No, I get your point.
Hey, if that’s the accepted etiquette in your congregation, I’m definitely not trying to tell you that you can’t or shouldn’t follow it.
If congregations are on board with the general culture shift tending to conflate musical entertainment and musical offerings of reverence into a single baseline of customary response from the congregants/audience, fine. As a Jewish atheist anyway, I don’t really have a god in this fight; I’m just a hobbyist of choral and communal music performance. So I’m familiar with a lot of the traditional arguments opposing such conflation.
Never seen applause in a Jewish context (other than for a b’mitzvah kid’s speech, of course).
It’s interesting to hear an outsider’s perspectives. I think the difference is how one displays reverence. For us, silence is not reverence; reverence is “shout a joyful noise”.
(And looking that up, it’s Psalms 100. Are there no noisy Jewish services?)
Sure, there are lots of “rites of vocalization”, so to speak, among all sorts of congregations, including various denominations of Christian and Jewish ones. But they all typically involve congregations uniting in the noisy expression of reverence, by singing or shouting etc. together.
Not the congregation listening to a selected set of performers and then using applause to express appreciation of the performance, like an audience at an entertainment event. Christian worship etiquette across all denominations, until quite recently, has been pretty strict about deprecating applause for other people’s performances in worship services. (Unless, as I said, you happen to be the deity in whose honor the performance is being offered.)
I grew up in a Protestant congregation that considered applause inappropriate, but as an adult I’m in a congregation with different views. I’ve adapted (I don’t think there’s a moral or ethical argument one way or another, it’s just a different practice, one that I’m getting more comfortable with as time goes by).
On the subject of Stupid MFers
Did you hear the one about the Smithsonian hiding the bones of Bible giants in the basement? No? Well, Missouri Republican Representative Eric Burlinson did, and he recently said he wants to develop a “strategy” to use Congress’s investigative power to get to the bottom of the mystery. “I do believe [giants] were real,” Burlinson told a Blaze TV program in June, shortly before he gave a speech at NephCon 2025, a gathering of people who are hunting the remains of the Nephilim, or the giants from the Book of Genesis.
Yeah, there isn’t really a Jewish counterpart to the widespread Christian choral or soloist offertory anthem (mostly because synagogues don’t do offertory, on account of no-handling-money-on-Shabbat, having paid-membership finance structures instead). AFAICT Jewish liturgical music expression tends to be all performed either by the officiant(s) or the congregation as a whole, in the form of prayers, chants and hymns.
Yep, etiquette is fundamentally arbitrary, there’s no one right way to do any social activity.
Why stop there? In at least some accounts I’ve read of Roman society, the paterfamias could order any of his offspring executed without giving a reason. That would make the whippersnappers toe the line, toot sweet!
Disclaimer: as I said, this was in some accounts and I’m not sure there’s any definitive proof this was the case. But conservatives have used even flimsier “evidence” to justify their behaviors.
Synagogue prayers are usually led by a cantor, who can sometimes be very good, and sometimes just be whoever showed up. There isn’t much fancy vocal work involved, but on occasion, at the end of some impressive prayer, you’ll have a rumble of “yishar ko’ach” (an archaic Hebrew phrase meaning “well done”) from the congregation.
Deuteronomy 21 says that if the kid does not square, that’s a public stoning.
In Kansas City, it concludes “the home of the CHIEEEFS!”
Years ago, I was singing in a Catholic Church choir and we frankly rocked an arrangement of “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. I was stunned and a little embarassed when the congregation burst into applause. It was the first and last time I experienced that, however.
Also, as I understand it, a Jewish cantor is a liturgical leader in their own right, and can, if no rabbi is available, conduct the entire service. They’re perhaps more analogous to a Catholic deacon than to a Catholic cantor (whose only job is leading the singing).
This is an interesting assertion, so I did some googling. I found this article.
https://www.eldersdigest.org/en/2011/4/clapping-fit-or-unfit-for-worship
This author is opposed to applause during church services. But their support of that position is a series of references to previous authorities complaining about applause during services. So, you’re correct that applause has been discouraged for a long time, but apparently people have been doing it for a long time.
A pertinent quote:
Ellen G. White asserted that clapping was associated with the holiness movement at a Methodist camp-meeting at Burton. “Some things at this camp-meeting perplexed me exceedingly. I could not understand the exercises of many persons during the conference meetings at the stand and in the tents. They shouted at the top of their voices, clapped their hands, and appeared greatly excited.”15 Mrs. White believed that applause was acceptable for Jesus’ coming but not for worship. She warned about its dangers as “the food of world” and one of “the iniquitous practices of the world.”16 In fact, she said that “popular applause” is a “low standard of right and wrong” and leads people to seek men’s approval, where no man is safe, rather than the commendation of God.17 In addition, she portrayed applause as having the same stimulating powers as wine and identified it as a “snare.”18 Finally, applause is contrary to the Spirit of Jesus, for “Jesus did not seek the admiration or the applause of men.”19
My congregation is Methodist, so we’ve been noisy worshippers for a long time. (The quote cited was first published in 1876.) And others have been complaining about it for just as long. 
Technically, a Jewish service doesn’t need a leader at all. Just someone to make sure everyone’s (literally) on the same page.
It’s normal to applaud after the national anthem. It’s an appreciation of the singer’s efforts and further support for patriotism. I see it as odd not to.
I’ve been to many events where it is sung, and that’s the standard response, regardless of a person’s personal feelings on the matter.
Apparently, “Miss Manners” would say it’s disrespectful, this isn’t the 1950s. In modern times, that’s the norm, whether it’s considered “disrespectful” to some people.
As a kid growing up in 1950s Milwaukee, I honestly thought the anthem ended with “And the home… of the… Braves!”
And my dad used to ask me what the last two words were, and I’d say “Play ball!”
In my experience, “resin” is a goo that is liquid at room temperature that you add a catalyst to to harden. That may not be the broader definition, though.
Some of them are instead hardened by light. That’s what a “resin 3D printer” uses.
I was trying to remember the catalyst I used to use. It is Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide, and you use just a few drops at a time (in the range of 1 part per 100 of the resin or less). It seems to be pretty nasty stuff and I always thought that it was interesting that Walmart and Michaels sell it casually on the shelf.
MEKP is a severe skin irritant and can cause progressive corrosive damage or blindness.
The volatile decomposition products of MEKP can contribute to the formation of vapor-phase explosions. Ensuring safe storage is important, and the maximum storage temperature should be limited to below 30 °C.