What I noticed was that the rabbi sprinkled his talk liberally with Hebrew words, some well-known and others that could be understood from context even if you didn't previously know the words. He never used the language in a way that would leave an uneducated listener completely in the dark, but he also did not shy away from using Hebrew. I like this, a lot, and in my experience the Orthodox do this a fair bit in general. It's something that Reform Jews could learn from.

I speculate that Reform leaders, wanting to be as open and accessible as possible, shy away from this for fear of losing people. And there may be some merit in that fear, as members of Reform congregations are less likely to have gone to a full-time Hebrew school and thus been able to absorb more of the references. On the other hand, it's not as if I had that experience or have become fluent, and I can generally follow these conversations. Given a statement like "when Moshe brought the luchot down from Mount Sinai and saw the people worshipping the golden calf...", don't most people understand that "luchot" is "tablets"? That's the sort of context I'm talking about. That, and sometimes people use a term and immediately translate -- "Nadav and Avihu made an aish zarah, an alien fire, on the altar...". This just makes the educational aspect a little more explicit.

As with everything, context and audience matter. When my rabbi and I talk he uses a lot more Hebrew than he does when giving a sermon, for instance. When friends and I are discussing some bit of torah or halacha the Hebrew terms fly, though I wouldn't do that when talking with random members of my congregation. But I wonder if we don't shy away from Hebrew a little too much. It's happened in the liturgy already (and Hebrew is now coming back into favor in the last couple decades), and that avoidance helped to move Hebrew from "normal" to "strange and foreign". But maybe we should be pulling small bits of the language back into the normal lexicon of synagogue discourse, not just in worship but in conversation, as a way of making Hebrew seem less foreign and scary to folks.

I'm a member of this year's nominating committee. This year we're also nominating the executive committee (last year was just board members). The executive committee consists of the president and three VPs (with an obvious line of succession), and also a treasurer, financial secretary, secretary, and a couple assistants. My understanding had been that getting onto the VP track leads to eventually being president, but that the other positions are not tied into that.

At this week's meeting of the nominating committee, though, the chair said something like "so-and-so (currently on the exec committee) is interested in keeping his current job but isn't interested in moving up the ranks" (so he was willing to step aside). That's when I learned that, actually, it's assumed that once you're on the executive committee you'll eventually move up to a VP and thence to president. How odd.

Our committee suggested that it's more important to have people who are both competent and interested holding positions like treasurer, and if such people don't have other aspirations that's fine with us. Two past presidents of the congregation thought this was right too, so it's obviously not a hard-and-fast rule. But still -- the skills that make one a good treasurer aren't obviously related to those that make one a good secretary or a good president. I'm still planning to insert myself into the budget committee, mind, but now I know that I probably shouldn't let them eventually make me treasurer. :-)

This morning at breakfast after minyan there was some discussion of that congregation's current rabbinic search. (Their rabbi gave notice a few weeks ago.) One of the minyanaires who (I gather) is on their board or executive committee had copies of a survey the Rabbinic Assembly asked the congregation to fill out. (The RA matches available rabbis with congregations.) She was soliciting feedback from the people there. I asked to look at the questions because I'm curious, though it would be wrong for me to contribute answers. (I'm not a member of that congregation. I'm just this person who shows up and now leads services.)

There were some interesting questions, including many that I wouldn't have thought to ask. (Obviously they have many more clues about this than I do. :-) ) They asked about congregational customs in a number of areas, including the role of women. (This is a Conservative congregation, so not automatically egalitarian.) They asked about attitudes toward intermarriages, conversions, and (I think) gays. They asked what activities in the last year the congregation is most proud of, what things the congregation does not want the rabbi to change, and what things the congregation does want the rabbi to change. They asked what the most recent major decision regarding worship was and how it was made, and what major decision the congregation expects to be next. These are all good questions -- in addition to providing raw data they give the potential rabbi a feel for what the congregation is like even before a phone screen happens.

I was amused by one question: "After leading services, what are the three most important jobs of the rabbi?". This is interesting because of the built-in assumption. Actually, at many congregations the rabbi doesn't lead services, or does so only for Shabbat and Yom Tov (that's the case at this one). And if a congregation has more than one rabbi, I gather that it's fairly common for leading services to fall primarily to one. I know a congregational rabbi who never leads services (except in an emergency); she was hired to oversee the religious school, not to lead worship, and she likes it that way.

