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I’ve updated the chart linked from my previous post to include an English translation. Thought that might help some people.

I will be singing next week at one of the communal commemorations for the Holocaust next Wednesday night. At first I was going to only be singing with the Sydney Jewish Choral Society (my usual Wednesday night entertainment), but they invited me also to sing El Male Rachamim (the memorial prayer) alone.

Not only do I have to work out the tune, but there seem to be a variety of texts for the purpose. This chart compares a few samples. Any bits people particularly like or don’t like??

• Is God a dweller on high, or a father to orphans?
• Should God procure space upon or under the wings of His presence?
• Do we mourn “6 million Jews”, or “our brothers, Children of Israel”, or “multitudes of thousands of Israel”, or the “holy and pure”?
• Do we specify “men, women and children”?
• Do we state that their death was “in the sanctification of God’s Name”?
• What different means of death should we list?
• Do we name the holocaust, or list the camps, or mention Germans, or Nazis, or that their name should be erased?
• Do we give attribution to our prayer for them, or to our charity on their behalf?
• Do we mention that among them were the righteous and learned?
• And why is יום pluralised irregularly as ימין when it follows the word קץ?

By the end of a week (now two weeks ago) of eating in fairly cold and mildly damp poorly-covered huts; of such fascinating and inebriating events as the Ghetto Shul’s sukkah, sushi and sake night and Westmount Chabad’s very Chabad-like sukkot party with clown, sausage sizzle, popcorn and fairy floss (cotton candy / candy floss / grandma’s hair); of not going to an Avraham Fried concert due to lack of interest and excess of work… by the end of that week, Arié had convinced me to come with him on a bit of a journey on Saturday night: Simchat Torah. (more…)

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. (more…)