elul, 5768/29 September, 2007
As I prepare for my first High Holidays at Temple Beth Shalom, I wanted to give you a peek into some of the things I am planning for our services. There a few tweeks that I will make to give the services a special feeling. While I am spending a lot of time preparing sermons, I also give a considerable amount of time to plan the order of services, a sort of scripting. It is in this planning that you are able to add d imension and depth to a service. Ultimately the quality of the service will be determined by the ‘lev’-the heart that is felt by those who lead and how all of us participate in the service. Making openings for the heart to find expression is one of the keys to planning.
The High Holiday services are a unique opportunity to build a sense of community as well as to create a space for the individual to express his or her spiritual needs. There are a number of communal prayers that are recited just after the Haftarah-the prophetic reading which provide opportunities to acknowledge people who serve and people who have made significant transitions in their lives. During these prayers I will be asking people to come up on the Bimah to honor them. You might be among them, so now you are duly notified.
Rosh Hashannah First Day
Prayer for New Babies: This communal prayer custom is unique to TBS. We call on all parents and grandparents who celebrated the birth of a new child in their families during the past year.
Prayer for the Congregation: I will invite all new members and those who converted to Judaism during the past year to come up to be honored for their decision to join our community and our people.
Prayer for the Country: I will invite to the Bimah those who serve in our armed forces, veterans, civil servants, and public officials within our congregation who will receive our gratitude for serving our country.
Prayer for Jewish Communities: I will invite members of our congregations who come from Jewish communities outside the United States to acknowledge our diversity as a Jewish community.
Prayer for Israel: I will invite all of you who visited Israel during the past year to affirm our commitment as American Jews to the Jewish homeland.
Yom Kippur Day
Yekum Purkan (Prayer on behalf of Scholars) I will invite to the Bimah our members who have served the Jewish community as educators, professionals, and have taught Torah during the past year to wish them success and to extend honor to them for their efforts.
Prayer for the Congregation: I will invite to the Bimah our Board of Directors and all those who have served on synagogue committees during the past year to acknowledge their service to our community.
Prayer for Peace: I will call to the Bimah our worshippers who have volunteered with organizations to help improve the world. We want to acknowledge social activists in our midst who dedicate their lives to social justice and improving the human condition either as professionals or volunteers.
The Temple Beth Shalom Paginator: Hama’amad- (from the word amud-page)
As a kid I sat behind a wooden scoreboard at little league games and put numbers in the slots to tell the score. When I was a young man I went to a shul that had its own type of scoreboard. A child stood behind it and kept on flipping pages with large numbers on it. I wondered if there was some sort of competition on the Bimah between the cantor and the rabbi. Maybe they were keeping thetime of the service. Upon closer observation I saw that this scoreboard announced the pages so that the Rabbi or Cantor did not have to verbally announce the page and detract from the service. When I became a rabbi I commissioned a woodworker to make this contraption and called it a paginator or the Hebrew term Hama’amad.. I then recruited kids who could follow the service to sit on the Bimah and flip the pages so everyone in the congregation knew where we were in the Siddur.
One of my first official acts as rabbi at TBS was to commission a paginator to be made by Master Paginator Builder, Lyle Margulies, of the Northwest Jewish tribe of Seattle. (He is a member of another Beth Shalom up in Seattle, one of the Beth Shalom franchise shuls that dot our fine country.) He hopes to have it to us by the High Holidays where it will bless our Bimah and will help all of you not to lose your place at services ever again (unless the paginator operater falls asleep or misflips a page which will all cause us to be on the wrong page, God forbid.)
There is a method to my madness about something that seems inconsequential or quaint as a synagogue paginator. It is one of the methods I use to increase participation in our worship. It provides an opportunity for young persons to sit on the Bimah and to engage in the service. It removes anxiety from people who have trouble following Hebrew about where we are in the service. It allows the Rabbi and Cantor to focus on leading the prayers. It makes our service more accessible to newcomers. It may even allow us to keep score. I hope you enjoy our new paginator and that it enhances your worship experience at TBS.
Younger Persons: Become a Flipper or a Greeter Usher by joining the Future Mentches of Israel-FMI
The Future Mentches of Israel-FMI-is the name of our loose organization of young volunteers at Temple Beth Shalom. To join all you need to do is volunteer for the following. Parents and Teenagers: Please sign yourself or your children up by responding to this email or by calling and emailing the office before 9/7/07.
Paginator Flippers
I call upon our children to serve as ‘page flippers’ during High Holiday services. Children need to be available to sit at least one hour on the Bimah. Flippers will sit near the Rabbi who will help them to keep pace with the service and flip the correct pages. I recommend that the starting age for a flipper on the High Holidays be 10 and up or any child that has basic Hebrew reading ability. Even if you don’t, please volunteer. Younger children will be given an opportunity to be flippers on Shabbat. Paginating can be counted as community service for those who go to schools that require community service hours. We will be organizing a regular sign up process for services throughout the year after the holidays.
Young Adults as Greeter-Ushers
Speaking of community service, I call upon teenagers, post Bar Mitzvah and up, to serve as greeter ushers during the High Holiday services. All volunteer greeter ushers may apply this activity toward Junior High and High School community service hours. By ushering you get an automatic membership in FMI.
This invitation also goes out to adults at TBS, who want to enhance our services by making them more welcoming. I will be hosting a dessert and 1 hour orientation meeting on how to be a greeter-usher at the synagogue on Sunday, September 9th at 7:00pm in the Beit Midrash which is a prerequisite for getting community service credit. Please note that anyone who serves as a greeter usher is also fulfilling a mitzvah-hachnasat orchim-welcoming the guest. Jewish hospitality is the congregational theme this coming year.
My wife Robbie and I wish each of you a Shanah Tovah,
This will be posted to Rabbiblog. To see previous entries, please ciick http://rabbidovblog.blogspot.com/
Shalom,
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg
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