Jewish services - why so much Hebrew?

Factual Questions
1

In recent weeks, I’ve started to attend services at Reform synagogues near me. (I’m not Jewish, but I’m investigating and trying to learn more about the faith. About half of my family is Jewish.)

It seems like about a third of a typical Reform service is in Hebrew. I would imagine that the percentage of Hebrew would be even higher in a Conservative or Orthodox service. I can get a rough idea of what’s being said or sung thanks to bilingual prayer books, but unlike Protestant, Catholic and Unitarian-Universalist churches, Reform Jewish services seem to have no fixed “order of service”; I often find myself lost.

Catholic masses use very little Latin now. Go to most Lutheran churches in the US, and you won’t hear a word of German or Swedish. (Most hymns were originally written with German lyrics, but they’re recited in English, making them awkward to sing at times.) Unitarian-Universalist services aren’t conducted with a Boston accent – that is, outside of Beantown. Why is Hebrew is used so much at Jewish services in the US, though?

I haven’t seen this answered at any of the various “Judiasm 101” sites out there. I wouldn’t doubt that a Doper could enlighten this goyim.

2

I’m in no way an expert, but my semi-WAG:

Throughout history, Judiasm has always been strongly invested in preserving a sense of community. A lot of this has to do with the persecution that Jews have been subjected to. Maintaining a lot of Hebrew has been a way of keeping that language (which, for reasons unclear to me, is the “Jewish” language) alive, even in the face of cultural persecution.

3

They don’t use a prayer book? I’m Conservative, not Reform, but we almost always use a prayer book for the “order of service”. They’re usually located with the Torah books on a table either just outside or just inside the door to the sanctuary. Some synagogues put them in the backs of pews.

A book you may want to read: To Pray as a Jew by Hayim Halevy Donin. It’s from an Orthodox perspective, but it does explain the different parts of the service and the prayers. The author explains the use of Hebrew in services thusly:

4

Re-reading your post, I noticed that you do mention prayer books. Do they not follow the order of service in the prayer book? The synagogues I have been to always do, IIRC.

5

Consider too that Judaism does not proselytize as Christianity does so there is less motivation to make the service understood by outsiders.

6

I can’t imagine any synagouge (whether Orthodox or non-Orthodox) not following the same basic structure of services:

Birchas HaShachar - morning blessing
P’sukei D’Zimra - Psalms of praise
Shacharis - The Shema and it’s blessings and the Amida
Hallel - songs of praise (on Holidays [not including Rosh HaShanna and Yom Kippur], Rosh Chodesh and Channuka
Reading of the Torah
Mussaf - “Additional” service - although some Reform congregations have omitted this entirely.

While I would imagine some Reform synagouges may choose to omit certain prayers and change the wording on others, all Reform prayer books that I have seen still follow this same basic structure.

Zev Steinhardt

7

oh, you must mean shul :wink:

8

Judaism places great emphasis on tradition. Orthodox Jews, at least, follow the traditional service, which was written in Hebrew. An Orthodox service is almost entirely in Hebrew; only the sermon (if there is one) and things like “turn to page 471” are in English. The Great Assemby codified Jewish prayer in about 500 BC, and we still say their prayers today. Alterations have been made, of course, but never lightly, and never without much discussion as to wording.
Many of the prayers are taken directly from biblical verses or are based on biblical passages; for instance, the Shmonah Esrei, the central piece of Jewish prayer, is modeled on one of the psalms. The wording is a very important aspect of the prayer, and to translate it is to miss a lot of the point. Of course, if you don’t understand what you’re saying, that misses a lot of the point too, but from a Jewish perspective, it’s better to educate yourself about the Hebrew than either to say them in English or to say them in Hebrew with no understanding. If you want to add something personal, from you to G-d, you can certainly say it in your native language-- that’s from you. But the prayers everyone says are standard, and we try to say them as they were intended to be said. They are a unifying force in Judaism. If I enter a synagogue in Israel or France, or the Chabad house in Bangkok, I’ll feel right at home with their prayer service, because it’ll be basically the same as mine.
NinjaChick, as for why Hebrew is the “Jewish” language, it was the Jewish language before it was the Israeli language. Jews spoke Hebrew from their national birth until they were forced to adapt in exile, and they continued to pray in Hebrew and study the Torah in its original Hebrew (with the exception of the book of Daniel which was written in Aramaic-- the perfect example of having to adapt. It was written during the Babylonian exile, in which everyone spoke Aramaic). Hebrew as a spoken language was essentially dead until a man named Ben Yehuda revived it and molded it for modern use, creating anew generation of Hebrew speakers during the first Aliyah (time of immigration to Israel). But that’s a topic for a different day. If anyone is interestecd in learning more, read this article:
http://www.pravapis.org/art_benyehuda2.asp
Anyway, as for having an “order of service,” we definitely do. You may have been confused by the many orders of service there are in the prayerbook, though. There are morning, afternoon, and evening services, and a different one of each for weekday, Sabbath, and holidays, plus special insertions for things like fast days and the first day of the month. So your confusion probably arises not from the lack of order, but from the abundance of order in the prayerbook.
Hope that helps! I can’t speak from a Reform standpoint, being Orthodox, though I can tell you that when the first Reform temples cropped up and began including German parts in the services, it was considered a revolution. Tradition, passed down as intact as possible through the generations, is something Jews place the highest priority on.

