Tuesday, July 05, 2005

114. Recruits

(Resuming the story.)

Six of us had been recruited to help lead. There was a guy I knew from around the bonfire at retreats who could sing any pop song ever written; a girl about to start her freshman year at Yale and who, incredibly, had led part of last year's services; the principal of a Hebrew day school, an early civil rights activist who marched with Heschel and King; a young rabbi, the administrator of a Jewish educational program; a social worker, wife of another rabbi, with a newborn son; my Torah chanting teacher, who had sung Kol Nidre for the past fifteen years; and myself, a graphic designer with serious stage fright who knew the alto parts of a hundred choral masses but not very much when it came to praying on Yom Kippur.

Along with one cantor, four rabbis, a dozen instrumentalists, and a few score Torah readers and darshanim, and at a synagogue, a church, and a theater, we would help make the sounds to accompany 4,000 congregants as they stepped into next year.

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