A few weeks ago I was subject to what the Spanish inquisitors would surely have considered a far more effective conversion tool than strappado and the rack: singing and clapping.
Let me explain. I attended a shul service that suddenly went all happy clappy on me. Now, I could understand if this dreadful happening had taken place in one of those progressive reconstructionist deconstructionist post-denominationalist gatherings, but this was not the case. I’m talking frum.
At this small Shabbat minyan all was droning along perfectly acceptably. There was no chazzan, as is often the case in such situations, just a service leader whose method of creating a holy atmosphere was to make like a secret service operative surreptitiously whispering into his lapel pin. Then all of a sudden someone started clapping and yelling during the Kedushah!
Don’t these people know that clapping is prohibited anywhere on Shabbat, let alone in shul! The reason is perhaps a little flimsy in that it is to guard against the possibility that a person who, in his excitement, temporarily loses his mind and feels compelled to fix or make a musical instrument for the purposes of accompaniment. Nevertheless, the law is the law.
I’m aware that some chassids are happy with clapping on the basis that unlike in the temple days when every other Jew was a skilled instrument maker, that particular competence is now confined to vast factories in Shenzhen, thus rendering it highly unlikely that this particular law of Shabbat can be broken. However, I must insist that chassids do sometimes adopt rather too cavalier an attitude toward our traditions. Clapping and dancing can lead to fixing a utensil, obviously, and fixing a utensil is one of the 39 prohibitions of Shabbat; one that I’m more than willing to go along with it if it means an end to caftan clad hippies strumming along to Jewish Kumbaya. I tell you, Rabbi Schlomo Carlebach (Zt”l) has much to answer for.
Were I, on the other hand, to attend a Liberal or Reform service I would be prepared for the prospect of such entertainment. It’s a well-known fact that the choir does the communing, or should I say, performing, on behalf of the audience – I mean congregation – in their synagogues. I know of at least one chap who was expelled from a reform synagogue because he disturbed the choir by having the temerity to try to pray for himself. I’ve also been to one shul where they didn’t provide siddurs at the door but tambourines and penny whistles instead.
Let me be plain. I don’t attend shul to watch or participate in a concert performance; I go to pray. If I am present at an orthodox shul services and someone alongside me finds himself suddenly moved to yelp and dance I would be the last to object should he find himself just as suddenly moved into the street via the nearest window.
In Christianity it’s known as rapture and typically reserved for athletic types who do gymnastics down the aisles of churches. Can you imagine what it would be like to sit in shul with people chanting “Praise the Lord” every twenty seconds while cartwheeling around the place? Think of the potential damage when the ark is open, not to mention the danger to over-excited women up in the gallery! They may lose their hats.
No, I need the Jews who pray around me to maintain a sense of decorum and limit their public expression in the way that those secret service operatives do.
I am English after all.
NW Jew 