I was a first-timer at Songleader Boot Camp--here's my 1st Facebook post about it

February 13, 2021

I'm a first-timer at

Songleader Boot Camp (SLBC Group)

, @#slbc21. What a wonderful experience! The music during the Tefillah and Shira Kallah was beautiful, and the leaders,

Eliana Light

and Rabbi

Josh Warshawsky

, were fantastic!

My take-away is that I'm not good at take-aways--I'm not a particularly organized person. Having an actual plan for a service? Who, me? Well, apparently, I'm going to have to get much better at planning services in advance rather than making choices at the last minute or during the service. Today, in honor of Rosh Chodesh, I chose to lead Adon Olam to the, er, *a* tune for Yevarech et Beit Yisrael (from Hallel) about 3 minutes before we sang it this morning. I didn't even have time to figure out that I had two lines more music than words, and had to do the last two lines of music "instant-niggun" style on the spot--la la la, with lots of clapping. I'm going to have to do better than that, if I want to serve my synagogue better as a baalat tefillah.

I found myself in some interesting situations at SLBC. Apparently, I wasn't supposed to default to my beloved Israeli folk dancing when some great music was played as a lead-in to a service. I haven't made it a practice to use movement as a spiritual practice, so I'll need a lot more practice. Also, reminder to self: If you can't figure out which break-out room to join, just stay in the main room--just because you're a baalat tefillah doesn't mean that you should be the only layperson in a Clergy break-out room. (Pick your preferred term: eavesdropper, "space invader" . . . )

Speaking of interesting situations, being on Zoom did dictate one of my choices. I've been known to say that the most difficult thing about leading almost any singing (whether it's Ashrei, Musaf, Birkat HaMazon, zemirot, or secular songs) is singing lead. I've been improvising vocal harmony since I was about 11, partly because singing harmony comes almost as naturally to me as breathing and partly because my voice is low enough and my vocal range limited enough that singing harmony is often the only way that I can sing with other people. If I'd been present in body rather than on screen, I would never have volunteered to lead a verse of Ein Adir at the Zemirot session after Erev Shabbat services, knowing that the key was too high for me--I would simply have sung harmony the whole time. It didn't matter on Zoom, though, because I wasn't really leading, anyway, since everyone who wasn't "leading" was on mute, and I knew that whoever sang the next verse would simply revert to the original key. (On second thought, maybe I should rethink the "not really leading" part--otherwise, what am I doing on Zoom every Shabbat morning?)

I will probably eventually blog (and link to Facebook) about something I heard at least a couple of times in SLBC break-out rooms and also prior to SLBC--so many "pulpit" clergy, congregants, and synagogue volunteers have commented that most of the congregants are close to my age (72). Where are the younger people? Where are the families? Where are the children? What is the future of synagogues? Will our temples go the way of our Temple?

I'm looking forward to further fun and learning as the main SLBC conference begins tomorrow.

 

 

For the benefit of my blog readers who are not on Facebook, here are some "missing" links:  :)

 

~Eliana Light's website

 

~Rabbi Josh Warshawsky's website