Well, I did it AGAIN! I slept right through services Saturday morning. Didn’t get up until 11:40! I guess I needed it, but this is a habit I MUST NOT fall into. It would be a tough sell to be a cantor that misses services because he was asleep!
I decided not to go to Ulpan for the one day of review and not to take the test. As I am taking the next session off, I will have to take a placement test when I go back to Ulpan. I hope by then to have a more robust vocabulary through reviewing what I have learned and working with Hebrew-speaking friends.
That leaves me with the cantorial, my entire reason for being in Israel. I had another class yesterday (Monday) at which we reviewed what I have done so far. There is still a little work to do on it, and then we start into the presentational aspects.
At the same time, I am being taught some of the basics of music. We are working on major scales right now and I am being instructed on the keyboard. Some of this is VERY old information for me, as I used to play the accordion but that was some 45 years ago. In addition to this I am working on learning the intervals between all of the notes in order to make learning even faster.
All of this is positive. The faster I can learn the more likely that we will finish in the 1 year timeframe and not have to go another semester.
The High Holy Days are just around the corner. Rosh Hashanah starts tomorrow evening. This morning I went to the Ge’ula area of Jerusalem. This is an extremely orthodox section of town. I was told that the prayer books there were less expensive than where I had been going. I did manage to find the Art Scroll outlet and picked up both the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur books with interlinear translation. The books will do wonderfully for the holidays and the interlinear translations will help me on the cantorial side relative to accenting or subduing certain words or phrases. These books were each 10 Shekels less than where I had been buying as well as other stores in Ge’ula that I looked at.
I was expecting to go to the synagogue just up the street from here, but a friend invited me to go to the settlement where they live for Rosh Hashanah. This is the same settlement I was at for Shabbat right after I first arrived in Israel, and I am looking forward to experiencing my first Rosh Hashanah at such an observant and spiritually enhancing location.
Just in case I do not post again before the Haggim (holidays), I want to wish everyone a very sweet, peaceful, healthy and prosperous New Year, 5771.
L'Shanah Tovah uMetukah
A Happy and Sweet New Year
B'shalom u’vrachah m’Yerushaliam
In peace and blessings from Jerusalem
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