9

Part of the importance of praying in Hebrew is that in any translation, there in an inevitable loss of meaning. Since all divine communication (according to Judaism)the Bible is in Hebrew, it is the purest language for conveying spiritual meaning, and therefore it is best to pray in it.

If one does not understand Hebrew,it is better to pray in a language one understands. But if one has even a slight understanding of Hebrew, it should be used, for Hebrew words contain nuances of meaning that their translated counterparts do not convey.

10

Ah, just had another thought on the topic re: order of service.

At my parent’s (reform) synagogue, they do generally go in a specific order. Part of what may be confusing to an “outsider”, though, is that that’s not nessecarily the order of the prayerbook, as Zev mentioned. Many of the different services have slightly different varients of the same prayer; a reform rabbi may (to a certain extent, I guess) ‘pick and choose’, making it seem as if there’s no set order.

11

I am mostly ignorant on this subject, but had a similar discussion recently with a Jewish person on this very topic. Although I will mangle what she said, I will do my best. It is my understanding that the faith/text itself requires certain regimes be followed. For example, certain parts of the service cannot be done unless there are X number of people with a certain skillset/background present (it may be simply a certain number of attendees, but I believe there is something more to it than that). Likewise, I believe you are not permitted to give certain parts of the service unless it can be read in Hebrew.

12

From the Orthodox viewpoint:

There are certain parts of the service which cannot be done without a minyan present. A minyan is a quorom of ten adult (over the age of 13) males. Among them are the recitation of kaddish, the repetition of the Amidah and the Reading of the Torah.

In addition, while one generally can pray in any language s/he understands, certiain rites must be done in Hebrew. The Reading of the Torah, for example, must be done in Hebrew. The Priestly Blessing recited on holidays is another example of a service that must be done in Hebrew.

I can’t speak for Reform congregations, but I would be highly surprised if they did either of these in any language other than Hebrew.

Zev Steinhardt

13

That’s it. Thanks for writing it out, maybe I’ll remember it a bit more closely next time.

14

I think Leo Rosten touched on this in The Joys of Yiddish; the persecution, as already noted in this thread, caused Jews to become disaffected with other languages, such as Latin or German–ironic, of course, since Yiddish is a dialect of German itself (and, as I understand, Yiddish is widely used in Israel.)
This disaffection, Rosten noted, was severe enough to prompt many Jews to reject not only the other languages, but the Latin aphabet as well.

15

Also, depending on the season and/or holiday, additional prayers may be said, or prayers may be substituted. My old rabbi also used to add prayers for the military (he was a Navy chaplain), the country, and the President.

Robin

16

Not really. Certain Hasidic groups speak Yiddish as their first language, but that’s true in America as well. I doubt that they could make up more than a couple of percentage points of the Israeli population as a whole.

17

All I can tell you is that I had seen a quote in an edition of Mario Pei’s book Talking Your Way around the World in which he notes that Hebrew was a rare language in that it was devoid of profanity–forcing Israelis to use Arabic when they felt the need to curse. I told this to an aged Jewish woman I knew (since deceased), and she said “Or they could use Yiddish.” I had not thought of that.

