Fuzzy Monster
Oct. 30th, 2004 04:08 pmYesterday after I took a shower I tried just blow-drying my hair without putting any stuff in it. Bad idea. My hair ended up looking like it was about to jump off my head and devour someone.
That's not the worst thing that happened to me this weekend - the Mage game was cancelled, and so was my appointment with Martine to watch Mansfield Park. So, without any proper organized recreation to vent out my impulse for fun, I have been rather lethargic.
At least I got something done. In April, when my little brother becomes a Bar Mitzvah, I am going to read three lines of Torah at the service. It will be my maternal grandparents' aliyah, which means they will say the blessing and I am in effect reading for them. Dad found a Navigating the Bible site that has line-by-line recordings of all the readings, so I downloaded the files for my three lines. I also have a photocopied page of my reading (in Hebrew). I listen to the recording and follow the text and, going by a few words at a time, try to get the pronunciation and chanting right, or as near right as I can get it. My new digital recorder is helpful for this. I've reserved a file folder on it for my reading. I make very short recordings of myself singing two or three words, then use "continuous playback" to hear them all in sequence - a little choppy, but not that bad. So far I've got about half of the first line in there. My plan is to record a little more each day, and then it will be a matter of remembering all the segments and stringing them together. after two days I can already chant half of the first line:
Veem-tachteha ta'amod habahereyt lo-fasta v'or v'heev chayha...
My reading - Leviticus chapter 13, lines 28-30 - is about rules concerning leprosy. Joy oh joy. When I became a Bat Mitzvah, my reading was about premarital sex. If a supposed virgin didn't bleed on her wedding night and her husband could prove she had had sex before marriage, she got stoned to death. If she (or, rather, her family) could prove that she had in fact been a virgin, the husband had to pay her father with a substantial amount of silver. Real equitable, that.
I've just noticed that my reading seems to cross over from the fourth to the fifth "official" reading. This is probably because the site documents all the readings according to an annual cycle, and my synagogue uses a triennial cycle, which means we read one-third of each book of the Torah for three years (for instance, the first year we read the first third of Genesis, then around the same time next year the second third, and then the last third). Also, we abridge parts of the readings.
I almost forgot, the Rhoads Halloween Party is tonight (Rhoads is a dorm here, as you may have guessed). It's not my kind of party, but at least I'll have an excuse to wear a costume and eat junk food, always a good thing.