Forgive my gentile ignorance (but what better place to lay it bare than in FQ) but what, if any, is the difference between a temple (small t), a synagogue, and a “congregation”?
Oh, and i just asked an Orthodox friend who is a member of a fairly large congregation what his community did during covid. He replied:
First there was nothing, then outdoor only, then mask only.
And he said they worried that revenue would plummet and the shul would fail, but in fact, revenue never dropped. Attendance has still not returned to pre-covid levels, but members seem to feel the need to support the congregation even if they don’t attend weekly services.
I would say that “temple” and “synagogue” are synonymous, at least in the context of Judaism (though of course other religions can also have temples, but I’ve never heard of, say, a “Buddhist synagogue”). Either word can refer to either the congregation, or to the physical building in which they meet.
A “congregation” (of any religion) is a group of people who worship together.
Mostly, only Reform Jews refer to their place of worship as a temple. And that word refers to both the building and the community. A more generic (among Jews) word for the building is “synagogue”. And a congregation is just what it sounds like, the group of people who collectively identify as a group that gathers together to pray. So, a reform congregation might raise money to build a temple. Orthodox and some conservative congregations refer to their synagogue as a shul, which i assume is a Yiddish word, but I’ve never actually looked it up.
Shul is Yiddish and literally means school.
So, a building can be either “Temple Beth-El” or “Beth-El Synagogue” but if the sign outside says “Congregation Beth-El” that’s not the name of the building?
I wouldn’t read that as the name of the building, but as the name of the organization that owns the building.
My daughter’s Bat Mitzvah was in one of the sanctuaries at our Reform temple. The only people in physical attendance were me, my wife, our daughters, and our mothers. There was a Bar Mitzvah in the other sanctuary and we were all on zoom. The Cantor was running between the two rooms, since two of the Rabbis were laid off and the third one was in quarantine due to recent travel to the US to see his parents.
Whereas “synagogue” is disfavored among certain more observant communities because it’s a little too…Greek. (See also: “phylacteries,” “tabernacle,” “Pentateuch”…)
Re Shul
AIUI A shul is a synagogue with an attached school and a focus on education. A shteible (my spelling may be off) is a house people live in that also serves as a meeting place for prayer and services.
For those still curious, here’s Wikipedia on corpse uncleanliness, which is considered distinct from other forms of ritual impurity;
Short version: touching a human body or even a small fragment thereof makes you unclean, as does being under the same roof as a dead Jew, and touching someone who is thus unclean also makes you unclean (which is why it is assumed that everyone living today is thus unclean). Kohens cannot enter a Jewish cemetary but are permitted to become unclean for the sake of burying family members or an abandoned corpse where there is nobody else available. (My understanding is that a commandment to do something, e.g. bury a body, generally overrides a commandment to not do something, e.g. avoid contact with the dead.)
I was mistaken about dead animals conferring the same impurity - those only confer the lesser grade of impurity which can be removed through mikveh immersion.
I don’t know OTTOMH what the exact translation of tum’at is. Met is literally corpse. I know this because in many versions of the golem legend the word inscribed on the golem’s forhead is emet. The literal translation is truth. However, it is also one of the names of God. Remove the first letter, and you get met - which means corpse and the golem becomes inert clay again. OTTOMH this version is used in the classic German silent film and in an episode of the X Files.
Strangely, any place where a bunch of Jews dwell is supposed to have a burial society. This group is repsonsible for taking a corpse out the house, and performing a very specific cleansing ritual of the corpse while saying certain prayers. Jewish law mandates that a dead body be buried that day (unless it is the sabbath). If a body cannot be buried right away, it is required that a Jew stay with body to keep watch and say certain prayers. Fyvush Finkel’s character did this duty in an episode of Picket Fences. The duty is the premise of the Jewish horror movie The Vigil. I bought a DVD of the Vigil in January. I have not got around to watching it yet.
Well, there’s a genre that I didn’t know existed.
After the success of The Exorcist- originally it was a novel- many authors tried to imitate it. One of those books was The Tribe, Non Spoilers- The author’s attempts to capture Jewish behavior and Jewish culture are great. At no point is the book remotely scary. The ending is unbelievably stupid. You have probably never heard of The Tribe. There are many good reasons for that.
Greenberg The Vampire was a horror/comedy/shmaltz graphic novel published by Marvel. Non Spoilers- Parts of it are very good indeed. Personally, I found the many stories Oscar Greenberg starts typing and then rips up vastly more interesting and of much higher quality than the letter he writes at the end which is supposed to be a great piece of writing.
Oh I almost forgot- I highly recommend (I think this is the title. Searching on IDMB was no help) Golem A Legend Reborn. This is definitely a Jewish horror movie. Without spoiling- certain things are changed. Most details are faithful to the legends. The touching parts are touching. The scary parts are scary. You should watch it.
I’ve heard good things about A Dark Song, which is based on a Kabbalah ritual (specifically the Abramelin operation, though the version of it depicted in the film is highly fictionalized), but I haven’t seen it since I’m actually planning to undertake the Abramelin soon and I don’t want negative impressions of it in my head.
I’ll add the movies you mention to my list of things I should get around to watching at some point.
Found it! I could swear that when I watched it with my Mom, the screen showed the title as Golem- The Legend Reborn. According to this, the title is simply The Golem.
Another fictional story on the subject of rebuilding the Temple was a miniseries called Dig ten years ago on the USA Network. It also involved a boy being raised to be pure, a red heifer and so forth.
This is absolutely correct. My orthodox friend I mentioned in an earlier post told me that on Saturdays, the Haredim (ultra, ultra-orthodox in Israel) love to donate blood because they, even teen-agers, are driven to the hospital in a high speed ambulance to save a life. Of course, they are then stuck there till sundown. But they love the thrill. Once I was in this guy’s living room on a Saturday afternoon. Around 4 the lights suddenly came on. They were on a timer. It is not the use of electricity that is banned; it is turning on a switch because that will make a tiny spark. Perhaps, if you leave your computer on all through the Sabbath, you can run your zoom service without closing any switch.
And there’s The Unborn, starring Gary Oldman as a rabbi who apparently does an exorcism (!?).
Thank you! The mention of the red heifer earlier in this thread made me think of this miniseries, which I had watched but could not remember the name or enough other info to be able to find it.