18

Well, yes and no. When Hebrew was revived at the beginning of the 20th century it indeed lacked slang and profanity, but as nature abhors a vacuum - and both slang and profanity are natural parts of any language - it adapted words and phrases from Arabic (“kus ochtoc”), Yiddish (“shmok”), Russian (“kibinimaat”) and Ladino (“demikulu”), among others, as well as developing new words of its own. After all, a language can take perfectly innocuous words and with time turn them into something far more ribald, even vile - for instance, look what happened to the English word “to come.” In Hebrew’s case, a good example would be the old verb root “to arm” (as with weaponry), Z-Y-N, which eventually also came to mean “to fuck”:

“Lizayen” - to fuck.

“Mizdayen” - fucking, fucker.

“Mizuyan” - fucked, fucked-up.

“Ziyun” - the act of fucking; also, a fuck-up.

Amusingly, the term also kept its old meaning, so the correct Hebrew term for “Armed Forces” is “Cochot Mizuyanim” - an instant double entendre.

19

Thanks for your answers! From what I’m reading, the use of Hebrew is akin to the use of Arabic among Muslims; it may not be the first language, but it’s considered more “correct” than interpretations because of nuances that can’t be reflected in other tongues. Tradition is also very important; the Hebrew helps to maintain a distinct Jewish identity, even in a world where you’re otherwise assimilated.

In Protestant churches, attendees are usually given a pamphlet at the door that includes a step-by-step instruction guide to the liturgy that day; start with this hymn on page 35 of the blue hymnal, say the Kyrie on page 12, stand, recite the prayer on page 13. kneel, say the next prayer on page 14, sit back down, introduce yourself to those in the pews around you, listen to the lesson from the Old Testament, stand for the lesson from the New Testament, and so on. Catholic churches have regularly published missals that are far more detailed than the order of service guides distributed at mainstream Protestant churches. Unitarian-Universalist liturgies are far less rigid, but they’re still spelled out in the order of service guide.

When I’ve gone to synagogues (really, “temples” since they’re Reform, but I’m used to the term “synagogue” since Dad’s Conservative), you still get a pamphlet at the door, but it lists a calendar of future events and holidays, the sponsor of the oneg shabbat after the service, a list of people that are subjects of mourning, anniversaries, births, and a few other things unrelated to the service. There’s no listed order of service, though; it seems like you’re just supposed to know the liturgy without the help of a step-by-step guide. Occasionally the rabbi will tell you to turn to a certain page, but then I quickly lose track of where I’m supposed to be. Everybody’s flipping through to some distant page, even though there are no such instructions in the prayerbook or from the rabbi. The cantor may sing something on a certain prayerbook page in English or in Hebrew; what language is used “just depends”. WOAH! Everybody’s bowing now … I guess I better do that too. I seem to “pass,” though. At oneg shabbat, others usually ask if I belong to another synagogue. I look Ashkenazi, which probably helps concel the blinking “GOY!” sign I’m wearing.

I knew some of the basics; the “shabbos shalom” and “gut sabbat” greetings, and standing when the Ark is open. I’ll admit to feeling less confused than when I attended Conservative services with Dad as a kid. I’m going home this weekend; Dad’s going to take me to a Reform service and help me understand what’s going on. I asked him about the Hebrew; he said “It’s just how they do it. You might not know what you’re saying, but it’s instinctive; it just rolls off your lips. It would be nice if it were in English so we’d know what we’re talking about.”

Yes, I’ll keep going back. My spiritual path has pointed me in that direction through the years.

20

If you ever care to attend a Hindu religious ceremony, you’ll find that almost everything is conducted in Sanskrit, a language which few practicing Hindus understand. This reflects a different philosophy with regard to the purpose of religious ceremonies. In Hinduism, it doesn’t matter if you understand the words. The religious act is not meant for your understanding; it’s meant to invoke the presence of the divine and entreat him or her to take certain action. You don’t perform a religious ceremony in order to increase your understanding; there are other ways to go about doing that.

I have heard a lot of Catholics say that they would prefer to bring back the Latin mass. So there seems to be some feeling among some Catholics that it’s not necessarily important to understand the words.