Let's do Stage 3 in the morning; P'sukei D'zimrah; Etc.
Crossposted to The Reform Shuckle
Fellow Jewschooler BZ over at Mah Rabu has put up the long-awaited Part VIII of his Hilchot Pluralism series. HP is a series of case studies in what BZ calls Stage 3 Jewish pluralism. In Part VIII, he covers a novel solution to the issue of one and two-day yom tov observances. Tikkun Leil Shabbat, a DC group, celebrated Simchat Torah this year in such a way that people who believed it to be chag and people who believed it to be a weekday could participate equally within their own frameworks. It’s fascinating. You should read Hilchot Pluralism.
All of this had me re-reading all of HP. Re-reading it, combined with my slightly unsatisfactory recent experiences in a couple of different New York City prayer communities had me giving serious consideration to a big new project. I’ve also been thinking about less than a year from now when my NJ chavurah is not going to be an option for me every week.
HP paints such a perfect picture for me. The only place I’ve ever been (not that I don’t know of others) that lives up to BZ’s vision of Stage 3 pluralism is Kol Zimrah. KZ meets once a month and only on Friday nights. But I want what is on offer at KZ every Friday night. And then I want it again in the morning. And I want it in a daily minyan. And I want it on holidays. This is a tall order.
So this week, I began starting to think toward creating one more element of this.
For some, like me, what draws them to KZ is the pluralism. I like the singing, but I like the ideas more. However, most of the people who come are probably more drawn in by the singing and spirited atmosphere. The spirited singing is thanks to two liturgical developments. First, we can thank some Medieval Kabbalists for giving us Kabbalat Shabbat. And second, we can thank Shlomo Carelbach for giving us some great tunes to make Kabbalat Shabbat a fun, engaging prayer experience. In essence, KZ without a Carelbach Kabbalat Shabbat would be a shell of itself.
So maybe what we need to create is the same kind of big singing, big fun prayer experience on Shabbat morning.
Luckily, much like Kabbalat Shabbat, we have hefty section of psalms to sing in the morning too! P’sukei D’zimrah usually gets shafted in shul. Most people don’t even show up until its over. It’s also long, so if we actually sang all of it, we wouldn’t be done with services until it’s time for Minchah.
We’ve got tunes for all of these psalms, but some may not work for the kind of spirited experience I’m talking about here. Especially if Carlebach (or Carlebach-esque) music is what is needed, we’re in trouble. For Psalm 150 and for 92 and a few others, we’ve got no problem.
But for some pslams, this will take some work. I chatted with Russ, our chazan (OK, our JTS student chazan, but he’s our chazan) at Chavurat Lamdeinu here in Jersey, about it this morning. I’m a bit melodically-challenged sometimes, so the obvious hadn’t occurred to me. Russ pointed out that Carlebach (and others) have a gazillion nigunim out there that could be laid on top of some of these psalms. This will take some work, but it’s doable.
Of course, as others have pointed out to me as I’ve rambled about this idea off and on this week, there are also some significant practical challenges here. Getting a minyan together on a Shabbat morning is harder than on a Shabbat evening because you need a Torah. You also need people to read Torah. This stuff is infinitely surmountable, but it’s there nonetheless.
The biggest challenge would be time. At its fullest, by my count, P’sukei D’zimrah includes 16 full psalms, the entire Song of the Sea, two prayers and a whole host of ancillary biblical passages. This is a more than twice as much material as Kabbalat Shabbat, which only has 8 psalms and a few extra piyutim/songs (usually between one and three songs, though it depends on who you talk to).
So there would probably need to be cuts. Personally, I’d probably start with the ancillary biblical passages, but I wouldn’t want to make these decisions alone anyway.
There would also have to be some discussion of how to do the rest of the service, with very careful attention paid to the requirements of Stage 3. Issues like the number of aliyot and the triennial cycle would certainly be up for discussion. Other parts of the service would need discussion too, such as the Amidah, where a Heiche Kedushah (leader does Amidah aloud through the Kedushah, everyone continues silently on their own, no leader’s repetition after) would probably merit discussion. And Birkot Hashacar etc, despite being a favorite of mine, would probably be right out because that can all be done at home before arriving or individually by people who arrive early.
