Synagogue

As the sun sets tonight around the globe, millions of Jews will begin their observation of the Sabbath.

They will keep it in different ways. Some will go to their local shul and sing the Lecha Dodi Likrat. Others will repeat the kiddush over the wine and challah bread in their homes. More secular Jews may choose to enjoy a meal with their families, the beginning of a 24 hours set aside for enjoying life. America owes the idea of the "day of rest" to the Jews. For the Jews it is more than this. As the Zionist Ahad Ha'am noted, the practice has kept Jewish identity alive through a tumultuous history: "More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews."

The group that I lead went to Shabbat services at Central Synagogue last Friday, braving a March sleetstorm that turned midtown into an obstacle course of ice and slush.

The building is beautiful, with a vaulting cathedral-like ceiling and an attention to pattern and detail that is rich in carved wood and bright colors. When the synagogue was built in 1872, it was modeled on Moorish Mosques. Since the Jews really didn't have a tradition of big buildings since the fall of the Temple in 70AD, the larger, more affluent communities in Germany and Europe looked for architectural inspiration to the Golden Age, when 90% of the world's Jews lived relatively peacefully under Muslim rule in Spain. The building is enormous, and seats 1,500. Thanks to Amy Nyack for these insights.

The service itself was upbeat and progressive. Many men chose not to wear the kippa, or head covering. The two cantors were women - one played the guitar. There was a large contingent of Muslims visiting that night - their Imam from the Islamic Cultural Center as sitting next to the Rabbi as part of an interfaith exchange. There was a pastor there as well, the three joined in a benediction that was moving.

Also, lots of rosy-cheeked kids got up to sing, a Hebrew song punctuated with cowboy yelps of "Yeee-haw!" We were invited to sing along. I couldn't help but notice that some of the kids didn't look ethnically jewish at all - Chinese and African-American features punctuated the group, maybe through adoption or intermarriage or conversion.

Needless to say this is a Reform Jewish congregation. Reform Judaism was born in the mid-nineteenth century, and embraced a lot of enlightenment, progressive ideas about how strictly Jews should observe their traditions. Today, most Jews outside of Israel are part of this movement.

But inside Israel, the Orthodox Judaism rules. A piece from yesterday's Washington Post:

World leaders of Reform Judaism launched a new push Monday for greater support from Israelis despite what they called continuing discrimination at the hands of the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel.

Reform Judaism, a liberal, egalitarian movement, is the largest branch of American Judaism. But the movement has never caught on in large numbers in Israel, where the majority of religious Jews are Orthodox, and only a small minority Conservative or Reform.

In Israel, the Orthodox rabbinate has strenuously resisted inroads by the other streams, refusing to recognize their rulings or conversions as religiously valid.

The niceties of the struggles within Judaism are beyond my ken, but it was interesting to hear the reaction of the one Jewish guy in our group to the services at Central Synagogue. He is a freelancer for the NY Times, sniffing around to see if our travels are worth a story or not. He was raised in a Conservative Jewish community in New England, where there were no guitars or cowboy yelps. He hadn't stepped foot in shul for some fifteen years.

"I felt protective of my tradition," he said. "Religion is not supposed to be fun."

Glad he wasn't along when we saw the Hip-Hop Taoists.

Well, to everyone - "shabbat shalom." (good sabbath)