Candy Rain

For the first time in my life I tasted religion. I tasted community, the essence of synagogue, the pinnacle of Judaism. Instead of sleeping this Shabbat morning, something I highly needed and deserved, I decided to attend a morning walk and visit Shabbat services at various synagogues in our Jerusalem neighborhood. The first synagogue we visited was a congregation of orthodox Serbians. The inside was magnificent. The altar was in the middle with intersecting rows of seats surrounding it. Architecturally, it typifies what I felt, community. The congregation sat together, in almost a circle, seats intersect at different points so as one might be facing the altar from the left and someone could be facing the altar from the right. While some people went up for aliyah, others prayed, talked amongst themselves or walked to the dinette area beneath the four-story bookcase. Above us and completely out of site from my point of view was the women’s balcony. I only remembered this after I was hit in the head with a piece of candy. I kind of remember this vaguely from my few orthodox encounters as a young kid, but in many cases it is customary to throw candy to wish sweetness and good luck upon someone. I was told that one of the men was to be getting married this week and he was the target of the candy assassins, but I am still convinced this candy was aimed at me. First, this would mean their aim was way off. I was nowhere near the groom to be. Second, I’ve seen them throw candy for a while and they can throw some candy. Third, I was talking to a lot of people during service and was probably a distraction. Forth, who could forgo a redheaded target. Enough said.

Everyone was happy to see us and could not speak high enough of birthright. One man, who looked a little like an early version of my grandfather that I have only seen in pictures, approached the dinette area and we began to talk. I couldn’t hold it in. This was so bizarre to me and I had to ask, “you can make yourself a cup of tea during services?” “Of course you can, why do you think its hear,” he said with a smile and a wink. “Besides, my throat hurts and I just read for aliyah, what is a man suppose to do?” My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe this. It makes perfect sense. I told him that if my synagogue had a kitchen and looked like this, I would go to synagogue every week. “This is the way to pray.” I don’t know if his answer was a call to aliyah (move to Israel) or something less, but he was right. This felt right.

The synagogues in my town look like pretentious movie theaters with plush seats, and often it feels like the bema is a mile away. There is nothing that grabs your attention, or allows you to focus. Most of the people that come aren’t interested in praying and the ones that are give you dirty looks if you talk to loud. This past Yom Kippur I envisioned an image, that if I was a painter I’d love to paint. It was a plush synagogue, the pews were filled with manikins ornately covered in the finest designer yamukas and tallises. The biblical images found on the stain glass windows were replaced with advertisements for Coca-Cola and BMW. The Rabbi, the only real person in the synagogue had a big microphone shouting orders to all his manikin followers that didn’t understand a word of it. Manikins no speaka Hebrew. Growing up and going to synagogue I always thought that I was being judged. I never would have thought that at an orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem I would feel at home. At my synagogue at home, I feel too much attention is placed on the Rabbi. People go and expect the Rabbi to do all the work, flush out all the meaning in the prayers they don’t understand, pray for them and fill their empty souls with spiritual enlightenment. This of course would be the most ideal situations, but quite unrealistic. I think real power is derived from the congregation. The Rabbi is there to help guide that energy. Just as a teacher would help organize and order a classroom discussion and save his comments for a Jerry Springer final thought I think this is the role of the Rabbi. A teacher, who gives you the materials to learn and support in times of need, but it is up to you to study diligently and succeed.

The next synagogue we went to was just down the street. This one was a congregation of Hasidic Jews who had made aliyah and had moved from America. The whole complex was underground and when you’re going underground in Israel of course you can expect to end up in a… bomb shelter. Bingo. This looked even less like a synagogue then the last one. The ornate bricks and pews, gone. By bomb shelter I mean bomb shelter. Low sealing, cement floor, and a few scattered religious pictures decorating the vastly empty walls. All seating was completely mobile; by this I mean seats were in the form of plastic lawn chairs. Let me repeat, lawn chair. There was no sense of assigned seating at all. Chairs were spread all over the place and were moved constantly. You had to always be mindful of your seat; otherwise someone would take it, literally. You want to sit next to someone for a while, bring your chair with you. We arrived during a festive point in the service. Yes another marriage. A marriage was going to take place after Shabbat and the men were dancing around the Torah. We were encouraged to take part, and before we had a chance to say no, we were whisked in the circle, dancing and singing songs of celebration. One of the tour guides slash Rabbis that were with us led us outside for a small torah lesson. He was inspired by our curiosity to teach us the Shima. This was the same Rabbi that last night I fought with about the legitimacy of the bible. He asked a little boy in Hebrew if he had any English siddurs. He came back with a stack so high he and the books wobbled back and forth. No one would want to kiss that many siddurs. It was the cutest this I’ve ever seen. So we sat outside in the garden and learned the Shima. As I failed to mention earlier, I was considered (by many of my peers) one of the more religious and observant Jews in my tour. Most of the group was completely secular, many had parents of different faiths and could count the number of times they have stepped foot inside a synagogue. For many of my new friends, this was new, this very well might have been the first time they ever said the Shima. Someone might think this is sad, but to me and by the look on the Rabbi’s face this was most special. Really funny story. We said the shima and stupid me, like usual, asked the most ridiculous and difficult question you can ask a seriously observant orthodoxy Jew at the time. “Why do you say Hashem instead of Adoni?” I could tell he was trying to tell me something, but I didn’t quite catch on. I asked him again, and his frustration compounded. It wasn’t until we recited the prayer again, when I realized, oh, you can’t say that word (Adoni) unless you are in prayer. Otherwise you have to say Hashem. Of course he couldn’t explain this properly without saying Adoni. When I finally figured this out it was like someone took off his cement shoes from under water and he swam up to the surface to get his first life saving breath of air. For those of you that think its stupid that you can’t say a name especially in a moment of education, I agree with you, but I still hurt from last night when I mentioned the name YAWEH and got a sharp kick to the leg. Remember kids, when in Israel (minus Tel Aviv) don’t go around saying the name of g-d, or even the name of the name of god. Hashem is just fine. Tetragrammiton is even better. Most likely you won’t get stoned like in Life of Brian, but you might get a swift Moy Tae shin kick from an overly observant Rabbi.