Galilee Diary #452, August 12, 2009 Marc Rosenstein
Rabbi Johanan said in the name of Rabbi Simeon bar
Yohai: If Israel were to keep two Sabbaths according to the laws thereof, they
would be redeemed immediately. -Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, page 118b
When Shorashim was founded
by about a dozen young families in the early 1980s, the group decided that while
they were not (yet) affiliated with any particular denomination of Judaism, they
wanted Shabbat to be an important part of the life of the community. They
decided to hold services Friday evening and Saturday morning. Shorashim did not
have a rabbi or other professional religious leadership, so the tasks of
conducting services, preaching, and reading Torah were divided up among those
with the requisite skills and willingness. Alas, there was only one competent
Torah reader in the community, and he, like everyone else, wanted occasionally
to spend Shabbat with friends or relatives elsewhere in the country - or even to
go abroad. A problem: what would we do in his absence? A solution: commit to
Shabbat morning services every other week. On "off" weeks, the Torah reader -
and everyone else, would be free to travel (or sleep late) without letting the
community down. Friday evening services could still be held
weekly.
Almost thirty years later and we still
don't have any professional leadership. That original Torah reader moved away
twenty years ago, but in the meantime, the list of competent Torah readers has
grown to well over a dozen adults and teens, as the community has expanded to 75
families, and the pool of members with other liturgical and teaching skills has
grown proportionately. However, the tradition of biweekly Shabbat morning
worship has continued. Indeed, on the off-weeks we have an adult study session
on Saturday morning that has its own loyal following, mostly, but not entirely,
comprising the core of regular attendees at on-week services. That means that we
have around 25 Shabbat morning services a year (plus, of course holidays, which
are independent of the regime of alternate weeks), of which maybe as many as ten
include a bar/bat mitzvah. It feels silly when we have to explain our "system"
to outsiders, but somehow, it works for us.
Last week, at the off-week
study session, N., a veteran member who recently began to attend services
regularly, asked for the floor and stated that in his opinion the time had come
to start behaving like a "normal" synagogue, with Shabbat worship every week.
After all, the original reason for our unusual custom has long been irrelevant,
as we certainly have the manpower to sustain weekly worship. I have to say that
on one level, I agree with him, and I know there are others in the community who
feel that alternate-week Shabbat worship feels strange, incomplete. There is
simply no good reason to continue our tradition. However, interestingly, the
general tone of the conversations "in the street" after N.'s little speech was
quite negative. For one thing, doubling the frequency of services would double
the burden of preparation - and of "compulsory" attendance - on all the
"regulars," for even with our growth we remain a relatively small community; the
same pool of about 20 people who share the liturgical responsibilities biweekly
would now have to commit to coming every week. Beyond that, I think that most of
us (even some like me, who believe that weekly services would be appropriate),
have gotten comfortable with our less demanding tradition, and rather like it.
There is something to be said for sleeping in on a Saturday morning without
guilt.
It will be interesting to see what develops. Local traditions,
even when they have no rational basis - even when they are in conflict with
central Jewish tenets - have a life of their own.
Multimedia: 