JoelNothman.com

I haven’t run out of things to say. I sometimes seem to have run out of time to say them. Or maybe I’ve just found overly effective forms of procrastination. And my life here is less made up of events than of themes and relationships, so is harder to pull apart and capture in neat written entries.

In my second week in Montreal, I received a phonecall. It was Dena, the rebbetzin (Rabbi’s wife) of the Ghetto Shul, giving me the phone number of a man named Mr Brick who was looking for someone to lead services at the Bagg Street shul for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. I had never led services for the high holidays before, but I had led services, and this was something I had hoped to do, in one North American city or another. By this stage, only about two weeks before the New Year, I had thought I wouldn’t find anywhere out of town, and would probably end up at the Ghetto Shul.

Unlike many students who had been here longer, I had actually heard about Bagg Street, or read about it online. It’s one of the few congregations downtown, and the longest-running synagogue in Montreal, having been built in the early 1920s. Much like Sydney’s Newtown Synagogue, it’s a beautiful, recently-restored building situated in an area that no longer has a significant Jewish population. But unlike Newtown Shul, Bagg St hasn’t had a young revival and is weekly frequented by exactly 10 or 11 men (including a Rabbi who runs off to his own congregation after giving a talk on shabbat) and maybe a woman or two.

After giving the shul’s caretaker a call, I visited, and he showed me the highly ornamented synagogue, its historic treasures, and a list of what would be demanded of me if I were to accept my mission: maarivs, shacharits, musafs, neilah, shofar blowing, torah reading.. This was all a worst-case scenario, where someone might be able to fill in to read the torah, or maybe do a shacharit here and there. He decided that although he didn’t need a real chazan (only a baal tefillah), he would rather someone who could actually sing. So we sampled a few notes and he seemed sufficiently pleased.

So, without spending too much time to think about it (about the nearness of the holiday, the amount of preparation, and how much I might rather being at the Ghetto Shul), I signed away my next few weeks of time. I justified it with the shul not having anyone else to lead them, me needing experience, and a little alleviation from the financial burden of 7.5 months of travelling…

I practised a little, mostly at the latest opportunity possible, with the help of a faded memory of some great tunes learnt at Kehillat Moriah in my youth from David Shaw, a few more from Or Chadash / JLC, others from virtualcantor.com and from a couple of CDs (Yisroel Williger) I bought after getting the gig, and a handful warm-up exercises from various choirs.

Rosh Hashana was nice, although a little lonely to be away from most of my friends–still, I did encourage a few to come along. Then again, many were out of town, and even the Ghetto Shul struggled at length to get a minyan (quorum for prayer) at any reasonable hour. It may have been for a lack of physical warm-ups (and only vocal preparaton) or because I was too loud and misusing what voice I had, but I was quite hoarse by the end of the services on Rosh Hashana. Nonetheless, I felt the shofar blasts were all fairly clear even if my voice wasn’t by the end of the day.

A new experience was the traditional sale of aliyot to the torah in an auction before the scrolls were taken out of the ark. It’s maybe not my favourite custom and is questionable in how appropriate it is on the Day of Judgement, but it is a tradition, and was a little amusing to watch the amounts called in English and Yiddish, “second time”, “third time”, “sold!”

The second night of the new year I had off (the shul was unlikely to gather enough people), and I went with a group of friends to Chabad of Westmount, a 30 minute walk west of my home here. It is (maybe surprisingly) a very welcoming congregation and rabbi, and provided us with a perfectly prepared and presented banquet of a dinner. A conversation of mine with the Rabbi (next to whom I ended up sitting went a little like this):

J: Wow. What a meal! Where do you find these people?
R: It’s actually my wife’s cooking
J: I know!
R laughs

It went a little longer, but I think I’ll stop there. Another feature of the night was all the small-to-medium-size children running around serving the courses. At one point I was served a plate of salmon, which I proceeded to pass to my neighbour. I received another place, I passed it to their neighbour. They asked me why I wasn’t eating: “I don’t eat much fish”. And I discussed my unusual fish-eating pickiness with them, when suddenly appear two hands from beside me, which throw down a plate of the fish in front of me. I was left a little resigned and very amused by the appearance of this boy, whose head did not nearly reach my shoulder when sitting, and whose arms had to stretch upwards to place the plate in front of me. It over all was a wonderful night of good (some new) company, great food, nice singing and interesting learning.

