I’m not going to pretend that our Annual General Meetings are the friendly, supportive events that the Rabbi hopes for, in vain, each year. However, he ought at least to be relieved that only a tiny fraction of the synagogue membership bother to turn up for this ancient and honoured ritual often referred to as “bashing the lay leadership and taking a barely concealed sideswipe at the spiritual leader while you’re at it”.

I suspect that my shul is similar to yours and that the following pen portraits of AGM stalwarts will be familiar.

The Keeper of the Book. Always sitting in the front row of every meeting. This is the person who leaps to his feet every time the most obscure procedural detail is not being followed. While the rest of us study Talmud he studies the synagogue constitution and he knows obscure clauses down to the sub-subsection by heart. As a result, approval of the previous year’s minutes takes approximately two hours. We’ll be hearing from the Keeper of the Book again. And again. And again.

The Founder Member. There appear to be about 300 founder members still active in my shul, which was founded in 1924. Go figure. Anyway, the founder member performs an invaluable function ensuring that we keep sight of the original principals upon which the synagogue was formed. He will not hesitate, for example, to leap to his feet during a discussion about decorating the function room to remind us that while the paint may have been curling away from the plaster for the past 27 years, we mustn’t abandoned the original colour of the walls which he personally chose. What was the original colour? Nobody can remember but the best guess is that it was the colour one’s face turns when attacked by food poisoning.

The Treasurer. This is a crucially important role for the synagogue. The treasurer must possess the skill to describe enormous budget shortfalls without anyone being unduly perturbed. He does this by not leaping to his feet at any time while droning on, at length, and barely audibly. When he has completed his report it’s time to put it to the vote. With most of the members now fast asleep the budget is passed by a majority of two votes with only the Keeper of the Book voting against.

The Guildswoman. Inexplicably there have been no new members of the Ladies Guild since 1983. Some have speculated that the cabal – I mean guild leaders – are reluctant to allow in women who don’t wear enormous hats with fruit on top. At each AGM the chair of the Ladies Guild reports on all the scandalous complaints she has received over the year concerning, amongst other things the stale biscuits at Kiddush and the hay fever inducing flower display at Yomtov. This speech earns her the longest and most enthusiastic applause of anyone at the meeting. What she doesn’t realise is that the applause is a front so that members can kvetch to their neighbour about the flowers and stale biscuits.

And so the meeting eventually comes to a close. Nothing is decided and everyone goes home asking why they bothered. But don’t worry; they’ll all be back next year to show their appreciation of the poor suckers who volunteer for official posts because they certainly don’t reckon they could do a better job of it themselves. Not much they don’t.

Chapter 5: a Jewish Backgrounder to the Tongues Controversies.
This is the work I am presently addressing. Right now I am working in Talmud Bavli Megilah 21a, where it describes the role of the Reader in the ancient synagogue. After that I am going to press into the role of Greek in ancient Jewish synagogues. There has been only two books I have found on this topic and they do not provide too much detail. Hopefully more research will uncover answers to this important question.

It has been a long time since I have had to use my Hebrew to read the Talmud. Although I know modern Hebrew and studied classical Hebrew, the Talmud is a genre to itself.

Chapter 6: Language and Liturgy in the Early Church.
This chapter extends what is learned from Chapter 5 and incorporates Patristic literature into the mix. The emphasis especially focuses on an important passage supplied by Epiphanius. This chapter is 99% complete but it awaits the completion of chapter 5 before being posted. It doesn’t really make sense otherwise. This is one of the more important chapters of the whole book.

Chapter 9: the Literalist Interpreters.
Cyril of Alexandria was a part contributor to this camp, and he was one of my first attempts at Patristic translations. Many more belong to this literalist camp which I have pretty much completed. My next Patristic writer on this subject that I need to research is Chrysostom–I am not really looking forward to this one because he wrote so much, is overused by so many modern day writers and my initial response about his coverage on this subject is that it is weak. I have to go through a lot of work with Chrysostom to get little results. After that all I have left is John of Damascus.

Chapter 10: Origen on the Gift of Tongues.
This has been posted on Scribd in pdf format and is in the process of being converted into html and being posted here. While working on this, I have found some commentaries and a small portion of my translations in this chapter needing some attention. Hopefully this new draft should be posted in the next few days.

This chapter is not considered fundamental to the project, but does dispel many myths concerning Origen and the gift of tongues.

Chapter 11: The Oneness Tongues Movement
This chapter along with chapter 6 are the critical chapters of the whole book. It is 90% near completion, lacking only some final research in Cyprian, Hippolytus and Erasmus.

