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March 12, 1999/24 Adar 5759, Vol. 51, No. 24
Showing the way
Lay leaders fulfill ancient tradition
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
For Marlene Burns, leading services at Temple Chai is her way of contributing to the community.
Photo by Mark Gluckman
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Early on Saturday mornings, Marlene Burns dons a richly colored, hand-woven tallit (ritual prayer shawl) and prepares to lead her congregation in prayer.
Sometimes she chants Torah, the ancient words and rhythms echoing from her Jewish past. Other times, she immerses herself in the service, as others, including Bill Berk and Lisa Tsur, rabbis at the Reform congregation, assume the role of prayer leader.
"I feel an incredible connection standing in front of the Torah scroll and understanding that my ancestors chanted from the same (text). I want others to feel it too," says Burns.
She chants Torah at the temple's early morning Shabbat minyan (prayer service), which precedes a later service. She credits Berk with inspiring her to develop her abilities and use them in service to her community.
"It was Bill who first brought up the word 'community' to me," she says. "I had never thought about my responsibility and my place in the community."
Inspired by that initial conversation with her congregational rabbi, she began adding her voice to the temple choir, then assisting Temple Chai Cantor Sharona Feller in teaching bar and bat mitzvah students. Burns had learned Torah trope, the distinctive cantillation used to read the Hebrew text, 10 years earlier when helping her son prepare for bar mitzvah.
Gradually, she progressed to leading Torah study, then helping to conduct services.
She and other lay leaders pitched in when Berk was on sabbatical last summer, and often fill-in or assist the rabbis.
"You can run out of clergy if you have a couple of deaths and bar mitzvahs (on the same day)," she notes.
The Saturday minyan, which Burns describes as a "teaching service," often attended by bar and bat mitzvah students and their parents, is a collaborative effort with several lay leaders taking responsibility for specific parts. While leading the congregation in prayer can be empowering, it also teaches humility.
"I have found that the more I learn, and the more I do, it's humbling," says Burns. "It goes back to my concept of community - that everyone has something worthwhile to offer."
As her own level of participation has increased, so has her respect for her rabbis, says Burns, noting the inherent tension in being both a service leader and participant.
"They have to take themselves out of the details and get in touch with God," she says. Raised in an Orthodox congregation in Detroit, Burns says such active participation, particularly as a woman, initially "was foreign to me." But little by little, she says she realized that "those who are knowledgeable have a responsibility to the community."
Rabbi Harris Cooperman, principal of Phoenix Hebrew Academy, says that lay leadership in the synagogue is an essential element of Judaism. "That is what sets us apart," he says, explaining that "rabbi" literally means "teacher." It is not necessary for a rabbi to lead a minyan or to perform life cycle events, says Cooperman. Any knowledgeable Jew can do it.
However, over time, as people became less educated Jewishly, the role of the rabbi grew. "We made our rabbis into holy utensils," he says. The challenge, says Cooperman, who daily teaches Torah and tefilot (prayers) to students at the central Phoenix community day school, is to educate ourselves and our children.
"Judaism is a hands-on religion," he says. "Our hope is that people are aware and knowledgeable enough to do it themselves."
Beth El Congregation's Rabbi Rick Sherwin, whose Conservative congregation hosts a periodic lay-led shabbat minyan, quotes mentor Rabbi Harold Schulweiss when asked about the rabbi's role: "The task of the rabbi is to make him or herself dispensable."
He explains that historically rabbis were scholars who only addressed their congregations twice a year, on Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath that falls between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and on Shabbat Hagadol, the Sabbath preceding Passover.
It was not until the Enlightenment, an 18th century philosophic movement that emphasized rationalism, that rabbis began assuming a larger role, in part because progressive German Jews sought a model reflective of their non-Jewish neighbors. "Then the rabbi became the service runner, the officiant," he explains.
Lay participation, he says, constitutes going back to ancient tradition. "It's my joy when people take over and lead," he says.
While Sherwin encourages meaningful involvement in regularly scheduled Shabbat and holiday services, a group of congregants have taken the notion a step further.
Expanding on a 15-year-old history of a lay-led High Holiday service, offered as an "alternative" to the traditional service led by Sherwin or Rabbi Sharon Cohen, a group of congregants initiated a participatory service for Shabbat.
For the past year, some 3-4 dozen Beth El members have gathered two Saturdays a month for services in the synagogue's intimate Shapiro sanctuary. Organizers Alan Singer, Steve Nathan, Gary Serbin and Sherman Minkoff take turns facilitating, sometimes as leaders, more often encouraging others to take an active role.
Joel Gereboff, who heads the religious studies department at Arizona State University and is a Beth El congregant, helps to guide the effort.
"We're creating a sense of community," says Gereboff, acknowledging, like Burns, his responsibility to share his knowledge and skills with other Jews.
"It's a small, intimate group that is taking responsibility ourselves," says Serbin.
The intent is to create a warm, welcoming atmosphere that will encourage meaningful participation, says Minkoff. "We want to be actively engaged - and involve others."
Once a month, participants discuss an aspect of the Torah portion; at other times they study the structure of the service using a text recommended by Gereboff and written by Reform Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman of New York's Hebrew Union College, a renowned expert on Jewish liturgy.
Some 100 congregants, who have expressed interest or attend the minyan, receive bimonthly mailings with pertinent readings, including background for the Torah study and excerpts from Hoffman's book. Minyan leaders guide discussion and also invite guests to take that role.
"For many, this is their only study outlet," says Serbin of the often lively discussions that Minkoff calls "the centerpiece" of the minyan.
Serbin, a lifelong member of Beth El, says that a solid Jewish background prepared him for his role. "Junior congregation at Beth El was my training ground," he says. As a teenager, he had also conducted services at Camp Ramah and as president of Beth El United Synagogue Youth.
"It doesn't strike me that what I am doing now is all that different," he says.
That, says Cooperman, is exactly the point. Students at the Hebrew Academy receive a firm grounding in Jewish ritual and prayer and are comfortable in the synagogue.
"We want the kids to be proficient so that wherever they go, they will be leaders," Cooperman says. Such participation benefits not only the community, but the individual, he adds.
The concept of davening (praying) is the same in Boston, New York, Budapest and Jerusalem, he says, and has existed for thousands of years. "It crosses geographic and time boundaries, giving kids a sense of unity and belonging."
Too, reminds Berk, leading the community in prayer and teaching Torah, are fulfilling mitzvot (Jewish commandments). He says he is committed to inspiring his congregants to carry out those obligations and is proud to have at least 50 members - and hundreds of young people - who, like Burns, can chant Torah.
He has also taught the temple board to prepare and give D'Vray Torah, short lessons in Torah."You grow spiritually by doing mitzvot," he says, "and one part of my rabbinate is giving people meaningful things to grow."
Minkoff agrees. "You can't help but grow when you are involved in Jewish leadership," he says.
"And after all," he adds reflecting on his role and posing the quintessential question, "who learns more - the teacher or the student?"
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