RELIGION

Wishing All Our
Customers and Friends
A Happy and Healthy
New Year
From
The Staff Of

AVIS FORD

Holiday 'Rabbis'
Aid Congregations

-

A

Open Mon. & Thurs. 9 p.m.
Tues., Wed. & Fri. tit 6 p.m.

355-7500

1-800-648-1521

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Best Wishes For A Healthy and Happy
New Year

From

SPERBER'S KOSHER CARRY-OUT

Rita and Marty Jerome

967 - 1161

MIKE & MARY MUST

Wish Their
Friends
A
Very Healthy
And

Happy

New Year

I

May the coming

year be filled

with health and

happiness for

all our family

and friends.

COUNTRY CORNER BARBERSHOP
DAVID, BOB, LILIA & ZINA

Wishing You A Happy
And Healthy New Year!

pQ.44:4--

thanks you for your
continued patronage

Susan Weingarden

an

FRIDAY. SEPTEMBER 21, 1990

851-0552

ALLISON KAPLAN

Special to The Jewish News

Telegraph at 12 Mile Rd.
SOUTHFIELD

The Dealership with the

1

THE JEWISH NEWS
354-6060

temporary crisis hits
a number of Ameri-
can Jewish com-
munities both large and
small each year — a sudden
need for rabbis and cantors
to handle the increased
number of worshipers who
turn up for High Holiday
services. •
While the problem is
common, the solutions are
diverse. Some congregations
hire rabbinical students
from Reform, Conservative
or Orthodox seminaries,
which maintain formal
placement services.
Others find help through
less formal networking from
those with other full-time
professions — attorneys, or
even dentists —who renew
cantorial, skills and supple-
ment their income by serv-
ing congregations on the
High Holidays.
For the rabbinical
students, the substantive
fees they are paid is a
significant part of the
motivation for serving. But a
more important reason is
that presiding over a con-
gregation's High Holiday
services is a vital educa-
tional experience — a crash
course in dealing with real
congregants, not just texts in
the classroom.
Almost immediately after
they are informed that they
are going to a geographically
isolated congregation for the
holidays, their intense prep-
aration begins.
"You give it all your con-
centration, all your energy
for a month," said Ariel
Stone, a 28-year-old rab-
binical student at the
Reform movement's Hebrew
Union College. Ms. Stone
has lead High Holiday ser-
vices in Williamsport, Pa.,
and Wilson, N.C., for Jewish
communities who have no
regular rabbi.
Last year, she got lost try-
ing to find the town of
Wilson, which merges its
congregation on the High
Holidays with another in
Rocky Mount.
"I led the service, did the
preaching, Torah reading,
did the singing and blew the
shofar," Ms. Stone said. She
compared the experience to
running a marathon, calling
it "the ultimate long-
distance test."
Describing the area as "a
real lovely, old-time small-
town place," Ms. Stone said

that "the people very much
appreciated the link with
what they saw as
`professional Judaism.' "
Filling in during the High
Holidays is less of an adven-
ture and more like a family
reunion for Toledo, Ohio, at-
torney David Friedis.
For 13 years, Mr. Friedis
has traveled to Buffalo to
serve as a cantor for Conser-
vative congregation Shaare
Zedek's overflow service.
Not only did Mr. Friedis
grow up in Buffalo, but
learned his chazzanut from
the congregation's former
cantor.
"I consult with the rabbi
only an hour or two before
the service. After 13 years,
he knows every move I
make, and I know every
move he makes," Mr. Friedis
said. Mr. Tokayer also
makes the trip to Buffalo

The students gain
experience and the
congregations gain
a trained, if
inexperienced,
prayer leader.

each year from his home in
Great Neck, N.Y. Mr.
Tokayer is not a congrega-
tional rabbi, but principal of
the North Shore Hebrew
Academy.
The Buffalo congregation's
regular rabbi, Eliot Marrus,
said that his congregation
brings in Mr. Tokayer and
Mr. Friedis so that they can
have two simultaneous ser-
vices — one in the temple
sanctuary, which seats 300,
and the remaining wor-
shipers, who number more
than 1,000 in their
auditorium.
This arrangement is pref-
erable to moving the entire
congregation out of the syn-
agogue to another place or
limiting the number of wor-
shipers, Rabbi Marrus ex-
plained.
"Our members prefer the
sense of being in their own
building, even if they are not
in the same room together,"
he said.
Having two sets of rabbis
and cantors would be an
unimaginable luxury to the
small Jewish communities
who turn to rabbinical
students to conduct their
High Holiday services.
In order to have trained
clergy for their services,