Monday, July 11, 2005

118. The CDs

(Continuing.)

The cantor handed out a bunch of CDs at the end of the study session. I got three: Shaharit services from last year's High Holidays, including Yom Kippur and both days of Rosh Hashonah. All the services at my synagogue are recorded. I had no idea.

"Do you have the sheet music, too?" asked the pop singer. The cantor smiled. "Everything you need is on the CD. Just follow along with a machzor [the High Holiday prayer book]."

So we would have to figure out our parts in the traditional way--aural memorization, listen and repeat over and over again, the way it was done long before the age of recording devices. And, as always at my synagogue, we would honor the past while also embracing the future. God might not have written about MP3 files in the Torah, but He surely imagined them.

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