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thoughts on worship
But first, a short story from a class handout:
The Sacred Cat
(from The Art of Public Prayer)
Once upon a time, there was a guru in the mountains of Asia who gathered around him a band of monks dedicated to prayer. The guru owned a cat, which he loved deeply. He took the cat with him everywhere, even to morning prayer. When the disciples complained that the cat's prowling distracted them, the guru bought a leash and tied the cat to a post at the entrance to the prayer room. Years later, when the guru died, his disciples continued to care for the cat. But as they say, cats have nine lives, so the cat outlived even the disciples. By then the disciples had their own disciples, who began caring for the cat, but without recalling anymore why the cat was present during prayer. When the cat's leash wore out, they knitted another one in the scared colors of the sky and the earth, and when the post wore down, they built a beautiful new one that they began calling the sacred cat stand. During this third generation of disciples the cat died, and the disciples wasted no time in buying another sacred cat to accompany them in prayer. Their worship was eventually expanded to include the sacred actions of tying the cat to the leash and affixing the leash to the sacred cat stand.
One of the worship classes stressed the idea of plotting out a service, much the way that you would plot out a performance. It's not that services are performances per se; nothing that crass. But what you do on the bima, what content you choose (readings, music), how you balance various factors -- all that can have an effect on the mood of the service and, ultimately, what the worshipper takes away from it.
So if you just go through the siddur saying "we'll read this in Hebrew, that in English responsively, sing this together, have the cantor sing this solo" and so on, you've only done part of the work, and not the most important part at that. Before you do any of that, you need to think about the mood and shape of the service. Where are we in the liturgical year? What's happening in the community and the world? What is the parsha and what will the sermon be about? Where do you want the high points, and where do you want the quiet meditation?
We tried to apply this thinking to our group service. We had some readings that one of the members wanted to include that were roughly around the theme of commitment to Judaism, so I said we should have high points during kri'at sh'ma, the part of the service that's about revelation and redemption (accepting the covenant). Given that, we needed to have easily-singable music for the Sh'ma itself and for Mi Chamocha, the song at the sea. Given that, we needed to transition into it from the lower-key part of the service that preceeded it -- that's where using "Open Up Our Eyes", a song that builds up to a very full-hearted Sh'ma, came from. And similarly, the transition from Mi Chamocha to the t'filah couldn't be too harsh, but we had to lower the outward intensity to allow people to focus that intensity more privately for the most important part of the service, direct prayer to God. So I used the traditional melody for Tzur Yisrael but slightly up-beat (in keeping with what came before), slowing it down at the end and going into the traditional (slower) melody for "sefatai" before t'filah.
My point isn't to catalogue our service bit by bit (I could do that, but I'll bet no one else cares), but to illustrate the reasoning we used. (Well, the reasoning I used, but I think we were all working along similar lines.) I've led services before but never with that early design work, and it does make a difference. (Sadly, the service my committee is leading this week was largely put together before the Sh'liach K'hilah program, so it won't show much benefit from this, but there are some bits and pieces I can influence now, and the next service I organize will be much better planned.)
All of this was in the back of my mind Friday when one of our leaders mentioned to me in passing that there were no announcements that night. (Aside: every week some board member gets up, after the sermon and anthem and before the concluding prayers, to read the announcements. It kind of breaks up the service -- not in a good way -- and it's not really a good use of time, because often there's nothing to say that people don't already know, but someone felt it important to have a board member do this every week. When I was a board member I was told this was a way of honoring board members; I personally thought it was stupid and successfully dodged that bullet during my three-year term.)
So anyway, the assigned person for announcements that night had fallen through and there was nothing to say anyway, so this person was suggesting that maybe we didn't need to have announcements every week anyway. I did my best to encourage that thinking. :-) Then someone else said that we really ought to give congregational leaders some opportunity to participate in the service. I pointed out that you can't take something away from someone else to do it; for example, the bar/bat-mitzvah families "own" candle-lighting and kiddush, and aliyot are deliberately distributed throughout the congregation.
Then it hit me. The Friday-night service, which everyone thinks of as one service, is really two: kabbalat shabbat and then ma'ariv (the evening service). Kabbalat shabbat is "welcoming Shabbat", and consists of songs and psalms. Then you have chatzi kaddish and go into barchu like you would for an ordinary evening service.
In our congregation, kabbalat shabbat is all in English except for the songs, which everyone knows. In other words, the barrier to entry is very low. And it's a part of the service that's logically different anyway.
