Opinion
No shul-going has hit my psyche hard
At the onset of lockdown, Norman Lebrecht worries about those Jews who come to synagogue to lose themselves
March 26, 2020 12:56
3 min read
At the onset of lockdown, Norman Lebrecht worries about those Jews who come to synagogue to lose themselves
March 26, 2020 12:56What you don’t realise when you write a piece for the JC is that the real reward comes when you go to shul next morning and people come up to you with comments, not all of them derogatory. Last week the absence of shul hit me in parts of my psyche I never knew existed.
And since all the therapists in Hampstead are now hiding behind Skype screens, the only place I can try to explore that profound trauma is right here, in the old-faithful JC.
So, whether you go to synagogue twice a day or twice a year, the idea of a fixed place where we share the moment of being Jews is innate to our identity. To a Viennese Jew, the place might be a coffeehouse, to a New Yorker Carnegie Hall, to Parisians a boite off the Marais. When it comes to our family joys and sorrows, however, to the vast majority of us it’s the synagogue.
So, on the first Shabbat in two millennia when we went without shul, I caught myself listing the ten things I miss most. (If you tick more than five, you get a seat upgrade when the cherem is lifted.)
1) People asking if you’d read something in that week’s JC, when you had actually written it yourself (Ed — bigger bylines, please).
2) The miracle of the craning necks, an occurrence in shuls that still have a choir. When a new kid on the bimah gets his solo debut, all the behatted heads in the gallery above are elongated to 3ft so that owners of said heads can identify the boy with the voice of a fallen angel. Anatomists have no explanation for this phenomenon. Like the Northern Lights, once seen you won’t forget it.
3) Getting asked to jump in last minute for someone else’s Haftarah.
4) Realising, as I say the blessing, that I’ve got the wrong Haftarah and the designated one is a passage I’ve never read before, a devilishly obscure bit of Ezekiel that has only ever been mined by Eliezer Ben-Yehudah when he was inventing a modern-Hebrew word for hair-dryer.
5) Singing very loudly at the correct tempo when the Torah is taken back to the Ark, while the rest of the congregation thinks it’s an Anglican funeral march.
6) Remembering that my seat-neighbour is an Arsenal supporter with an early kick-off and covering for him when he skips out before the sermon.
7) Walking around during prayer. Some shuls encourage it, others frown. I belong to one of each and transgress wherever I pray.
8) Being artificially insermonated. This procedure, not available on the NHS, occurs when we are addressed from the pulpit by a scholar-in-residence, a fundraiser, or the Israeli ambassador. You know it’s not going to end well when they start by spraying the community with synthetic praise.
9) When our own dearly beloved rabbi goes off on an unintended riff, recalling his past life as a beach bum, a prawn peeler or a shochet’s assistant. Halfway through the story you know there will be no homiletic revelation and the joy is figuring how the heck he’s going to get out of this one.
10) Top-hats. I’ve left this to last because it’s an acquired taste. One of my shuls requires gentlemen of a certain status to don a topper on solemn and ceremonial convocations. The lid weighs about a ton and a half, especially by afternoon service on Yom Kippur, but it connects you in mysterious ways to past wearers of this hat (no-one buys himself a new one), and hence to the souls of all who have ever gone to shul in search of a numinous experience or a relief from crippling loneliness.
Look around shul and you’ll see men and women dressed in such magnificent designer gear that you imagine they must be sitting on a gold-standard investment portfolio, until a rabbi drops a word that they don’t have enough to eat at home.
Another person in the back row who appears to have got dressed at Oxfam turns out to own two hedge-funds and a Texan oil well.
What brings them to shul? A need to connect with others who accept them at face value, regardless of whatever value it is that they place on their face.
These are the Jews I worry about at the onset of lockdown, the ones who come to lose themselves in shul, more than those who try to find themselves. We can reach them by remote means, but it’s the place they crave. And so do!
Last Shabbat I walked to shul. I knew it was locked and empty but still. When I got there, I sang a prayer, turned round and walked back home. Where a kiddush awaited. Lechaim.
