Voices of Messianic Judaism: Confronting Critical Issues Facing a Maturing Movement

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HOW MUCH LITURGY

SHOULD WE HAVE IN OUR SERVICES?

CHAPTER 1

THE IMPORTANCE OF JEWISH LITURGY

—Stuart Dauermann

This was Mrs. Jacobs’ first visit to a Messianic congregation. A middle class Jewish woman with a husband in the aerospace industry and grown children, she had come to Los Angeles to participate in the Elderhostel Program sponsored by the University of Judaism. Her son Daniel, a Messianic Jew, brought her to my congregation for her first-ever exposure to a Messianic Jewish service. Seated between him and his Gentile wife Donna, midway through the service she turned to her and asked a telling question: So tell me, don’t you feel out of place in the synagogue? Her question revealed that Mrs. Jacobs felt perfectly at home: she was concerned that our congregation did not feel like foreign territory to Donna, her daughter-in-law.

What was it that made our congregation feel like Jewish space to Mrs. Jacobs? In large part, it was our extensive use of traditional Jewish liturgy, something our congregation has been known for since its founding in the early 1970s.

Messianic Jewish Liturgical Renewal—Why?

If the Messianic Jewish movement is to build communities that not only feel like home but actually are home to Jews and intermarried couples and their families, we simply must warmly and flexibly embrace the Jewish liturgical heritage. Ma tov chelkenu umanayim goralenu—How good is our portion and how pleasant our lot! Our liturgy is just one part of that portion worth handling constantly and lovingly, like a gold watch that shines brighter and brighter the more its contours are caressed.

This Jewish space must exist not only in our congregations but also in our individual and family lives. James Kugel, in his masterful book, On Being a Jew, invites us to take on such disciplines as a means of constructing a mishkan—a tabernacle—where we might encounter and honor the presence of the God of our ancestors. One is reminded of the motion picture Field of Dreams, which popularized the phrase, If you build it they will come. Similarly, for us, it is as we build this mishkan—this holy prayer structure—that we will experience in a new way what it means for the God of our ancestors to come to dwell with us.

Some cannot be bothered with believing that such an encounter will occur. They see only the effort involved in constructing the building. Others suggest that since God is everywhere, all this building is a needless bother. They confuse God’s omnipresence with his relational and manifest presence. Just because he is everywhere present, that does not mean that he is everywhere known and experienced. Building such a holy structure increases the likelihood that we will know the presence of the omnipresent One in our lives and in continuity with his engagement with the House of Israel throughout time.

Happily, some find it within themselves to believe the promise that such a humble structure is just the kind of place God delights to dwell in. Such a summons comes to each of us individually, and each must respond personally. As with the little child Samuel, so for us—we must personally say to the Holy One, Speak Lord; your servant is listening.

For Messianic Jews, who draw near to HaShem (God) through Yeshua our Great High Priest, and in the Ruach HaKodesh, such a mishkan—such a Jewish structure of liturgical practice—is imperative. Although Emily Dickinson declared that every bush is ablaze with God, Moses did not find it so—and neither shall we. We must seek the Holy One in the structures he is wont to inhabit—and our liturgy is just such a place, if we, like Moses our Teacher, will but turn aside to look.

What guidelines then might Messianic Jews follow in implementing and developing our own liturgical practice, in building our mishkan? I recommend the following principles as a good place to start.

The Mah Zot Principle

There should be markers in our lives which memorialize our involvement in the Jewish people’s experience with God and which provide occasions to proclaim and renew awareness of His saving acts.

This principle is repeatedly illustrated in our Scriptures. Our ancestors in Egypt were admonished to put blood on their doorposts as a yearly reminder of the redemption from Egypt (Exod. 11:21–27). First-born sons and animals had to receive special treatment as a reminder of the slaying of the first-born in Egypt (Exod. 13:1, 11–15). Jews were admonished to wear t’fillin so as not to forget these saving events (Exod. 13:9–10, 16). Matzah (unleavened bread) was to be eaten during Passover as a memorial of the Exodus (Exod. 13:2–6). Twelve stones were to be removed from the midst of the Jordan to serve as a reminder of how God cut off the flow of the river that Israel might pass through (Josh 4:1–9). In each case, the custom or artifact served as a memorial of the saving acts of God and as an occasion for inquiry into the meaning of the form. Someone would ask "mah zot? which means What is this?" thus presenting an opportunity to recall and to tell the next generation of the mighty acts of God.

We Messianic Jews ought to incorporate such traditional markers into our personal and communal lives. We must never forget that we are participants in a common history with other Jews. The Book of Exodus expresses this clearly and the haggadah (Passover liturgy) repeats it for us as each year each father is told to explain to his inquiring son, "It is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt" (Exod. 13:8). Each father, though born after the events, is nevertheless to see himself as implicated in those events. It is for this reason that the haggadah bids us all consider the Passover events as if we ourselves had come out of Egypt, for indeed we did.

We must not miss the crucial implications of this principle. Failure to preserve and honor our Jewish particularity means the neglect of our very own history and identity. More tellingly, such neglect means to egregiously disassociate from other Jews and to display a cavalier forgetfulness concerning God’s benefits (Psalm 103:2).

This also means that the communal and personal lives of Messianic Jews ought to be different from those of the wider Body of Messiah because our history is different and because we share a corporate solidarity with other Jews, which must not be overlooked.

