Chapter 3 Part Two: Worship

Responding To Demographic Changes: Part Two - Worshiping God

As a Rabbi, I have gotten used to hearing from Jews over the years that services are too long, too boring and not very spiritual. At least that is the excuse given to me as to why more people don't attend services. I have now been a part of several congregations where services are packed with people. The surprise is that it is the same service, of roughly the same length but they are hardly boring and they are very spiritual. Each congregation says the same words, in fact, the popular services often don't skip a word of the service. It is enough to “cross a Rabbi's eyes”.

Joel Lurie Grishaver, in an article he wrote many years ago, called “Time Wars”, noted that when people are interested in what is going on, they don't look at the clock. When they are unengaged and bored, then time slows to a crawl and they can't wait to get out and do something different. The issue with boring services is about engagement, not the contours of the service.

Gabriel Blau, in his essay Negotiating Orgasm: Spirituality and the Sexual Experience published in the book, “Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: Sex and Intimacy” (Edited by Elliot Dorff and Danya Ruttenberg, JPS, 2010: page 122) writes: “At the center of every great prayer experience that I have ever had, there has been a profound yearning, a desire that is strong and alluring, yet mysterious and elusive. The greatest of our tradition’s liturgy and music offer us a sense of awe, empowerment, and release. These are the same qualities present in our sexual desires and experiences. Like prayer, they can be ecstatic, yet like prayer they can, at times also be off-putting and demeaning. Both spiritual practice, in all its forms (some of which are sexual) and sex offer opportunities for unique connections to others and to ourselves. They require faith and trust, and they have a presence in our lives that can seem limited to isolated occasions, yet are part of almost everything we see and feel.”

If sex is a complicated part of our lives, how much more so will prayer be complicated. If both prayer and sex attempt to reach that most intimate part of our souls, then how can it ever be possible to have a service that will meet the needs of all the individuals who make up a congregation? Sometimes it is impossible to have a normal conversation about sex, and sometimes it is impossible to have a normal conversation about tephilot, the structure of Jewish prayer. Sex and prayer may be two different discussions, but they seem to meet in the same place in our spiritual soul.

I think that everyone, Rabbis, Cantors and worshipers all agree that something needs to be done to fix the service. Change is hard, and I believe this is because we are all speaking a different language. Clergy want to remain true to the traditional format of the service, and worshipers are demanding shorter, less “boring” services with more English. Both sides go away from this discussion angry. Each side feels that the other is not listening to their concerns. When I hear these arguments and then step back and see what happens when we let the lay leadership compose their own service, more often than not, they put together something that is pretty traditional. The English readings that substitute for prayer, however, notoriously go out of style after just a few weeks. Writing prayers is a pretty complicated task. Our Siddur is filled with prayers written over thousands of years. The really meaningful prayers have survived a test of time. So what is the key to making our worship services more spiritual, more meaningful, more beautiful, more interesting, more engaging, more uplifting; or in short, what will make services better?

There are many who have written about what is wrong with our services. Rabbi Eli Kaunfer, Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Rabbi Mike Comins, Rabbi Naomi Levy, Rabbi David Wolpe, Rabbi Neil Gillman and a host of others. Some have written extensively about taking services out of the sanctuary, into nature and into the real world. There are those who speak about meditation, chanting and mantras. These are all paths to spirituality and they have a rightful place in the prayer toolbox. I will let you read these guides to non-traditional prayer from those who are more involved in them than I. I have bonded with the service in the synagogue and that is where I find my spirituality. My topic here is the synagogue and so I will limit my observations to the synagogue setting. That is not to say that it is the best setting for everyone; it is only the particular aspect of prayer that I want to comment on at this time.

The Siddur

Ever since the dawn of time, parents have been saying to their children during the prayer service, “Stop fidgeting, pay attention... What page are we on?” Rabbis have seen it as their religious duty to make sure that every member of the congregation is on the same page of the prayerbook (siddur). I was once, a long time ago, visiting another congregation and found that I had fallen behind and had to catch up. I stood up, in the back of the room to move quickly through my prayers and I noticed that the Rabbi was obviously unhappy that I was not with the rest of the congregation at that moment.

