The rabbi, a short, plain, sturdy woman with big glasses, begins
by welcoming us to the celebration today for Emma and Jacob. “Jacob’s”
family in the front rows makes it known that in fact the young man’s name is
“Daniel.” It’s never a good feeling when the first pitch sails to the
backstop.
The rabbi apologizes sweetly and moves on.
“God commands us,” she says. “God commands us” to do this and that. The
audience stares at her. Impassive. No one nods in agreement. No one disagrees.
It’s just words.
The words roll on. The Jews are special.
Their traditions are special. The Torah is special. Let us go
to the cupboard and get out the Torah. Look at the fancy covering, the
fancy silver caps. See how heavy it is. This is how special it is.
We will carry it around the room so that you can press your prayer shawl
to your lips and use your shawl to kiss the Torah.
The artifacts, the rituals, the chanting. The tribalness
of it all.
The singing and chanting, by the way, is grating and
awful. If there’s going to be singing, at least sing well. The Mennonites, who
get plenty of other things wrong, at least have got that right.
Worst of all is the determined, overt, even strident, insularity. At the
end of the ceremony, the rabbi gives the two children – and children they are –
membership certificates to the local JCC, where, she says with a smile, “you
can go and swim and play basketball with other Jewish children.” Because,
God forbid you should have a life outside our special Jewish community. God
forbid you should meet a pretty girl or handsome boy who will take you away
from us.
The ceremony goes on forever and is awful enough in its
own right. But is made more awful still by the calls for audience
participation. The cantor strums her guitar and invites us all to sing.
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the words,” she says, just feel the
joy and sing “Lai, lai, lai.” And then she breaks into a complicated
melody that you couldn’t follow if you wanted to. Ask me if I wanted to.
Also -- note to cantors -- if the joy is real and the music is a
real expression of it, people don’t need to be told to join in. Go to any
popular music event. Or Fenway Park at the end of the seventh (Take Me
Out to the Ballgame) or eighth (Sweet Caroline). Or your local black
congregation.
And worst of all, there is this. How am I supposed to sit
respectfully through two hours of drudgery when the Jews themselves won’t do
it? Adults talk during the prayers, get up and wander in and out, and do
nothing to police their misbehaving children. Two older boys sitting behind us
spend the entire service talking loudly, laughing, goofing on the songs and,
incredibly, slapping each other with their prayer shawls. Loudly, and a
lot. They draw nothing more than a few casual looks from the adults who are
near them. But no one tells them what they plainly ought to hear if any of this
is to be taken seriously. “This prayer shawl means you have had your own bar
mitzvah? Yes? You have ‘come of age’ in this congregation?
Yes? You are supposed to ‘be a man’? This is the house of
your God? You can sit still and pay attention – or at least pretend to
pay attention – for an hour or two."
Or I was right all along. This is just a waste of
a fine spring morning.
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