Re: Rahel Jaskow article

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

I'm bewildered at the comments of our so highly knowledgeable correspondent 
Cantor Sam Weiss with regard to the Jerusalem Post article, "United in music 
and prayer," about Rahel Jaskow's recordings and sometime service leading.

Cantor Sam refers to "a confusion (in the mind of the reporter and/or of Ms. 
Jaskow) about the role of a Jewish prayer leader"--but, as improbable as it 
would seem, the only confusion seems to emanate from our erudite 
correspondent.

First of all, Sam refers to "Orthodox womens' minyanim," which to my 
knowledge is something of an oxymoron.  When *Orthodox* women meet in a 
separate prayer group--and I know some who do so, or have done so--they 
don't consider it a minyan and are careful not to refer to it as such.  And 
I believe I recall, at least from my informants, that they don't do prayers 
requiring a minyan, either.

More relevant is Sam's peculiar references to "place-marking," which Ms. 
Jaskow avers to be her primary function.  I'll put aside the 
uncharacteristic (I assume) vulgar comparison by Sam (in re a dog and a fire 
hydrant; not worth revisiting), which is, and was, most inappropriate in any 
discussion of sincere Jewish prayer.  But it is Sam's demeaning of this 
function that is more lastingly disturbing.

In plain fact, place-marking (however/whatever one calls it) is *exactly* 
one of the primary functions of a service leader--or ba'al (or, in her case, 
ba'alat) tefilah, which is really the missing term in the article about 
Rahel Jaskow:  That's what she wants to say she's being, as opposed to a 
hazzan(it).  One can see this function of place-marking most starkly or 
purely evident in weekday minyanim, when, depending on the shul or minyan 
and the level of the participants, the rabbi--if one is present at all--may 
not do the kind of page announcements that many American Jews are used to at 
Shabbat services.  Instead, time usually being short or considered as such, 
the ba'al tefillah will customarily do little more--other than when he is 
required, as in Borchu, morning and afternoon repetition of the Amidah, 
etc.--than voice (i.e., aloud) the beginnings and esp. the endings of each 
major (or even not so major) prayer or unit of prayers, which serves the 
function of pacing the service and cuing worshippers as to where, more or 
less, they should be--or, at least, where the ba'al tefillah and probably 
most of the kahal (congregation) are.  And of course, any service leader 
does this on Shabbat as well.

Such "place-marking" may or may not be "rewarding," as Cantor Sam has it, 
but a ba'al tefillah usually sees his (or, I guess, her) function as being 
of service to the congregation; indeed, (s)he may simply be called on by the 
kahal, the gabbai, the rabbi, etc., to conduct the service.  The reward, 
presumably, lies in just the stam, so to speak, act of being of service.

Cantor Sam also seems to have problems with Rahel Jaskow's reference to 
hazzans as "performers"; Sam counters that the task of a prayer leader is to 
be "a facilitator of prayer."  I think this rather misses the--or Rahel 
Jaskow's--point.

First of all, to be a place marker *is* to be a facilitator of prayer, 
albeit in a bare-bones, rudimentary fashion.  Certainly a musically 
pleasing, heinadik (loosely, graceful) service leader can, perhaps, elicit 
deeper spiritual responses from congregants and so facilitates, or enables, 
prayer all the more.  And an inspired, knowledgeable, and non-performing, 
non-showy hazzan can, of course, do this as well--and will, furthermore, be 
(sometimes far) more knowledgeable with respect to the proper nussach 
(musical prayer mode) of a given service, which in itself can help convey an 
appropriate mood of prayer.  Obviously, too, a gifted hazzan can, with 
subtle and understated embellishment and variation, tap something in our 
musical/spiritual (Jewishly, often one and the same!) response that a less 
gifted or musically fluent service leader can perhaps not tap.

But that hazzans can be, and often are and have been, performers rather than 
facilitators of prayer is so obvious a fact of Jewish history that it 
shouldn't need reiterating.  Rabbis were, in fact, condemning cantors for 
this, apparently, from the first days of cantors--and in all the centuries 
since.  They apprehended that some cantors weren't serving as facilitators 
of prayer but, precisely, as performers, full of themselves and their "art." 
  They turned congregants not into more intense, more deeply engaged 
pray-ers but into an audience.  There are citations aplenty of this sort of 
thing being remarked on, and condemned, in many eras of Jewish history; in 
the last century, in America, many Jews, it would seem from contemporaneous 
accounts, would leave synagogue raving about their cantor's magnificence, as 
though they'd just come from an opera, instead of deeply fulfilled in 
prayer.  Indeed, negative comparisons with opera and opera singers are very 
much part of the rabbinic reaction against performing-style cantors in the 
nineteenth century.

(For some reason, this makes me think of Dick Cavett's remark, in re 
television maybe in its early days, that folks were more likely to boast 
that they *had* a great picture--meaning, great reception--than that they'd 
*seen* a great picture [as in a movie].  I guess what this has in common, 
and it's a stretch, is a disengagement from the core experience--from what's 
supposed to be going on.)

"Aesthetic embellishment of the prayers," as Sam puts it, *can* 'enhance and 
intensify the prayer experience,' but it can also merely intensify the 
operatic, audience-engaging (or audience-creating) performance--the 
*cantor's* prayer experience, if you will.  Depending on the congregants and 
what they come to synagogue for, I suppose that, for some people, that will 
heighten some sense of spiritual experience--just as, for that matter, 
*listening* to opera--or to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, or to Joan 
Baez--will, depending on one's taste.  But that's not praying.

--Robert Cohen




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