What I Did (am doing?!) On My Summer "Vacation"

In the course of my rabbinical studies I have already been gifted with amazing opportunities and experiences. This summer as I study in Jerusalem at the Steinsaltz Yeshiva, however, one of the most intense of these experiences has arisen -- I was invited to sing with the choir at the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem for Selichot and the High Holy Days.

Well, streaming vids are worth several terabytes worth of words, so I am posting a link to a video here -- sorry, I cannot imbed it and the site is all Hebrew -- that might help shed a little light on the nature of the experience.

Several groups filmed Selichot this year at the Great Synagogue -- the sound is not great but certainly gives a little idea as to the nature of the music. For those of you that are not Jewish, and maybe even for some that are, this might be a bit of an alien experience. This video is 25 edited minutes from a 3 hour service that lasted until 1 in the morning (and unfortunately does not contain the early part of the service with the best choir music.) The music is about 50% improvised, with the truly brilliant choir director (and composer and/or arranger of much of the music) Elli Jaffe listening to the prayer improvisations on the Cantor and then giving pitch cues to the choir as to how to accompany him. From the vantage of this video, you can easily hear some of the more simple cues that were given. As a choir member, this means that the level of focus that must be maintained is quite high -- even within the written pieces there is a huge amount of improvisation.

Hopefully I'll write more about the choir as the High Holy Days progress. In the meantime, enjoy. For those looking, you can find me to the right of the tall balding bass in the foreground to the right of the conductor -- my black kippah contrasts something fierce with my gray hair -- and yes I am one of those men singing the very low notes.

Shana Tova to all.