A JEWISH EXPERIENCE

For a month -- it seemed a year -- I had listened to that strange, familiar nasal chanting of the Torah cantillation as my wife stumbled through her first struggle with the alien modes of middle eastern vocal music, attempting to learn three lines of one phase of one chapter in one book of the Torah. It was a tiny bit, those three lines, but in a Hebrew unlike much of what we had tried to master years ago in the Jerusalem ulpan. Different from the street Hebrew of policemen and shopkeepers in Israel, it was poetic and archaic, a style that made its learning and understanding all the more difficult.

I became interested enough to look at the meaning of the passage:

And the son of Aaron, the priest, shall put fire upon the altar and lay wood in order upon the fire. And Aaron’s 5 sons, the priests, shall lay the pieces and the head and the suet in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar; but its inwards and its legs shall he wash with water; and the priest shall make the whole smoke on the altar for a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord.

Long ago we gave up sacrifices, I mused. Even if I were to put that passage back into the entire portion so that the context could generate meaning, as I had always been taught, I would still learn almost nothing worth learning. True, I would know more about the preparation of the burnt offering; but so what? The question kept coming back: Why do we do these things? Why does my wife, assaulted on every side by the insistent demands of a busy suburban/professional life, spend time, exert energy, devote hours at a time to mastering an alien music, with no professional training, with little concern for the denotative meaning of the passage, so that eventually she can mount the bimah, clammy~handed, to read from a scroll she has never seen, to a congregation, most of whom know nothing of the passage, the cantorial tradition, nusach, trope, the peculiarities of sacrifice, or the theology and politics of the priestly clan? The reading, learned by rote, would last, perhaps, two minutes, after which she would sink back into the anonimity of the congregation, perhaps never again to make use of the much-studied technique that she had so laboriously mastered. Why?

That Friday night, at services, I listened to three women speak of three other women: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, their places in history, and the relationships they had designed with their husbands, their sons, and their parents. The discussion showed every evidence of thoughtful research, careful organization, and rehearsed presentation. Obviously, much time had been spent on this program, as well. But I could understand the reasons. The discussion was wide-ranging and probing, using new information and examining human relationships in ways I found useful for myself.

Then, Saturday morning, the Torah service. My wife's experience was repeated three times. And the Haftarah, longer than any of the Torah portions, demanded that same question: what makes any of these people, or any of us, take time out from the "daily rounds," as if some occult shabbat were forcing its way upon us, to do this exotic thing?

I asked the question. The answers were all reconstructed in hindsight: "She asked me; how could I refuse?" "Who else would?" "Well, someone has to."' "It's for Sisterhood, of course."' "I really didn't think I could, but I couldn’t say no." But all these answers were not answers at all. For, after all, one can and does refuse; and Sisterhood has many jobs; and there are always Georges around someplace. It occurred to me that the people I had asked didn't know, themselves. Did anybody, I wondered, really know what prompts a person to spend so much time this way? Obviously money can play no part. Power? Yeah, right! Influence? better to become a Board member. Prestige? hah.'

I could only go back into my own reasons for learning the Haftorah cantillation. It wasn’t exactly that I liked music; the music I empathize with is western: Bach, Bruckner, the Beatles...Perhaps in part it was that this chanting was dimly remembered from my own boyhood and while one can’t go home again, it's nice to try.

But only partly. More, I think, it was that challenge of trying to master a skill, of joining with others in a long tradition of masters, in blending that mastery with an appreciation of the complexities of the poetry involved; something in the order of participating actively in the Seder: "We are enjoined to relive the emancipation from Egypt in our Seders so that we can individually experience the exaltation of freedom."

And then I realized how well Judaism serves the contemporary human; how its very structure provides a space in which we can stretch ourselves in an effort to experience that exaltation. There needs to be a demand on us to fulfill the pieces of the ritual. That demand leads to the exaltation, and that exaltation makes all the effort, all the rote learning, all the anxiety worthwhile.