Sunday, October 9, 2011

WECLOME

    Hi. My name is Yosef Rappaport. Here's the deal: I am not an expert, a Cantor, or a Chazzan. I have never taken voice lessons before. I do not claim to be an expert in nusach hatefillah, nor do I claim to know everything about leading davening. I do, however, enjoy davening for the amud very much. I guess I am what you would consider a Baal Tefillah. I grew up with a father, Dr. Stuart Rappaport who is a great chazan and who has taught me his nusach for most of davening and especially for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur for which I am a chazan in Queens, NY. But being that I grew up in a shul/neighborhood where for the most part chazanus and cantorial davening is not really appreciated, I have developed a more Baal Tefillah style of davening where I incorporate modern tunes into davening and I try to get the congregation to sing along. Therefore I am always looking for new ideas for tunes to use in davening. I started this blog the day after Yom Kippur 5772/2011 in order to let others know what tunes I use/might use in the future, and more importantly to LET PEOPLE SEND ME THEIR SUGGESTED TUNES SO THAT I CAN EXPAND MY COLLECTION OF TUNES.
     So as I said the point of this blog is to get suggestions from other baalei tefillah for new ideas of tunes to incorporate into my davening.
     I guess the best way to organize this is to go tefilah by tefilah in order of most common to least common (shabbos all the way to Yom Kippur). I invite EVERYONE to let me know what ideas they have for each part of davening and what tunes they love/hate and to feel free to make any suggestions/ comments.