A few weeks ago, while I was putting together the outlines for the services in December, supplying the Cantor and organist with what they needed in order to plan the music, and supplying Betty with the information to be included in the “Scribe” - yes, we do plan these things in advance! - I sat at my desk, before my computer screen, pondering, “What shall we do for this service in the midst of ‘winter break’?”  After all, many people are going to be on vacation, taking the “Christmas to New Years” opportunity to visit family, or travel to warmer climes, or just get out of town to play.  While there may be some folks in town, and even some who will be receiving guests, still the chances are that on this particular Shabbat our House of the Lord will be more like an empty nest.  In fact, my own family will have just returned to town the night before, from a gathering in Las Vegas of the Cantor’s family clan, to celebrate her parents’ 50^th wedding anniversary.  Indeed, very often at this time of year, on this particular Shabbat, we ourselves are out of town.  That being the case it is more the norm for our congregation on this “Shabbat Chol HaMoeid Christmas and New Years” to have a congregant led service with no Torah reading and no sermon.

So I found myself wondering, “What shall we do on this Shabbat?  Should we make believe the Cantor and I are still out of town and just hold a liturgy service or should we make believe that this Shabbat is like every other Shabbat, with few, if any, people out of town, and do all the things we do for a typical Shabbat, but wind up doing it for what may only be a handful of people who show up?”

As I pondered these questions, I found myself confronted with the uncomfortable duality of the Shabbat worship experience which faces, and often haunts, Jewish clergy - rabbis and cantors.  The duality of which I speak is that duality of Shabbat as a personal spiritual experience and Shabbat as a performance; as part of our job description - a less romantic and spiritual perspective on Shabbat, but one just as real, and often more pressing, for Jewish clergy than the first.

As crass as the performance aspect of Shabbat may sound, it is an important facet of the Cantor’s and my jobs.  Indeed, it is one of our major responsibilities to frame and mold and present this service in such a manner as to hopefully maximize your spiritual experiences.  For as clergy, we do not only have responsibility for the quality of our own spiritual lives, but also, at least in part, for yours as well.  Any of you who have visited or belonged to other synagogues have, I am sure, compared those Shabbat services with ours.  You have walked away from those experiences with your own impressions concerning the quality of the services - whether you liked or disliked them; whether they moved you in some way or not.  Occasionally some of our congregants have approached me to share their reflections on services at other synagogues, sometimes offering suggestions for practices which they really liked and wanted to see instituted here.  In fact, that is how our congregation came to include the Children’s Blessing in our services.  Some­body saw it in another congregation, liked it, and recommended that we start doing it as well.  Since there is no such sin or crime as “ritual plagiarism,” we appropriated it for ourselves and now it is a part of the Temple Emanuel worship experience.

It is a given in Jewish life that people often talk about the abilities of rabbis and cantors to present a mean­ingful worship service.  We Jewish clergy half jokingly refer to this as “giving good bimah.”  We joke, but we also understand that this is a very real and measurable phenomenon; one of serious concern to our congregants, and also one which our congregants recognize and acknowledge far more when it is absent than when it is present.

The point of all this being that the spiritual quality - or lack thereof - of what happens here on a Friday evening just doesn’t simply happen.  It is orchestrated, choreographed if you will, by the Cantor and myself, along with the members of the Ritual Committee.

Nor should it be assumed that our services are simply a reflection of the Cantor’s and my personal Shabbat spiritual and ritual priorities.  One might think that ideally, if the Cantor and I could conduct a service which maximized our personal spiritual experiences, then due to our heightened spiritual states, you, our congregants, would also be brought along to your own higher spiritual realms.  That would be the ideal, but in practically all congregations, if not in all them, that is far from the actual case.  As a matter of fact, one of the common faux pas of newly ordained rabbis and newly invested cantors is that they attempt to do just that, and as a result, find themselves at logger heads with their congregants, who bitterly complain about how these young rabbis and cantors have “ruined” their services.

