I recalled what the rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in Dallas, Texas told me when I first joined his synagogue: “There is no business like shul business.” He had no clue how accurate his statement would turn out to be, in my case at least.
For me, having just moved from Europe to Dallas, Texas, the American shul experience was a brave new world. Growing up in Israel, it was mostly the men who went to shul, and Kiddush was served only on very rare occasions. The sheer size of the US synagogues, the sermons, mostly on topical issues, were new to me. The lavish Kiddush luncheons were the equivalent of a banquet in Israel.
What was so surprising to me after years in the US was the fact that so many who attended relied on these generous luncheons for their Shabbat meal.
Urban anthropologists argue that humans need to be around other people. We are social creatures. That is why the closure of places of worship during the COVID-19 pandemic left such a void in peoples’ lives. The synagogue is not just about man and God, but also about humans interacting with others.
That mainly social aspect was not nearly as evident in synagogues I attended in England, Germany and Spain. However, my Jewish American experience brought home to me how much synagogues in the US are the glue that holds Jews together, a networking center. I met numerous couples who met there, and few even got married. People get invited regularly to Shabbat meals there and I held my Jewish lecture series in various synagogues. The last thing I expected when I first walked into that Dallas synagogue was to be the first person in their 100-year-history to be sponsored for a Green Card for my educational work.
What made it even more remarkable was that I got my green card in record three-months time. The filing lawyer joked that the sponsoring synagogue must have had a direct line to God.
Dallas is a sprawling city and Jews are not likely to socialize in any other place as much as in the synagogues. Even though Manhattan is more densely populated, so many congregants consider it their home away from home. I was reminded of the words of my Dallas rabbi after a friend in Manhattan confided in me how much he missed the human contact with the congregants during the closure.
Everything has changed now that synagogues reopened with small minyanim and no Kiddush served. My friends complain it resembles more a hospital experience than the touchy-feely experience of the B.C. (Before Corona) era when one could socialize at the Kiddush rather than maintain a safe social distance. Reminders to wash hands and wear masks welcome the few brave ones who still attend shul despite constant warnings that the virus is lurking in the background and is highly contagious.
The synagogues help us not only reconnect with our fellow Jews, but also mainly with our roots. I was reminded of Winston Churchill’s visit to Israel in March of 1921. As a large crowd welcomed him, the young trees just planted in his honor collapsed and their roots were scattered. Churchill started to laugh and whispered to his host, “Mister Dizengoff, without roots nothing will grow here.” We might apply this truism literally and figuratively to our synagogues.
Stranded in Israel during the COVID-19 pandemic, I treasured spending Shabbat at the mother of all synagogues, the Kotel (Western Wall). At the peak of the pandemic, we were only a few people there yet I never felt alone.
No matter how often one prays at the Kotel it is never the same.
Walking up the hill I found myself humming lines from my favorite song, titled The Kotel: “There are people with a heart of stone and there are stones with a human heart.”
The writer is a journalist living in Jerusalem.