Can I Get an Amen?

Are religious services supposed to be somber, serious affairs or fun for the whole family? People should enjoy themselves when they go to church or temple, but more like a good time at an interesting lecture and less like at a drunken frat party. It’s tough for my family to find an appropriate balance.  One thing I know for sure, though, is that you should not distract the rabbi from doing his job.

My twelve year old daughter, E,  is rapidly approaching thirteen, and the date of her bat mitzvah looms over my head like one of those cartoon rainclouds. She has been learning Hebrew since she was eight, but now it’s crunch time, and with one month to go, she is eating, drinking, sleeping, and generally obsessing over her big day. One of the things I do to help her prepare is to take her to Friday night services on a pretty regular basis so she can be very familiar and comfortable with everything.

It’s not easy to go every Friday night; I like to do things on Friday nights, and going to sit for an hour and half to pray in a language I don’t speak isn’t usually high on the list. I have told our rabbi before that if we could switch services to Sunday morning, more people would want to go, but he just laughs like he is pretending that’s funny. Since we have been going regularly, however, my daughter and I have made it fun. It’s nice to spend some time alone with each other, no phones, no television, no iPads. We sit calmly and sing along for about the first five minutes, but after that, we lose interest and get slap happy.

It usually starts with us finding bad words in the Hebrew-to-English transliterations. There’s a “tush” in there and a “shit” or two, although they are pronounced like “sheet.” And since our cat’s name is Moshe, a good Hebrew name, we enjoy the many references to him. Whenever the rabbi strums his guitar, one of us will lean over to the other one and whisper, “I feel a song coming on” or “I didn’t realize this was a musical.” Then we get the giggles. It doesn’t matter if whatever we laugh at is even funny. It could be the way someone’s pants are tucked in their crack or a seriously unusual singing voice booming behind us. Whatever it is, funny or not, we start that silent laughter that involves lots of body shaking and tear streaming.

Recently, we attended Friday night services together on a night that a local college group came to observe, like they were on a field trip to the zoo. We generally try to be very welcoming and, there’s that word again, appropriate, so they can study us Jews in our religious habitat. The rabbi took a little extra time to explain parts of the service, but overall, it was the typical Friday night worship scenario.

Friday night services follow a general pattern. We start with a call to worship, then some we are so happy to be here together praying and singing, followed by the Thank God It’s Friday blessings. We take some time to honor the past, pray for peace, and remember the sick. After that, the rabbi reminds us to take a moment for silent prayer.

While the congregation meditates, the rabbi usually drinks from a water bottle he has tucked away in the podium, because all that singing and praying can really parch one’s throat. But that night E and I were there along with the college group, the rabbi choked on his water during the silent prayer. This wasn’t one of those little coughs; it was full blown violent gagging and choking with no breathing.  E and I immediately started cracking up, not because the rabbi was dying in front of us but rather because of the irony of loud choking during the silent prayer. I covered my face with my Gates of Prayer book so he couldn’t see me laughing, although if he looked at my daughter, he would have known. I have no doubt the whole pew shook from our laughter.

We knew he saw us laughing because he began laughing too, laughing and choking. I raised my hands up in the air, since I am of the belief that raising your hands while choking is the best way to make it stop. The rabbi was then choking and laughing with his hands in the air.

“Touchdown!” I whispered to E. At least I hope it was a whisper.

“Raise the roof!” she said back to me. I laughed.

When he regained his composure, he continued services as though nothing happened, making his way through the Torah portion and the sermon with relative ease, punctuated by a small cough or two.

Usually at the end of services before we have refreshments in the social hall, the rabbi offers a priestly blessing over the congregation. He raises his hands overhead and forms the Hebrew letter “shin” with his fingers while reciting a prayer. You know what that looks like if you’ve ever watched Star Trek. Remember Spock and his Vulcan salute, with his four fingers held in a V, two fingers and two fingers? Well, that’s a Jew thing. The rabbi does the Vulcan salute/priestly blessing every week, and whenever we are there, my daughter and I too raise our hands in salute, mostly because it hurts a little between the middle and ring finger, and because it’s funny.

When the rabbi’s hands went up, so did ours. And for the second time that night, the rabbi could not continue because he couldn’t stop giggling. Yes, giggling. He would start again and then have to stop, a little Hebrew, a little laughing, while we were sitting in the pew, laughing along at this inside joke while the other people in the temple tried to figure out what had gotten into their spiritual leader. There was a lot of turning around in seats to see what was so funny, and it was us.

We did offer our apologies after services, and the rabbi seemed cool with it, like he usually does. He knows us, so it’s not like our cutting up is a surprise. The only surprising part was that he didn’t tune us out. “It’s his job to be the rabbi, for Christ’s sake,” I told E. “We have to make more of an effort to control ourselves. We can’t be making the rabbi laugh while he’s up there doing his thang.”Our rabbi has assured me that he is glad we have a good time at services. He’s probably just glad to have some live bodies paying attention, even if we are paying attention to the wrong things.