Would you laugh at a dwarf? Would you mock a man with a rat's face? So why don't you, my friends and family, stop gushing when I open my mouth to sing, and give my version of 'Yahweh Akshur', or 'Ukhila La-L'?
The High Holy Days are approaching, and a touching scene from my time studying in yeshiva comes to mind.
Hundreds of students crowd around the stage, moved by the mournful melodies that characterize the day, and accompany with a second voice the cantor Rabbi Naftali, author of Rabbi Shalom's "Nushek Hebron.".
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I was also swept away by the enthusiasm, and I was happy that as an older student I was given the seat next to the stage. That is, one row behind Rabbi Naftali the cantor.
Next to me sat Benzion, who would organize the singing in the dining room during the third meal. As the fast was being consecrated, I smiled at Benzion and said to him: 'I hope the prayers are answered.'.
He looked at me and seemed worried. I understood his heart, after all, Yom Kippur is not just another day.
The prayer began and I joyfully joined the cantor. 'And forgive us all, forgive us, atone for us,' I shouted with the entire audience and felt that God was indeed forgiving us and accepting our request for forgiveness. And even when the cantor played 'Behold, like clay in the hand of the Creator,' I did not shut my mouth, and tried to help him both in the audience's part and in the part intended for the cantor himself.
It was one of the most exciting Yom Kippur days of my life.
I had been in the yeshiva for several years and knew all the melodies well. I hardly let the cantor say a word on his own. I would finish the final sections with him, curling my voice when he sang "I am the poor in action," and shedding tears with him during "And we have given strength.".
In "And All Believers," I leaned a little closer to Benzi and sang along with him, occasionally nodding my head at him when I felt we both gave a little "squeak" in the melody.
At certain stages, when I felt that the wind had calmed down and we were at spiritual peaks, I would wave my hands to the sides exactly as Rabbi Naftali the cantor would, as if the two of us were organizing the choir of 600 yeshiva students.
The evening shadows fell, and the closing prayer arrived.
The head of the yeshiva would come up to the pillar, and his weak voice would encourage me to raise my voice a little, and also to shake my hands more vigorously, both upwards and to the sides. There were moments when I felt like I was correcting the rabbi, who apparently wasn't always accurate in tune, perhaps due to his hearing, which had been impaired - so they say - in recent years.
But then something happened that I still have trouble understanding to this day: As the piyyut "Remember the God of the Sea" came, which I had begun to recite, Benzi threw the siddur in his hand with force onto the stand and said: Calm down, you ruined the whole Kippur.
What does that mean? I don't understand.
"That means," said Benzi, his voice hoarse with anger, "that you're such a bad forger that you ruined all the melodies. I have nothing against people who can't sing, but I worked hard to get this place behind the cantor, and in my darkest dreams I never believed I'd be sitting next to the biggest music killer I've ever known.".
He also said something about the fact that, in his opinion, as long as he is alive, he will not be able to enjoy praying on Yom Kippur. As far as he is concerned, he can pray from now on with the Yemenites.
I was not shocked by Benzi's words.
I was familiar with this strange discourse of people who didn't like to hear me sing. At the same time, I had a hard time understanding why it aroused such strong emotions in their hearts?
"You need to pray alone in the desert," Bentzi told me maliciously at the end of the fast. It's a crime to let people like you roam free in churches on terrible days..
Not carried away at all.
Even in later years, when I was sitting next to a good friend in the Avrehim synagogue in Kiryat Sefer, the latter said to me, in a moment of frankness: 'You have the voice of a dead man. For your own good, follow the cantor in your heart.'.
Later, my wife told me that an old Bulgarian woman sitting next to her kept cursing the young man who wouldn't let her enjoy the prayer.
The most painful point was when my wife asked me, as if innocently, if I knew which blessing the old Bulgarian woman was referring to - and smiled evilly.
I also know the cliché jokes like 'He's not faking it, he's just re-composing,' or 'How can it be that his father is a cantor and he's like this, what did he take from his father?'.
I may not be the direct heir to Frank Sinatra, but there's a long way between that fact and the forgiving smiles and the insistent statements that 'it physically hurts to hear you sing.' At least in my opinion.
I recently read that singer Ehud Banai was only discovered at the age of 35. For years, no one believed in him and gave his music a chance. He was forced to work as a gardener, a stagehand, and even a construction worker.
But then, as he was approaching his fifth decade, his music began to catch on and he became one of Israel's most beloved artists. Kobi Afalo, another Israeli singer, was also rejected by record companies for years until he was recognized as 'Singer of the Year.'.
These stories encourage me every time, although I have a little trouble understanding why when I present them, I cause bursts of laughter in my friends who don't stop coughing, wiping away the tears that are flowing from their eyes, and muttering, Ehud Banai, Kobi Aplalo, you, and again Ehud, Kobi, you, Aplalo, Banai, you, and again God forbid.