Why does this happen?  It happens because we rabbis and cantors are in a different place than our laity when it comes to what makes for us a spiritual experience.  I say that not to belittle your spiritual expressions, nor to exalt ours.  It is just that we are in a different place than you are, and that is as it should be.  After all, we are far more studied in matters Jewish than are you.  We have undergone an intensive Judaica education which has brought us to where we are in our careers and in our lives.  Just our proficiency in the Hebrew language alone adds a profound dimension to our worship experience which simply cannot be duplicated in English translation.  For us, the rendering of the prayers in Hebrew provides a spiritual access not readily available to the non-Hebrew speaker.  This is so not only because we understand the literal meaning of the words but also because we can capture the poetry and the spirit behind the words as well.  The interplay between our grasp of the Hebrew and our understanding of the intricacies of the theology which gave rise to the text enables us to intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually interact with worship texts in ways I fear I cannot even begin to adequately explain to you.  I do not say that to be patronizing, but simply because any analogy which I could attempt to draw for you would only wind up trivializing what it is I am trying to explain.  In fact, for many Reform rabbis, the very English texts of our prayer book which serve so well to inspire you, often actually get in the way of the spirituality of our personal worship.  The same could be said for the cantors and the music of our services. While congregants love the music of Debbie Friedman, and cantors sing it to please their congregants, for many of the cantors, that music does not speak to them spiritually.   They find it trite and musically unsophisticated, and thereby unworthy of the sacred texts and the sacred quest with which it is associated.  The bottom line is that when it comes to worship, rabbis and cantors are in a different place spiritually than are their congregants.

In order for Jewish clergy to maximize the spirituality of their worship experiences, we have to take what­ever opportunities we can find to gather together in worship with our peers.  That is one of the great attractions that rabbinic and cantorial conferences hold for us.  They permit us to worship with our colleagues in a manner in which we, as colleagues, hold in common.  It is the same with Jewish study.  When we gather at our conventions, we can engage in study on a level which is predicated on a foundation of Jewish literacy possessed by Jewish professionals and not necessarily by Jewish laity.

When I was a rabbinic student, I remember hearing about a Reform rabbi who got into trouble with his congregation because he let it be known that in order for him to have a personally meaningful worship experience, he needed to attend Shabbat morning services at a Conservative congregation.  As you can imagine, his board did not take too kindly to his remark.  After all, he was condemning the quality of their congregation’s worship experience; a worship experience the quality of which was his responsibility.  Politically, what he did was pretty foolish.  But practically, what he was saying was, at least for rabbis and cantors, quite understandable.  The more traditional form found in the Conservative worship service carried deeper meaning for him due to his training having provided him with a deeper appreciation of Jewish traditional practices.  He was just in a different place ritually and spiritually than his congregants.

That rabbi’s story would not be my story.  I, for one, am rarely moved by the worship services in traditional congregations.  I usually find them to be far more about form than substance, and I am very much a substance type of guy.  That is one of the reasons I am so committed to Reform Judaism, for I believe that our movement is far more focused on substance than on form.  We recognize that form is supposed to serve substance and not visa versa, or worse yet, replace substance.  I suspect that most of my Reform rabbinic colleagues feel the same way.  That is why we stay Reform rabbis rather than drift over to Conservative Judaism.

So how do we clergy live with the spiritual gap that stands between those on the bimah and those in the pews?

As I stated earlier, there are those who decide to fulfill their own spiritual needs and pay scant heed to the spiritual needs of their congregants.  These rabbis and cantors usually wind up failing on both counts.  By refusing to consider, and therefore meet, the spiritual needs of their congregants, in the end, as rabbis and cantors, their own spiritual needs also remain unmet.

There are those clergy who resign themselves to the existence of the gap and surrender any desire for their own spiritual fulfillment.  For them, the worship service becomes a sacred performance, solely structured around their perceptions of the needs and desires of those in the “audience.”  These rabbis and cantors can be perceived as “giving good bimah,” but we are left with the question: “Are they being good clergy?  Are they helping their congregants to grow spiritually?”  I believe that they are not.  What they do may seem attractive, but it is all facade.  In a strange way, they, like those in the traditional worship service from which Reform Judaism fled, are also lost in replacing substance with form.  If in worship the clergy are not engaged in their own spiritual quest, then what happens in that sanctuary is not worship, but theater.  The clergy are not clergy, but performers.  The bimah is not a bimah, but a stage, and the congregants are not worshipers, but an audience.

