Dear Golda,
Thank you! Your words of inspiration from nearly three weeks ago did help me to trust
myself and made me more of the kind of self that I'll be happy to live with for the rest of my life. Most of all, you helped me to fan tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.
No, those flames aren't yet strong enough to roast marshmallows, and no, I'm not going to cantorial school anytime soon, but I did chant the goings on from the fifth day of creation during today's Rosh HaShanah service.
You don't get all the credit here, though.
It truly took a village to get me onto that bema and I owe a debt of gratitude, too, to Jesse Berger for inviting me to chant in the first place, to Cantor Maria Dubinsky for making the recording that I think I listened to 3,765 gazillion times, to Rabbi Victor Appell for listening to me read the Hebrew, to Cantor Caitlin Bromberg for talking me off the ledge and then for color coding my copy of the text to illustrate which melodies repeat themselves in the verses.
Thanks, too, are due to my father, who sat next to me in the pew and to my mother, who was there, too. Her tallit and love both, I know, were wrapped around me this morning. Although I don't wear the former too often, today was the perfect day to do so, and the latter, without a doubt, is with me each and every day.
I'm not especially superstitious, but if this morning was a sign about the year to come, I think good things are in store. Or, as some of my friends are fond of saying at this season, "shofar, so good."
Thanks again, Golda. I appreciate your support...and that of the rest of my village!
Shana tova,
~ JanetheWriter.