At torah study one of the regulars told me I'm becoming more and more like a rabbi over time. (I said "summer school was good for me", but he argued that it's more than that.) When I (gently!) corrected my rabbi during study he whispered to me "see?!" and I told him to hush. When he called me "rabbi Monica" at S'lichot that night, though, I told him that was presumptuous and to please not even joke about that. Just what I need -- someone overhearing and thinking the para-rabbinic program is going to my head or something. He agreed to poke fun at me in other ways instead, which is fine. :-)

We've been using lay torah readers in the morning service for a year now, and there's been some discussion of minor changes. Until now, the person reading torah is responsible for leading that part of the service as well -- we've made it clear that he's free to delegate, but that almost never happens. Meanwhile, some torah readers feel intimidated by the service (but don't make other arrangements), and some people want to lead the service but don't want to read torah. So after discussing it with people, I'm going to keep two separate sign-up lists. After the service four people told me they want to lead services (who were not already torah readers), so I think that was the right thing to do.

As part of that, I'm going to conduct a workshop soon after the holidays on the torah service -- liturgy, choreography, and practical skills. Assuming permission (likely), I'm going to copy a handout from a class at HUC on the choreography of the torah service, because why invent work for myself when I have a perfectly good handout? (It's an annotated siddur excerpt. It's not our siddur, but it's close enough.) This sort of public speaking I can do, though teaching more formal classes still intimidates me. One step at a time, I guess.

One of our regulars, a 13-year-old who became bar mitzvah in June, also signed up to read torah. I think that's great! He's the only person of that age who's currently showing up, and I'd like to keep him. His father has been involved in the congregation for years, including this service; the son started showing up at this service a year or two ago.

Aside that I might come back and expand on later, or not. This season involves three states: t'shuvah (repentance, literally "return"), s'lichah (forgiveness), and kapparah (expiation). It's not just about the first.

The S'lichot program this year was very good. I got there a few minutes late, but all I missed was havdalah, which I did at home before going anyway. They then had two mini-classes, one on the Rambam's laws of t'shuvah (excerpts; it's a long work) and the other on customs and random bits of information on the season. I think this is the first time (since I've been going) that they've aimed for an educational angle (as opposed to something like a cantorial concert), and I like this approach a lot. Then after that we had some refreshments, and then the S'lichot service itself. (This is customarily done at midnight, but we tend to start around 11:00. Some of our older congregants demanded it.)

Yesterday's mail brought a birthday present from my mother-in-law (a very kind woman). She sent a very nice purse, in which she had placed a keychain from the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv. The keychain has a tiny pouch (closed by a snap), and inside it was a teeny tiny copy of the book of Tehillim (Psalms). We're talking about a book that's as long as the middle joint on my index finger, as wide as the end joint, and somewhat thick. It's very cute, though I can't actually read the text myself. That's ok, though. I've (now) heard of smaller liturgical aids on keychains (t'filat ha-derech, or the traveller's prayer, which makes a lot of sense), but an entire book surprised me.

It does make me wonder about one thing, though. We do not take books containing the divine name into restrooms. I've always understood this to mean actual exposed books, though when I'm carrying a volume of talmud in my backpack I make sure not to carry that backpack into a restroom either. But what about something like these keychains? I'm not really worried about personal practice; I figure that if there were a problem with t'filat ha-derech keychains someone would have raised the issue by now, and my keys stay in my pocket when not in use. But I wonder where the line is that makes a keychain in my pocket seem ok to me, a book in a backpack iffy, and a "naked" book wrong.

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.

( Read more... )

The campus store and the library have very limited hours during the summer. I haven't yet been to the library (sigh -- who's got time? but I want to), but the store stayed open later today to accommodate us. I think it was worthwhile for them; lots of people skipped part of dinner to buy books and the like. I picked up the JPS Hebrew-English Tanach (I wanted to see it "in the flesh" first to see the size of the print, which is adequate), passed on Braude's Book of Legends this time (highly recommended, but I'll bet I can improve on the $75 price via the used market), and picked up a new talit. I have a talit and it has signifance to me, but there have been times when I wanted the option of a larger one, particularly when leading services. (The one I have, which belonged to Dani's grandfather, is the small "scarf" size.) It turns out that the large size is too big for me (drags the ground, which isn't an appropriate thing to do to tzitzit), but there is an intermediate size that gives me enough material to draw the talit up over my head for the sh'ma, which I can't do with the one from Dani's family. I'd also rather use a larger one when leading services. So now I have that option. I was going to use it for the first time at Friday's service, which I'm helping to lead, but I see wisdom in getting used to it first, so I'll be using it tomorrow.