I would like to think that we are past this phase. I would like to think that all Jews understand that they don't have to all be on the same page. All Jews do not have to stand and sit in harmony and if the words of one prayer or another moves us in that moment, then we can linger there, contemplate the meaning of that moment and catch up (or not) later. I know some Jews who bring other books to read to enhance their prayer experience. Some of the more modern prayer books have commentary on every page to help not only explain but to help the pray-er have a deeper understanding of what the words mean and to reveal the deeper meaning of the poetry and metaphor of the prayer.

The siddur is not a cook book. The prayers are not recipes that one can follow to bake a spiritual cake. Prayer is an art form and the prayer book is a book of poetry and linguistic art that guides us in our spiritual search; but the siddur cannot do all the work for us. Rabbi Mark Greenspan, in one of his High Holy Day sermons recalled some advice from his wife; “services are not spiritual, people are spiritual.” If we come to synagogue expecting something to give us a spiritual feeling, we will be disappointed. If we come prepared to seek the spiritual in our lives, if we come with a spiritual frame of mind, the siddur will guide us to places we have not attained before. The siddur calls us to be artists with our words, using them as the rungs on ladders to help us grow upwards and inward to find God. When we find ourselves looking at our watches or trying to figure out what the words of prayer are supposed to mean, we have missed the purpose of being in synagogue. It is the combination of location, poetry, music, and inner awareness that make our prayers come alive. Nobody else can do it for us.

Prayer

This does not mean that synagogues are off the hook. To improve the way Jews pray, there needs to be a better relationship between synagogue and congregation. We can argue all we want about the merits of spontaneous prayer verses fixed prayer. That debate was resolved centuries ago. Judaism has a fixed liturgy for three services a day, allowing for personal spontaneous prayer in only one section, the Amidah. Rabbi Max Kedushan, professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the early twentieth century, connected this fixed liturgy with what he called, “normal mysticism”, that there could be a deeper, spiritual understanding of the liturgy that could come from regular, planned prayer. As we become familiar with the wording of the fixed liturgy, we are better able to use it as part of our own spiritual advancement; in the same way that we learn to play a piece of music and after we have mastered it, we are better able to add our own “riffs” to the original score. This means that to fully understand Jewish liturgy one needs to become a regular at the service or be committed to praying individually at home. Intermittent praying will not bring about the desired connection to the text. We can sing along to our favorite music in the shower and while driving in our car, but if we wish to take the next step and perform the song for ourselves, we need to add something of ourselves to the music and not just give a karaoke performance imitating exactly how it sounds on the CD.

This would seem to imply that someone who is interested in spiritual prayer in synagogue will have to sink a bit before he or she can swim. It may mean that we will struggle for a while with one prayer or another until we find the place for this prayer in our life. This may be true, but again, we should not let synagogues off the hook. Waiting for the congregation to master the service without recognizing the needs of the congregation and how we can help them bridge this gap would be a serious breach of communal responsibility. Rabbi Sharon Brous reminded other Rabbis recently, that “if your service the week before the tsunami hit Indonesia is the same as the service after the tsunami, then something is very wrong.” Spirituality is not about a moment of silent prayer, but it is focusing on the proper parts of the liturgy in order to highlight how we can emotionally and reasonably respond to important events in our lives and in our world. It is up to Rabbis, prayer leaders and synagogues to show us the way.

I know that there are many Jews today who think that the best way to improve the service is to cut out unnecessary prayers and shorten the time of the service. This approach is not validated by any of the modern congregations who have successful services. In fact, the vast majority of independent minyaim for young Jews offer only a full traditional service, often from older prayer books with translations that can be sexist or archaic. In the end, it is not the prayers or the prayer book that seem to make the difference.

Congregational Responsibility

The most important part of prayer is the participation of the congregation. All too many synagogues are oriented for prayer that is a performance. The congregation waits for the Rabbi or Cantor to “lead” them in prayer and the congregation is told when they can sing, when they should pray, when they should stand, when they should sit and they are constantly reminded what page they are supposed to be on. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner (in “Making Prayer Real, Comins ed. p. 13-14) writes; The problem with Reform liturgy is that we assume that we should always give people an exciting new experience. There were ten Friday night services in “Gates of Prayer” [The Reform prayer book], which has the unfortunate side effect of preventing anyone from memorizing the liturgy. And it sort of turned everyone into dummies who had to be told when to stand up and when to sit down. I'm always struck when the leader of the service says, “We now rise for the Shema.” Why are you telling me that? I've been coming here for thirty years. I know we stand up for the Shema. Only Jews tell one another when to stand. People in every other religion assume you know what to do, and if you don't, you're smart enough to watch and see what everyone else is doing.”

