The Death of Worship in America

With the ringing of church bells in Rome signaling the choosing of a new Pope, the Catholic world of well over 1.2 billion people were overjoyed. I am sure the Catholics in the United States were overwhelmed as well and the Catholics in Chicago must have been over the moon, and yet as the tv showed many American services in the following few days I would not exactly call the churches overflowing with worshipers. Rather than look like Yom Kippur services at Yizkor it looked much more like the few lonely survivors who staid for the Musaf service after Yizkor.

When commentators talked about all the problems the new Pope faced for his 1.2 billion followers, I reflected on all the problems my colleagues have with their 15 million fellow Jews or 0.2% of the world’s population , and I realized we should only have their problems. But we do have one great problem in common.

Almost no one comes to worship in our shules just like the lack of attendance at many Catholic Churches in the United States; and most of those who do come are the elderly. They come not because they fear their oncoming death, but because they are the remnants of the last segment of the population for whom public worship was a regular activity. Selfishly I wish many more Christians would rediscover regular public worship because there is a Yiddish expression that states that when Christians do something Jews then follow, but even that hope does not look promising.

It was Easter time when I started to think about the demise of worship. I was watching the news on NBC and Raf Sanchez, a reporter whose coverage of Israel and Gaza bothered me to no end, reported on an interesting event in the Royal Family. He informed us that Prince William and his family would not be attending Easter Sunday services. I immediately thought that his wife had taken a turn for the worse with her health, but he quickly jumped in to say that it was for a happy reason. I could not imagine what was happy about the prince and future king of England skipping Church on Easter, something his mother would have never done and then he explained.

The prince’s children were all on school vacations and so he wanted the family to spend more time together. That sounds admirable unless you believe that the family that prays together stays together, or in this case the father who decides not to spend a few hours in church on Easter happens to be the next Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The British monarch is the head of the Church of England. Imagine if the assistant Rabbi of a large synagogue stayed home on Yom Kippur so he could have more family time.

I remember meeting a congregant in Publix whose daughter had celebrated her Bat Mitzvah that year. I naively, as it turned out, asked how his Passover had been, and he unabashedly told me that since all the kids were off school the family had taken a Caribbean vacation that week. Therefore no Passover. The only one who was uncomfortable in this conversation was me.

Easter is a big deal. I know that Christmas gets all the attention but without Easter there is no Christmas. One is a birthday party, and one is the reason why his birth matters. Yet both have been refashioned as celebrations seemingly detached from their religious purpose. Easter is the Holy Day. Without Jesus rising there is no Christianity, just another Jewish boy killed by a mighty oppressor. Yet ask most young families what Easter is about and how to observe it, and you get giant bunny rabbits and egg rolls. Most churches may be full that day without most Christians going to church.

It reminds me of the many Jews who would never miss the breakfast even though they don’t go to shule and for that matter don’t fast. If you feed them, they will come. Passover Seders are still widely attended, using a very loose definition of seder but whether you read all, or most, or some, or none of the Haggadah you will definitely eat. But worship, share a Yom Tov with God, Torah and a praying congregation? Not going to happen. The patient in front of us is dying and are we willing to save it?

I doubt it.

I’ve noticed a new thing on Facebook. On some Jewish holidays people post a greeting to their friends but with a caveat. “Wishing a happy and healthy new year to all who observe”. So, you don’t wish it for everyone? Will you offend people who are not observant by wishing them Shanna Tova? Will your non-Jewish friends take offense? I take good wishes from anyone who offers them.

Why are we reenforcing people’s desire to detach from their own people’s heritage? Why are we contributing to the death of worship and ultimately the end of our people? We are more than an ethnic group, more than a perpetual victim. We are a religion that brings us together in history, in ethics, in morality in spirituality, and with a mission to bring light into the world and we can’t do it without the reinforcement that group worship brings us to.

Worship with a choir or without, with all Hebrew or more English, with a Hazan or a good baal tefilah , with a kiddush or a lunch, with people you love, or people you tolerate, with all friends or with strangers who came to worship that day; but come before no one comes and its all over.

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