My Rosh Hashana lunches were spent at the Ghetto Shul, where a crowd much smaller than the average shabbat were dining as I entered on the first day. (On the second day when I came in, they hadn’t finished services yet and I even jumped in for a quick Birkat Kohanim when I suddenly realised no one else was stepping up to the task.) I have not been particularly impressed by the food served there, and was even a little less so on Rosh Hashana. Oh well.

A place, though, that continues to feed me on such festive occasions is Yosef and Danny’s across the road. Yosef is constantly inviting the Hillel crowd and a handful of others to his table for a delicious and entertaining meal. On the first night of the holiday he had covered the table with “simanim”: various edible omens, ranging from black-eyed beans to fresh dates to beet leaves (fried in a sweet batter) to fish heads. It was a new experience for me to have a Rosh Hashana meal with quite so many of these. And it was quite a lot of fun, but maybe a habit I wont get into doing every year.

Yosef also hosted us on Sunday evening for a meal before our day of fasting. He decided we’d find enough people to get a minyan together for mincha before it. I was holding that minyan up: too busy cramming tunes and printing out sheet music that I’d typed up (while the printer was out of toner) I arrived half an hour late. And after mincha I went back to get a belt, non-leather shoes, some coins, and some socks for people to swing the coins around their heads. The meal was, as usual, wonderful, but running a little late, I left with just enough time to walk to Bagg St with Naomi.

Kol Nidrei started late: they hadn’t properly confirmed that the Rabbi would be speaking first, so when they finally decided he wouldn’t show, it was getting dark. The service itself was not so remarkable. I borrowed a nice tune from virtualcantor for one of the piyyutim (“Yaale…”), and in other tunes whenever I hit or sustained a high note I suddenly noticed heads pop up from the women’s gallery overhead and stare in my direction for a moment, only to recide until another note. I don’t know if they feared the stained-glass windows being broken, but they seemed at least to be impressed and let me know so after the service. I guess chazanim are much more often baritones and basses… Among those coming up to greet me after the service was a former lecturer of mine (I dropped his class after a couple of weeks), who described my (or Mr Nothman’s) presence on the bimah as a nice surprise.

Not wanting a repeat of Rosh Hashana’s hoarseness, I warmed up well on Yom Kippur morning, and kept a much softer, more comfortable volume throughout shacharit. Musaf I put in a little bit more, and it is a lot longer than any other service of the year, so I did come out of it a little worn. But I came out (after 3pm, with Sarah and Naomi) to a sprinkling of rain. I had decided we would go find out what was happening at the Holiday Inn, at which the Ghetto Shul was convening. Maybe someone would be there giving over some insightful words, or maybe I would just be able to get some rest in the comfort of friends. But when Sarah and I got there, it was nearly empty. Nathan did entertain us a little (and taught us a little), but he was one of few remaining. So I got 20 minutes of nap there on the carpeted hotel floor.

Refreshed, I returned through a sunny afternoon to the Bagg Street shul for a 5pm start, and was able to actually sit down during most of mincha (although I purchased an aliyah). By the time we reached neilah, and despite my not being confident with the tune, I had an enormous adrenalin rush, which made it a very powerful finish to the day (again despite my failing to get the tunes right). One of its few detractions (maybe) were that I could see a number of women spent the service looking at me instead of their books… We had started late, so it wasn’t entirely my fault when we brought out Yom Kippur 20 minutes late, and I was quite surprised that no one left for their break-fasts until I blew a long tekia gedola and sang to next year in Jerusalem.

With many congratulations after five hours standing and singing that day, we went down stairs to drink a little grape juice, eat a little cake, and raise our hands to the fluorescent lights to divide between holy and profane. After breaking the fast once, and despite it being quite late, I walked with Naomi, Sarah, Tali and Leah to the Holiday Inn again to see how their fast-breaking was going. Their fast-breaking had gone, along with their fast-breakers. But people were still cleaning up and there were bags of fruit and half-eaten cakes and packets of buscuits lying around for the taking. By this time I was highly fatigued (by loss of adrenalin, or simple exhaustion) and needed to get some books from the library to read before the next day’s Levy class. On the way home we refused a man on a street the money we weren’t carrying, and instead gave him a half-eaten cake. It was a relief to get my books, to shower, to close the gates of my experience, and to begin again ordinary life as an exchange student in Montreal…