alexist

I just got back from services (actually woke up and went today).

1) The rabbi read the prayer for the Royal Family in English today. Normally I mostly ignore it because it's only in Singer's (the official United Synagogue prayerbook) and I use Artscroll because I'm used to it. (though I heard rumors that there may be a US edition in the works, much as they did an RCA edition in the USA with the prayer for the state of Israel and the prayer for the US government in it). But I think I heard him say Camilla... which makes no sense, because Dr Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, said that no changes to include Camilla in the prayer would be made. I'll have to pay more attention next week.

2) Our rabbi needs to attend a continuing-education course on homiletics. His sermons are terrible. He's of the generation where they still trained all rabbis as Torah scholars and didn't include training for communal/synagogue roles. Places like Yeshiva University have now caught up on this, after realizing that one of the things that people liked about non-Orthodox synagogues was that the rabbis were really good at that part of their job.

It's a shame, because it was a good parsha (weekly Torah portion) this week, Kedoshim (Lev. 19-20). It's all thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots, which is often a sign of a boring parsha, but the first half is interesting and important ethical decrees. I know rabbis can get bored of simply doing a dvar Torah about the parsha, but they can be a good idea. He discussed Pesach--why not connect that to the commandment about converts? ("You shall love him like yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt".) I could go on...

(have a look at this week's US Daf Hashavua [Page of the Week] or Rav Riskin's column to get an idea of the sort of thing that gets done on the parsha.)

3) The ladies' gallery was rather warm today. Someone opened the fire exit, but this meant it was very noisy at the end of the service, as the youth groups finished before the main service.