That’s about as far as my thinking on this has taken me so far. Thoughts, anyone? Who’s with me?
It sounds like what you’re looking for is an experience of davening as opposed to davening itself. I am not judging one over the other it just seems to me that they are different. Yes of course people can sing and daven at the same time and many minyanim do this successfully but I don’t see this in what you are looking for.
I agree with most of the practical obstacles you have laid out and they are indeed formidable. But not insurmountable. There is a minyan here in Jerusalem called the Leder Minyan (Amika D’bira) that is organized by some of R. Shlomo’s chevre. They do give PdZ the fair shake that you are looking for but also do not diminish in any way the other, and technically more important, parts of the service. They start at somewhere around 8 or 8:30 am I think and they will reach the end of shacharit by 11:30 or so. Then they have kiddush. This lasts 30-40 minutes. After bracha achrona, they return to shul to read Torah and do musaf. The end of shul is usually around 2:30-3. People who plan on attending this minyan make plans to have late lunches usually with other members of the community who have been in attendance as well.
One of the reasons that this works is precisely because it only meets once a month on shabbat mevarchim.
I hear that you want a meaningful transformative shule experience all the time but it may not be feasible.
You know, David, I used to think like you do. Now I see (after 20 some years of experimenting) that things don’t always work in one community the way I want, so, thank God, I have the opportunity to davven in different shuls. Today, I went to Kibbutz Ketura, where they start at 9:30 with Shochen Ad. I hate that. I want Pesukei D’zimra, and I want it to be a good warm up. As my wife said this morning, “I can’t hit the Sh’ma cold, it hurts my muscles.”
But because of Rosh Hodesh and the bar-mitzvah of twins, the service went on until noon, which is late for them.
Pesukei d’zimra will come around again next shabbat.
You could always do minhag ha’arets and have everyone do psukei d’zimra at home before they come.
Although I have to say that, personally, that would leave me cold: – psukei d’zimrah is some of my most intense davenning, and often most meaningful.
So let’s get this straight. You like the KZ pluralism, people go to to KZ for singing, so you want to recreate the singing? Something doesn’t seem to follow here.
As Uzi pointed out, the singing you describe can and does exist outside of a pluralist setting. If you want a pluralist minyan shabbat morning, create a pluralist minyan. Don’t fool people by pitching it as singing minyan.
Or maybe you should pitch it as a singing minyan but not a pluralist minyan.
uzi, I think you’ve greatly misunderstood me.
I like spirited singing, though it is not essential for me. I can even pray in a community whose values and norms I don’t totally agree with.
But I’m not just talking about praying and I’m not just talking about good music. I’m talking about a community. Kol Zimrah, for instance, is where I am in terms of values, but it only happens once a month. What I’d like to work toward is creating something that I can go to all the time has my values, so that I can be a fully enfranchised member of that community. Some can feel fully enfranchised when they don’t totally share their community’s values. I have problems with this personally, so I’m laying out what I’m looking for.
The (perhaps undue) emphasis on PD is that what has made KZ successful in terms of numbers is the spirited singing. This is a tactic that would also work in the morning, or some I’m hoping. And, the more I think about it, the more I just wanna try this approach to the service and see if it works just because.
I hear that you want a meaningful transformative shule experience all the time but it may not be feasible.
It may not be feasible, but if I assume that it’s not feasible, it will be impossible. So I think I’ll see if I can give this a try.
Simcha,
You know, David, I used to think like you do. Now I see (after 20 some years of experimenting) that things don’t always work in one community the way I want.
Yet, without the same experiences, I can’t say that I agree with you. Maybe some day I will, but for now, I’m gonna give this a try.
KRG,
You could always do minhag ha’arets and have everyone do psukei d’zimra at home before they come.
But my goal here is to create a pluralist Shabbat morning minyan. The PD and the singing are ancillary, something to draw people in. Some will be drawn in by the pluralism, but more will probably be drawn in by the singing. So the singing is a key ingredient to getting critical mass at the pluralist minyan.
Avi,
You like the KZ pluralism, people go to to KZ for singing, so you want to recreate the singing? Something doesn’t seem to follow here.
