It has been a very long time since I have read from the Torah for a service. I could be wrong, but it may have been since June 13, 1998. Why do I know this exact date? Because that was the date of my Bar Mitzvah. I don't think that I have read since then.
I've been working a little bit on the portion that I read for the last two or three weeks, but I finally put some serious effort in starting last week. All I can say is that it was a lot of fun to work towards that again. There were a few tricky parts that I needed to try to remember, and from what I have heard, I pretty much nailed it this morning. I know there were a few vowels that I pronounced to short, but aside from that, bam!
But I didn't just need to read/chant today. One skill that HUC-JIR wants us to learn how to do is to translate the Hebrew into English. It is really important to be able to read and translate the text since a many Jews in today's world do not understand Biblical Hebrew. This was actually the part of reading today that I was most worried about. There were some words that I needed to translate as a concept that were not the easiest to convey in a few words of English.
I think that went well too. I'm really glad I got one of those taken care of early in the year, we are required to chant twice during the school year, and I can't wait until I get the chance to do it again.
Not too much else has been going on this week. A lot of school and that's about it. Tomorrow is the ordination of the Israeli Rabbinic program. I'm excited to see how that goes. It will be all in Hebrew and I hope I can understand what is happening.
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