RECOLLECTIONS: Davening and Decorum: The Incompatibles

...to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more: and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world, so absurdly performed as t h i s . " Unfortunately for interfaith relations, this visit seems to have taken place on Simchat Torah which only compounded the apparent chaos in the synagogue and the bewilderment of Pepys...

...The war c o n t i n u e s , only the weapons change...

...Cong r e g a t i o n Rodeph Shalom of Philadelphia instituted a schedule of fines for members " w h o will not behalf [sic] orderly...

...Among the practices which were proscribed was " t h e loud kissing of tzitzit (fringes on the prayer s h a w l ) . " It was also decreed that " o n l y the president might call for o r d e r , " and he was constrained to do so " i n a quiet fashion...

...A century later, Diderot, visiting a synagogue in Amsterdam on a Sabbath morning, wrote: " T h e Jews arrived one after the other and then the service began...

...Perhaps davening and decorum are irreconcilable...

...Can it be that the malaise is incurable...

...However, even in the midst of their elegant "sanct u a r i e s , " the irrepressible Jewish spirit was not altogether subdued...

...Its editor is Leon Jick, Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University...

...In 1975, the bulletin of a "classical reform" congregation in the Southwest reported a renewed effort to " h e l p establish and preserve with decorum the quietude necessary to enjoy the serv i c e s . " The rules now adopted included a requirement that "doctors and others who have radio calling apparatus must leave their instruments with the foyer usher...

...Only one passion was condoned: the passion for decorum...

...Perhaps, as one crusty old patriarch in a neighborhood shul observed, " q u i e t u d e " is more appropriate for the bet olam (cemetery) than for the bet knesset...

...RECOLLECTIONS Davening and Decorum: The Incompatibles Leon Jick In 1844 Congregation Ansche Chesed of New York, one of the oldest German congregations in America, adopted a series of "rules for the purpose of elevating our divine services and avoiding the present confusion in our Synagogue during service . ' ' The new regulations prescribed no reform in the content of the ritual...

...the magic lantern of the P a s t ." Not surprisingly, the attainment of decorum became an objective of highest priority for Jews increasingly concerned with their image, determined to win the acceptance and approval of their neighbors, and no longer certain that they were addressing the Almighty in His language...

...The latter reached a certain verse and the former were at either a following or preceding verse...

...they provided that a fine of fifty cents be imposed on "everyone who reads prayers aloud or chaunts [sic] with the choir without being authorized to do s o " and that " t h e mitzvot (honors) be sold in lashon hakodesh [the Holy Tongue i.e...

...The achievement of decorum in traditional Jewish worship is no easy task...

...Bnai Jeshurun of Cincinnati (which later became the synagogue of Isaac Mayer Wise) adopted a series of proposals designed to " p r e vent disorder...

...Samuel Pepys visited a Sephardic synagogue in London in October 1663 and recorded his reactions in his diary: "Lord...

...RECOLLECTIONS presents documents and vignettes out of the American Jewish past...

...spectral and flitting...

...Later generations of respectable German Jews forgot their boisterous antecedents and came to regard unruliness as characteristic of East European Jewry...

...Hebrew] that is, that the word dinar be employed in place of pence, shillings and d o l l a r s . " The upwardly mobile immigrants had determined that their rising status in society required an improvement in the decorum of the synagogue...

...It was a mad racket [un charivan enrage' ] . . . which could close the ears of G o d ." In the American setting, the comments of non-Jewish visitors were somewhat more charitable, but even a s y m p a t h e t i c observer like Lydia Maria Child wrote in 1841: " T he chanting was unmusical, consisting of monotonous ups and downs of the voice, which, when the whole congregation joined in it, sounded like the continuous roar of the s e a . " The experience seemed to her "strange and bewildering...

...In Western and Central Europe, the responses of early visitors to the synagogue were none too reassuring...

...In the 1840's German Jewish congregations in America (with few exceptions still strictly traditional) began to adopt rules which revealed both their current state and their future aspirations...

...Keneseth Israel of Philadelphia required "orderly d r e s s " and provided fines for "walking around, standing together, conversing with neighbors, joking or making fun...

...Levity and piety were deemed equally inappropriate...

...with a sort of vanishing resemblance to reality...

...Even in relatively stable times, when the problem of reconciling diverse musical settings and local liturgical variants did not add to the confusion, individual styles, tempi, and bel canto improvisations made the Jewish service a rather cacophonous (albeit lively) affair...

...While the text of the traditional Jewish service is fixed, every male participant is obligated to recite the prayers himself and is free to do so in his own way...

...Some were singing a passage from the Bible, while others were chanting another passage...

...The adversary is no longer the "loud kissing of tzitzit" but the loud beeping of electronic devices...

...The prayer leader (literally — sh'liach tzibur — public emissary) was at best tolerated as a "first among e q u a l s ." This pattern is universal and seems not to have troubled Jews until they aspired to enter the general society and became increasingly concerned with the reactions of non-Jews to them and their practices...

...The result is a highly individualistic mode of worship — a type of liturgical laissez-faire in which every individual is virtually " i n business for himself...