Chapter 12: Thomas Aquinas
This is complete, just a few minor finishing touches. He warped my mind with his Aristotle influenced framework. It will come quickly after chapter 11 is posted.

Chapter 13: The Evolution of Tongues in the English Bible
Out of all the chapters this has been the most difficult to research. The quality, availability and the ability of the writers of this age have so far thwarted in giving definitive answers as to why “unknown” got liberally added to tongues in the Book of Corinthians in the Geneva Bible and expanded to other Bibles after that. My hunch it is over the use of Latin exclusively in the Catholic Church public liturgy and this is one of John Knox’s diatribes against them. Maybe I am wrong. But this is all I have so far…

Chapter 15: The Irvingites.
This chapter has been completed and posted on Scribd. One of these days I will migrate it here to html, though it isn’t high on my list of priorities. It also surprises me the level of interest represented by hits on Scribd on this chapter is way less than the one on Origen. The Irvingites have a more central role to play in the evolution of the gift of tongues than Origen.

Chapter 16: Higher Criticism.
It was written, posted last year with some friends to review and withdrawn. It received good reviews but it needs just a little more tlc.

Chapter 17: The Pentecostal Stream of Tongues.
Thanks to the library at Calvary Temple in Winnipeg, a Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada Church, I was able to retrieve many old Pentecostal works on the subject. Still though, the transition from Azusa Street, which believed and published tongues being a foreign language to the definition being a prayer language about 20 years later is still not clear. The initial Pentecostal fathers who penned the idea of it being a prayer language has not been uncovered.

The other chapters not listed here I do not consider as critical and do not require so much intensive effort. Some are completed and will be posted when time permits.

So I’ve been thinking a fair bit about possibly the central thing we do as pastors – at least in terms of time spent on any single thing (research, preparation and delivery). We would take a half-day as a preaching team to work through a message, then I would take a day to write it and then about another half day spent marinating on it before delivery. So all up we’re looking at about fifteen hours of preparation and delivery for one message. Which I think is probably about average.

Recently I read Pagan Christianity by Viola and Barna, which was a really good read and instrumental in helping the church move beyond its institutionalization. They claim that preaching was never central to the church until a couple hundred years after Christ and really came into primacy with Luther who claimed it was the central part of the sunday service. He changed the term “priest” to “preacher”. Understandably preaching the word for Luther, who was putting reformed theology into the hands of hungry hordes of protesting catholics departing the catholic church in utter ignorance, was of utmost importance.

Viola claims that preaching in the NT was only done by apostles – church planters/workers in the process of establishing churches and on special occasions (Solomon’s temple etc.). They also claim that the office of Pastor is not an office, but a function and pastors didn’t preach.

I kinda disagree. I think pastors did preach because I believe Timothy was a pastor (Viola suggests he was “apostolic” because he obviously wasn’t an apostle, but his theory about pastors would fall over) and Timothy was urged by Paul to preach. Furthermore in Acts where it says the early disciples met from house to house and in the temple, would suggest it was a weekly occurrence.

Here’s where I get really creative now. Try and keep up.

Public teaching was done in the synagogue for centuries, so was embedded in Jewish culture. Furthermore, rhetoric was one of the most popular of entertainment of the day among the Greeks. Rhetoricians were public speakers who became famous and well paid for speaking eloquently (subject matter was inconsequential). So culturally in Judea, public speaking was the best form of communication and entertainment – infotainment would be a good word to describe it in today’s parlance. So it seems Jesus and his followers were using the best and most modern forms of communication that was most effective for their culture and the people of the day – preaching and teaching.

Translate that into today’s culture which is neither Greek nor Jewish. Preaching like we live in 100 A.D. in Judea simply isn’t cutting it. I even had trouble remembering what I preached the week before let alone thinking anyone else remembered (and I’m a good preacher). Which is why I resorted to The Big Idea which is simply one singular idea that I wanted people to leave the building with (there were other reasons to adopt it, primarily to use a preaching team and being able to keep a multi-site church moving in the same direction). I mean, how many sermons have you heard and actually implemented? It’s a completely modernist idea to think that simply giving people information will change their lives. We all know it doesn’t work like that, yet we continue doing it because it’s part of the consumer contract we have with our congregants (search this blog for consumerism).

Researchers on adult eduction have found that while teaching children “by rote” – in other words, I tell-you listen-you learn works, it doesn’t work with adults. And because preachers have all been to school and know nothing about educating adults, we use the only model we’ve known. Adult education doesn’t work like that. In fact when it comes down to it, experts concede that adult educators can only “facilitate” another adults learning. I won’t go into all the reasons for that. But bottom line, you can’t teach someone anything until they are ready to learn it. Kinda sounds like that old chinese saying “when the student is ready, the master will appear” – except we’re not masters… but you get the point.