The planning for that service got off to a rocky start due to logistics (not at all due to the people, who are wonderful), but we finally had a good solid hour and change to go over it tonight. Tomorrow we will meet with our staff advisor about our plans (each group has an advisor), and then tomorrow night we'll solidify things down to the level of who does what and sticking post-it notes in the siddur and stuff. I'm doing all the music leading; that wasn't my plan, but the other two really want to not do this and like me in that role. I introduced them to some new melodies tonight. Some of that was explicit experiment; I figured that if they could pick them up quickly (just by listening) then the others could too. And they did. So we'll be using a niggun that my rabbi taught us at the last Shabbaton, and a new meditation before the Sh'ma (and setting of the Sh'ma) that our cantorial soloist introduced some months back (by Jeff Klepper). Our group feels that in this setting, each service should have a lot that is familiar and some that is new, because (1) we're experimenting and learning and (2) this is a group of synagogue leaders who will then disperse, not an established congregation where you would be much more conservative about change. I'm looking forward to the service; I think we've done a good job of preparing. (I seem to be the unofficial leader of the group, but not for lack of trying to push decisions out to the other two.)

( people in need of a clue-by-four )

All that aside, onward to today's nifty classes.

( class: text study )

( lunch: leadership development )

( class: Jewish music )

( class: shiva/funeral )

( chug: trope )

( class: illness and the community )

( ma'ariv )

Of course it's not always this or always that, but I do sometimes wonder, when watching my rabbi, whether he gets out of the service anywhere near as much as I do as a mere participant. When I have been the leader, I've noticed varying degrees of this, from being purely a stage manager to being just one of the daveners. It depends on the formality of the setting, my connection to the other people there, and -- somewhat -- on the presence of microphones. (I feel that a mike fundamentally changes your role with respect to the other people. That one time I was leading services at Tree of Life during a power outage, I was actually glad that we were forced to all work together a little harder. And it's not like I can't make myself heard in a moderate-sized room...)

In our Shabbat morning minyan, the service practically runs itself and if the rabbi has to leave early we just keep going. This Shabbat that happened (unexpectedly); he looked at me and said "torah service?", I said "yes", and I led it while he left. (The torah reader, who would normally get dibs on this, had a sore throat and was trying to conserve word-count.) No problems there. When, last summer, the worship committee jointly led a Friday-night service (both rabbis were out of town), I spent the service feeling like I was herding cats and didn't really pray. (This is not a comment on the other people; it is a comment on the nature of group efforts.) Another time I and one other very-competent person led the Friday service and it went better, but I was still mindful of the fact that I was up on a bima with a mike in front of a congregation that wasn't fully participating. I think, though I haven't done it yet, that when I lead shacharit services at Tree of Life I'll just be one of the louder daveners, and that'll be kind of neat. Of course, I'm also confident that if I mis-step, half a dozen people will jump in to correct me. :-)

But to an extent, every person leading a service is paying attention to some meta-issues. How are we doing for time? Is the person with the next aliya ready to walk up here? What happened to the person who's supposed to read the announcements when I'm done with this prayer? Do we read tachanun today? And so on. I find myself wondering how often people who make a career of this really pray, as opposed to leading prayer. And while I'm talking here about Jewish prayer, I imagine the question generalizes to other religions.

Occasionally my rabbi and I will be the only ones who show up for a weekday service. (This happened this past week.) When that happens we just drop into Hebrew and go, independently for the Amidah per tradition rather than in unison as is common in the Reform movement. And he always thanks me for the opportunity when we're done.

One of these days I'll get around to asking my rabbi about this. I'll probably ask this summer during the sh'liach k'hilah program, too. It would be pretty frustrating if the people who are so committed to religion that they're willing to make a career of it are the ones who are least likely to be able to pray effectively during services!

The FAQ says that one of the responsibilities of the sponsoring rabbi is "to verify that the congregation will have an appropriate role for the applicant should s/he be accepted to the program and that the applicant is suited to serve the congregation".

Now I've heard about this program before and ogled it from afar, but I hadn't seen very much information. (The last time I visited the web site there wasn't much to it, but that's changed. Either Mozilla or Acrobat is choking on their PDFs, so I can't actually read some of the materials yet.) And that ogling has been more of a "gee, that would be neat, though it's not like I'd have a chance to actually apply any of it in my congregation". But -- a condition of being accepted to the program would be having an opportunity to apply what I learn, according to them. That's significant.

Some of the information is vague (like the curriculum), and some is inaccessible (at least for me right now). And maybe my rabbi just sent this to me because he had to find a home for it and the worship chair makes sense -- or maybe it's a suggestion/offer. I won't be able to ask him before tomorrow, so it's premature to write this, but... wow, that sure would be neat, and if he does have that degree of confidence in me, well that's awfully flattering.

This would be about as close to formal quasi-rabbinic training as I'm ever likely to get -- emphasis on the "quasi", as the program is measured in weeks rather than years and I know better than to be presumptuous. But the real thing is pretty unlikely to ever happen, and this is something I could actually do, and benefit from personally, and (apparently) benefit from congregationally. So it's worth investigating!

At 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.

( Aside: what do rabbis do? )

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.