Well, when you put it like that…
I have a primary goal: pluralism on Shabbat morning. To get a critical mass, I have a secondary goal: good singing. So, yes, I want to recreate the singing, but in service of the primary goal.
Does that follow better for you now?
If you want a pluralist minyan shabbat morning, create a pluralist minyan. Don’t fool people by pitching it as singing minyan.
Again, I want a pluralist minyan on Shabbat morning, but I don’t want where we would struggle to make the minyan every week. The singing would be a draw for people who could care less about the intellectual framework.
Who’s fooling anyone? I haven’t talked all about how to phrase this to potential members/attendees. But now that we’re talking about it, why not call it “a pluralist Shabbat morning minyan with spirited singing?” What about that would be fooling people?
David,
Sorry for the misunderstanding but your focus was the singing and not creation of a pluralistic community. You can see how I might get confused.
Furthermore, you reveal yourself to Avi when you say that you are not concerned that people “could care less about the intellectual framework”. In other words it’s the singing that’s more important to you. And that’s fine by me. I too prefer my davening (shabbat and chagim particularly) to be spirited and song-filled.
My point in my response was simply that it is not sustainable on a constant basis to have the kind of singing that KZ. There is no community in the world that I am aware of that maintains this level for all prayer services. It can’t be done. That is one reason why minyanim like KZ, the Leder minyan, Nava Tehila in Jerusalem and probably many others are not full service communities.
I know you like to try it out for yourself and you don’t like taking advice from people with more experience than you but on this one you may want to consider it seeing as how every response to your post has told you basically the same thing. Why reinvent the wheel?
Thanks for the shout-out to Hilchot Pluralism! But I agree with Avi in advising caution about conflating pluralism with singing (etc.), even in appearance. As I’ve written, we shouldn’t let “pluralistic” become a synonym for “good” (for whatever definition of “good” we’re using). KZ is pluralistic, and KZ also has singing, but these two things are almost completely unrelated (not completely, since a community whose participants share a commitment to X will have a greater motivation to reach pluralistic solutions when they disagree on Y, and the “X” in this case is singing… but almost). And if you want to start a Shabbat morning minyan that is pluralistic and also has singing, I say go for it! I don’t know what city you’ll be in, but if it’s DC, I’ll totally go to this minyan.
And second, we can thank Shlomo Carelbach for giving us some great tunes to make Kabbalat Shabbat a fun, engaging prayer experience. In essence, KZ without a Carelbach Kabbalat Shabbat would be a shell of itself.
It’s been a while since I’ve been to KZ (and even longer since I’ve been there when I wasn’t leading), so you’d know the current state of KZ services better than I would. But at least in the past, one thing that set KZ apart from other musical Friday night services was that it went beyond the standard Carlebach kabbalat shabbat melodies (which, spirited as they are, are the same from week to week) and encouraged musical experimentation and bringing together melodies from many disparate sources.
P’sukei D’zimrah usually gets shafted in shul. Most people don’t even show up until its over.
I think the latter is largely the cause of the former: there’s little motivation to put more energy into PdZ, since “no one’s there yet”. Which results in little motivation for people to get there on time. I would be all in favor of breaking this vicious cycle.
It’s also long, so if we actually sang all of it, we wouldn’t be done with services until it’s time for Minchah.
So there’s that too. Like uzi, I’m also reminded of the Leader Minyan, which indeed operates this way. (And they daven nusach Sefard, in which PdZ is even longer: I count 21 psalms instead of 16, plus HaAderet v’haEmunah.) I’m a fan of the Leader Minyan, and it was an influence on the founding of KZ, both in its influence on the actual davening and as a proof-of-concept that it was possible to have a minyan that meets once month and still feels like a community. (It wasn’t my community, but it clearly was for the regulars.) It’s also really really long. I advise people going there “I understand if you don’t want to stay for the whole 5-6 hours. But if you’re just going to go for part of it, don’t do that the usual way and show up late; Torah reading and musaf are nothing special. Get there at the beginning and leave early.” But maybe there’s a happy medium. After all, even KZ generally doesn’t sing all 8 psalms in kabbalat shabbat in their entirety.