The other thing that complicates the issue is that we live in the information age. No-one knows how vast the internet is. It’s not measurable. That’s how much information is out there. I can download the best preachers in the world hours after they deliver the sermon. And they’re way better communicators that you or I. I can download theology, christian books, magazines and blogs. I can even check the lexicons and commentaries while you’re preaching to see if your exegesis and hermeneutics are up to scratch. So that’s what we’re up against. So if we’re going to trade in information, I guarantee you, your congregation can get better information any day of the week.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us reaching for the best communication forms available to us for today’s culture and not simply dishing out information because adults don’t learn like that (and neither do you by the way so don’t be surprised that no-one else does either), but rather facilitating an experience. How’s that for radical? I’ll let you think about that for a bit, and I’ll unpack my conclusions later.

On Friday afternoons, the people coming to pray at this building take off their shoes, unfurl rugs to kneel on and pray in Arabic. The ones that come Friday evenings put on yarmulkes, light candles and pray in Hebrew.

The building is a synagogue on a tree-lined street in suburban Virginia, but for the past few weeks – during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – it has also been doubling daily as a mosque. Synagogue members suggested their building after hearing the Muslim congregation was looking to rent a place for overflow crowds.

“People look to the Jewish-Muslim relationship as conflict,” said All Dulles Area Muslim Society Imam Mohamed Magid, saying it’s usually disputes between the two groups in the Middle East that make news. “Here is a story that shatters the stereotype.”

Magid, who grew up in Sudan, said he did not meet someone who was Jewish until after he had moved to the U.S. in his 20s, and he never imagined having such a close relationship with a rabbi. But he said the relationship with the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation has affected him and his members. Beyond being tolerant, the synagogue and its members have been welcoming.

He said one member of the mosque told him, “Next time I see a Jewish person I will not look at them the same.”

Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk, who leads the Reform congregation of about 500 families, said the relationship works both ways.

“You really only get to know someone when you invite them into your home … you learn to recognize their faces. You learn the names of their children,” Nosanchuk said.

The actual prayers are held in the building’s social hall, which is used by the synagogue for a range of activities from educational programs to dance classes and receptions.

Both the synagogue and the mosque have a history of sharing space with other religious groups. People coming to Friday night services at the synagogue sometimes park in an adjoining church’s parking lot; on Sundays, sometimes churchgoers park behind the synagogue.

And the mosque has rented space from others since it was founded in 1983.

Members have prayed in a recreation center, a high school, an office building and, for a long time, a church. As the mosque has grown, however, it has needed more space. In 2002 the community opened its own building in Sterling, Va. It holds 900 people for prayers, but the community has satellite locations to accommodate more people: a hotel, a banquet hall and even a second synagogue, Beth Chaverim Reform congregation, in Ashburn, Va.

The community began renting space at the two synagogues in 2008. They began holding daily prayers at the Ashburn synagogue and prayers on Friday afternoons, the week’s main prayer service, at the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation.

This is the first year, however, they have rented space at the synagogue for the daily prayers for Ramadan, which began at the end of August. More than 100 people come to the daily services, which are held from 9 p.m. to 10:45 p.m. except for Friday, when the services are in the afternoon. The society pays the synagogue $300 a day.

The partnership isn’t entirely new. The two communities have held occasional events together going back a decade: dialogues and community service. Still, some members of both communities were unsure of how things would work at first.

“When they rented the place, I was surprised, but then after that when I came here and saw how nicely everything is set up and how well done it is … I am very happy with it,” said mosque member Ambreen Ahmed.

Now, mosque members sometimes greet the rabbi with the Hebrew greeting “Shalom”; he’ll answer back with the Arabic equivalent, “Salaam.” Nosanchuk spoke at Friday afternoon prayers recently. The imam spoke at Friday evening Shabbat services.

Both groups say the relationship won’t be over when Ramadan ends in North America over the weekend. The rabbi and imam are talking about possibly even making a joint trip to the Middle East, and Friday prayers will still be held at the synagogue.

Magid says some mosque members, in fact, have permanently moved from the mosque to the synagogue.

“Where have you been?” he asked one man who used to pray regularly at the mosque.

“You saw me in the synagogue,” the man replied.

“All the time?” the imam asked.

“It’s cozy, it’s nice. Your parking lot is overcrowded … and I like to be there,” the man said.

