I learned it from the Reconstructionists; it appears in beautiful calligraphy at the beginning of shacharit in Kol HaNeshamah, and in many of the places where I daven it’s chanted or sung at the beginning of the service, which I love.

The Progressive group has the usual problem of trying to be all things to all people, and there are people who are annoyed because the service is too traditional and might as well be Orthodox, and other people who are annoyed because I change what they consider immutable.

Oh, yes indeed. I know that feeling well.

I completely agree about the lay versus rabbinate issue. Absolutely we shouldn’t go about ordaining everyone who has the least bit of clue, and absolutely rabbinical training shouldn’t be the only way to go beyond the most basic level of Jewish knowledge. And it’s completely true that we need a strong laity almost above any other communal priority. For me personally, though, I can at least ask the question whether I’d be more use to the community as a rabbi than as an active lay person. Also whether I’d be more useful to the world as a rabbi than a scientist. Part of the reason why I’m thinking like this is because I’m losing my confidence in my ability to be an effective scientist, but you know. I think it is probably best on balance for me not to go and get ordained, but I’m just mentioning that it seems less like an utterly ridiculous idea than it did a few years ago.

I am talking mainly about the Progressive service here. There is a big difference between the role of a service leader in a Progressive context, versus the role of a Sha”tz in an Orthodox or traditional nusach context. I have done both, and the latter involves a lot less trying to affect the congregation emotionally and hold them. But the things I’m saying are still true to some extent with the traditional services I’ve been leading with PbP.

I think part of the difference is that your community is made up of people who know what they are doing. Mine isn’t. Stockholm doesn’t have a minyan worth of people who are frum, knowledgeable and inclined towards egalitarianism; pick two. That means that even when I’m doing the traditional thing, acting as Sha”tz and just standing in front of the congregation davening to give them some pacing, I have to guide people a lot more than you do at Assif. Ploni and I are trying to create something that feels spiritually engaging, it’s not a thing that is already there and we can just tap into it.

Another thing is that you’re relying on music to do the emotional work. I obviously can’t do that, and even with musical support from my co-leaders, nobody here knows the tunes. So they don’t get that automatic emotional buzz of a familiar melody.

Clearing up some semantic issues: I didn’t say I can’t daven while I’m leading, I said I can’t pray. If I’m doing traditional nusach I am davening pretty much by definition, and even with the Progressive service I use the silences to catch up on running through the davening for my own sake.

And the people who complain my Progressive service is too Orthodox are flat-out wrong, they don’t really know what an Orthodox service is. What gets that reaction is things like: if we recite the Shma with the Barchu, I expect to have at least a skeleton of the blessings before and after. The Progressive liturgy is in flux at the moment, but in its current version they either skip blessings altogether, or they cut them at an arbitrary point in the middle so they are missing the chatimah. I put some of that back in, which a few people associate with being “Orthodox”.

I didn’t know that. That’s beautiful.

I’m with you on the stagecraft. Last night we went to a davening which was competently done, but it wasn’t led. We usually go to HIR, whose Friday night shlihei tzibbur have the art of leading a congregation emotionally, very much as you describe, and the difference was tremendous. A shaliah tzibbur who can take a bunch of weekday people and pull them through emotional highs and lows into Shabbat using only the liturgy is a skilled being. It takes a hell of a lot of experience and a fair bit of talent to do that well – just standing up there and singing doesn’t compare.

Sorry about the upsetting bits. Good thing you have enough sense to see past them.

But don’t be a rabbi, you’re brilliant as a scientist, and you’d be a perfectly good rabbi too, but you always wanted to be a scientist! All the liberal movements have this messed-up thing going where anyone who has any Jewish skills is expected to be a rabbi (the flip side of this is that if you aren’t a rabbi, ppl assume you haven’t any Jewish skills). The career rabbinate is desperate for lay people like you, rabbis like having congregants who know stuff and do Jewish and can do services and get involved and all that.

Speaking as someone who takes services myself, I have to say I can’t connect at all to what you’re saying here. I thought it might be because what you’re doing is more Reformi, to use your term, than I’m used to, but then you say later down that your service was mostly traditional (or perceived as such).

I took the service last night in Yakar; all I had to do there was pick tunes I knew the congregation knew, and sing. No eye contact with anyone was required (they were mostly behind me anyway), no lowering of the voice*; certainly no crying. (I did have to stop myself from dancing a little, because I could hear and , who had spotted it, laughing.) And, whilst it was not as easy to concentrate on the davenning as it would as a member of the congregation, it was certainly not impossible.

So I’m intrigued to know how your service differed from what I am used to that made all of the above necessary. Could I get you to explain, please?

* Obתּוֹכָחָה today: “Lest anyone think I am losing my voice, or have a pressing luncheon engagement…” (No, it wasn’t me.)