My first week of classes

I did it! I finished my first official week of classes in cantorial school. I have to say, I'm exhausted. I'm not used to classes starting every day at 8:30. How did I do this in high school? And without coffee?

Here is what my week looked like:
Sunday Yom Rishon (yes, my week starts on Sunday. My weekend is Friday/Saturday. It's been very weird to get used to):
8:30 - Biblical Hebrew: Unlike Brandeis, this class is taught entirely in modern Hebrew about biblical Hebrew grammar. It's a lot to all keep straight at 8:30 in the morning, but my teacher is wonderful. She's a little m'shugenah in true Israeli teacher style. Sima is very excited about what she teaches. So excited in fact that she occasionally would start screaming in class in order to make a point about something. Really. Screaming. It was a bit disconcerting at first and she must have realized that because she switched to English and said, "I'm not screaming at you, I'm just screaming." She'll be great though. And I'm very glad that I've had the class in English before to help me more now.
Break
11:15 - Coaching: My vocal coaching is with a cantor named Mikhal. She's wonderful. The point of the session is to work on liturgical music both for services and in general. It's a good way to work on repetoir. Mikhal is also my voice teacher.
Break/Lunch
2:00 - History of the 2nd Temple Period: This is a lecture for only the first half of the semester and it's exactly what it sounds like. My professor is good, although he's no Sarna.
4:30 - Nursing home: Every student this year is required to do a community service project. What better for me than to volunteer at a nursing home? I'm going to visit with a woman named Audrey who is originally from the United States. Her daughter made aliyah about 30 years ago. When Audrey's health began to fail, she moved to Israel so that she could be closer to her daughter. Unfortunately, Audrey doesn't speak Hebrew so she is bored a lot of the time at the nursing home. So I'll be going a few times a month to chat with her. Another cantorial student (Nancy) and rabbinical student (Sara) are also coming for this project. I think Nancy and I are going to be doing some musical stuff as well.

Monday Yom Sheini:
8:30 - Tefillah: Tefillah will eventually (in November I think) be lead entirely by students. It consists of P'zukei D'zimrah, Bircot Hashachar, the Torah service, Aleinu, and mourner's kaddish. I will be leading a service with my friend Rachel in December on a Monday and later in February I'll be leading a Kabbalat Shabbat service with my friend Meredith.
10:15 - Liturgy: This class will be studying the liturgy of Shabbat, weekday, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Passover. My teacher is the rabbi at Kol Haneshama, a Reform synagogue in Jerusalem. He's wonderful. I"m incredibly excited to study with him. However, he is no Reuven Kimmelman. I really wish I had taken that class...Oh well.
12:00 pm - Modern Hebrew: This class moved very fast the first day. I was so excited to be in a Hebrew class where I really felt as though I had to work to keep up. It was great! My teacher is fantastic and I think will really help me to improve my Hebrew. It felt exactly like being in a Brandeis Hebrew classroom. Very, very good.
Break
4:15 pm - History of Jewish Music: Cantor Eli Schleiffer teaches this class. He is the cantorial Papa of HUC in Israel. He has been here for many many years (ask almost any cantor in the Reform movement and they will have studied with Eli). He is a musicologist as well as a cantor. It is really an honor to study with him. It was a fantastic first class. I know that I'm going to learn so much from him.
7:00 pm - High Holiday choir rehearsal: We're getting closer and closer to the High Holidays! We ran through Kol Nidrei with Eli as well as a few other pieces. It sounds beautious!

Tuesday Yom Shlishi (This is my ridiculously long day):
8:30 - Modern Hebrew
10:15 - Modern Hebrew
12:00 pm - Music Theory/Ear training: This class I've been taking since the summer. It's kind of hard to describe how exactly our teacher runs the course. We do a series of exercises for about 20 minutes that help us with perfect pitch. I can now hear middle C in my head. It's incredible. It's kind of crazy what Bat-Sheva does with us, but it seems to be working. Then we run through a few sight-singing exercises from a book. By the end of the class I'm always exhausted from the amount of concentration that I've put into the class. I'm very excited to see how much I've improved though in just a few short weeks.
Lunch
2:45 pm - Cantillation of the Bible: I know how to read from the Torah, so I'm going to mostly likely place out of this class. A few things I'll need to come back to learn, but every once in a while I'll have a free hour and a half to relax/do work!
4:30 - 6pm Cantorial Workshop: Last class of the day! This is where we work on the daily service. We're learning how to chat a traditional weekday service. A lot of it sounds familiar to me, but I don't know the theory behind it at all. I'm very excited to take this class.

Wednesday Yom R'vi'i:
Israel Seminar: This is a day to purely learn about the state of Israel. Israel is our classroom. We will be taking many field trips, watching movies, reading the newspaper, learning about the culture of Israel. It will be a great resource if I'm someday in the position to lead a congregational trip to Israel (or if family and friends want to come visit me...)
The rest of my day was filled with music. We had another High Holiday rehearsal and I did some practicing on my own. It's a relatively low key day.

Thursday Yom Hamishi:
8:30 Hebrew
Break
11:30 Voice lesson
Lunch
1:15 Hebrew
3:30 Israeli Folk and Popular Music - I actually ahven't gotten to this class yet. I'll tell you more about it later!

My days generally end around 6. They're long days. I'm always exhausted by the end, but I think I'll eventually get into the rhythm of things. I like my classes for the most part though and I'm getting more and more excited (and less and less overwhelmed) as I realize more that I'm really going to be a cantor!!!!