Chant Fight the Feelin'

Welcome to the blog! I'm happy you're here. 

Let's talk about my why.

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Younger me cannot believe I get to do so much cool Torah stuff for a living! 

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At the beginning of my bat mitzvah prep at my orthodox synagogue in 1999, my mother and I met with our rabbi for my first lesson. The rest of the lessons I had on my own. But in that first meeting, he reviewed everything I'd be doing at my bat mitzvah: a dvar Torah (English sermon related to the story of the week), and a couple of spoken prayers. I was absolutely forbidden to sing. Now only that, I could only do any of it from the "women's section", because the bima (synagogue stage) was in the "men's section", from which I had been barred around age 11 (an angry older gentleman yelled at me to leave the men's section because I was too old, even though I had, until then, absolutely adored sitting with my father at synagogue). Synagogue became suddenly quite soured by this man on that particular day and for the rest of my time at my childhood synagogue. 

But that's a story for another post!

My mother asked the rabbi, "so, if she wanted to learn how to chant Torah, even if she isn't going to do it on the day-of, I mean, it'd be a great skill right? Who knows where she’ll go in life. All of her brothers got to learn, she should get the chance too, right?" She was trying to get his support in encouraging me to learn how to leyn (Yiddish word for 'read' and used colloquially to refer to Torah chanting).

His answer, "well, the first step would be not to tell me about it". Bam. Shut down. He continued, “no, no I can’t recommend that and I won’t.” I watched my mother’s face and shoulders collapse a little, like the runner-up kid at the spelling bee just having been told they misspelled the crucial word.

“Oh….okay.” Slight pause, and then the rabbi resumed his shpiel about the rest. 

And that was it. His response left such an icky taste in both my mouth and my mother's! I had an instant reaction to not care at all about my bat mitzvah. The stakes seemed so low. Oh, I can write and say some boring words and read a couple of prayers from the women’s section. *Yay* (think: the genie from Aladdin waving a tiny little toothpick sized “J” flag saying “Jafar, Jafar, he’s our man…”)

I didn’t realize at the time, but in hindsight, it’s the truth. I disengaged from caring about any of it for a very long time. I did what I had to do for my bat mitzvah, and then lost interest.

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As an adult, I was blessed with random, roundabout opportunities to learn things here and there. And now, for the past 6+ years, I have found myself in that rabbi's same position, holding so much influence over the next generation's experience of their first big, serious, adult, difficult encounter with Judaism. And it's FUNDAMENTAL to me that I give them something else. Something to strive for. Something exciting. Something with a net-positive impact on their lives.

Not only do I want to give a new generation of b mitzvah kids something else, but I want to take every single woman of any gender, any person who had a similarly gnarling experience with their rabbi or cantor at b mitzvah age, or who’s never been given the chance at all, or who has converted to Judaism as an adult, to try a different way. I want to open the doors! I want to give those folks the tools, knowledge and encouragement they need to walk through those doors and finally feel ready, comfy, and confident to step onto a bima and chant Torah. 

This is my why. 

I make it fun. I make it interesting. I sprinkle in some of that Sabrina Magic ©️

I see it as my mission to give all my students of all ages a polar opposite experience from what I had. 

Join me?