it's always good to experiment a little, right?

[desh]

Warning — Jewish liturgical minutiae ahead, with many terms not defined or explained. Proceed at your own risk. And feel free to ask questions, though Google and http://www.jewfaq.org will be able to help you a lot as well.

So as a "summer experiment", my synagogue decided to change around the order of Shabbat services a bit. From this weekend through the shabbat after labor day, or so the plan goes, we will start morning services a half hour later (9:30 rather than 9:00), skip the sermon, move musaf to be with mincha, and hopefully finish earlier than our traditional 12:00.

It's supposedly okay to move musaf to mincha-time, but no one seemed quite sure of how the details work. So our rabbi asked Joel Roth how it's done. After receiving an answer, our rabbi then went on his previously-scheduled vacation.

So this morning, in the first day of the experiment, we skipped just the musaf amidah and the chatzi kaddish before it, going straight from "etz chayim hee" to full kaddish, ein keloheinu, etc. Then, in the afternoon, we started with some random non-Ashrei psalm (we chose 93), then chatzi kaddish, musaf amidah, full kaddish, aleinu, mourner's kaddish, and then ashrei and the rest of the shabbat mincha service as normal.

I was sort of surprised that it turns out musaf is suppposed to go before mincha even in this configuration, rather than after. But I trust the source, so I trust that we got that one right. There are only 3 details that surprised me: I was surprised we did the "titkabal" line of the full kaddish after the morning torah service, given that I think that's only supposed to be said right after an amidah, and is omitted the other times you have an "extra" full kaddish (such as ma'ariv for purim or simchat torah). And I was surprised that we had an extra aleinu and mourner's kaddish after musaf. I would have expected that we'd just go straight into the mincha torah service without "ending" musaf in that way, just like you go straight from shacharit to the torah service on a typical shabbat morning (though we have the extra break here of ashrei, uva letzion, and chatzi kaddish); I'd expect only the one aleinu-and-mourner's-kaddish set at the end of mincha.

Any thoughts?

Oh, and how did the experiment go? Well, we ended at 11:40, though it took a quick torah reading while our usual ba'al koreh is on vacation to make it there. In future weeks, when he's back or when there's a double parsha or when someone (either the rabbi when he's back too or if a lay person is interested) decides to give a short devar torah in lieu of a sermon, we'll be hard pressed to finish as quickly. And a lot of people were complaining about missing musaf. But I didn't hear anyone complain about services starting later. And there were a LOT more people there for the shacharit amidah than there ever usually are, which was part of the point of the experiment. So I'd call it a qualified success so far.

Comments

[lord-emo.livejournal.com]

All that stuff you said strikes me as a little strange too. I remember learning that mussaf can be done at any time of day, but you do it after shacharit in case you hit the end of the time for shacharit. I guess the time for minchah and the time for mussaf end in the same place, maybe, so then you'd want to do mussaf first because it's been there all day? Perhaps. But that's the problem with being used to having a siddur tell you what to do. I doubt it was all that set in order before the printing press. And I thought full kadish was strictly after an amidah too.

[desh]

Well, there's one part of this that you probably know more about than I do. You often go to a shabbat morning service without musaf, yeah? So what do y'all do at the end (i.e. from putting the torah away until the end)?

[lord-emo.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I haven't gone to dorshei derekh in years. But if you're looking for a source of halachah, that's hardly the place to look...

[intangiblehugs.livejournal.com]

Dorshei does an alternative musaf (usually a reading, poem, niggun or something) right after putting away the torah with no kaddish before or after. But it has been correctly noted that they are not the best group to look to for halachic precedent.

[alanscottevil.livejournal.com]

I thought the same things you thought about kaddish and mussaf before mincha instead of after.

[groovin-reuven.livejournal.com]

At Gush (AKA Yeshivat Har Etzion) on Rosh Hashana, they have an hour break with a kiddish between Shacharit and Musaf- They don't want people to end up "fasting" past the half day since you're not supposed to fast on Rosh Hashana. I don't recall the details of how they ended/began the services to deal with this.

[desh]

I think for that, you don't have to do anything special. You're allowed a hefsek either right before or right after the torah service, yeah? No need to rearrange anything or add any psalms.

[(Anonymous)]

I would have thought that the kaddish after shacharit before torah service should have been hatzi kaddish and the one after torah service should have stayed at full(similar to a weekday mon/thur). Maybe shift returning the torah to before ashrei also. I trust Rabbi Roth, but would love to ask him myself rather than relying on what your Rabbi asked exactly and what he did/didn't question.

My initial thought for mincha would have been to do musaph after torah service before aleinu(maybe with an extra psalm there) but I guess there might be some zmanim issues involved. Adding the extra aleinu between musaph and mincha sounds like he made musaph a separate service(like mincha/maariv). I guess that's ok, but I have no clue.

[bz-mahrabu.livejournal.com]

They do this at the Leader Minyan (Amika d'Bira) too on Shabbat (since shacharit is so crazy long). Kiddush is before the Torah reading on a regular Shabbat, and IIRC after the Torah reading on Rosh Hashanah. After shacharit, they close with shir shel yom and mourner's kaddish (which they'd be doing at that time anyway since they're nusach sefard), and after kiddush, they just start right away with the Torah service (cf. YK mincha).

[bz-mahrabu.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'm also surprised about the titkabal line (though maybe it's appropriate, as long as there's just a chatzi kaddish *before* the Torah service in shacharit, as on a weekday when there is Torah reading and no musaf; the rule seems to be a one-to-one correspondence between titkabal anda amidah), as well as the additional aleinu/kaddish. The other time when we're accustomed to going straight from musaf into mincha (at least theoretically, though there's sometimes a break) is on Yom Kippur, and in that case there's no aleinu/kaddish in between.

Here's the order I'd expect:

ashrei
uva letzion
chatzi kaddish
musaf amidah
kaddish shaleim
torah service
chatzi kaddish
mincha amidah
kaddish shaleim
aleinu
mourner's kaddish

[desh]

Well, we had a full kaddish just before the morning torah service as usual. (And really, we couldn't do that differently, since at that point there was about a 10% chance that we'd abort at the last minute and do musaf as usual.) So there were 2 total titkabals at the morning services (before and after the torah service) and 2 total in the afternoon services (after each amidah, musaf and mincha

And as for that list...yeah, that's the order that would seem to make the most sense, right? Makes it feel a lot like a shortened version of the usual shacharit-and-musaf Shabbat morning service. But maybe there's some reason why you can't move mincha's ashrei earlier? I dunno...

[bz-mahrabu.livejournal.com]

Mincha's ashrei can certainly get moved later (e.g. Yom Kippur), so one would think that kal vachomer it can be moved earlier.