If you can command a pulpit when rabbis around all about you
Come and go and the shul depends on you;
If you can lead so all can follow you
But make allowance for their leadership too;
If you can sing all day and neither be tired by singing
Nor make us tired to hear your song;
If your weekday, Shalosh Regalim, Shabbat, Yomim Noraim
Nusach is always impeccable;
If your Yitgadal and your Yitgadash are always evocative
Of correct time and place;
If you start and even more magically
If you finish at precisely on the dot.
If your Tefillat Geshem makes the heavens weep
And your mere presence guarantees sunlight on the walk to shul
If you can fill the unforgiving Day of Kippur
With Avodah of beauty and passion;
If you can bury and wed - or both in the same day
If you sit with spotty adolescent or home bound congregant
And love us all, and we know that, so we love you in return
If you can be the fulcrum of our thoughts and prayers
And still retain that humility – for it’s not to you we pray;
If you can sing with unstinting passion and commitment
And still know that being our Baal Tefillah isn’t
About your vocal pyrotechnics
We’ll love you even more.
If you can cater – and boy can you cater
Or even as you give up the catering
If you inspire others to try
If you raise the money or produce the leaflet, or the concert or Boojah or ...
Oh so many many things
If you can sit through meeting after meeting
With a gnomic smile;
If you can sit through sermon after sermon
And not make it too obvious
That, of course, you know far better;
If you can put up with this Rabbi
Who speaks too much and starts too many things
That fall through the net for you to catch;
If you can make the office groan
At yet another quickly turned pun
And if, despite all the love we have for you
You know there is no higher call than the care of your sister and mum
Then there will always be a special place in our heart, in my heart, for you
We are all in you debt
Our Chazan, our songstrel
My friend and colleague good and true,
Then, indeed, yours is the Earth and everything in it,
And what is more – you’ve been a mighty Chazan, my son!
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