More Cowbell

Mourning the destruction of the temple

This has been the fitting conclusion to the slow and agonising death of a once vibrant Conservative congregation: "Guess what?! I've got a fever, and the only prescription... is more cowbell!"

The recipe is simple: Take one LARabbi™ who killed himself, throw in a sweet pinch of interim rabbi who held the place together in mourning, toss in a carefully hand-picked permanent rabbi who gets kicked out after a year for characterological "defects", add a big dollop of a board executive who rarely if ever attended religious services, throw it all into a pot of bitter tears, and mix everything thoroughly with one self-centred, ambitious, manipulative glam loving cantor with a cold hatred of traditional Judaism/liturgy... of Judaism.

Anyone who actually cared about the soul of the temple who tasted of this concoction has retched and tossed it out. It sickened them and so they have been leaving. In droves. Not the ones who had some quibble with a personality or rule, but the hardcore, diehard spiritual strength and centre of the congregation. People who have given decades of their lives in genuine caring and support. We all know who they are, in any congregation- the ones who are involved in services and festivals and learning and teaching and supporting on so many levels. The ones we can count on. Even if we don't know them personally.

I have found this phenomenon in minyan as well. Not all of us know each other on a personal level but the unspoken bond is there and the strength is there and when hard times come it is the only place to be, even if you never talk about it. To me, coming together at minyan is the purest form of Judaism and all that Judaism was meant to be. Those who attend regularly, in my little minyan, want to be there. Although as Conservative Jews we are also obligated to pray, this minyan has always been about more than duty. In its finest sense:

Prayer is the continuation of prophecy, and the fellowship of prayerful men is ipso facto the fellowship of prophets.~ Rav Soloveitchik

Almost everyone in the congregation who truly was a pillar, has disappeared, particularly after the current rabbi's firing. The temple has lost a lot of members with more losses to come. When the previous board presidents got together to brainstorm ways to stem the hemorrhaging and offered their services to the executive, they were told that they had no valid standing and their offer of help was summarily dismissed. Every president I had known in the past had been religious in a good way and heavily involved with the temple community. This cannot be said for the present board. I had spent a time on the board chairing a committee, so I had gotten to know the players quite well.

This was a congregation in crisis from the moment that my rav died by suicide. Since that time I've been a firsthand observer of the butterfly effect, of how the ripples of this single act have flowed outward in ever and ever increasing circles, like shock waves without end. At his funeral, almost 1000 people attended with barely a day's notice. When we were asked to stand up if he had personally touched our lives, almost the entire crowd rose. Now the circles cannot be stopped. I am convinced that his suicide did have some influence on a young man who also killed himself.

Will these ripples ever come to rest, I wonder? Will they ever end? Because we're not looking at the present only, but future generations, all from this one abortive act. It is devastating to return to what was once your spiritual home and sanctuary and discover it a barren wasteland where, finally, and indeed, G-d has left the building. On reflection, this is what it must have been like to lose the great Holy Temples and experience the utter devastation and disintegration of the Jewish people that followed. And there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I went to his grave and raged at LARabbi™. What else was there to do? I see so clearly the great panoply of events that led us to this moment. In my case, I lost my first and only spiritual home- it was my Great Temple- and I even lost my minyan. Most of the regulars are gone. Apart from the beginning blessings, my minyan was gutted beyond repair, with a total loss of preliminary prayers- over in 25-30 minutes on a slow day. Stopping to recite a passage in English or telling us the meaning of prayers, ye gods. There is no way to retain kavannah with a bunch of stops and starts and no way to create a meditative space, which is what davenning is at its very best.

The dumbing down of services continues. Some happy singing, and a lot of talking at. Which brings me to the villain of this piece- the cantor. He's a show biz, Broadway type who spent his youth in yeshiva and came out a miserable, bitter anti-Jew. It's a job. He hasn't a spiritual bone in his body. His voice is uninspiring and adequate. He's a big ol' skinny tanned unctuous smoothy. Like a snake. I could go on.

When LARabbi™ died he was there to pick up the slack (and get a raise). Yeah, he knows Hebrew which I think must have been the only requirement. He changed services to reflect his interests. Which happened to coincide, it seems, with a bowdlerised version of Reform (Reform services are so much better). Liking the sound of his own voice, he destroyed the liturgy by hacking off chunks of passages and interspersing it with his fulsome "teaching" minute by minute, hour by hour, usually aimed at middle school minds. We get to hear show tunes like those from Prince of Egypt and electrified instruments during Shabbat services.

