GREG ARCENEAUX CABINETMAKERS
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CELEBRATING & PRESERVING LOUISIANA’S UNIQUE CULTURE & HERITAGE Acadian Pencil Post Single Bed in Cypress with a Cane Bayou Bench (right); and Creole Style Bed in Mahogany (below)
Greg Arceneaux Cabinetmakers 17319 Norwell Drive • Covington gregarceneaux.com • 985-893-8782
We Are Here For You For over 147 years, Jewish families from all over this great city have come to Jacob Schoen & Son to plan their funerals and pay respect to friends and loved ones. A special place where heritage, pride in service and people make the difference.
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May 2021 • Southern Jewish Life
The Bard Mitzvah Reimagined after 13 more years training b’nai mitzvah and six years leading a Shakespeare company… Welcome to this morning’s Bard Mitzvah celebration. This guide explains the service you are about to experience, and the fundamentals of its underlying faith system. You’ve already noticed that people are wearing unusual head coverings and pieces around their necks. These are traditional garments, similar to those worn since the beginning, in the Sixteenth Century along the River Avon. Many people find the language you’re about to experience cryptic and difficult to understand. You should still be able to follow what’s going on even if you don’t understand every word. Also, with a little attention and study, the language comes to people in time. The books in front of you will help guide you, providing translations into modern English as well as commentary on the original text. This service is divided into five parts. The preliminary service, or Prologue, sets the mood for what’s to come. It includes the reading of numerous Sonnets. The Sonnets are a collection of the Bard’s 154 poetic renderings that, in many varied ways, express love and devotion. The second part of the service is a devotional. When we rise to our feet, we face northeast, the traditional direction from the Americas and lower England toward the original center of our worship: the sacred Globe Theatre in London. Included in this part of the service is an expression of monothespism, the belief that there is only one true Shakespeare (referred to informally as HaShakes). This communal declaration denies any theories that there was no single Shakespeare, or that his mastery was the work of other hands. The third part is usually cut, except on holidays. It contains several more Sonnets, reserved for extra praise on those special days. The fourth part of the service is the main event: a reading from scripture. A particular script is associated with every week of the year. Originally written on papyrus, many of the scripts recount historical events and the lives of kings, while others are more allegorical on social themes. Some readings are lighter or philosophical, while others demonstrate war and intrigue at levels some consider surprisingly graphic. The scripts include the 37 commonly attributed to Shakespeare, plus three others previously considered lost. These plus the 11 scripts in the Shakespearean Apocrypha comprise a full year of readings. Traditional establishments read an entire play every Saturday. Some newer movements follow a quintennial cycle, in which one act is read each year. This way, all plays are read in their entirety after five years. For example, a popular mid-fall reading is best known for the pivotal role of a great storm and the people on a boat that weathered it: The Tempest. The readings themselves have a special rhythm and cadence in which they are performed. Every Bard Mitzvah student must learn an excerpt, but it often takes years of study to master the skill for all texts. Even more difficult is that the script itself does not include notation of the rhythm or cadence, and sometimes little more than paragraph breaks. The final part of the service is reminiscent of the sacrifices made in ancient times, figurative and sometimes literal, for the craft. While we don’t indulge in the same practices today, this service is a reminder of continued on previous page