So there would probably need to be cuts. Personally, I’d probably start with the ancillary biblical passages, but I wouldn’t want to make these decisions alone anyway.
There are costs to this, as discussed under “macroscopic structure” in HP4 (the Goblet of Fire). Cutting things out detracts from bring-your-own-siddur culture (which I assume is part of the Stage 3 pluralism you want to create), since it makes it harder for people to follow in their own siddurim. Though it’s still easier to follow if the community has a fixed minhag of what is and isn’t included than if this is a decision of the leader each time. (See under #3 in the fugu post — similar issues apply even in a service with a leader, if you’re aiming for a constructivist prayer experience.)
On the other hand, the service can only be as long as the community wants to be there (especially if you want a critical mass there for the whole time, and why wouldn’t you?), so if you want to sing most of PdZ and want the service to be under 3 hours, that time has to come from somewhere.
Issues like the number of aliyot and the triennial cycle would certainly be up for discussion.
The “triennial cycle” has lots of problematic issues in terms of how the community views itself. And I suspect (though I don’t have lots of data on this) that in practice, the triennial cycle doesn’t tend to make the service all that much shorter. There are other ways to save time, if that’s the goal, so it’s a question of competing priorities.
Other parts of the service would need discussion too, such as the Amidah, where a Heiche Kedushah (leader does Amidah aloud through the Kedushah, everyone continues silently on their own, no leader’s repetition after) would probably merit discussion.
This definitely doesn’t save all that much time (relative to doing the repetition at a brisk clip). And in musaf and minchah, it’s mostly harmless (and btw, in those services, individuals are supposed to start from the beginning after kedushah, not just “continue” on their own), but in shacharit, it totally kills the flow of the service.
If you’re going to do a silent amidah and less-than-full repetition in shacharit, I much prefer the way Fabrangen does it: they go straight from geulah into the the silent Amidah, then the leader does the repetition through kedushah, and then everything after kedushah is optional (leader’s choice). Even if heicha kedushah is technically correct and this isn’t, this method allows for a full silent Amidah, and seamless flow from geulah to tefilah.
Good luck with the minyan!!!
KRG writes:
You could always do minhag ha’arets and have everyone do psukei d’zimra at home before they come.
I’ve never heard of this (or encountered it at any of the places where I davened ba’aretz); where do they do this? Or are you thinking of having everyone do birkot hashachar at home and starting with Psalm 30 (which I’ve heard called “minhag yerushalayim”, though it’s getting more popular in the US now)?
Just came across your blog and wanted to reassure you that it is certainly possible to have a song-filled Shabbat morning service! My community, Havurat Shalom in Somerville, MA (www.thehav.org), does it every week (we try to, anyhow). We spend a lot of time on pesukei d’zimra and there are, indeed, many many songs to be sung from the psalms in the davenning. I don’t know whether the way we do it is what you’re looking for, but just wanted to encourage you not to give up — singing on Shabbat morning in davenning is very possible!
@BZ writes: If you’re going to do a silent amidah and less-than-full repetition in shacharit, I much prefer the way Fabrangen does it: they go straight from geulah into the the silent Amidah, then the leader does the repetition through kedushah, and then everything after kedushah is optional (leader’s choice). Even if heicha kedushah is technically correct and this isn’t, this method allows for a full silent Amidah, and seamless flow from geulah to tefilah.
Adrabah, it’s technically more correct: everyone gets to daven all of the tefilla together, and since nobody is yotzei from the hazzan anymore, the only merit of the amidah is kedusha, and after that everything is really optional.
“in those services, individuals are supposed to start from the beginning after kedushah, not just “continue” on their own”
No they’re not.
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/2210.htm
If you’re referring to 10:16, that’s about an individual arriving late bedi’avad, not the entire kahal davening that way lechatchilah.
I was referring to the particular Maimonidean practice of having only one `Amida out loud for Musaf and Minha. The very purpose of that out-loud reading (not appropriate to call it a hazara) is so that others could follow along.
R’ Ovadia rules that you should follow the Sha”tz word for word (including the minor portions of Kedusha) both for late arrivals and Heikhe Kedusha; this is based on the S”A, I believe.