July II, 1924
canadian jewish review
7
London, England, Synagogues Have New Worry
Our memories of a religious service in an English synagogue and the refreshment that we have had of them from pictures and descriptions are fast being shattered, writes Rabbi Gerson B. Levi in the Reform Advocate. We had memory of men in dark and long coats, with heads under shiny high hats .md a gravity befitting a somewhat courtly attire. We had heard that occasionally there were exceptions. But these always paid for their temerity. When the Mitzvoth were assigned, these iconoclasts were left out in the cold. There was no room for them when, in symbol at least, son after son of Israel was called for a few moments on the raised platform to represent Israel at the mount there again receiving the law. All of that had to be done in proper gravity and proper attire. Hut alas! Israel will soon be receiving the law in shirt sleeves.
For the London Jewish Chronicle has brought us the information that Liver-|x>ol has bred "children iconoclasts" and they have come to the synagogue on the first day of Pentecost with light-colored hats on their heads. They did not pass unnoticed. The minister is reported to have rebuked them and to have told them that light-colored hats were not befitting attire for the Lord's house. To this, in the columns of the London Jewish Chronicle, "A Worshipper" issues the challenge that the fault-finding rabbi quote the law from any source that he can find in Jewish legislation, prohibiting the wearing of light-colored attire in the synagogue and closes his challenge very appropriately with the question whether God values "one's sincerity in the synagogue by his dress or by his conscience.'
We are not prepared to say offhand that there is no such a law. It is a risky thing to make such a statement concerning Jewish law. It is a body of regulations that has Lived for a long Lime, and has in the course of many years gathered up a great many details. It would be necessary to examine the customs of various communities, for it is not altogether true that the body of Jewish law, at least in details like this one, would be the same in all countries and in all villages in all countries. Customs grow up from no one seems to know where. A scribe notes the eustom and promptly a form is established. There must have been a time in England when high shiny hats were not worn to the synagogue service. But they are established now, or were yesterday. One would have to examine the minutes of all the congregations and hnd out whether at any time one had made such a provision for the services before coming to a definite statement on it. There is a job here for a member of the Jewish Historical Society. But really, all that we need do is to read the very richly summarized statement of Zunz in his Ritus to know that it is impossible to make any sweeping statement concerning Jewish practice, even m the house or prayer, and expect to have it followed without exception in my one of the thousand villages of burope. So the rabbi may be right, Jntil "A Worshipper" finds a custom <*f some village to show that there was -m exception.
One thing obtrudes from the whole -mall controversy and that is that re-hgkm is conservative. And religious Iress is always behind the times. What was the ordinary cloak of one generation -oon emerges for the later generation � is a sacred garb. That is the entire sanctity of the Tallith. And the time must have been when the Talhth itadf was a new thing and therefore could find no admission into the synagogue service. There is a remnant to show that in mourning the customs always break away from the advanced to the more primitive styles of the ancestors. Chairs are a new invention. They can not be used by the mourners. So are
have no place in the mourner's attire. And of course in the Orthodox custom the mourner has a rent made in his garment, a custom that would be difficult indeed to explain if we did not have a thought for the return to the simple attire of an older generation in time of mourning. There is a word in Hebrew for cutting, but that is not the word that is used in connection with the so-called Keriah. That word means a "violent ripping," a "complete rending." The custom therefore dates back to the time when the comparatively earlier stage was that of the loin cloth. The man in mourning ripped off the clothes of an advanced civilization and dressed in the more religious and more befitting dress of the simple life. That return is now a poor survivor in the Kerish ceremony.
This conservatism is one of the great dangers of corporated religion, which will rise in arms against the breach of one of its honored customs and consequently shift the battle of religion from its real work in the upbuilding of
humanity to the vain discussion of forms. The danger is not that the old forms will not be shaken off. That will inevitably happen. The danger lies in the possibility that when the iconoclasts have won the fight, they will not know just what they have been fighting and will think that it was the spirit of religion that they have conquered and not a form of corporate theology.
"A Worshipper" is dangerously near the point where he will have to emigrate to America and indulge himself in the privilege of wearing any kind of hat or no kind of hat. For if his argument is good to the extent that he uses it, it goes further. If he asks "whether God values one's sincerity in the synagogue by his dress or his conscience" and really means all that he says, he does not have to wear any hat at all. The question of color has vanished.
The other side to the complaint, the side that the London Jewish Chronicle itself presents is also interesting. Is there a Jewish norm, who has given the ministers permission to wear the bishop-shaped hat, the flat-domed head covering, the gaiters, the wrong side to the front collar and the high episcopal vest? The aping is not limited to the eastern shores of the Atlantic. There are many of the western shores, "humble ministers of the Lord," who would like to put on the sacramental garments.
Eloquence proceeds so blithely, as a friend of ours put it, from underneath the pastoral, rabbinical, episcopal vest. The slightest trivialities are so sacred. The sentences that, as a baulky mule moves a little bit one way and then turns around on himself and measures his step back to where he was, start and finish in exactly the same point are oracular when they issue from the dark cavern underneath the vest of the clergy. But there is no use arguing. To some minds every cloud is a high silk hat in the firmament of God's glory and the colors are not for us. They are for the time when the great behemoth will be conquered and the leviathan will be speared and the I^ord will make shiny resplendent garments for the righteous.
G. B. L.
POLISH RABBIS TO CONVENE TO STRENGTHEN JEWISH RELIGION
Warsaw (J.T.A.).�A conference of all the Polish rabbis will convene on July 4 in Cracow, at a call issued by the rabbinate of Cracow. The conference will last four days and will consider a rogramme for the strengthening of the ewish religious feeling among the Jewish masses of Poland.
Read the "Jewish Review"
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