The imam joked maybe the man should stay for the Sabbath service.

Said the imam: “That shows you how comfortable they have become.

(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115271.html)

I don’t know who wrote this, but it’s hilarious!

Worried about looking like a shlemiel in shul?  Finding the shul service impossible to follow?  Many people suffer from what is known in religious circles as “Mainstream Judaism.”

No need to worry, however. Our team of spiritual healers have devised a cure and we are making it available to you exclusively today.  Please pass it on to anyone you know who may be suffering in silence.

“Shul Rules”  is your ten step guide to synagogue confidence.

1. If you arrive after the start, don’t sit down right away, but instead open the book near the beginning and spend 2 or 3 minutes turning slowly through the pages while mumbling under your breath. If you recognize any of the Hebrew words, say one or two of them a little louder so those around you can hear.
2. Find a seat just behind someone who looks like they know what’s going on (you can tell this person because they are likely to be mumbling to themselves under their breath).  Make sure this person is using the same prayer book as you.  Keep a note of what page they are on by glancing casually over their shoulder every now and again.  A pair of strong magnification glasses may help here.
3.  When putting on the tallit, wrap it around your head for a few seconds while mumbling under your breath.
4. Liberally sprinkle your time in shul with more barely audible mumbles as you look intently at the pages of your siddur. Again, the odd word, phrase, or line spoken accurately and a little louder than the rest goes down very well.
5. Don’t jump up whenever the person in front does.  He may be stretching his legs.  Instead, wait a moment until a significant proportion of the congregation is standing. In this way, even if they are all stretching their legs, you won’t look conspicuous.
6. See those guys near the front that are wandering around with an air of assurance?  These are the members of the service committee.  AVOID EYE CONTACT WITH THESE PEOPLE or you may find yourself being asked to do something strange, like opening the doors of the Aron Kodesh or, heaven forbid, saying something in Hebrew out loud to everyone.

The easiest way to look the part is to shockel.  I have met people who have won international shockelling competitions without having a clue about where in the service they were.  Advanced shockellers will even shockel

 Schockelling is an entire lesson in itself but there are two basic forms. The “lateral swing” is usually seen in ultra-orthodox congregations.  Here the practitioner is perfectly still from the waist down (feet together, naturally), while the top half of  the body repeatedly twists at a steady speed.  The “hammerhead” is more prevalent in mainstream orthodox shuls and, as the name suggests, the congregants look as if they are trying to bang a nail into the floor with their heads (I say “his” because women prefer to use this time for kibitzing or kvelling over the way their grandsons shockel).

 Shockelling mainly takes place during the silent Amidah. This is about 10 pages during which you have no idea where everyone else is.  All you do know is that if the others were really reading all the prayers involved, they would be contenders for the world speed-reading record.  You know when it starts because everyone  puts their feet together, dip at the knees, and bows. This is your cue to start shockelling while turning the pages of your prayer book approximately every 15 seconds. The end of the silent Amidah is signaled by everyone taking three short steps back, bowing to the left, the right and the centre and then looking round to see if they won.

7.  Is the Rabbi speaking in English and yet you can’t understand what he’s going on about?  If so, this is the      sermon and it’s your job to look alive.  Paying attention to the sermon is a skill that may take many years to master rather in the way that one learns how to complete diagramless crosswords.  

The formula for this particular puzzle is fairly simple. The narrative of Torah portion you have just heard plus something from local or national news equals “you should go to shul more regularly” or “your home isn’t kosher enough.”

8.  Feel free to talk to people near you at any time. Business and football are particularly appropriate topics of conversation. Seeking kavanah and listening to the sermon will be regarded with suspicion in most communities.

10.  If you can keep your cool until the end of the service, you will be rewarded.  At last something that is familiar, and a chance to clear your throat and give it some as you bash out Ein Kelohaynu and Adon Olam, just like you did at cheder all those years ago.

One final word of warning.  If it goes well and you feel confident enough to go back for a second week running, you will be classified as a regular.  This means there is a very good chance you will be asked to be the next synagogue president.

Here’s the report back from our super-fast, super-stealth 3 day reconnaissance mission to St. Thomas:

We landed on Wednesday night at 9:45 after 13 hours of travel and lots of airline frustrations. Immediately after deplaning everyone was given shots of rum. Our hotel was right by the airport (but that doesn’t necessarily indicate unpleasantness – it actually had one of the nicest beaches attached to it). The hotel had no bottled water left, and the guy at the front desk told us to run tap water through the coffee maker to sterilize it and then drink it with ice, like they do when they have hurricanes. We didn’t. We were starving, and he told us there was only one restaurant still open on the island and that after his shift he would drive us there. But Anne was really tired and had to get up early to go meet her potential work people, so we decided against it. He was visibly disappointed. We ate fritos and diet coke from the vending machine for dinner.