And then there are those clergy who try to bridge the gap between themselves and their laity.  They fully understand that they cannot do it all at once, but only piece by piece, step by step, and it can only be done slowly.  They appreciate where there congregants are spiritually when it comes to worship, and that is the point from which they start.  While their goal is eventually to bring their congregants closer to where they  spiritually are in worship, they recognize that their worship services will be a evolving experience, but one always of personal compromise.  Their worship services will always be for them a dance between per­sonal spiritual quest and ritual performance.  It will be a balancing act; a tightrope which they will need to walk.

The Cantor and I perceive of ourselves as part of that third group; as ritual / spiritual tightrope walkers.  And I can tell you, it is a challenge.  For it is so easy to slip off that tightrope.  And when we slip, it is usually toward the side of performance rather than personal spiritual quest.  For our concern is great when it comes to our helping to create a meaningful spiritual experience for you.  To accomplish that, our attention is turned to the nuts and the bolts of the service - the choreography, as I called it earlier.  When things come together smoothly, and everything falls into place, then we can hopefully create such a meaningful spiritual experience for you, and capture some nice spiritual moments for ourselves as well.  But when things don’t fall together so well, as can happen when your personal spiritual experience depends upon the cooperation of others - when a service participant fails to show up to do their part, or shows up late; when there are missed music cues; when there is a disturbance in the congregation, upsetting the sacred mood which has been created; when any one of a countless number of things goes wrong or just does not happen according to plan or timing, creating a certain amount of stress - then our own spiritual experience can be fractured or shattered, as we scramble to reclaim the “performance” so as to safeguard your spiritual experience.  Yes, it is very easy for us to set aside the personal spiritual aspect of the worship service, and to lose ourselves in the “performance” aspect.

That brings us right back to the beginning of this sermon; right back to that time a few weeks ago, when I was sitting in front of my computer screen, pondering what to do about tonight; whether to treat it as an abbreviated service, because of the projected reduction in size of the congregation due to the vacationing of winter break, or treat it as a typical service, in spite of the projected effects of winter break.

Such considerations themselves are born of the performance side of the service.  They reflect a mentality which perceives of the congregation as an audience.  They are rooted in the question of whether or not a performance is worthwhile when it is played to an empty house.

What is lost in such questioning is the perspective of Shabbat as a spiritual experience in and of itself.  Shabbat is Shabbat, regardless of the number of seats that are filled in front of the bimah.  Shabbat is Shabbat regardless of the time of year it is according to the Gregorian calendar.  Of course, the nature of a given Shabbat may change in regards to the time of year it is according the Hebrew calendar - whether or not that particular Shabbat intersects with a Jewish holiday and how that intersection alters that Shabbat - but it does not change because of the Gregorian calendar.

It is one thing if the nature of our Shabbat services are altered because the Cantor and I are out of town with our family, taking advantage of school vacation time.  It is quite another if the nature of our Shabbat services is altered because of that vacation schedule, even when we are in town.  If that were to happen, then it would be been a surrender to the performance aspect of worship.

I share all this with you tonight, not only because this is an issue which presents a profound challenge to us on the bimah, but also because you are challenged by it as well.

While the duality of worship as spiritual experience and worship as performance challenges rabbis and cantors in terms of how we approach the conduct of worship services, it challenges the laity - you in the pews - in terms of how you approach your role and participation in worship services.  For on any given Shabbat, when you enter this sanctuary, you have to decide for yourself whether you are attending a sacred performance or participating in a worship experience; whether you are going to sit back and see what type of experience those on the bimah can provide for you or you are going to take an active role in creating your own worship experience.  The Protestant theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, described this matter exquisitely when he said that some people come to worship, viewing those on the pulpit as the actors and those in the pews as the audience, but in point of fact, that is not the case.  In truth, those on the pulpit are not the actors, but rather the prompters.  Those in the pews, they are the actors.  And as for the audience; the audience is God.  The challenge the duality presents to you is for you is to choose to be the actors rather than the audience.

By making such a choice, you do much to bridge that gap between pulpit and pew.  For one of the hallmarks that makes worship services at clergy conferences so meaningful for us is that when we gather to pray, there are no prompters.  Only God is our audience, and we are all actors.

While as long as there is a disparity in the level of our Jewish education we cannot seal the gap.  However, if we can accomplish this, we can work to significantly close it.  More to the point, if we are all actors and God is our audience, then our spiritual quest itself becomes all the performance that is needed, and there becomes little call for choreography, other than the choreography born of our hearts and souls.

Amen