Published: 3 September 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
WHEN WE TELL the story of 2020, the empty synagogues of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur will be among the most haunting absences of pandemic period drama.
High Holidays without shul may feel disappointing or liberating, a creative opportunity or a stark loss, but for the vast majority of Jews affected, they will certainly feel strange.
That’s now. But the more interesting question is how this year will look when the historians of the future consider it? Perhaps it will be a mere aberration but, more interestingly, perhaps it will be a turning point.
Jewish culture has survived not because it was resistant to the many different environments in which it found itself but because it adapted skillfully to new worlds.
We are in the early days of a social upheaval and the shape of the “new normal” will affect many structures previously taken for granted. Just as businesses are wondering why they are paying for office space when their employees can work from home, and supermarkets are restructuring as delivery centres, Jewish communities will be challenged to consider what gathering in a synagogue gives us – and what we might be ready to change.
There is a popular myth that Judaism is immutable because it respects the past and because such a claim is a weapon for those resistant to change. But as Charles Darwin wrote in On the Origin of the Species, it is not the strongest or most intelligent of the species that survives but the one that's most adaptable to change.
Jewish culture has survived not because it was resistant to the many different environments in which it found itself but because it adapted skillfully to new worlds. The writing of the Talmud in Babylon, the rise of Chasidim in Poland, the enlightenment response of Reform Judaism in Germany, and the creation of the secular Israeli are equally examples of such adaptation.
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It is worth considering what might happen as a result of a year when we can’t go to shul, especially when that year occurs within the context of the digital revolution, increasing secularisation, and a rising generation more concerned with social justice and individual freedom than cultural or religious identity.
Those who complain annually about the boring length of the service or loudly proclaim their atheism in the synagogue courtyard might feel released from the habits of a lifetime and never go back.
Or they might discover, to their own surprise, that they miss the visceral undercurrent of the familiar melodies and the sense of transcendence that comes from an annual venture beyond the material world, and look for more. They might even stop complaining.
Those who replace the service with reflection or meditation or study may discover new ways of making meaning out of the day and next year choose these kinds of observance over a return to synagogue.
Or they might bring these insights into their communities and – over time – replace tired and alienating services with more resonant and meaningful practices, perhaps secularised, perhaps study rather than worship-focused, perhaps less literal, perhaps simply shorter.
Some, who overcome distance to connect with family, friends or communities across electronic means, may find intellectual community means more to them than physical closeness and may form enduring non-geographical communities that exist online.
Others may find that no amount of screen-based communication comes close to the sense of connection they feel simply by inhabiting the same physical space as those who are praying, singing or fasting next to them.
They may want more community, more kinds of minyanim, not necessarily prayer or synagogue-based but ways to produce the spiritual endorphins that come from lighting candles, or listening to a shofar, or singing together in the final moments of the concluding service of Yom Kippur as we run together towards the finish line of our annual marathon.
What are we ready to jettison and what do we not want to lose?
Those who dare may use the hiatus to interrogate what parts of Jewish life work for them and why they keep doing what doesn’t – and their answers may empty synagogues next year too.
Households will find ways of making meaning together and – in places where it is permitted – small groups will replace large institutional synagogues. These new kinds of communities – already a feature of 21st century Judaism– may feel more connected and meaningful.
The plethora of resources online may mean there is less need for a rabbi or a cantor or – sacrilege – that having our Jewish professionals on a platform with a mute button is not a disadvantage.
Some will want to change nothing, of course. For Jews who are deeply religious or strongly traditional, the closing of synagogue doors will be only an endurance test. They need simply to remember the primacy Judaism gives to any action required to save a life and wait it out.
History could look back on 2020 as a watershed, in which the dominance of synagogue Judaism began to wane. If we can go from sacrifice to synagogue and from religious legalism to secular nationalism, might we not also move to a completely different form of community and connection? What forms might such community take? What are we ready to jettison and what do we not want to lose?
These might be good questions to ask as we eat our apple and honey, listen to recordings of shofar and pray, in whatever form we can, for a happy and, particularly, healthy, new year.
READ MORE
Jews prepare for pandemic-era High Holiday season of rupture and resilience (Times of Israel)
Many congregations opt for virtual services, while some Orthodox ones will have short in-person prayers, but COVID-19 is testing commitment across the religious spectrum
Photo: A socially distanced outdoor service at the Green Road Synagogue in suburban Cleveland, June 2020. (Courtesy of Rabbi Binyamin Blau/ via JTA)