The next day we had a really bad and absurdly expensive breakfast (we were later to find that this is the norm for the island) and Anne went to the clinic to meet everyone and get interviewed and oriented. There was a torrential downpour while we were eating, but it ended quickly and the sun came out. While Anne was doing job reconnaissance, it was my mission to do life reconnaissance. I decided to go to “town” (Charlotte Amalie, which is the capital and I guess the densest cluster of stores). Because I didn’t have a million dollars for a taxi, I decided to go the way the locals do, which is by going to the main road and flagging down a truck thing with benches called a “safari” (see below) and then stomping on the floor when you want to get off (some have buttons you can push but some don’t) and then paying one or two dollars. Since I had no idea where I was going or how to do anything, there were deifnitely some comedic antics of the bemused-and-irritated-locals-help-awkward-and-ignorantly-adventurous-white-girl-with-local-customs nature.

This is a safari. But usually it's moving and full of people.

I wandered around the town for a little while. It looked like central America and felt like Africa, and everything was named with Danish or Dutch words. A cruise ship had just excreted its contents all over the downtown, so the millions of jewelry stores were open and busy. I went off in search of St. Thomas synagogue, which is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the Western hemisphere. Who knew? It was founded by Sephardic Jews who escaped from Spain. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to go to shul during this visit, so we didn’t really get a sense of the Jewish population but there definitely is one.

 

The rabbi in the video for the tourists said that the Sephardic Jews put sand on the floor to remember when the conversos had to do that in their basements to muffle the sound of them saying the shma.

A random street in town

The beach by the hotel (Lindbergh Beach) late afternoon

La guerre civile faisait rage, ses parents sont morts et ses frères ont émigré. Mais Sour ne voulait pas tourner le dos à sa patrie – pas même en 1982, quand les Israéliens marchèrent sur le liban er que le premier ministre Menahem Begin proposa la citoyenneté israélienne aux Juifs orientaux qui restaient encore. “Pourquoi aurais-je accepté cela? demande Srour. “Je suis une Libanaise et je le resterai.”

En septembre 2008, un porte parole de l’organisation avait déclaré: “Nous respectons le judaïsme, tout comme nous respectons le christianisme. Notre problème est seulement avec Israêl.” Et donc, en juillet 2009, les travaux de rénovation ont commencé.

Même si la synagogue est à quelques minutes à peine de chez elle, Mme Srour ne s’y est pas rendue depuis longtemps. Elle dit ne tout simplement pas supporter d’en voir les ruines. Ironie du sort, les pilotes Israéliens avaient bombardé ce lieu de culte parce qu’ils pensaient que des armes palestiniennes y étaient cachées.”

By Gil Troy, Canadian Jewish News, 11-12-09

The great financial meltdown of 2008 continues to wreak havoc, causing the great organizational shakedown of 2009. We should take advantage of these hard times to close institutions that only survive thanks to inertia or clever politicking. But we must ensure that worthy organizations aren’t wiped out, too.

Since 2000, Montreal’s student community has been blessed by an amazing institution called the Ghetto Shul. The jarring name – reflecting its location in the neighbourhood bordering McGill University known widely as the student “ghetto” – gives this generation of students a positive association with a word burdened by the scars of our tragic past. But making young students feel good about the word “ghetto” is only one of many ways the Ghetto Shul engages in tikkun olam, or fixing the world. At a crucial time in young Jews’ lives, the Ghetto Shul offers a welcoming, hip, inspiring, warm, Jewish space to pray and play, learn and eat, and sing and dance.

Led by a dynamic husband-and-wife team, Rabbi Leibish and Dena Hundert, the Ghetto Shul helps make Friday night what it has been for centuries – the highlight of the week, the moment to delight in welcoming the Sabbath Queen, with utter joy. Every week, dozens of Montreal students – and 20-somethings – crowd into the shul. Some are observant and lucky they can do Jewish at an institution that has become central to McGill Jewish life. Some are traditional, and might have drifted away from Jewish life at other universities but have been attracted to the shul’s friendly, intense, Kabbalat Shabbat – and it’s all-important Shabbat dinner scene. And some are uncommitted, having grown up without Shabbat dinner and all of a sudden going occasionally, or even regularly, because, believe it or not, it’s fun.