Many of the independent minyanim (see E. Kaunfer “Empowered Judaism”) have placed the leaders of prayer, not in the front but in the middle of the congregation; they have switched from professional leaders to lay leadership of the service and, while they insist that those wishing to lead the service pass a “test” with an experienced service leader, the leadership of the service is, for all practical purposes, open to anyone who wants to lead. Those who do not have the necessary skills, are given a chance to learn prayer skills with the eventual reward of being able to lead the congregation. In this model, “responsive readings” are no longer necessary. The service is done all in Hebrew. The only part in English is the D'var Torah/sermon. Page numbers are only called out in special circumstances (when there is something new or unusual that needs to be clarified); the pages are listed in a program or in the front of the siddur and the congregation is expected to find their own way through the siddur. If there is a problem, then they are to ask someone sitting near them for clarification. In this way, everyone is able to pray at their own pace. The real surprise for congregations today is that they don't need to coddle the worshipers. While there may be some confusion in the beginning, after a while worshipers will come to appreciate being on their own in the siddur. The reading of the Torah also does not need to be a constant reminder of what page we are on. Everyone should be reading/studying at their own pace. If someone makes a comment on the reading before or between aliyot, a simple reference to chapter and verse is all that should be needed. This would even let those who may be studying the Torah from a different text than the rest of the congregation, follow the comments of the darshan (the one explaining the meaning of the Torah reading).

Music

Music in the service is a big concern. Surprisingly, the issue with music is NOT about whether or not musical instruments are permitted on Shabbat. There are very successful congregations that use live music and those who only pray a Capella. What seems to matter the most is the KIND of music that is being used. In the book, Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues From Functional To Visionary (I. Aron, S.M. Cohen, L.A. Hoffman, and A.Y. Kelman; Alban Institute Press,2010, p. 69) the authors examine worship to see what makes the greatest difference in the service. They write, “Neither space nor choreography, however, made the greatest difference. Nor, certainly, could it have been the prayer book (Gates of Prayer), which had been in use since 1975 without facilitating much notable change at all. The determining factor was music – a finding compatible with Protestant worship change as well. Rick Warren, founder of the path-breaking Saddleback Church in southern California, recalls, “If I could start Saddleback all over again, I'd put more energy and money into music. … The great American pastime is not baseball; it is music.” The authors also note; “...music can either aid or inhibit the congregant's experiences of meaningfulness in the service. Music and melodies that are familiar link one with tradition, real or imagined, but at the risk of being experienced as routine and uninspiring. Music and melodies that are innovative and contemporary evoke other reactions, such as stimulation, excitement, curiosity, or discomfort. The choice of how best to balance these and other musical options varies with time, place, congregants, and context” (p. 37-8).

I believe that there is a new wave of Jewish liturgical music that is being written today that will eventually mark these years as the beginning of a new “Golden Age” of Jewish liturgical music. The new music has grown out of the pioneering work of Rabbi Shlomo Carlbach, Debbie Friedman, Craig Taubman and many others. It is a mixture of modern forms of music, spiritual chants and repetitive musical stanzas. These melodies are easy to learn and help the congregation learn the Hebrew prayers. Sometimes they begin as a nigun, a wordless melody (using La-La-La or Bim Bam Bim or Ai-De-De-Dai etc) then switching to the words of the prayer and then going back to the wordless melody. This allows everyone to learn the music and the words and if you can't read/sing the words, there is still time to connect during the wordless part of the singing. The music is actually enhanced by having everyone singing, adding to the spiritual component of the service. Clearly the music is a key to spirituality and having the congregation chant together with a minimum of central leadership (someone has to at least pick the music for the prayer before everyone can sing it and then set the pace). What applies to leading the music also applies to musical instruments. If the singer or the musicians play as if they are performing, then the service will be an empty shell. If the singers and the musicians play to encourage the entire congregation to join in and participate, then there is almost no end to how high the service can take its participants.

