These past two Shabbats, I’ve encountered a few experiences that I’ve found both refreshing and disappointing. For the last few months, I’ve been going to a shul that could probably be considered on the Ultra-Orthodox side of the spectrum. Last weekend I was staying with a friend nearby and instead we decided to check out the local Modern Orthodox shul that I’ve been hearing about my entire life. It was exciting, I always imagined there was this tiny community of Orthodox Jews in Cherry Hill that has been hidden away from the eyes of the rest of the community. When I arrived, I was surprised to find that tiny was the last word that could be used to describe it. I didn’t even know so many Jews even lived on the west side of town. For the first two services, Kabbalat Shabbat and Shacharit, I joined in with the Ashkenazi minyan, which I’ll speak about shortly, but later found myself tied by my liver to the Sephardi minyan for Mincha and Maariv.
For now, though, I would like to speak about the Ashkenazi minyan. If you ignore my dressing down, blue tzitzit, and tavs I’m about Ashkenazi as you can get. Having grown up Conservative and Reform, when I first started going to the Ultra Orthodox shul I was definitely a bit lost, but I’m also pretty literate, so it didn’t take me long to catch on and even be able to keep up with them. The melodies weren’t foreign to me even though I never went to Orthodox services before. Anyway, I really enjoyed davening with them, you could tell everyone there was present, and they were there hoping to connect with Hashem. It was also in a pretty small room, so you felt close up and a part of their community. So, I sort of just assumed the other shul would be similar. It wasn’t at all. The room was huge and the gap between the rabbis and the rest of the minyan felt unbreachable. Also, I’m shocked this actually bothers me as an egalitarian, but the mechitza could barely be considered one. I’m happy that women want to daven with men, and see no issue with some of the big controversies over women in Judaism that are going on nowadays. I would even say I support them. With that said, it felt dishonest to me that the mechitza at the Orthodox shul was pretty much a handrail. I couldn’t help but look over at the women, and I felt that it was more distracting than no mechitza at all. Anyway, with the gap between the minyan and the rabbis alongside terrible acoustics, the service was barely comprehensible. To make things worse, the behavior of the congregants was absolutely atrocious. They would not shut up, at all. The men in the back spent the entire service chatting and laughing as they joked around about a kiddush club. I’m well aware that they do this at the synagogues I grew up in, which was what put me off from praying in public in the first place; it felt as if people don’t come to pray they come to socialize. A part of me really hoped that at an Orthodox shul, where at least according to their belief systems prayer is important, you would find a different situation. That just didn’t seem true. I was no more inspired by the Orthodox shul than I was at the Reform shuls I’m used to. As I experienced this, I remembered how a teacher of mine at Pardes preferred davening with the Haredi despite being Da’at Leumi (National Religious/Modern Orthodox). The way he described it was, “The people I daven with are the people I don’t like to socialize with, and the people I like to socialize with aren’t the people I like to daven with.”. I completely understand at least part of that now, though I do also enjoy socializing with the people at the more traditional shul I attended.
So, after being disappointed by the Ashkenazi minyan, and then being told the Sephardic may be more in-line with my desires for an appropriate prayer space, I was really quite willing to be roped in by the whiskey they offered me during kiddush. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I knew the Sephardic do things a little differently, maybe an extra prayer here or there, but it was mind-blowingly different. I found myself in an unfamiliar circular room with a group of people who don’t actually look like me and what I have always stereotyped as Jewish. It took me about 5 minutes, with the help of some others to actually find the correct siddur, and when I opened that my eyes bulged. It wasn’t just all Hebrew, the font was different and the format completely foreign to me. Fortunately, after missing a prayer or two I was able to find my place and somewhat join in. I say somewhat because their melodies were completely new to me. It may be wrong to say, but it made me think of Arabic prayers almost. I was absolutely amazed by the Hazzan, the guy sang beautifully at a speed that would beat a hummingbird in a race. He was able to chant at such a speed, yet I could still understand every word, and it was absolutely amazing. I’ve seen Sephardic Torahs before, but never had the honor of carrying one, all that metal makes it quite heavy. I’ve also never seen one one open before let alone read from. It really was something else, and a great experience. The Sephardic minyan really knew how to daven, with the same passion that I looked forward to at my old local shul.
Anyway, the experience was great, but that isn’t actually what I wanted to write about today. I wanted to discuss a problem I noticed that goes way deeper than people speaking in shul, something I’ve heard of, but never noticed or cared enough to consider a real issue. I really felt like there was a level of discrimination against the Sephardic community by the Ashkenazi. I don’t know the details of the shul, and how it runs itself, so perhaps I may be too critical, but I definitely felt a sense of discrimination. While it may be small, there is something there, and it felt like a chillul Hashem. The fact that they had to proactively rope me in to get me to join them really points to this problem. There is a huge community there, yet if the Sephardic can’t find a minyan they are forced to join the Ashkenazi. Really? There isn’t one or two people from the Ashkenazi minyan who would be willing to step out of their comfort zone to go help their Jewish fellows make a minyan they would be comfortable with? There were a ton of people talking and not praying, maybe they could go join in and get some actual prayer done so that both minyans can pray in peace. Worse than that is the way the kiddush and seudah shlishi worked out. During kiddush the Sephardic minyan had its own table and its own food. When I walked in with my friend he goes, “Oh don’t take that food, it’s for the Sephardi”. I couldn’t help but think of segregation. The excuse is that there is a 5-10 minute difference between the minyans. So one of the minyans can’t wait for the other to finish before chowing down? The seudah was even worse, when the Sephardic minyan was done, they didn’t have their own table, and there was almost no food left for them by the Ashkenazi who had already proceeded to eat everything in sight and start singing. The Sephardi were even aware of this, and complained about it to my friend. Now, I understand that it could be said that there are logistical considerations, but logistics aren’t an actual excuse for such behavior. A religious community should be working together to be warm and accepting, and it should be able to rise above such pettiness to make sure that everyone has an equally pleasurable Shabbat. That’s not how it felt there. Instead it felt like the Ashkenazi cared only about the Ashkenazi, feeling almost superior because they allowed the Sephardi a place to daven in their shul as if they were throwing them a few scraps under the table.
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