Speech Therapy

Hiya Blog Fans,

Today was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I was asked by my synagogue to deliver a speech about why I love Israel as a precursor to an appeal for people to invest in Israel Bonds. I agreed to do this speech and saw it as a great opportunity to spread my ideals of Judaism and Zionism to a very different crowd.

The past two years I have been the Mazkir Tnua of Habonim Dror North America. In those two years I had myriad opportunities to deliver speeches on Zionism to lots of different sorts of crowds. I realized, or perhaps simply this became the case from practice, that I am pretty good at it. I strike the right balance between informal jokey self-deprication and hifalutin idealism.

Over the course of about a week I crafted this speech. I was kind of nervous because this was a conservative synagogue I was talking to. This was not my movement, who shared my ideals, or a Jewish Agency Task Force, where at least we share the same goals and there is a shared vocabulary. A synagogue, a conservative one, is an institution based on religion - something I'm not so keen on - and explicitly propagates a Diaspora mentality, not to mention that Conservative Judaism is kind of...well...conservative. (Please forgive me if this post has already gone above some of my reader's heads...I'll bring it back down in a minute)

By yesterday I was satisfied with it, I ran it by my Mom and my hairdresser/friend Tommy and they both liked it a lot. I was not afraid in my speech to mention Zionism, to talk about Habonim Dror and my ideals, to be bold and idealistic.

I arrived at synagogue and I was a little nervous. I had given plenty of speeches before, but my largest audience until then was perhaps around 180 people. This sanctuary had upwards of 300 people in it, perhaps more...I suck at estimating crowd sizes, could've been 20 people for all I know. I got up on the Bima as my name was announced and began my speech. I spoke slowly and enunciated. I made eye contact with the crowd and swept my gaze across the entire room. I emoted. I was pretty happy with my delivery, frankly.

Afterwards my mouth and throat were both very dry and was nothing I could do about it because of stupid Yom Kippur and stupid fasting.

As the rest of the morning and afternoon progressed at synagogue, I did my normal routine of wandering around to while the time away. During this whiling, I was shocked to find many many people approaching me to tell me how much they liked my speech. Some of them were your garden variety, "Hey, Good Job" or "Yasher Koach" (for all my Jews out there). Some of them were pretty nice praise like "It struck just the right tone" or "It was perfectly put together". And two people went so far as to say, "It was the best speech I have ever heard delivered in synagogue!" I was humbled.

It felt good. It made me feel good about my decision - that is, my decision to move to Israel. It made me feel validated. It made me feel like I know how to talk about what I believe in a way that touches anyone and everyone. I was pretty proud of myself. It felt good.