High Holiday Lockdown Threatens Man’s Plan To Note Everyone Singing Liturgy Wrong

Absence of communal prayers will deprive him of the self-righteousness he gets from observing that everyone sings everything wrong.

Teaneck, August 10 – A resident of this northern New Jersey township voiced concern today that his synagogue’s announced intention not to hold services during the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement because of continuing concerns over COVID-19 will impede his practice of remarking that both the cantor and most of the congregation render the various special holiday melodies incorrectly.

Yaakov Stickler, 45, expressed his dismay Monday at the realization that Congregation Am Haaretz, where he has attended Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services for sixteen years, will remain closed down during those sacred days amid ongoing efforts to mitigate the spread of a coronavirus that has hit New York and New Jersey hardest of all US states. The synagogue administration has begun planning a shofar-sounding schedule at various locations in the community to provide opportunities for everyone to hear but avoid crowded spaces, but will keep its building closed and not arrange prayers. Those prayers customarily include stirring tunes and passages unique to the time of year, and the absence of those communal prayers in Mr. Stickler’s High Holiday schedule will deprive him of the self-righteousness he gets from observing that everyone sings everything wrong.

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” he lamented. “Pointing out that there are ways of singing the last stanza of ‘Avinu Malkeinu’ without repeating words and rendering the line a bunch of gibberish is always a highlight of the High Holidays. It looks like that’s not happening this year. And you know that stupid tune so many cantors use for the Kaddish after the repetition, at the end where there’s an extended ‘nei-nei-nei, nei-nei-nei’ chant before the last two ‘amen’ responses? I’ve been looking forward since last Yom Kippur to citing various sources that the ‘amen’ has to come immediately, without a bunch of nonsense syllables interrupting. Now I won’t get that chance. Stupid epidemic.”

Cantor Ignor Ramis, one of Stickler’s favorite targets, also voiced disappointment. “I get a kick out of showing everyone that the way they grew up hearing and singing various melodies is wrong,” he confessed. “Not that I actually tell them that – what I do is I sing it the way I learned, which I know is the original way because that’s what I heard as a kid, and let them feel the pangs of unrequited nostalgia because it’s not the way they remember it, and obviously the way you grew up doing it is the only correct way.”

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