When the permanent rabbi came on board, Old Scratch (the cantor) dug in his heels and managed to erode that rabbi's position and influence; he surprised and shocked me, when I saw him, through his behaviour, diss the rabbi on the bimah during Shabbat services. In keeping with my own instincts, I tend to believe those in the know that it was the cantor's concerted effort that largely led to the rabbi's ouster. While there is a lawsuit brewing, the cantor just signed a contract for another year and is picking up the slack (with a raise). Out of this whirlwind, the cantor is the only one still standing.

Some people are trying to salvage what's left. Some are bitter because they perceive others as disloyal. Others force cheeriness on us saying it's time to meet members' needs which usually means a dumbing down, and always a cut in liturgy. Some think that singing simple catchy tunes will raise our spirits and bring in hordes. Most think that it doesn't matter about the rabbi, that it's the community that matters, the members, the congregation; we've seen how well that's worked out, haven't we?

Once I went raging to LARabbi™ about the congregation and he said, "You have a real love-hate relationship with this place, don't you?" I did, but I didn't understand, until I began listening to how people perceived the place. The largest argument has been for community and that's all that matters. In fact, the new president's vision is in restoring the community. They fail to see that without the spiritual/religious element, it's just another chavurah. Where is G-d in all of this? It deems itself a religious community only because it has a synagogue as its centre, not G-d; it is simply another sociological structure.

I didn't fully understand how they could make that mistake until I picked up Rav Soloveitchik's The Lonely Man of Faith. Here, the two Adams of Bereshit in the Torah are seen as representative of the respective essential natures of human beings: one is "majestic", that is, creative and utilitarian, and the other is "covenantal", committed to G-d; both are valid. To be wholly human means to have this dialectic of two natures raging within you. The lonely person of faith is a convenantal faith oriented human being who struggles to integrate the utilitarian and covenantal within themselves and into a covenantal faith community; this, unlike the majestics, includes the experience of G-d.

If you take a look at most of our religious institutions, so many of the shuls, this holds true- they are largely religious communities, but not covenantal faith communities. They are, indeed, "religious cultures" where faith has its uses and its message changes with the times. So, without the informed participation of covenantal faith types, the cultural edifice becomes weakened and crumbles into disarray, or ossifies.

Notwithstanding that Western man is in a nostalgic mood, he is detemined not to accept the dialectical burden of humanity. He certainly feels spiritually uprooted, emotionally disillusioned....Yet this pensive mood does not arouse him to heroic action. He, of course, comes to a place of worship. He attend lectures on religion and appreciates the ceremonial, yet he is searching not for a faith in all its singularity and otherness, but for religious culture. He seeks not the greatness found in sacrificial action but the convenience one discovers in a comfortable, serene state of mind. He is desirous of an aesthetic experience rather than a covenantal one, of a social ethos rather than a divine imperative.....

His efforts are noble, yet he is not ready for a genuine faith experience which require the giving of one's self unreservedly to G-d, which demands unconditional commitment, sacrificial action and retreat. Western man diabolically insists on being successful. p. 98

I really hate the word "sacrifice" but what I think Soloveitchik means here is essentially a humility, a sacrifice of the ego, an acceptance that the ultimate power is G-d and that we depend on G-d for everything. And without people like that informing the structure, the centre cannot hold. Without a rabbi who also informs the culture as my beloved LARabbi™ did, you get the poseurs and destroyers- you get the cantor. Without an executive that cannot see beyond the immediate, you get more of the same, and the cantor who counts and hoards success at the expense of everything else. This trickles down, like suicide, even to minyan. And to me, who stopped going to services, and finally could no longer bear to go to minyan and who has now lost my only spiritual community; the chances of encountering another one are nigh improbable at this point (and not for lack of trying).

I had to step back and give up on trying to fix it, since I don't live there any longer. In the big picture, I realised my time or influence there was pretty much over, since there was barely anyone I knew left. In the bigger picture I hope that the place will self-destruct and rise from the ashes, such is the cycle of things- ever Jewishly hopeful.

But meanwhile, I knew it was over when I endured the cantor's commentary on the passage in the Torah regarding the Shema and the wearing of tzitzit. He was speaking to a predominantly non-Jewish bar mitzvah audience. He likened the tzitzit to cowbells. That Jews wore tzitzit like cowbells to remind them of the commandments. And all I could imagine was a bunch of Jews in a field wearing a big, clanging bell around their necks. Talk about a death knell! I was mortified that non-Jews would see us depicted in such a manner. It offended my sensibilities on so many levels. It was crass and discordant. Cause yeah, according to him and the executive, they and the shul have a fever and what we need is more cowbell.