We need to remember the sacred calendar. The Jewish holy days, both great and small are like family anniversaries and birthdays circled on the calendar hanging in the kitchen of our people. If we consider ourselves members of the family, if we are grateful for what those circled dates signify, then we will not treat these occasions just like any other day. We will mark special occasions in special ways, in ways customary among our people. One way those occasions are marked is in the rhythms of our liturgical tradition.

The First Law of Liturgical Mathematics

Increased contextualization of Messianic services is directly proportional to increased use of traditional Hebrew liturgy.

Jews expect Hebrew liturgy in Jewish religious services. Anything less and anything else is apt to be perceived as un-Jewish and inauthentic. In my experience, nothing is more likely to add a sense of authenticity to Messianic services than the use of traditional liturgy—in Hebrew, with translation as appropriate.

Some will object to this idea protesting that since very few American Jews understand Hebrew it is time to get rid of it. This suggests yet another principle, the law of liturgical tolerance, which states that Diaspora Jews will tolerate more liturgy than they understand so long as they perceive the service to be otherwise meaningful.

In fact, most of our people do not expect to understand the Hebrew liturgy. We come to synagogue and find it meaningful for a variety of reasons, including the opportunity to associate with other Jews, a time to worship God, an occasion to be enriched in Jewish knowledge, to hear an inspiring sermon, or to reinforce our own identity in the midst of the wider world. Because Diaspora Jews are so tolerant of traditional Hebrew liturgy, we need not be fearful of alienating our people by including liturgy in our services, provided other needs are properly addressed.

The Dodge Van Principle

The way things stand today—there are those of our people who treat us with suspicion or even hostility. If communications are ever to improve, we must maintain every possible shred of commonality with the wider Jewish community. I call this the Dodge Van Principle.

There is a donut shop not far from where I live, where I used to stop daily as a matter of habit. At that time, I was driving a Dodge van. On one of these occasions, as I exited the shop, coffee and donut in hand, I noticed that in the interim another motorist had parked his vehicle in front of mine. He was also driving a Dodge van. As I prepared to enter my vehicle, he called out and asked me how I liked my vehicle. What followed was a brief conversation, a conversation which never would have taken place had I been driving a different kind of vehicle. Thus, our communicational context was directly proportional to what we had in common, in this case, the fact that we were driving the same vehicle.

I submit the same must be true of our religious services and other communal expressions. In our congregations we must endeavor to be driving the same kind of car as our fellow Jews, otherwise there is no context for communication. Without such communication, there will be no commonality and little prospect of a healing of the breach between us and the rest of k’lal Yisra’el (the community of Israel). There will also be little opportunity to explain to other Jews the ways that we are Jews like them with a certain wonderful added extra.

I submit then, that our Messianic liturgical practice should be the same kind of car as is driven by our fellow Jews everywhere. Unfortunately, too few of our Messianic Jews know how to navigate through the liturgy. That brings us to what I term the prime directive.

Messianic Jewish Liturgical Renewal—How?

The prime directive says that the better people understand the liturgy, the better they will like it. Therefore, we must institute ongoing programs designed to nurture liturgical literacy and competence, beginning with our congregational leaders and opinion leaders.

Such programs should include instruction in Hebrew, in the history and function of the liturgical units, and practice in all aspects of participation in a traditional-style service, from dress, to bodily postures, to liturgical participation. With user-friendly resources like The Synagogue Survival Kit by Jordan Lee Wagner, there is no need or excuse to remain ignorant or inept in our tradition.

Our liturgical education programs must be ongoing because it is not enough to learn simply how to operate the liturgy. One must learn by experience how enriching liturgical practice can be, for individuals, and for the group as a whole. James Kugel rightly points out that Americans want to know what they will get out of something before they commit to it. Our tradition tells us we can only know by the tasting: Taste and see that the LORD is good (Ps. 34:8). Consequently, those who insist on a description of the taste before they will take a bite will remain forever empty and hungry.

The reason we must begin with congregational leaders and opinion leaders is expressed in another closely related principle, the law of obstructive leadership.

The Law of Obstructive Leadership

The greatest obstacles to liturgical renewal are the ignorance, fear, pride, prejudice, and negative experiences of opinion-leaders and decision-makers. The next greatest obstacle is a lack of motivation.

Too many American Jews have a low regard for liturgy. For some this is due to negative experiences from their own childhood or the negativity they picked up from someone in their family. Some, with little or no liturgical experience, come from contexts where liturgy is categorically dismissed, being equated with spiritual deadness and vain repetition. There is a psychological inhibition operating here as well—it is rare to find a leader willing to introduce some practice into his congregation for which he feels himself unprepared or unskilled. Far better to dismiss the practice as unnecessary, rather than admit to ignorance or bias.

For these and similar reasons, congregational leaders and opinion leaders should be the first to receive training in liturgical literacy. Opinion leaders, those people in the congregation who may not hold any kind of office but whose opinion is sought out by others who want to check things out, must also be trained and won to this approach. Opinion-leaders are the ideological gatekeepers in a congregation. If they say something is O.K., then chances are the rest of the congregation will go along. Therefore, winning the allegiance of opinion leaders is crucial, so that others in the congregation will be convinced of the rightness of liturgical renewal in congregational