All, as Jews in the modern world, are searching for something. All are blessed and cursed by the dizzying array of choices that today’s world offers, able to be whatever they wish but overwhelmed by so many options and so few anchors. Many, unfortunately, arrive at the Ghetto Shul already Jewishly scarred, having been bored by Hebrew school, narcotized by their staid synagogue back home, or misled by their parents’ sorry example into thinking that Judaism is a thin gruel of ethnic food, juvenile holiday rituals, colourful expressions and simplistic lessons, with one day of fasting a year and a big blowout guaranteed when you turn 13.

The Ghetto Shul is constructively counter-cultural. It’s a place of warm hugs, not awkward handshakes. It’s a place of ecstatic prayer, not polite posturing. It’s a place of substantive spirituality, not superficial guilt-mongering. It’s a place where students feel welcome and at home, but they also feel Jewishly stretched and fulfilled.

Unfortunately, the Ghetto Shul is also a place at risk of closing. If more individuals and more institutions don’t support this amazing institution, it won’t survive, certainly not in the long term. This isn’t a matter of figuring out how to raise money for a year or two. The question here is how does the broader Jewish community ensure that this positive Jewish space grows, that it inspires legions of imitators, and that it helps guarantee Jewish survival in the 21st century.

In the real world, one of the first steps in that process is securing regular funding. A place such as the Ghetto Shul should be flooded with honorary memberships. Alumni, parents, Montrealers, Jews from the rest of Canada and others should step up to pay the $360 annual fee to join the Ghetto Shul. And they should commit to doing so for the next 10 years. This way, Rabbi Leibish, Dina and their devoted student leaders can focus on nurturing their community rather than raising money to stay afloat.

If a small number of people, say 300 or 400, undertook to make this relatively small investment, the payoff would be enormous. These people and others would be contributing to a successful Jewish community that serves hundreds of students and Montreal-area 20-somethings every year, while pioneering institutions rooted in our past, fulfilling us in the present and guaranteeing us a meaningful future.

More Tephila Tips.

This Tip Talks about the  Sacrifices that were offered in Ancient  times and their relevance to today.

These are short audio tidbits of information that help you to understand the meaning and structure of our prayers and services.  If you have a question, suggestion or comment; feel free to add a comment on this post or to send me an e-mail to hazzan@e-hazzan.com. You can also call me at 754-273-8613

Tephila Tips #2

Tephila Tips is sponsored by www.cybarmitzvah.com

The Friendly, Personalised Interactive Way to Learn.

This weekend I will be the “Jeffrey A. Miller” scholar in residence at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco, giving two talks and teaching a workshop on the role of synagogue music in representing social identity and political processes. Services will include a panoply of melodies from the synagogues of Italy, arranged a performed by Sharon Bernstein with Ruth Rainero and the synagogue’s excellent choir.

While the inspiration of these talks is indeed drawn from the Italian Jewish experience, I am also addressing them to the complex of multi-layered identities that compose the Jewish mosaic of the San Francisco Bay Area, and especially of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. For me, this represents a wonderful opportunity to bring the study of synagogue life back to, well, synagogue life, but also to test the idea that Italian Jewish modernity, as experienced and crafted within synagogue and congregational life since the 16th century, can speak directly to the “melting pot” of contemporary Jewish life in America.

See the announcement on the Congregation’s website.

Matthew 23:13-40 (New International Version)

¹³“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.^[a]

¹⁵“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

¹⁶“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ ¹⁷You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? ¹⁸You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.’ ¹⁹You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? ²⁰Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. ²¹And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. ²²And he who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.

²³“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. ²⁴You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

²⁵“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. ²⁶Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

²⁷“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. ²⁸In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

²⁹“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. ³⁰And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ ³¹So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. ³²Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!

³³“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? ³⁴Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. ³⁵And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. ³⁶I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.

³⁷“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. ³⁸Look, your house is left to you desolate. ³⁹For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’^[b]”

Albeit a few weeks overdue we were finally able to move into our new Jerusalem home this week. Since Asya’s university course started over two weeks ago we’ve had to make do the best we could, living out of suitcases, moving from place to place. In the kibbutz this meant cramming into Asya’s small family home, while in Jerusalem we were able to stay with a family friend in the quintessential quiet Jerusalem commuter town, Mevaseret Tzion. It hasn’t been ideal, but then again I have become pretty used to these ad-hoc living arrangements over the years – but with summer still holding out and Jerusalem still so new and exciting, there never really could be anything worth complaining about.

We’ve been in our new place a week now, and while it still feels as if we’re having to make do with the bare basics it’s just been nice to have, at long last, our own place. Nevertheless, bit-by-bit, pieces of donated family furniture make their way up to Jerusalem and are going a long way to make the flat feel more like a new home.

