The holidays, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, are a month away now. Like all religious denominations, Jewish congregations are trying to figure out how to safely do services. For most Jews, God sends people to tell you how to be saved from trouble. So we take good advice, like doing services online. There was talk of doing services for the holidays outdoors, but that didn't seem workable. What the board at Tree of Life Morgantown decided was to prerecord the services, then have them on YouTube at the appropriate time. My husband, Joe Hample, is the rabbi at Tree of Life. I have worked as a cantorial soloist (someone who sings at services but doesn't have a formal certification), so they decided to ask me to sing a few things, and chant in Hebrew from Deuteronomy and First Samuel. I've done the chanting before.
Last Sunday, Joe and I dressed for the holiday and went to the temple, where a congregant who works in tech recorded us doing the evening service for Rosh Hashana. I've been busy with my class at OLLI and Morgantown city council and haven't rehearsed much. I didn't have a lot to do at the service, and it went pretty well, although I was exhausted from getting up early after not sleeping well, and being there for four hours.
I was panicked about how all this would go. People tell me I sing well, but when I last worked, seventeen years ago, I did vocal exercises every day. I don't sing as well as I did. The last year I worked, 2003, was the worst year of my life, worse even than 2020. My sister was ill at the beginning of the year, and stuck home. Her son, then eleven, couldn't go out because two people were randomly shooting people in the Washington area, where they lived. My mother had pancreatic cancer. I visited Baltimore, where my mother lived, for her 75th birthday. While there, I suffered a heart attack. My mother died five weeks later.
My goal at the time was to retire from the school district in 2004, and work full-time somewhere as a cantor. I auditioned for a job that came up in August 2003 when a cantor suddenly left his post, and I was hired. My cardiologist had advised me not to do that, but I hadn't yet (maybe still haven't) killed off my closet Type-A personality. I did the job, sixty miles east of Los Angeles, after buying a new car with the first of my inherited money. I have never been so exhausted in my life. It was a hard job anyway, rehearsing with a choir and singing the music left by the former cantor (we sang in the same key, which may be why I was hired). I got along well with the rabbi there, but not so much with the choir and director. They were talking about hiring a full-time soloist in July, maybe me, but I looked around and decided I didn't want to live in that community. They ended up not hiring a cantor anyway. The whole experience was debilitating and depressing.
When Joe and I moved to Morgantown in 2012, there was talk at Tree of Life of using me as a cantor, which I squelched. I felt like I had closed that chapter of my life. Now they want me to do a few things, not beyond possibility, but still a drain on my not abundant energy. Joe has taken on most of the singing, which was too much for him. He's been working like mad to get it together. The people in charge, like those at most congregations, don't realize how hard it is to do the holidays.
I don't typically have panic attacks, but when I started going over the music, I thought about my mother, my own precarious health, and what had happened to my family all those years ago. It wasn't pretty.
I've calmed down now and I've accepted my role, but like most things I'm doing, I keep thinking I won't do it again. I'm still here, well after my "use by" date, my sister is healthy, her son grown up and married. I try to just count my blessings instead of obsessing about the past. Joe and I plan to visit with my sister in Maryland at the end of August, and maybe, as is my custom before the holidays, we'll visit my parents in the cemetery in Baltimore County.