Clergy

All of this requires a different role for the Rabbi and Cantor in the service. The Rabbi may set the structure of the prayer service and then leave it for the congregation to lead, with an extended role as teacher to those who don't know the prayers and to those who want to boost their connection to the service by learning to lead the congregation in prayer. The Cantor would be constantly searching for new music to help the congregation expand the musical modes of the service; the Cantor's role would be to teach new melodies and new ways to lead prayer. This does not mean that there will no longer be a role in the service for traditional nusach, the standard musical modes that are unique for the different experiences of Jewish liturgy. There is a great deal of interest in learning traditional nusach, but the music attached to specific prayers is an ever evolving process and Cantors can help keep the music of the service up to date.

(I want to note here a technical difference between nusach and hazzanut. These two terms are often mixed up or described as one being a part of the other. I believe that they are very different and need to be treated differently. Hazzanut is a Cantorial tradition that dates back over 100 years to the great age of Cantorial music. Composed and chanted by some of the great hazzanim (Cantors) of the early twentieth century, (Rosenblatt, Koussevitzky , Oysher, Tucker, etc.) it represents a style of religious singing that once was very popular in synagogues but now has faded over time. Nusach is the older, traditional musical modes of the service that set the tone and style that separates the service for Shabbat from the service for weekdays and which makes the holiday services musically unique. These modes, much older than Hazzanut, are still the musical underpinning of every synagogue service.)

This implies that there will need to be extensive teaching of liturgical melodies and of the structure of the service itself. Some congregations have created a “Learner's Minyan” where those who wish to learn more about the prayers and how to chant/sing them can go, ask questions and practice leading the liturgy. Other congregations do this kind of training as part of their Adult Studies program. Some congregations have a team of teachers who record the music for others to learn, post that music on the synagogue website and then help those aspiring to lead to iron out the rough spots in their presentation. To become a prayer leader, one would have to pass muster with this committee. (Kehillat Hadar, one of the new minyanim in New York City, has published a CD of the music they use at their service, and offers sample clips of the music on their website as a way to teach and encourage more people to take a role in leading the service).

Maybe you will accuse me of being self serving but I don't think that the role of Rabbi or Cantor is going the way of the dinosaur. Their role in the congregation is changing. The role of Rabbi and Cantor is going back to its roots; that of serving as mentors and teachers of the community. The role is less up front and more behind the scenes, urging and encouraging Jews to take a larger role in their own spiritual development. I am sure that there are still Rabbis and Cantors who want and need to be the center of the synagogue service. I believe that congregations should no longer be looking for the “Pied Piper” who will lead the congregation to successful worship. I think the synagogues of the future will be looking for the “mentor-in-chief” who will guide, support and encourage spiritual growth through prayer.

Challenges in Worship

Finally, the timing of the service is also an issue; not the full amount of time spent praying, but the start time and the pace of the service. Congregations wanting to finish by noon on Shabbat, often had to start by 8:30 or 9:00 am. There are a growing number of Jews who just don't want to get out of bed to get to synagogue at that hour. This has meant, in the past, that many Jews arrive late to the service, getting there when they have had all the sleep they desire on a weekend. Many successful congregations have instituted start times of 9:30 or 10:00 am (the latest possible time to pray the morning service) and more people arrive on time. The service is sometimes kept moving because the English and the spectator parts have been removed. Kehillat Hadar keeps things moving by keeping the d'var Torah, the teaching of a lesson, short. They stress teaching as the proper place for a lecture/sermon. It should be unusual for Shabbat services to go three hours or longer, however, except on special occasions when the liturgy may have many additions that could require a longer service.

There are also many indications that the “one service fits all” model is no longer helpful. It should not surprise anyone that styles of worship can vary by social class, by experience and by age. Young people have different ideas than their parents and their grandparents about what is spiritual. They may like different music, they may like more participation, they may want to learn from each other rather than have a formal sermon. I have heard of congregations where there were discussions about why younger members were unhappy with the main service and had started their own service; the older members were angry that the younger members didn't like what they were used to. I don't really see a reason why everyone needs to pray the same way. I believe that synagogues should offer a menu of venues for different groups with different prayer needs. While an advanced study program can generate unity among the students, prayer, because it is so personal, may require a menu of alternative services to accommodate the needs of all the members.

