There are myriad ways for Jews to do Jewish.  Some of them even happen in shul.  We pray, we study, we sing, we eat, we talk, we joke, we quip, we reflect.  Paraphrasing the words of a Chancellor of JTS, when we pray,  we talk to God; when we read Torah, God talks to us.  Each pathway might work for some of us, or not.  And what worked or did not work for us today, might or might not work for us tomorrow.  With this vision of doing Jewish there is a delicate balance to maintain on Shabbat morning, the primary time we gather as a congregation.

Each Shabbat there are moments geared towards introspective contemplation, especially during Peseukei D'zimra.  Shacharit offers us a contemplative pathway that begins with a sense of awe of the majesty of creation, continues to a growing sense of appreciation for the power of our creator then completes the journey through appreciation of God's continuing revelation and the personal and national redemption that living a life guided by Torah offers.

At the center of our worship we read from the Torah, study it, and find its relevance in our day to day lives.  We celebrate life through Aliyot to the Torah and express some of our deepest hopes through the Mishebeirach L'cholim, our prayer for those who are ill.  Then Mussaf offers us our highest and most inspirational moments of communal prayer, through personal devotion in the silent Amidah which builds the way towards communal expressions of joy for the gifts that Judaism in general and Shabbat in particular provide for us.

There is a lot to fit in, and we are trying to do all this in about two and a half hours to be considerate of those present.  One of the most frequent and impassioned comments we receive from congregants is that our Shabbat service is too long.  As your rabbi I want to assure you that having a timely and predictable Shabbat morning is one of my goals, and I can assure you that your ritual committee is sensitive to this as well.  We all understand that if our congregation is restless and anxious, the quality of our spiritual experience suffers, so we have taken on the challenge of trying to shorten the duration of our service while maintaining and even enhancing all that is positive about it.

As you know, we have recently made the change to a 9:30am start time.  Before we made this change, we invariably would have to wait before beginning Shacharit to have a minyan present.  Our assessment was that this had as much to do with people not wanting to be up that early on Shabbat morning as anything else, and since we pushed our start time back half an hour, we have had a minyan by the beginning of Shacharit every week.

We knew going into this change that we would have to manage our Shabbat morning a little differently in order to stay close to our goal of completing our worship by 12:00pm.  Below, I will share with you some of the primary ways we are working to achieve this goal.  We are trying various things to tighten our worship while at the same time, not feeling continuously in a rush.  On a Shabbat morning with a particularly long Torah reading or when we have a number of additions, we will sometimes employ a Hechi Kedusha, usually for Shacharit, but sometimes Mussaf.  On other weeks we might pray for our country and for the State of Israel quietly to ourselves, or not sing the Aleinu out loud.

Some changes will be regular, some intermittent—we will continuously be analyzing how we are doing, both qualitatively and quantitatively as we go forward.  Some of our goals include keeping the hamisch feel as our congregation gathers each week, keeping our reading of the entire Parsha and especially enhancing and protecting the spiritually uplifting singing during Mussaf.  We very much appreciate your patience as we work to strike the right balance for our Beth Israel Center community.

To help us keep the space in time for these goals, we do, at times, need to be expedient—tap into some of our Yekkeh (German Jewish) roots.  One place we are asking you as members of our congregation to do this, is when you are called to the Torah for an Aliyah.  Starting in February, we are going to try an experiment where by the person who assigns the Torah honors (called Shamash in many congregations) will take a more active role in facilitating our Torah service.

Sometime before your Aliyah, that individual will ask you to ascend the Bimah and sit next to me as you await your honor.  This will provide me with a welcome opportunity to greet you personally, and will help the flow of our service so that we do not have a wait between Aliyot while people called to the Torah walk from their seats to the front of the sanctuary and then ascend the Bimah.  This will collectively save several minutes through the course of the service and will keep the reading progressing in a more natural manner.

Among the important elements of being called to the Torah is the statement of one's Hebrew name, which in our tradition honors both the Aliyah (person being called to the Torah) and his or her parents.  It is our goal to have each person called to the Torah by their Hebrew name instead of as the Kohein, Levy, Shlishi, etc.  To accomplish this in an expeditious manner, we are working to collect each of our members' Hebrew names on a 3x5 card that we will keep on the Bimah.

We have already collected a number of them from various places but we do not yet have a complete collection of our members' Hebrew names.  Please check in the office the next time you are in Beth Israel and Aimee will tell you if we have a card for you or not.  If not, please ask her for a blank card, fill it out to the best of your ability and return it to her.  When you are given an aliyah, the Honor's Distributor will takeout your card and give it to the Gabbai so that they can expediently call you up by name. If we do not have your Hebrew name in our little black box they will ask you for your Hebrew name and then tell it to the Gabbai right before you are called to the Torah.

It has been a Minhag in our congregation—a custom not a requirement of halacha—to primarily acknowledge the names of people who are called to the Torah with an individual Mishebeirach.  In many Conservative congregations around the country, the standard practice has become offering one Mishebeirach at the end of the entire reading for all of the people called up to the Torah on a particular morning.  This recognizes the communal aspect of reading and hearing Torah and is a more expeditious way of conducting the Torah service.  We are going to make this transition as well, though of course we will continue to offer individual Mishebeirachot for a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, Hatan and Kalah (bride and groom) before their wedding, or on other special occasions like momentous birthdays and anniversaries.

Our efforts on this front are intended to help us protect and when possible enhance the special spiritual feeling of our Davening and of our communal gathering.  We recognize that in doing so there is challenge in making change.  It takes time to adjust to different ways of doing things, even when the goal is to make things better.  So please give these modifications some time, and then share your comments with us.  Your feedback is most desired by me and our Ritual Committee.  Please feel free to speak with me or any member of the ritual committee, or you can email your thoughts and suggestions to Bill Schwab at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We will be sure to share them with the entire committee and use them to the best of our abilities.

Shalom,

Rabbi Joshua W. Ben-Gideon