Why can't lay people lead services?
Jan. 25th, 2003 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioAt Torah study we talked about the question: why do we need a rabbi to lead services? We don't, of course; any somewhat-educated person who meets the (straightforward) halachic requirements can lead. In most Orthodox and some Conservative congregations, in fact, the rabbi doesn't lead services -- other congregants do. But in the Reform movement, by and large, the rabbi leads, unless you're such a small congregation that you don't have a rabbi.
(For those who are wondering, a rabbi's primary job responsibilities, traditionally, are to (1) teach and (2) act as a decisor. The latter means anything from resolving disputes (via a beit din, a court of rabbis) to answering specific questions about halacha. My rabbi certainly fields some questions (I know I'm not the only source of them, but I don't think he gets that many); aside from conversions, I don't know if he ever sits on a beit din, mainly because the Orthodox community doesn't consider a Reform rabbi to be qualified and they mostly control the beitai din. But anyway, a rabbi is not necessarily an officiant nor does he have a closer connection to God than a regular person does. He is not an intermediary. The reason this topic came up, by the way, is that we were studying part of the priestly ritual, and those people were intermediaries of a sort.)
My theory (which I wasn't fast enough to articulate this morning) is that this is a product of our culture. People (Americans specifically? people in general?) tend to want access to the expert. We don't want to settle for the physician's assistant to treat our illness, even if that person is perfectly qualified because it's only the flu and the flu is a well-understood problem; we hold out for the doctor. We don't want the apprentice electrician even though it's only a light switch; we want the experienced one. We only consider the "lesser" positions if we can save money, for the most part. (Yes, of course I'm over-generalizing.) So I think it's the same with rabbis and services; people want the rabbi, who they know will do everything right, and not the qualified layman who has no credentials, even though it's only a regular Shabbat service and that person has seen this hundreds or thousands of times. I've already seen this with respect to music; the Reform congregations I'm familiar with want the professional singers, even if they're not Jewish, and not the ameteurs from within the congregation.
Why is this a more common attitude in Reform than in other movements? Two factors, I think: first, we're more assimilated into the surrounding culture and second, we're (overall) less educated.
Assimilation means, in this case, that we are more inclined to imitate what we see or hear about from other parts of Americana, like church services. That organ at services isn't a coincidence, after all. The Reform community is more outward-focused, while the Orthodox community is more inward-focused (or so it appears from the outside). We're more likely to have had diverse worship experiences, and the ideas rub off. (Remember that most Orthodox would not set food in a church at all, and some of them will not set foot in non-Orthodox Jewish services.) I'm not trying to say that they're shutting the world out; it's not nearly that active. But they will have fewer chance encounters, and therefore fewer opportunities to pick up foreign ideas about "how things are done". Combine this with the fact that most Reform Jews do not attend services regularly, and you get a community that's more in tune with the outside world than with its own traditions and history.
And then there's the education factor. In the Orthodox community, it is pretty much presumed -- correctly -- that almost any adult male present is capable of leading services. He's been davening daily for most of his life, after all, so he knows the drill and can probably read the Hebrew correctly. Maybe he doesn't have a good voice, but that's not so important. I see this dynamic in play in the morning minyan at the Conservative shul I frequent, by the way; at least half the regulars can step in to lead services if the regular guy isn't there. (By the way, I am not yet one of those people. I am in the bottom third of that group for liturgical skill. I have most of the knowledge, but am just not fast enough with the Hebrew yet. Ironically, I am in the top half or third for pronoucing the Hebrew correctly -- I'm just too slow.)
Most Orthodox and many Conservative Jews of my generation have had significant Jewish educations -- day school, or at least a daily after-school program, and maybe Yeshiva, and maybe something beyond that. They also attend services regularly, so the Hebrew component of that is reinforced on a regular basis. But there's more to it than just the Hebrew; they learn halacha, study Talmud, study Torah in some depth, and so on. Most of my traditional friends can quote relevant sources off the tops of their heads, and know how to look up most of the rest. And they're just regular people -- lawyers and accountants and programmers and shopkeepers, not rabbis.
Most Reform Jews of my generation have not had a similar education, and are not seeing that their children get that kind of education. They send their kids to Hebrew school, which meets after school one day a week and on Sunday mornings, until bar mitzvah. A smaller number continue on through high school. They are studying a broader range of topics (after all, the Reform movement's focus isn't on traditional halacha), and they are spending less time on it, so of course their knowledge isn't as deep. Hebrew is not a large part of it, judging from what I've heard when the various classes lead services; they just don't read well, for the most part. I'm not dissing the kids; they read better than I probably would have at that age, and some of them read better than I do now. But most of them do not read well, do not maintain the skill past the bar mitzvah, and are not going to emphasize it with their eventual kids.
So, all told, the average person at a Reform service probably isn't capable of leading it. (Some of those could if they had time to practice.) So if you suggest to the average Reform Jew that someone other than the rabbi can lead the service, his thinking will probably go something like this: "Well, I can't do it, and I'm pretty normal, so why should I assume that David there can? He hasn't had any more schooling than I have; he's just a regular guy. No, he'll probably screw something up. We should stick with the rabbi; he's an expert." And if they've never actually heard David lead services, how are they to know that he's actually capable of doing it?
So the Reform Jew who is qualified to lead services faces a real up-hill battle -- not necessarily with the rabbi or the administration, but rather with the congregation. And who wants to put up with that kind of grief? Speaking only for myself, why would I want to try to force myself onto people who apparently wouldn't want me? And who am I to go to the rabbi and say "please make a pitch and let me do this"? Unless the rabbi decides that you don't have to be a rabbi to lead services, thus drawing flack from people who will say he's shirking his job responsibilities, it's not going to happen. So at some level, it's all politics.
And that's why, in the Reform movement, you have to be a rabbi to lead services, most of the time. In my opinion, of course.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-25 08:34 pm (UTC)Methodists also very much prefer a minister leading their services (despite the fact that they're often clueless about whether said person is ordained-- as long as they're appointed by the bishop, that's good enough).
So the term "minister" doesn't imply ordination? I didn't know that.
You referred to ordained ministers and ordained elders. Is "elder" a formal position? What activities (aside from communion) require ordination, and what does one have to do to qualify for ordination?
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-25 10:08 pm (UTC)This varies by denomination. In the United Methodist tradition, everyone is encouraged/expected to "minister" to the world ("be doers, and not merely hearers, of the word"). Some take on a formal ministry at the lead of the congregation, becoming ordained pastors. It's also possible (again, this is with the Methodist church) to become formally trained and certified (I think they may use the term "ordained" here too) as a "lay reader", who helps with scripture readings and some preaching during services but is not a full-fledged pastor. (Although many congregations don't require the formal certification before they let people act in at least some lay reader roles.)
But performing religious music, or teaching sunday school, or building houses for the poor, or working with youth, or even being a principled, ethical businessman who makes no attempt to hide his religious beliefs can also be seen as a ministry.
Other denominations use the terms "pastor" and "minister" interchangably. Some denominations have very formal lay roles like "elder" or "deacon" with specific responsibilities and requirements. And at the other extreme, other denominations have no formal requirement of study or ordination for pastors, opening that role to any who feel they've been called.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-26 08:14 am (UTC)I was under that mis-impression, too. So while everyone who takes the religion somewhat seriously ministers at some level, I thought "minister" in reference to a particular person meant "offiicial pastor-type person", which I thought had an ordination requirement. Hence my confusion. Thanks for straightening that out.