An interesting aspect to our flat is its location directly opposite the local synagogue. Needless to say Jerusalem is a religious city which upholds the Sabbath more so than most places here in Israel – the day of the week where the country comes to a total standstill. So there we were moving in last Saturday, parked right out in front of the synagogue at the height of Shabbat, labouring

The Edmond Safra Synagogue viewed from our balcony.

heavy boxes and furniture up the two flights of stairs; I can’t imagine any of the religious locals would have been too impressed by our lack of pious devotion to this “day of rest”. Thankfully our neighbourhood isn’t overtly religious; otherwise we may well have been hounded out of town. No seriously, make the mistake of accidentally driving through an ultra-orthodox neighbourhood on Shabbat and you WILL be stoned by the locals. Needless to say, the mystifying world of Jerusalem’s large ultra-orthodox communities will feature heavily in future posts.

Along with the synagogue and its devout conjugation, the echoing evening call to prayer from distant mosques only added to the mystical sights and sounds that envelop this holiest of cities.

My initial impressions of living in Jerusalem were, however, not of a city steeped in religious fervour, but rather of a city shrouded in the heaviest and darkest of rain clouds. Gosh, I could almost have been back in London. After weeks of blue skies and 30 something degrees it was a shock to the system to see the heavens unleash themselves upon the State of Israel – a country where rain is greeted with almost the same sense of marvel as we would greet snow. Back in the kibbutz, the pleasant Friday afternoon pitter-patter of rain on the porch roof soon gave way to hours of thunderous rain and hail clouds. And back in Jerusalem it was time to reacquaint myself with the sweater, the umbrella and thick blankets. But that was last week; normal service has since returned and we’re back to the bright sunshine and 20+ degrees.

Asya's Dad (Lev) helping us move in and installing the all important Internet connection.

Now that we’re finally settling in, and not living out of suitcases and backpacks anymore, I hope to have more time to write a bit more on this blog, more than just the weekly updates. This week the big topic worth writing about will be our interview at the Ministry of the Interior this Thursday – will they, won’t they give me the work permit?? Crossing fingers…

Settling In...

Web announcement of Francesco Spagnolo's lecture at the Center for Jewish Studies of the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, California), Nov. 2nd, 2009.

Following are my notes for the talk (these are only notes to guide my presentation, which lasted approximately 70 minutes, and no, I did not have a “powerpoint”).

1. Most of the research about Italian Jewish musical culture has focused, since the mid-19th century, on the scant written sources from the [late] Renaissance (16th-17th centuries), more than on the wealth of later, often written and oral sources. This is also true of other, non-musical, scholarly endeavors on Italian Jewry (i.e., the 18th and 19th centuries have been researched somewhat less than previous epochs). There are indeed very good reasons supporting this choice of focus: the “Renaissance” is a period that defined the modes of production of what we commonly call “Jewish culture” in modern times. Music rests at the core of those modes of production.
2. Researchers have focused more on defining the cultural products of this era (how are they “Jewish”? are they “art”? etc.) than on the ways in which they were produced. (By “musical production” I refer to three aspects: 1. Composition and creation of musical sources; 2. Performance; 3. Reception). The historiography of Jewish music has thus generated a narrative populated by cultural heroes (“Jewish musicians” fighting cultural assimilation and religious conversion: first and foremost Salamone Rossi) and acts of cultural heroism (the performance of “art music” in the Italian ghettos as acts of defiance against anti-Semitism).
3. An understanding of the modes of production of Italian Jewish musical culture can benefit from a shift of focus, geared towards the specific context in which music was produced: synagogue life. (Synagogue life in a broad sense includes the architectural spaces, the performance of text, the symbolic roles of its “cast of characters,” and the coexistence of assembly, study and worship). This shifts prompts us to reconsider the notions of “Jewish musician” [or artist] and “Jewish art music” [or art] within the broader context of music-making inside and around the synagogues of Italy.
4. How does one study music in the context of synagogue life?

• Two stories: 1. The Rabbi and the congregants arguing over whether the shema’ yisrael ought to be recited while sitting or while standing [How many traditions does it take to create a "tradition"?]; and 2. The guy who cannot say “I don’t know” without using his hands [Jewish music occupies the liminal space between text and performance];
• Intersecting sources (oral, written and literary) and methodologies (ethnography, history and sociology), and an anti-chronological approach.

