Oh wow, it’s been a while. I haven’t visited a lot of religious services since the pandemic, although I’m thinking I may pick that up again. But I did attend my synagogues Rosh Hashanah service today, and I thought I might share some thoughts.
Mine is a large and wealthy congregation. The space is nicer on the Sabbath than on high holy days, because for high holy days they open up the walls between the sanctuary and the two social rooms, and use a temporary ark in the middle of the huge room that ensues, and the social rooms aren’t as pretty as the main sanctuary. But it’s an attractive space with a lot of windows (viewing mostly trees) and has an airy feel with a high vaulted ceiling.
It arranged with the ark on the center of one of the widest walls, with seats flanking it for the officiants who aren’t currently speaking/singing, and a large table in front of the ark for the torah or other written materials. All of that is on a small semi-circular stage, called the bima. The seating is arranged in semi-circles, starting just in front of the bima and out to the edges of the room, with partial semi-circles towards the edges, ending with a single row of tall pews, that are useful both for hiding the sound equipment and for families with fidgity kids to sit at.
I went to the first of two main services, and there were probably about a thousand people there, maybe 1300. (The most crowded service of the year will be the later Yom Kippur service, which fills to capacity.) Being a huge congregation, we have a lot of staff, including 3-4 rabbis and two cantors, plus a song-leader who has a minor commercial career as a Jewish singer, but comes home to our congregation for the holidays. (Think Debbie Friedman, but not as successful.)
Our main cantor is a woman. I’m sexist enough to prefer female cantors. In my experience, male cantors have a little too much “listen to how well I sing” about them, whereas female cantors are more there for the music and the congregation. But our junior cantor this year is a guy, and he was really good. His voice isn’t quite as strong as that of the main cantor, but he was there for us, not for him, and he was very good at leading the congregation in prayer. (Many of our prayers are traditionally sung or chanted to a tune.) I hope he sticks around for a few years, although I assume his goal is to eventually have a congregation of his own to lead.
The Rosh Hashanah service is one of the longest of the year, and this one moved briskly, and ended perhaps 2.5 hours after it started. That’s even though we included the shofar service. It’s traditional to be called to attention at the high holidays, and especially on Rosh Hashanah, by the blowing of the shofar (the horn of a kosher animal – usually a goat or an antelope, because goats are common and antelope horns make terrific and showy shofars.) But there’s also a prohibition against using musical instruments on the Sabbath. So a lot of congregations only blow the shofar on the second day of Rosh Hashanah when the first day falls on the Sabbath.
The rabbi said there is controversy as to whether or not to blow shofar on the Sabbath, and claims that musical instruments were played in the Temple in Jerusalem, back in the day. And, you know, our cantor plays guitar every sabbath, and is often accompanied by a pianist. And for high holy days, we also have violinists, cellists, and often some percussionists mixed in with the choir. So to skip a required musical event because it’s the Sabbath always felt weird to me, in years when they’ve made that decision.
At Rosh Hashanah, the main rabbi usually includes a call to action. (And the actual d’var torah, the discussion of the day’s torah reading, is usually delivered by one of the assistant rabbis.) His past calls to action have ranged from “visit Israel” to “boycott tomatoes from growers who underpay their labor” (with advice on brands, and how to talk to the grocery stores about it.) And he usually talks about our connection with Israel, and supporting Israel. So I wondered what he would say this year.
Last year, he skirted the Israel topic by reading snippets of letters he got from consituants, which ranged from “you have to speak out against the genocide in Palestine” to “you have to stop the Temple from supporting Arab immigration to the US” (the synagogue has an active immigrant resettlement committee, which sponsored several Syrian refugee families, along with some other refugees.)
This year, his call to action was to encourage us to help write a new Torah scroll for the congregation, and his only mention of Israel was to say that we have an Israeli visitor who will be speaking during the Yom Kippur “hour of response”, which is an open-ended discussion the synagogue hosts the afternoon of Yom Kippur.) And he called the Israeli guy up to read one of the prayers. Aside – it’s always interesting to hear Israelis read Hebrew, because they actually read it. Other American Jews recite Hebrew, even when the American can speak Hebrew somewhat fluently, and the difference is obvious.
Oh, and before the reading of the Torah scrolls, various people are called up to recite blessings (an explicit honor, called an aliyah). On most services, the aliyahs are given to donors, or the parents of kids getting bar mitzvahed, etc. But for the High Holy Days, he calls up groups of people. And the second aliyah was given to “anyone who visited Israel in the past year, or has plans to visit”, as he’s done for several years, now.
But that was it, he didn’t even encourage people to visit Israel, as he usually does. The situation in Palestine has gotten too toxic for him to touch it, I think.
The D’var Torah was given by our brand new assistant rabbi, who talked about Isaac’s perspective of being not-quite sacrificed. (The reading today was that story.) He talked about the trauma and how trauma is part of life and we should embrace and celebrate ourselves, trauma and all.
We usually end the service with the Kaddish, an ancient Aramaic prayer recited by mourners, by bible students (ever so slightly different version), and by congregations. It end with a call for peace. “may God who makes peace in the highest realms, bring peace upon us and upon all Israel.” (we sometimes add "and in all the world these days.) This year, the cantors led the congregation singing the kaddish to the tune of “America the beautiful”. And then transitioned into that song. For those who forget the words, they are (as slightly modified today):
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed Your grace on thee
And crown thy good with equalhood
From sea to shining sea!
(I think that "equalhood is a bit clumsy, and prefer the original version of the hymn, which ended
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!
I may pick that up when I sing it in the future.)
The rabbi said it was a remembrance of 9/11, but I think one might read more into it than that.
Oh – and I stayed to help clean up between services. I have never seen the books and additional materials left in such disarray! People, if you go to the first of multiple services, LEAVE ONE BOOK ON EACH SEAT! I was shocked at how many people stacked up a pile of books and left them all on one seat. I had to take all those books and redistribute them across the seats so, you know, the next set of congregants would each have a book to read. I was reminded of the thread on stacking plates in restaurants, and wondered if those people somehow through they were helping.
