Expectations and Obligations
June 5, 2008
Jewish Living
(1 comments)
By Laurence Kaufman
A recent post on the Union's iWorship list serve raised an interesting issue, bewailing the lack in the Reform movement of a sense of obligation to draw folks to attending services -- and pointing out that Orthodox Jews do have that sense of obligation.
The question is which comes first -- do people have the sense of obligation because they are Orthodox, or are they Orthodox because they want to feel obligated?
Like many who belong to Reform synagogues, I chose my synagogue, not my
movement, and the choice had little to do with ideology. My
ideological commitment came later, and in part because Reform did not
impose expectations or demand consistency. (If we look at the
lifestyle of many of our Conservative friends, we'll find that they
live pretty much like we do (although in the case of my Conservative
friends, they go to shul less frequently than I do) -but it's their
expectation that the rabbi will be kosher and shomer shabbos).
Maybe a better word than obligation is expectation. The Orthodox Jew
may or may not worry that God will notice if he doesn't show up at the
synagogue on Saturday morning -- but he knows that his friends will
notice.
How do we bring good old-fashioned peer pressure into our
congregations? How do we make our people want to come to services,
which is different from feeling obligated to come to services?
One of my mentors told me that he would call friends on Friday
afternoon, and offer to pick them up for services -- giving them both a
social incentive which was a positive stroke, and putting them in a
position of having to make possibly uncomfortable excuses if they
turned him down. We might characterize this as a way to light a candle
rather than cursing the darkness.
The other thing that plays into obligation is habit. If I were to say
to myself on Friday evening, I'm tired, it's been a hard week, I think
I'll skip services tonight, I'd start down the slippery slope. I have
obligated myself not to think about whether or not I'm going to
services -- I go. But note -- my obligation is to myself. I'm not
going out of obligation to Rabbi Knobel, or out of obligation to Rabbi
Yoffie. One of the interesting phenomena is that Shabbat worshippers
who are turned off by the privatized b'nai mitzvah that characterize so
many of our congregations do not respond by staying home, they respond
by creating the alternative minyan.
Yes, our congregations have to remove as many of the impediments as
they can (that's why they provide baby-sitting and tinker with service
times), and as the post on iWorship mentions, make the services as
"attractive" as possible -- but the obligation has to come from within.
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Kaufman wrote: "The Orthodox Jew may or may not worry that God will notice if he doesn't show up at the synagogue on Saturday morning -- but he knows that his friends will notice."
I think this sells Orthodox Jews very short and represents not only a misunderstanding of the Orthodox Jewish life, but also of the Reform life.
First, the Orthodox Jew who does not go to Shul on Saturday morning is not, instead, on the golf course or watching Saturday morning cartoons with his children. He is at home reciting the Shabbos morning prayers. I know of no Reform Jews in my congregation (and I belong to a Reform congregation) who are praying at home when they don't go to Temple on Shabbos.
Second, the Orthodox Jew knows that there are important aspects of prayer that can only be done with a minyan: the reading of the Torah, the recitation of Kaddish, the recitation of Kiddusha (which does not exist with the same prominence in the Reform prayer book), and the hearing of the Birchas Cohanim. It is not that God is watching him that drives him to Shul; it is that he wants to hear the Torah read or respond to Kaddish or Kiddusha.
More fundamentally, it is that the Orthodox culture is that on Shabbos one goes to shul to daven with a minyan, period. An Orthodox Jew who finds himself in a distant town where nobody knows him, and where he could get way with not attending shul, will seek out a minyan to pray with on shabbos even if he has to talk a great distance.
What is missing from Reform congregations is not peer pressure. What is missing from Reform congregations is the culture that says that on Friday evening or Saturday morning the place that a Jew should be is the synagogue.
In the broader context, we have to be honest and look at culture, values and norms that have been created in so many Reform congregations. If the culture is that religious practice does not matter as long as a person supports Israel and votes for the "right" candidates, we should not be surprised at the outcome.
Peer pressure is only effective in motivating people to confirm to the norms of a group or culture. If the norms and culture are weak, peer pressure simply become coercion.