Parshat Vayikra 5766

Recently there has been an interesting discussion taking place in our synagogue as part of our SVP initiative. SVP stands for the “Synagogue Vision Project.” OJC is one of just a few congregations chosen by UJA on Long Island to participate in this effort. SVP is meant to help congregations like ours create a strategic plan as well as long range goals for themselves. Most of all, this program is an opportunity for us to look at who we are and reflect on our strengths and weaknesses. Hopefully, we can begin to formulate a vision for the coming years.

SVP is based on the assumption that synagogues, like businesses, need to have a plan as well as some short term and long term goals. It is based on the idea that unless you know where you’re going you can’t arrive at your desired destination.

One area of congregational life that we’ve been exploring is religious services. Some people have complained that services at OJC are “not spiritual” enough. Participants in these discussions have a hard time explaining exactly what they mean by “spiritual,” but there are some complaints that they have articulated that most of us here can easily understand. Among their complaints are: that services are too long, that they are completely in Hebrew and difficult to follow, that we rush through services and rarely stop to explain what is going on, and that they are not participatory enough. People who have attended the SVP meetings complain that when they come to services they want to leave uplifted and inspired and that doesn’t usually happen.

Listening to these complaints, it was hard for me not to feel a just little threatened. After all, I am the conductor or at least the driver. But I have tried to listen carefully to what people are saying and I’ve been spending time reflecting on what this means for us as a congregation. Interestingly, in the parlor meetings people made it clear that they liked the cantor and me, and enjoyed what we do, but found services uninspiring. So I have to ask: where are we going wrong? How can we make services more spiritual?

I’m also keenly aware that we are a diverse congregation made up of at least three different groups of people when it comes to worship. There are our regular attendees who enjoy a traditional service and would probably be upset if we changed what we are doing. Then there are people who don’t necessarily attend services every week but are troubled by the lack of spiritual connection that they feel to prayer in Judaism when they do. And finally there are people who do not connect to traditional prayer or spirituality in Judaism and who join synagogues for a whole variety of other reasons.

This morning, as we begin the book of Leviticus, I find myself reflecting on what it means to make services “more spiritual.” Like most people I’m not sure exactly how to define this word, but I’d like to believe that I would recognize “spiritual” if I saw or experienced it. I think most of us feel that way. There are mornings when I walk out of services feeling uplifted and inspired and other times when I leave not exactly inspired but at least satisfied knowing that I have fulfilled a religious obligation, that I have performed a mitzvah. For me that’s enough; for most contemporary Jews mitzvah is no longer enough reason to pray or practice Judaism. They want to know: what will I get out of it? Is it meaningful? What’s in it for me? I don’t say that critically. I simply think it is important to recognize that the traditional reasons for practicing Judaism and maintaining Jewish traditions is no longer enough reason for doing Judaism.

So let’s return to our Torah portion. What can we learn from the book of Leviticus about spirituality? The opening chapters in the third book of the Torah deal almost entirely with sacrifice and cultic practices of ancient Israel. And while we no longer have an altar or offer sacrifices, there is a direct connection between what our ancestors did long ago and what we do today.

To begin with, the connection is a linguistic one. Prayer and sacrifice are both referred to in Hebrew as Avodah, divine service, or literally, work. Shimon Hatzaddik, in a well known aphorism in Pirke Avot teaches that the world is based on three things Torah, Avodah, and Gemilut Hasadim; prayer, divine service, and good deeds. As the high priest, no doubt when Shimon spoke about Avodah he was talking about the cultic service in the Temple; when we read this statement we hear prayer or worship. And in fact by the time of the Talmud prayer was referred to as Avodah Sh’balev, the service of the heart.

Prayer and sacrifice, then, are two forms of divine worship. We ought to be able to learning something about the spirituality of prayer by carefully studying what went on in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple.

The most striking thing about today’s parshah is that sacrificial worship was not something that you experienced as a passive bystander in ancient times but something in which you actively participated. In the opening verses of today’s Parshah, we read” “Adam kee Yakriv mikem, when any person among you makes an offering….”

