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Showing posts from October, 2014

Yom Kippur 5755: Sweating the small stuff.

(Yes, I know - that's a picture of a fortune cookie. Let it go.) There's an expression "Don't sweat the small stuff; and it's all small stuff." What concerns me this Yom Kippur? The small stuff because so much of the next 30'ish hours is "small" stuff. One of my cantor colleagues wrote about his focus not on the Kol Nidrei prayer but rather on the prayer that precedes it (bishivah shel malah) - the intense awe it inspires in him with the idea of praying with an entire congregation of sinners. My concern this year is this: I am fully prepared spiritually and vocally for the BIG pieces of music the next 30 hours will present.  Kol Nidrei, Ya'aleh, Tavo l'fanecha, the Kaddish Shaleim that almost concludes Ne'ilah - these are vocally demanding, vocally and textually dramatic hefty pieces of music (and, in the case of the Kaddish Shaleim, a bit of fun and release). I am very concerned about the "smaller" prayers, the da