Chu"l

Hey Boys and Girls -
Sorry for not having posted in ages. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen in shul but it has been a rather boring summer.
The NF is currently in chutz laaretz visiting family. I spent this past Shabbat with my parents in a small mid-western community and davened in thier irritating local yokel shul (not the yekke shul in which I grew up). I was sure that I would come away with some good blog-fodder being that the davening there usually sucks and the baalei kriah don't really know dikduk but alas, I was dissappointed. The NF was asked to daven friday night. Then there was a bar mitzvah Shabbat mornign so a fairly good baal tephilla davened shacharit. I figured with an American bar mitzvah boy leining we would get a few gongs in (especially given that this past week was one of the highly gongabe parshiot) but alas, the bar mitzvah boy didn't lein and instead an Israeli doing his residency at a local hospital leined insraed, nailing every trop and shva nah/nach. Humph. There was nothign to complain about in musaf either. Only slightly amusing story: the gabbai -- originating from the deep South -- doesn't understand a word of Hebrew. Given the large number of guests in for the bar mitzvah (and a shabbat chatan), numerous hosafot were added. The gabbai kept callign each one up as acharon in this heavy Southern drawel. made me crackup. Hey, it was a slow shabbat. Oh and one other thing, after calling up both the bar mitzvah boy and the chatan, the Rabbi led everyone in an awkward, "we are Jewish, this is how we dance" dance around the bimah. Can't these people get lives?

This coming Shabbat we are out on the West coast and should be davening in the weirdest shul in the US (in Venice, CA). I really hope something bizarre happens --- for example, a few years ago a woman came roller blading into shul in the middle of mussaf wearing nothing other than a bikini...it turns out it was the rebbetzin.


the NF