The Torah goes on to list a variety of different types of sacrifices. There were burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings and guilt offerings. Each one was motivated by a different set of circumstances in one’s life. In other words you weren’t passively sitting back and watching things happen; you were a part of it. And while you couldn’t offer the sacrifice yourself, the role of the Kohen was that of a facilitator rather than an actor. There was no worship without the supplicant.

This becomes even more apparent when we consider the fact that there were a variety of possible offerings that one could make depending on ones material assets. Let’s say you needed to bring a sin offering. If you could afford it, you would bring an ox. If not, you could sacrifice a sheep or a goat. Poor people could bring two doves and really destitute people brought a hand full of grain. No one was excluded because of wealth. Each of these offerings was of equal value; it was simply a matter of what a person could comfortably afford. No questions were asked.

There are other aspects of the daily offerings, but I’d like to focus on this insight. Worship is not what you experienced but what you brought to the occasion. Sitting in a contemporary synagogue we become passive bystanders. Most of the time we are watching prayer; we’re not necessarily participating in prayer. And the truth is watching someone else pray is pretty boring!! If people feel services are not spiritual, it is because we have turned our synagogues into modern day ritual theaters.

Even the architecture of most contemporary synagogues reflects this idea. Prayer was never meant to take place on “a stage.” In traditional synagogues (and in our new chapel) the shaliach tzibbur, the prayer leader, would stand in the midst of the people so that he was not praying to the people but to directly to God. By being in the congregation he made it clear that he was actually leading the people in prayer. In fact, I would argue in fact the higher the pulpit, the less spiritual the service. The farther we place the rabbi and cantor from the congregation, the more distant we feel from the source of inspiration.

The bimah as a stage communicates a not so subtle message. If this is a stage then you expect something dramatic and exciting to happen here. And that’s not what prayer is supposed to be. And if the Bimah is a stage then rabbis and cantors are not real people – they are actors.

I realized how un-conducive to spirituality our Bimah can be this past week as I sat in the sanctuary during one of daily services. As I sat in the pews, I looked up at the Bimah and tried to imagine what it is like to sit out there on a Shabbat morning or, even better, on the High Holy Days. I realized that the cantor and I must seem very small and far away. I can only imagine what it is like to sit in the back of the reception room on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – you can’t even see the Bimah.

One thing I do know about spirituality – it is based on connection. How can one connect to a service when one can barely see the Bimah?

There are many things that can be said about spirituality and sacrifice. I’d like to suggest just one this morning: spirituality is what we bring to services. It is not just what we find there. One cannot have a spiritual experience unless one is open, receptive and aware of what is going on. And like our ancestors, avodah is what we bring to God, not what we find when we get there.

In rabbinic literature, the sages make a distinction between keva and kavannah, between the fixed liturgy and kavannah, the inner, spontaneous, and focused involvement of the participant. Prayer must involve both. The prayer book by itself does not create a spiritual experience. We must bring an inner sense of participation and involvement to the words we say. This is the avodah, the hard work of divine service for us today. This is what we must bring to worship for services to become more spiritual.

That’s not to say that we don’t have some hard work to do in creating a more conducive and participatory environment in our synagogue. Maybe what we need is different types of services to meet the needs of different types of people. However, in the end, what needs to change is not only what happens on the bimah but what takes place in the pews. Prayer, like sacrifice, begins when we bring our own personal gifts to this experience. And we need to stop treating the synagogue like a show we are watching – the real experience happens not up here (bimah) but in here (point at the heart). This is, after all, Avodah sh’balev, service of the heart.

Do you have thoughts about worship in our synagogue? I would love to hear them. After all, why spend hours together each week unless we get something out of this experience. By bringing our thoughts, our intentions, our creativity to one another maybe we can begin creating a more participatory and spiritual experience in synagogue.

Shabbat Shalom