5. The context of synagogue life allows for the emergence of previously unidentified roles involved in the production of “Jewish music.” Among them are:

• Rabbis and rabbinic authorities
• Lay community leaders
• Young community members vs. old community members: an intergenerational dynamics
• “Marginal” roles: 1. Women; 2. Children; and 3. Non-Jews (members of the Catholic majority), the latter involved at all levels of musical production (Production; Performance; Reception).

Jews4Skinnerblog is an online synagogue that seeks to integrate practices and values rooted in Judaism and radical behaviorism into a hybrid culture that applies contributions from software technology and daily-life contingencies from both Israel and America to enhance behavior through cultural modification.

God had always promised the Jews a Messiah who would avenge them and deliver them from their enemies.  They accepted Jesus as the Christ, because he fulfilled all the signs written in their Holy Scriptures; signs they had been hearing in Synagogue all their lives.

Jesus had done all the things required of the Messiah.  All the signs were there, but they erred because they didn’t understand the Scriptures: much like the Christians are doing today concerning their ignorance of Elijah and the second Coming of Jesus!

The Jews expected Jesus to lead them in an armed revolt against the Romans.  They expected Him to use that wonderful power God gave Him to destroy their enemies.  They had a right to believe it, because the Old Testament also testified to those things.  Their error was, the conquering Christ was reserved for a later date, and would not happen during the lifetime of Jesus.

The Jews believed it was impossible for the Messiah to die or be killed, but again their information crossed the boundaries of two different times.  Boundaries that would separate one set of events scheduled to happen during the physical life of the Messiah Jesus, and another set of events that would only occur after the physical death of the Messiah Jesus.

One Messiah to deliver the Jewish people from their conqueror and another Messiah to die for their sins.  They had it right, but they erred in the order of which event would first occur.  Naturally, they chose being freed from their conquerors first.  Yet, God sent the Messiah to die for their sins first!

The Jewish prophet Daniel testified that the Messiah must die before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem!  Yearning for rescue, Israel swapped the two segments of the Messiah’s work, because they wanted freedom during the life of Jesus.  So, they became disillusioned when the Romans arrested and killed their Messiah.  They expected Jesus to surprise the Romans.  They waited for the moment when Jesus would suddenly turn into Rambo and use laser beams and lightning to destroy the Romans.

Slowly they became disappointed.  Slowly they began to doubt and become disillusioned.  Then the jeers and spitting began.  Their hearts broken and their hopes dashed, they believed they had been swindled.  They turned their backs on Jesus and left him hanging on the cross to die.  Their Messiah had physically died and let them down!

He had refused to accept the role of warrior and king, but the second act was about to be unveiled.  The curtain was ripped opened after Jesus’ death on the cross; and the power of God was unleashed!  Jesus had beat satan by dying, and He returned from the grave, cheating death.

They saw him die.  They handled his dead body.  They buried him in a tomb.  They knew he was dead, but suddenly there He was___alive! The news spread like fire.  The Jews who doubted remembered what he had taught them about the resurrection of the dead; now they understood; now they believed.  The last sign of the Messiah was fulfilled.

Jesus was resurrected from the dead; and he wasn’t the only one!  All of Israel saw thousands of loved ones return from the grave to visit them.  This was one event the Jews could not ignore or doubt.  Dead family members came back from the dead.  They were right in their house sitting and eating with the family.

To be continued…

A gunman approached a North Hollywood synagogue this morning and shot two people before fleeing, according to police, who are investigating the attack as a hate crime. The shooting occurred at 6:20 a.m. at the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic synagogue in the 12000 block of Sylvan Street. Two men about 30 years old were each shot in the lower torso and were taken to a nearby hospital in stable condition, according to an LAPD spokesperson. The LAPD described them as Jewish.

LAPD sources told The Times that the gunman approached the victims as they were about to enter the temple for morning prayers. The sources said the gunman pulled out his weapon and fired. The gun jammed at first, then he fired again. Detectives don’t believe the motive was robbery, said the sources, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because the investigation is ongoing. At about 7:40 a.m., Los Angeles police arrested a man near the synagogue, but the sources say they don’t believe he was the gunman.

Pendant une patrouille de routine dans la ville, la police arrête trois enfants de 11 ans qui dessinaient des svastikas et d’autres graffiti sur le mur d’une synagogue. Après interrogatoire, les enfants ont été relâchés. La police considère que l’incident est un simple acte de vandalisme et non un acte néo-nazi. 

(source : CFCA 27/10/09)

L’entrée de la synagogue de la ville de Perpignan a été incendiée. Des visiteurs de la synagogue ont découvert la tentative d’incendie quand ils sont arrivés à la synagogue. Ils ont trouvé des signes de suie noire et une Maguen David brûlée.