Four Months In

I have now been in Israel for just over 4 months and have fallen into a routine. My normal day consists of getting up, practicing, eating lunch, practicing, eating dinner, practicing, maybe going to see some friends here and then going to bed. This is periodically interspersed with such things as laundry. Friday mornings are set aside to clean for Shabbat. On Shabbat, whether here at the apartment or out at a settlement, the routine is somewhat different: services, eat, sleep, services, eat, nap, eat and services. If I am at the apartment I can also get in some practice (without the keyboard, of course).

If you are thinking that this leaves no time to play tourist, you are correct. The only place I have managed to go to besides the Kotel (Western Wall) is Tel Aviv, and it rained on me there. Perhaps there will be time during the rest of my stay here, but since my purpose in being here is to learn Hazzanut this is only of cursory importance.

On a brighter note: I will be going home for a couple weeks in December and REALLY look forward to seeing my wife and kids. While I talk to my wife on Skype most days and can see her, I truly miss being able to hold her hand or touch her cheek. I am still amazed and in awe of her strength, and am grateful to her for allowing me to pursue this dream.

Last week I mentioned a concern over the speed at which I was getting new pieces and indicated that it would change once my mastery over the intervals between notes improved. I got sick after posting that message and could not practice for a couple days as my throat was too sore. I missed my lesson early in the week because of it.

As it turned out, this was probably a good thing. I was able to get lots of sleep and to take the pressure off of myself to get it done. While I still did the exercises I was given in my head, I did not vocalize them until Tuesday. The result: at my lesson last night (Wednesday) I was able to hit the correct notes and do the exercises vocally with very little effort and virtually error-free. My instructor was extremely pleased and even applauded. Then he told me that now he would give me more complicated things to do.

We went over some of the pieces from the Friday night service, and there was significant improvement there as well. I am going to perform part of the Saturday morning service for him on Monday. That will determine how much new material I get and will also reveal any areas that need more work. I am really looking forward to this as a benchmark of progress. Looking back I find that it took almost 3 months to get the Friday night service to the point where I performed it for him, but I have only been working on Saturday morning for about 3 weeks. Part of the difference may be that I know the words for the Saturday service better and this is a smaller collection of pieces, but I am still encouraged by the rapidity at which I have reached this point.