Happy Erev New Year

There's a funny thing that rabbis and cantors are doing at this time of year; we're trying to figure out how to acknowledge the secular year and the other sacred holiday without actually saying it! Honestly it's a little nutty, this pretending that Christmas and January 1st have no significance because, hey, I'm a Jew. So we say things like, "Merry Birthday-of-that-little-Jewish-kid" or "Happy not-really-our-New-Year." As if! As if we are somehow impervious to the holidays that affect vast numbers of people on the planet. This year it's a little different because both Christmas and New Year's Day are on Saturday, so we have a different agenda because it's Shabbat.

It's good. I like having something specific to focus on, so I know what's really important in my life -- and it's not Chinese food and a movie on Christmas eve, or getting smashed at midnight on New Year's eve. I remember one year a long time ago when my synagogue planned a special New Year's Eve Friday night service and an Oneg Shabbat (post-service food and social time) that included champagne -- Israeli kosher champagne, of course.

The point is, whether or not we celebrate in the "standard" secular fashion, whether we join non-Jewish friends to appreciate their holiday or gather with other Jews to celebrate how easy it is to get into our favorite restaurants, we really can't pretend that the secular celebrations and other religious days don't exist. It would be a little like denying gravity. But knowing the difference between respecting other religions and being completely in the thrall of them, ah, that's the point.

What's a "hazzan"?

I remember the first time I really paid attention to the word "hazzan." It was when I decided to enroll in cantorial school. "So," a colleague said, "you're going to be a hazzan! Y'shar kocheich! (congratulations!)" Most people know the word "cantor," but hazzan is different. First, it's in Hebrew, not Latin. Second, the word has implications beyond just "singer." Early  hazzanim were pious people who knew the order of the prayers. Since there were no printed prayerbooks in the 7th century (when we see the first mention of hazzanim), a congregation needed someone with the vision, the hazon, to see what prayer came next. The better the voice, the better the hazzan. The introduction of elaborate liturgical poems called piyyutim, meant that a prayer leader who could improvise a musical rendition was a valued asset to a congregation.

Since my ordination, I've been called "Cantor Lane" but "Hazzan Lane" is my preferred title. As this blog goes on, for as long as it goes on, I'll be writing about the huge range of topics that interest me as a hazzan -- music, prayer, Torah, the meanings of our rituals, the whole range of Jewish spiritual experience. I figure I'll keep posting as long as I remain interested ... and, hopefully, interesting!