So when my rabbi gets back from camp and I get back from Pennsic, I'm going to suggest to him that maybe, just maybe, a better way to provide a role for lay people in services would be to offer people the chance to lead kabbalat shabbat. I mentioned this to the people I was talking with on Friday (stressing that I had just thought of it in response to their comments and it was only a partly-baked idea), and they reacted favorably. The more I think about it, the more I think it makes sense.
And it doesn't just have to be synagogue leaders, though it'll be easiest to start there. Eventually, it could be a way for other congregants to become involved, particularly if they're celebrating something special (like, say, a wedding in the family).
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Likewise. A number of board members and other leaders do show up on a regular basis, but not all of them by a long shot.
I'm also not real clear on who exactly thinks standing up and reading obvious announcements is actually an honor, so I don't know who will feel the loss. (We also have a board member say a few words Saturday morning to the bar/bat-mitzvah student when there is one, but that at least makes some amount of sense. Announcements, though... ?)
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Ah, indeed they are performances. They are not mere entertainment, but they are, indeed, acts, they performed, and they are intended to be witnessed and to move the witnesses. Thus it behooves them to be as well formed and as well composed as any hymn, or as any other solemn performance.
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Must be the engineer in me.
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Actually, the history of (Jewish) liturgy is kind of interesting. On one foot: originally halacha dictated certain themes in a certain order, and the leader (sh'liach tzibur) riffed on those themes on behalf of the congregation. Over time, some of these texts became fairly standard via oral tradition, and people started adding to the liturgy (liturgical poems called piyutim, mostly). In the 9th century we have the first (known) siddur (prayer book), which wrote all of this down, including lots of piyutim. (So I'm told. I would love to see a facsimile of this siddur, but I don't yet even have a suitable citation.) This siddur was still just for the leader, though, so improvisation and acretions continued to happen. In the 16th century, with the advent of printing, everyone could have a copy for the first time, and creativity declined. In addition, while the siddur contained many texts where the apparent intent was "do one of the following N", some leaders felt a need to do all of it, and some of that belief got codified in halacha. For at least the last several hundred years, halacha has dictated not just themes but specific words, and, well, halacha rarely subtracts from the liturgy.
(Ok, I'll change feet 'cause I'm not done. :-) )
In the 19th century the Reform movement came along and said "there are way too many acretions here; let's go back to the themes that were supposed to be central before all this other stuff piled up", and they cut out all of the piyutim, all repetitions, and a lot of other stuff. In recent decades people have realized that they went too far, but we're not going back to Artscroll either. But the upcoming siddur from the Reform movement contains more complete texts with more accurate translations than either of the editions of Gates of Prayer, the current siddur. It'll be interesting to see how people use it over time; it also has some "choose one of these N" pages of readings, but it's made really clear that those are options, not core liturgy.
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His disciples continued the tradition, but did not chop wood, because the widow had passed away and the cottage was empty. They did walk into the woods and sing the song.
The next generation of disciples stopped walking into the woods, and had forgotten why it had ever been part of the minhag, but they still sang the song.
And now... we have forgotten the words, and all we have left is this story, and this niggun. *smooth segue into a nice Shabbat niggun*
(Special note: I know that there was more to this story when I first heard it, but I have forgotten. Perhaps you, in retelling the tale, will forget another piece...)
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On Shabbat mornings when there's a bar or bat mitzvah, a board member sits on the bima and makes a presentation to the kid. This makes sense to me in a way that the announcements thing doesn't. (And it honors the kid at least as much as the board member, which is fair.)
Inventing Bureacracy
Animal behaviorists put five chimps in a cage with a basket of fruit hanging from the ceiling. Whenever any one of the chimps tried to get the fruit, all five of them got hosed with cold water. The behaviorists took one chimp out and put in another chimp who immediately went for the fruit. The remaining four chimps pulled him down and wouldn't let him go for the basket. The scientists took another chimp out and put in another new chimp. When this chimp went for the basket of fruit, the three original chimps plus the first newcomer held him down. Three more replacements later, and they had a cage of five chimps who knew that going for the basket of fruit on the ceiling was a really bad idea, but none of them knew why. The behaviorists had succeeded in re-inventing bureacracy. :D
Re: Inventing Bureacracy
:-) I've heard that story. The outcome is initially surprising to many people and fully predictable to others. :-)