Thoughts on a Sunday night

Our shul has recently started a new type of service: Shabbat l’Mishpacha (Family Shabbat) We attended the first dinner & service on Friday night. While it was awesome to see so many young families and kids there, it was thought-provoking in several ways. The evening began with candlelighting, Kiddush, and keeping the challah knife out of the hands of various youngsters. This was done in the corner of the social hall where chairs were set up for the service that would take place later.

Dinner followed promptly, and was a buffet-style family-friendly set-up. There were name tags for everyone, so it was easy to introduce people and not forget names. Although we enjoyed the dinner, we were less than enthusiastic when the rabbi encouraged the children to lead the Birkat Ha-mazon (Grace after meals) prayers if they knew them. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. We thought it was a great idea until the children started literally screaming the prayers and no move was made to stop this from happening. The children who knew the prayers were probably 5-10 years old.

The senior rabbi (who has 4 young children himself) called the children over and invited them to sit at the front on the floor. He encouraged this by saying that the closer you sat, the more ice cream you would get after the service. That’s definitely one way to get a couple dozen pre-schoolers’ attention!

We sang a few songs and then they invited the children to follow the (new) assistant rabbi out into the hall for a story. Parents were strongly encouraged to remain for a 7-minute Ma’ariv (evening) service. I went out into the hall, because our 1.5 year old decided that she wanted to go along with the big kids. It was rather chaotic. It’s a long hallway, and getting kids (and parents!) to sit still and listen was no easy task.

The rabbi read “Sammy Spider’s First Rosh Hashanah” to the children. Since it was obvious that they had very little attention span remaining, he tried to cut out a lot of the text, much to someone’s chagrin: “But those aren’t the real words!” was heard from a nameless five-year-old in the crowd.

After the story, we rejoined the adults in the social hall for ice cream. My husband told me later that he wasn’t sure what to think of the Ma’ariv service. He initially told me that at one point, he and one other man were the only adults participating. My response was that perhaps a lot of the parents of young kids haven’t been to shul regularly in a long time and are only starting to come back now because of their children. I could understand if they were unfamiliar with some of the Hebrew, especially since I am still in the learning process myself. Then he told me that this was an English response and no-one was participating.

Still determined to be positive, we ended the evening thinking that perhaps these events would help bring people back to shul on a more regular basis.

This leads me to another item of frustration: the new “Young Family” services that are being held on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In previous years, our shul has always run concurrent services in the main sanctuary and in the social hall. The sanctuary service is more traditional, while the service in the social hall incorporates instrumental music and a less formal feel overall. Part of the reason that they run multiple services is to have enough space for those who attend at this time of year, but I also thought that part of the reason was to give a choice between “styles” of worship, ie. traditional or modern.

In addition to these services, there is babysitting for children ages 0-5, and age-appropriate programming/services for children ages 5-10. These services last the same length of time as the “adult” services. I have opinions about separating families, but at the same time, when services can last up to 4 or 5 hours on these days, I understand that it’s impractical to keep your young children in the service the whole time.

Last year the shul tried a new family service that was somewhat in the middle of the regular services. We attended it, but were in the sanctuary both before and after this service. Actually, I should be honest. I spent about 75% of last year’s High Holy Day services nursing Anna in the comfort of the women’s washroom – yes, by choice! There are comfy chairs in there and I got to nod off along with her when necessary.

This year, in addition to the sanctuary and social hall services, there are Young Family services in the Chapel on both days of Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur as well. The problem that I see with this is that the sanctuary and social hall services begin at 8:30 and 9 a.m. respectively (and 9:30 for both on Yom Kippur). The Young Family services are from 9-10 a.m., after which children can go to the babysitting or age-appropriate programming of their choice.

So this means that the parents will be walking into the main services anywhere from 1-2 hours late. While it is much more acceptable to walk into a Jewish service late than it would be in church, to me this is not a good proposition. All joking about getting a good seat aside, I think that it sends a negative message to the children: “Oh, it’s ok if we don’t go to shul until about 10:15 or so. They won’t be reading Torah until then anyway.” And actually, they are anticipating the Torah reading starting soon after 10 a.m. How do I know? I know this because Ben has an aliyah (honour) in the Torah service on the second day of Rosh Hashanah and he has been told to come up to the bimah (altar) by 10:05 a.m. I find it frustrating having to choose between being in the main service and taking my children to support the young families’ initiatives that are being started.

At the same time, I can understand the desire to have the children participate in a way that is meaningful to them. And I agree that it’s also desirable to have the parents participate with their children, but since when is a worship service all about bringing it down to the children’s level? Why not have the parents bring their children to whichever service they wish to attend, and take them in and out as needed? (For the record, this is what we do on a regular basis.) I would be surprised if the children weren’t engaged by a lot of the music in the social hall service, and really, it’s ok for them to learn that it’s not all “fun”.

Would I do away with the family service entirely? No. Our former (Reform) shul back home has what I think is an ideal solution to this dilemma. While babysitting is provided for the youngest children during the service, all others remain in the sanctuary. Later in the afternoon (after a good lunch!), families can return for a special Family Service. Of course I can understand that many people would not be willing to come back to shul after spending half a day there already, but this would at least alleviate the issue of forcing people to choose between their religious obligations and providing an age-appropriate experience for their children.

We’ve been revisiting the subject of Orthodox Judaism in our house lately. One thing that I really respect is that Orthodox Judaism is by its very nature inherently family-friendly. Women are not obligated to recite the same prayers that men are, at least not at specific times. Why not? Because Judaism recognizes that families are important. I do spend a lot of time at shul either walking our 1.5 year-old around or quietly reminding our 5-year-old how to behave. Sometimes I don’t attend if the 1.5 year-old needs a nap and it makes more sense for me to stay home with her. Am I grateful that I am not obligated to time-specific prayer? Most definitely.

Some people feel that Orthodox Judaism is anti-feminist and that it’s ridiculous to deny women the “right” of participating fully in services. I think it’s equally ridiculous to insist on “equality”. Women wearing tallitot (prayer shawls) and kippot (male head coverings)? Ok, but why? I don’t see men wearing bras (and believe me, some of them should at least consider it!) At our former (Conservative) shul back home, it struck me as to just how overdone this concept could be. At every service, someone would make an announcement about how it was an egalitarian shul and how proud they were of this fact. Not only was it tedious constantly hearing this, but it made it appear that the congregants were very much in defensive mode about how the congregation was run.

When Ben and I look to the (not-so-distant!) future of Rachel becoming Bat Mitzvah, we find ourselves thinking about where we’d like to be in our own Jewish lives at that point. We’re becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of remaining Conservative Jews, yet Orthodoxy seems to present more dilemmas that are not easily solved. In part, I suspect that our path will depend on where we move to next summer. And yes, it will also depend on our willingness to give up a lot of what we do.

Stay tuned… the more sleep I get, the more thoughts I have!