Thursday, June 9, 2011

How does one screw up so badly?

The NF hopes that everyone enjoyed Shavuot, זמן מתן תורתנות, or as it known in some circles, the Tisha B'av of the Lactose Intolerant.

Shavuot davening went off without a hitch in the NF's shul. The NF davened maariv, an Israeli with pretty decent nusach (and voice) davened shacharit and J led a flawless Musaf. Walking home from shul, the Logical African saw me and ran across the street. "Oh boy, do I have a story for you" said the Logical African. You see the LA davens in a small shul across the street from the NF's shul....it is mostly made up of Israelis who wouldn't know nusach from their belly button lint but there are a few guys who know what they are doing. Well , apparently the guy who led maariv on the first night of Shavuot was playing with his belly button lint for too long because the said chazzan  got up there and instead of using the traditional  Yom Tuv nusach, started the ay yay yays of the yamim noraim.

Sure the kahal tried to help and get the chazzan back on track but to no avail. The chazzan just kept plowing through using the yamim noraim melody. He even sang all the ay ay yays leading up to each bracha by himself while the kahal sat there uncomfrtablly thinking about cheesecake, blintzes and lasanga.

The NF  knows how hard it is to switch nusach mid-davening. Sometimes the chazan forgets to switch the meolody at yimloch and he just can't get the right melody in his head. On Shabbat Hazon, the haftara keeps going back and forth from the regular trop to eicha and its easy to lose the correct melody. When a chazzan messes these up its unfortunate but forgivable. BUT HOW THE HELL DO YOU START MAARIV ON SHAVUOT WITH THE ROSH HASHANA & YOM KIPPUR MELODY!?!?!?!?!?!?!

The Ofanim, the Chayot Hakodesh, the Malaachim, St. Peter, St Gabriel, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Buddha and everyone else hanging out with Abeshter let out one massive celestial GONG.

1 comment:

Michael Sedley said...

The Chzzan in question is generally pretty good with Nussach, which is why he was asked to Daven.

As soon as he started, he realized that he was wrong, but as you said, once you've with a tune in your head, it's difficult to switch track.

The Britsh Gabbai who deinately does know Nussach from Belly Button lint even stood next to him and tried feeding him the correct tune, but once he had started, he just couldn't get back on track