Massachusetts 4, or Now For Something Completely Different

"The Latin Mass, for instance, in which the priest celebrates the Eucharist with his back to the people, in a foreign language -- much of it said silently or at best whispered -- makes the congregation, the laity, observers of the rite rather than participants in it."

This is an excerpt from Sister Joan Chittister's article about the pope's decision to restore the Tridentine Latin Rite. It is being done, the pope explains, to make reconciliation easier with conservative groups.

The article made me pause and think about Jewish services - which are traditionally conducted in Hebrew, a language which has (until 60 years ago) been used traditionally to pray - and only to pray. Additionally, a good chunk of the service is conducted silently - the reader's Amidah leaves the entire shul completely silent, save for page turning, mumbling and coughing.

And yes, since many of the most important parts of the service (the barchu, call to worship being the most notable one) are chanted by the chazzan or rabbi with his or her back to the audience. Yet Judiasm discourages the kind of passivity Sister Chittister describes.

Perhaps it's an architectural thing - only in the late 1800s in central and eastern Europe did Jews begin to construct their shul with the bimah, the "stage", at the front. Up until that point (the rise of early Reform Judaism), the bimah was always in the center of the shul. And whoever stood on the bimah was facing the same way as everybody else; with his back to half the congregation, and half the congregations' backs to him. That layout suggests community, and active participation - the "clergy" praying among the congregation.

How has Judaism managed to retain its spirit of active engagement, even though Ashkenazi synagogues commonly have their bimah in the front? (Sephardic shuls, on the other hand, consistently keep their bimah in the center). I can't make much comparison to the Mass, as I've only attended a few (and several of those were technically concerts in which I was singing), but here are two things Judaism does by custom and by format to keep the congregation engaged:

1) Everybody has a book. Or every two people have a book, and share. Or the entire minyan, the entire gathering, has one photocopied siddur, prayerbook, and crowds around it with flashlights. Either way, the congregation is expected to follow the service because the rabbi is using an identical siddur.

2) Equality. Because everybody has the same book (or approximate copies of the same book), there is nothing that a rabbi can say in prayer that any other Jew is forbidden to say. The only actual power a rabbi has is in more life-related matters; for example, a rabbi can perform marriages, serve on a court of judges, etc. But when it comes to spiritual moments, a rabbi says nothing on behalf of the congregation.

Insert: there are a few specific occasions, such as on Yom Kippur, in which one person chants to the congregants, or on their behalf, such as the prayer that begins "hineini heani mimash". The person who does the chanting does not have to be a chazzan; their title is shaliach tzibur, or messenger to the public. This implies a different purpose than the one Sister Chittister describes for the Latin Mass.

But even with these built-in customs that encourage engagement, there are a number of synagogues that discourage this type of engagement by use of choirs, cantorial soloists (who usually sing in such ranges that are impossible for a congregation to sing along with), even organs. These devices can be found in early Reform synagogues from the late 1800s in central Europe (notably the Spanish Synagogue in Prague, as well as the Dohány shul in Budapest, mentioned in this entry. The synagogues that employ such devices were first built at a time during which wealthy Jews sought assimilation in their respective countries and built the biggest, fanciest, grandest synagogues they could afford.

In an effort to prove that Jews were just like any other Czech or Hungarian, they abandoned the traditional center-bimah format, and put it at the front like a church. In the Dohány synagogue, there is even a pulpit - with the traditional spiral staircase winding around one of the central columns of the synagogue. In fact, the Dohány shul contains two pulpits - just because they could build them! (They are each used once a year - on the first and second days of Rosh Hashannah. The rabbi gives one d'var torah, or sermon from the left hand pulpit on the first day, and from the right hand pulpit on the second day.)

I think what I set out to prove in this essay is that passivity doesn't necessarily come from praying in a different language, but from the assumption that someone else is doing the praying for you. I've been criticized for not understanding the Hebrew that I sometimes pray in, and ideologically, my critics are right: praying without understanding is a passive act, regardless of how well I'm harmonizing with the chazzan.

But, like many Catholics, those melodies and words were drilled into me as a child, and it took me a long time to figure out that praying can sound like something else. For me, prayer is the arm I use to reach out and hold on to spiritual things. And sometimes it's about the words, and sometimes it's about the melodies, and sometimes it's about harmonizing with the chazzan and hearing Mr. Shilsky's off-key blaring two rows behind me. And that choice is what determines my level of engagement. The right to choose keeps me - and all of us - from absolute passivity.