The Shabbat service five days ago lasted two hours, but the reasons for that are the very reasons I was there anyway. Not only was it the regular Friday evening worship for the Reformed Jewish synagogue in our town, it was also Hanukkah. Which added prayers, songs, and candles. All of them in Hebrew!
But none of this was what drew me to Agudas Israel Congregation last Friday. What did was the installation of Ted Labow as their new cantor and spiritual leader.
My invitation to attend came after I interviewed him on The Tangle Tour of ’23, at the last stop, in Hendersonville NC. I liked him immediately, and doubly so when he brought his guitar and sang a Jewish folk song. Before he did, though, I invited him to my micro-church which sits exactly 2.1 miles from his synagogue.
“What does a cantor do?” I asked him in the interview.
“A cantor does everything a rabbi does,” he answered, in effect, which was a surprise to me.
“So, you do the music and the preaching?”
When he said yes, I said, “You must come to Providence and sing and preach.”
I already knew he was trained in opera, and after our conversation he took the guitar and sang. Which is the way he led the entire two hours of worship last Friday night: speaking from the platform with a guitar slung around his shoulder.
Who would have thunk it, as we say sometimes in the slang. The guitar, the songs we sang, and his casual style of leading the whole thing gave it the feel of a coffee shop or, better yet, a contemporary worship service in a Christian congregation.
Except that the songs were old, and in Hebrew. And when they went on more than long enough, they presented the guest speaker. Sam Kaplan was his name. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. It was an odd choice, at first, but became even more so when his chosen subject turned out to be a math professor at a nearby school—Black Mountain College, defunct since 1957—who was a member of the Jewish German diaspora in the years before World War II. He fled with the Jewish intelligentsia and ended up in a no-name school that soon thereafter ran out of steam.
How all that was connected to Shabbat, or Hanukkah, or the installation of the cantor I failed to understand; but I did not bring it up when he sat down across from me at the meal that followed.
What I did understand was how important it was that I was in attendance. Not that the reason for that was ever mentioned in public or in private. Which did not matter to me, not one whit. But I think it mattered to others there, especially to the members of that Jewish congregation.
Jews need friends these days, and I am their friend. Too many people have unleashed a torrent of disrespect against all Jews and against Israel. The furor has now cost the president of the University of Pennsylvania her job, and she won’t be the last. People are losing friends, contracts, donors, and support. Some are even calling for the elimination of the Jews.
Some of this anger is triggered by Israel’s war against Hamas. I understand that. What Hamas did was cruel in the extreme and totally unjustified. But what Israel is doing is worse. Already more than ten times as many Gazans have been killed by Israelis than Israelis were killed by Gazans. Isn’t that enough?
It is more than enough, and Israel needs to stop. But even when I disagree with Israel’s war policy, I do not turn my back on Jews and fuel the call for extermination.
I feel the same way about Palestinians as I do Israelis. Let them live free. Let them determine their own future. Let them work and rest, sing and dance, pray and serve, and at the end, die in peace. That is the least that every human can expect on this planet.
Which is why I attended the installation of the cantor last week, although I never said a word about any of this to anybody, let alone the cantor. My presence said something. I hope they understood this is that something I wanted to say.
Shabbat Shalom, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.
The Shabbat service five days ago lasted two hours, but the reasons for that are the very reasons I was there anyway. Not only was it the regular Friday evening worship for the Reformed Jewish synagogue in our town, it was also Hanukkah. Which added prayers, songs, and candles. All of them in Hebrew!
But none of this was what drew me to Agudas Israel Congregation last Friday. What did was the installation of Ted Labow as their new cantor and spiritual leader.
My invitation to attend came after I interviewed him on The Tangle Tour of ’23, at the last stop, in Hendersonville NC. I liked him immediately, and doubly so when he brought his guitar and sang a Jewish folk song. Before he did, though, I invited him to my micro-church which sits exactly 2.1 miles from his synagogue.
“What does a cantor do?” I asked him in the interview.
“A cantor does everything a rabbi does,” he answered, in effect, which was a surprise to me.
“So, you do the music and the preaching?”
When he said yes, I said, “You must come to Providence and sing and preach.”
I already knew he was trained in opera, and after our conversation he took the guitar and sang. Which is the way he led the entire two hours of worship last Friday night: speaking from the platform with a guitar slung around his shoulder.
Who would have thunk it, as we say sometimes in the slang. The guitar, the songs we sang, and his casual style of leading the whole thing gave it the feel of a coffee shop or, better yet, a contemporary worship service in a Christian congregation.
Except that the songs were old, and in Hebrew. And when they went on more than long enough, they presented the guest speaker. Sam Kaplan was his name. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. It was an odd choice, at first, but became even more so when his chosen subject turned out to be a math professor at a nearby school—Black Mountain College, defunct since 1957—who was a member of the Jewish German diaspora in the years before World War II. He fled with the Jewish intelligentsia and ended up in a no-name school that soon thereafter ran out of steam.
How all that was connected to Shabbat, or Hanukkah, or the installation of the cantor I failed to understand; but I did not bring it up when he sat down across from me at the meal that followed.
What I did understand was how important it was that I was in attendance. Not that the reason for that was ever mentioned in public or in private. Which did not matter to me, not one whit. But I think it mattered to others there, especially to the members of that Jewish congregation.
Jews need friends these days, and I am their friend. Too many people have unleashed a torrent of disrespect against all Jews and against Israel. The furor has now cost the president of the University of Pennsylvania her job, and she won’t be the last. People are losing friends, contracts, donors, and support. Some are even calling for the elimination of the Jews.
Some of this anger is triggered by Israel’s war against Hamas. I understand that. What Hamas did was cruel in the extreme and totally unjustified. But what Israel is doing is worse. Already more than ten times as many Gazans have been killed by Israelis than Israelis were killed by Gazans. Isn’t that enough?
It is more than enough, and Israel needs to stop. But even when I disagree with Israel’s war policy, I do not turn my back on Jews and fuel the call for extermination.
I feel the same way about Palestinians as I do Israelis. Let them live free. Let them determine their own future. Let them work and rest, sing and dance, pray and serve, and at the end, die in peace. That is the least that every human can expect on this planet.
Which is why I attended the installation of the cantor last week, although I never said a word about any of this to anybody, let alone the cantor. My presence said something. I hope they understood this is that something I wanted to say.
Shabbat Shalom, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.
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