Shul etiquette

A little more commentary on the previous post, for anyone who has never been to services at an Orthodox shul...

Orthodox services are very different from services at a church or even a Reform synagogue. For one thing, they are much longer. On an ordinary Shabbos morning at an ordinary shul, services are around two and a half hours long, and then there's afternoon and evening services on top of that--another hour and something. On holidays, morning services can go three or even four or five hours, and on Yom Kippur they can go all day--one year I was in shul from 9 am till 8:15 pm, with only a 45-minute break in the middle (and it was too far to walk home). And unlike in churches, the emphasis is not on attending the service, but on praying the service--you are not fulfilling your obligation by just sitting there. So if you are a little slower or a little faster than whoever's leading, you might find yourself catching up or waiting when you get to the parts that should be prayed with a minyan (quorum). Being late is not a good idea, but it's very common, and women especially tend to turn up quite late--no one will look at you funny if you come even ten minutes before the end of services, if you've got children in tow.

If you're not used to it, an orthodox service can, at times, look like a free-for-all. People are walking in and walking out, forty people are sitting while six are standing, everybody's doing their own mumbling, and some of them are off in the back pacing back and forth and, apparently, not paying attention to anybody. Every so often, everybody goes totally silent, then responds to whoever's leading for a while, and then it goes back to every man for himself. And of course, it's all in Hebrew. (Except for the prayer for the government, sometimes. An aside: when I went to shul for the first time in England I almost fell out of my seat when I heard the cantor suddenly intone, in the midst of all that was familiar, "May the Lord bless our sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth; Philip, Duke of Edinburgh; Charles, Prince of Wales; and all the royal family...")

It might seem chaotic. But there are still some very definite rules of decorum. You're not supposed to talk (not that nobody does, obviously, but it's frowned on--just how much varies by shul). Children can get up out of their seats within reasonable limits--those limits being, you don't disturb anybody else. Obviously, you don't break Shabbos--no pagers unless you're a medical professional on call, and even then you'd better have yours set to vibrate. You can come and go, at most points of the service, if you do it quietly, but don't do it during the rabbi's talk or Torah reading. And if your small child starts making noise, you remove him or her. Immediately. Ditto if your small child or baby needs a clean diaper. And keeping kids quiet with lollipops etc. is fine, but feeding them lunch in the sanctuary is not. Obviously, again, all of this varies with what shul you go to, but I think those rules hold most places, most of the time.

Generally, the way people get their kids to learn to sit in shul is not by bringing toys or distractions, but by starting to bring them for just a few minutes at the end, and then bringing them for longer and longer periods of time as they can handle it. (It helps that shul is generally followed by kiddush, which involves grape juice and cookies.) When they're big enough, they get their own baby versions of a prayerbook, and then the emphasis is on their own obligation to pray, not their obligation to sit quietly. The job of a child in shul is never "sit quietly through the whole service." So for Barak to sit (mostly) and be quiet for a good half hour, when I was perfectly happy to take him to the playroom instead at an time--and he knew it--was what was really surprising. He just liked hanging out in shul, and listening to the cantor, and watching the people.

And he likes whispering, too. When he bonked his head on the back of one of the seats, you could see him catching himself and remembering not to cry--instead, he looked at me, pointed at his head, and very theatrically whispered, "Ouch!"

Was there a point to this post? Probably, but I can't remember what it was. Oh well. Moadim l'simcha, everyone.