As a shaliach tzibbur, you’re like the “bus driver” bringing along the tzibbur
My grandfather, Harry Weiss a”h, was well known in Kew Gardens, Queens, as a captivating baal menagen and baal tefillah. For 40 years, he led Shacharis on Yamim Noraim, with a heart full of passion, a booming powerful voice, and a beautiful nusach — fitting the requirement for a shaliach tzibbur to be “merutzeh lakol” [widely accepted and liked by all]. In his later years, when vision problems ailed him, he persevered with the regular Shabbos davening, but Yamim Noraim was obviously much more challenging.
After I got married, he decided to teach me the nusach and arranged for me to stand in his place at the amud in his shul. I think I still have a cassette tape somewhere — it was a long arduous learning process. As well as the niggunim, Zeide had to be satisfied with my grasp of the nusach he had inherited from his father, a baal tefillah in Poland, and he insisted I also know the peirush hamilim. “If you understand what you are saying to the Ribbono shel Olam, your heart will connect with your voice, and the tzibbur will respond,” he would tell me. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I stood in his place in the Nusach Sefard minyan in Kew Gardens. I was all of 21 years old then, and I have davened every year since, always wearing my grandfather’s tallis.
My zeide insisted that I go to the mikveh before going up to the amud. His mother, my great grandmother, an old time European war survivor, was there that Rosh Hashanah morning as I prepared to leave for shul. She called me over, took a spoon from the drawer, filled it with honey, and gave it to me, telling me, “Your voice should be sweet. Zei matzliach.”
I’d been davening Shacharis for 25 years and then Covid came and changed everything. Our shul needed a baal tefillah for Mussaf, and my rav, Rabbi Shimshon Sherer, encouraged me to step in. This was very intense, because there were only ten days before Rosh Hashanah for me to learn the entire nusach of Mussaf. But with the support of the kehillah, it works.
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