A foot (or feet!) in the door!

Last Thursday evening the rabbi from B'Vat Ayin called and asked me to be both rabbi and cantor for services THE NEXT NIGHT! "Of course!" I said...then went to work again. Put it together, with melodies I thought they would know, and wrote out the Hebrew for "we continue together" and "please rise" and "please be seated" and "continue in silence" etc. Read the Torah portion for Shabbat Sukkot in Hebrew and English, made some notes in English for a sermon of sorts (my d'vrei Torahs are always short, and sometimes pithy!) Got my stuff together, and went to Rosh HaAyin.

A very small but enthusiastic group finally arrived, and we had a lovely hour together. Everything went smoothly except for "Yedid Nefesh" for which I have learned the Israeli tune and I have heard it in all the services I have attended here. Well almost every service, because I started it, and nobody there knew it!! And it was a singing crowd. So we used the tune I always have used, but things fell apart because in the states we only ever did the first verse--of, like, six! So it fizzled, and we all laughed, and went on. Everything else was nice, and I felt pretty good and again, not particularly nervous.

So gig number 2! Again, once I have the tax stuff worked out, I'll get paid. A HUGE advantage to last minute gigs is that there is no time to worry about it!

And then yesterday Beit Daniel asked me to be the cantor on October 12. I meet with the senior rabbi on Sunday to plan the service.

Throughout the year it took me to get here, I kept saying that I thought there is a place for me here, in Israel, to show the people that there is another way to be Jewish, that there is an alternative to "Orthodox or nothing." But the voice in my head invariably said, "oh, you are SO full of s--t!"

Now I think that voice was wrong. (Hooray!!)