Oy. Big embarrassing moment last night.
I was leading Shabbat services with the other clergy members, and I was doing a reading before the Mourner's Kaddish (a prayer that we say when we are mourning the loss of a loved one). I didn't pick this particular reading; rather, I was reading it at the suggestion of the senior rabbi. I skimmed it in advance, felt it looked good, and put it on the lectern.
Little did I know, I was stepping into the pits of embarrassment.
I get up there to read it, at this very serious moment in the service, and in the middle of the paragraph is a word I have NEVER seen before:
ineradicable.
It swam in front of my eyes. It seemed to be WAY too many syllables. I didn't know what to do.
Mind you, I am a relatively smart gal, I am well read, and I have NEVER had to read this word aloud. I took it one syllable at a time, like a second-grader fumbling her way through a tough vocabulary word.
Ugh. I am never going to get this one wrong again. I now know that it is an adjective, meaning "not eradicable; not capable of being eradicated, rooted out, or completely removed." This makes sense to me. I get it. But I am going to feel embarrassed for quite some time.....
Saturday, November 8, 2008
in⋅e⋅rad⋅i⋅ca⋅ble - adjective
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4 comments:
Do people who practice the Jewish faith study the Old Testament? (That's how little I know about Judaism.)
Proverbs 16:18 is one of my all-time favorite bits of counsel to live by. It's an excellent reminder toward humility. Opinionated blowhard that I am, I try to maintain a degree of humility -- the acceptance that I can sometimes be wrong or make mistakes.
Your small blunder is a living sermon about humility.
Humility is a quality we do well to cherish in our leaders, whether they be mothers or presidents or rabbis.
מזל טוב
Awww! You're only human, Marci!
Trust me, there are SO many words out there that I still don't know (and half the ones I do know I still can't even pronounce), and it's my job to be a wordmaster!
The dictionary is my friend, and it should be everyone's :-)
That's such an obscure word. I'm willing to bet it left people scratching their heads too much to notice your difficulty pronouncing it. Besides, it makes you human. Take it from this formerly Catholic boy that a bit of humanity in our clergy makes the rest of us feel better about ourselves. :-)
Well, I missed it because I had a doctor's appointment. I would tell you if it was really as bad as you thought. I'm sure you can turn it into a teaching moment somewhere down the line.
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