Congregations with large buildings can offer a variety of other services meeting different worshipers' needs or provide places for smaller minyanim to hold their services. Some alternative minyanim need proper prayer space and some congregations with large buildings have room for alternative minyanim. This can be a natural place for two communities to work together.

What is an alternative minyan? Some of these alternative minyanim could be women only services, healing services, learner's minyanim, non-egalitarian services, services with a creative liturgy or those that sport longer or shorter davening times (or faster or slower pacing). Often there is an effort to have differing start times to these alternatives services so that they can all end at the same time and so all the participants can join together in one collation after all the services are done (a unified Kiddush or Oneg Shabbat). In some congregations, however, each minyan has its own collation and coordinating the end times is not necessary. This does mean that there will be members of the community who choose not to be present to hear the Rabbi's sermon or to hear the Cantor chant the Musaf service. They will be preparing their own Dvrei Torah and arranging their own music. (This is another reason why sermons should be posted on the synagogue website and a reason that Cantors should be visiting all the different minyanim and helping each of them find their own musical way).

B'nai Mitzvah

The most difficult area in all of these suggestions about services is addressing the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Over the past 50 years, in many mainstream congregations, there has been a tendency to give the service over to the family who is celebrating the Bar/Bat Mitzvah of their child. The child chants large sections of the service, may read from the Torah, chant the Haftara, give a speech and lead the closing part of the service. In addition, the family is given most, if not all the Torah honors on their special day. The parents may give a speech in addition to the one given by the Rabbi and the speech given by the child. It makes for a longer service on Shabbat morning. For a large part of the congregation, made up of the friends and family of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah child, this is not a problem at all. They have come from near and far to be present at this service. For the rest of the congregation, however, it can be anything from an annoyance to agony. In some of these cases, the child leading the service has not been a regular attendee at Shabbat services. The family is unknown to those who regularly attend Shabbat services, and the family is so focused on the child and their own family that they have little regard for those who attend every week. There are times when the family will not even share the Kiddush luncheon following the service with the regular attendees, having a private luncheon in a different room or in a different location off campus. Is it any wonder that the regular attendees at a synagogue often “dread” when a Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony is scheduled?

On the other side, I have seen wonderful Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremonies where the family is well known to all in the congregation, where the entire family attends Shabbat services, not just for the last year, but for many years. The congregation has watched the child grow and desires to celebrate with the family. In one of the minyanim that meet at Congregation Anshei Chesed in New York City, for example, it is the custom when these families celebrate, at the conclusion of the student's chanting of the haftara, the entire minyan membership all get up and dance around the child on the bima singing songs of joy and congratulations. Families who may be unwilling to make that kind of a long term commitment to the congregation, will need to, perhaps, conduct their own services for their family and guests and leave the rest of the congregation to daven as usual. In this manner the family can have a service that they will appreciate and the rest of the congregation will not be put out by the personal and private speeches that often characterize these Bar/Bat Mitzvah services today. I do not mean, in any way, to denigrate the family or the ceremony of Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Surveys have shown that families who have celebrated at a congregation are often the most vocal about their love of the synagogue and their love of the entire community. There are just competing needs that will have to be addressed.

To make prayer a meaningful part of Jewish life today, we need to address the needs of the congregation for a real prayer experience and then offer a service that is real and honest to the liturgy. We should stop dumbing down the service and invite lay leadership to participate at every moment. We need to have music that is easy to use and easy to join together in singing and we must pay attention to the pacing of the service. We should let all worshipers feel that they are welcome, that we value their time and effort and that the service can be, for everyone, spiritually moving. If we are regular attendees at Shabbat services, and we find that the service is long and boring, then something is very wrong and the congregation should begin to find ways to make the service uplifting, meaningful and spiritual. I believe with all my heart that the issues that plague our services are not time, the traditional liturgy or Hebrew. The real issue is how we can gather together to bring God into our lives. It is not about how fast we go through the prayers, but in how the prayers go through us.