Leading Services: The Post-Shabbat Wrap Up

This past Saturday I lead my temple’s Torah study and informal Shabbat service. While I have the opportunity throughout the year to lead Torah study or read Torah, it is rare that I get the chance to lead Saturday morning, so I was pretty happy to do it. I posted over at JBC.org last week what I think is a decent guide for lay people who are getting ready to lead services for the first time. It would have been great if I could have followed all of my own suggestions, but I think overall things went okay. It was a small group made up of people I know and am friends with, but my nerves eventually took over mid-Torah service as I stumbled through a couple of words. As I have taken a few days to process the experience, here is where I stand:

• No matter how much I prepare a Torah portion I still get so overwhelmed by the actual act of read from the Torah that I do tend to stumble through words that I know. It really doesn’t have anything to do with nerves, per se, but rather I feel so emotionally connected to what I am doing that it overwhelms me. I’m not sure if this is something I want to go away, I just need to be able to pull myself back together to finish the service. Case in point: I forgot how to begin the melody for the after Haftarah blessing, something I know very well.

• A prepared sheet of Torah commentaries surrounding a specific topic in the portion can work better than a sheet with a range of topics. There was a lot I could have focused on in last week’s portion (Matot), but I really wanted to talk about the idea of vows and how words and language have power. Partially because that was the most compelling section for me, and partly because I wanted to avoid bringing up sexual activity (which would have been inevitable with the discussion of really why the Midianites were punished) because one of those in attendance was a soon-to-be 5th grader. It also helped me focus the discussion a little more. If I know going in that there is a lot that we can touch on I’m going to want to actually cover everything; allowing myself the focus of a few different ideas I think let the group really discuss in depth.

• I did decide to not chant the V’ahavta because I wanted to give the 5th-grader mentioned above a chance to follow along in the Hebrew. I tried to slow down the spoken prayers enough for her; as my former Hebrew student I know she has good reading skills so I wanted to give her a chance to test those out.

• A couple of technical things related to my particular temple building: I need to ask how to turn down (or off) the air conditioning in the library where we hold Torah study. It got so cold in there that halfway through we took our chairs out in front of the temple and finished our discussion there. I also need to leave plenty of time for copying the study sheet as the copier will inevitably give me fits. Luckily I did that this past week and had time to unclog the jam that didn’t want to unclog.

• In general I think everything flowed well. Having the post-its throughout my siddur helped me to keep moving without needing to pause and think about what is going on next. I had decided (in my head) on a few melodies before hand, but apparently in the heat of the moment I had something else in mind when it came to the actual singing. Oh, well. It all worked out. For the most part people sang along with me, which is good since I don’t have a particularly good voice and can’t always stay on key when I’m the loudest one. I’m really good at following someone else’s lead, though. Maybe next time I’ll make sure I have someone a little more musical along for the ride.

All in all it was a good experience. I enjoyed getting the chance to lead my community (or at least a small part of it) in prayer and I like the preparation that I had to put into it. It has, however, brought up the idea I've kicked around before about how the person who is leading prayers is able to truly pray themselves while at the same time pay attention to what is going on around them and to the needs of others. That is something for a future post, however.