Would shorter services make Shabbat morning sweeter?

Another time-saving option is not to repeat the Musaph Amidah. I know in one place at least Anim Zmirot, the Hymn of Glory, has been sacrificed post-lockdown.

But if a service is confined to little more than a couple of hours, you’d need to have an exceptional level of Hebrew — by middle-of-the-road Anglo-Jewish standards — to follow the words from start to finish and understand what is being said.

It’s true, of course, that many weekly traditional shul-goers do not roll up until well after the start. If the service is compared to a five-act play, then many do not make an appearance until the third act.

The devotees may be in their place for the first bracha, while the bulk of the congregation filters in over the next hour or so. So if the full service takes three hours, what does it matter, since you do not have to sit through the whole thing and can choose when to come?

And yet, I think, there is greater willingness to question whether the conventional way of doing things is the best. Is there much point in rushing through prayers merely to complete the fixed liturgy?

In an essay in his posthumously published collection I Believe, Rabbi Sacks observed that “one gain” in praying in lockdown isolation was the ability to go at one’s own pace rather than having to keep up with the shaliach tzibbur (congregational prayer leader).

“It is hard to slow the pace so as to be able to meditate at length on any of the prayers themselves — their meaning, music, rhythm and structure,” he observed.
Lockdown meant “we could listen more to the poetry and passion of the prayers themselves”, he wrote.

There are parts of the public service that need to be collectively recited and collective singing can be an uplifting experience. But if one wants to encourage a spiritual connection to the prayers, then Rabbi Sacks’s prescription would seem a sine qua non.

And to achieve that within a public setting might need a more flexible, selective format — for example, choosing from among the repertoire of psalms in any one week rather than gabbling through the whole lot.

Another, more radical idea would be to replace the annual Torah reading cycle by a triennial one (a practice which once was followed in ancient Israel).

To limit the service to two and a bit hours generally requires high-speed leyning of the portion— which makes it difficult to follow the Hebrew while glancing at the translation, with barely enough time to digest the commentary during the gaps between aliyot.

In the early part of the 20th century, at least one United Synagogue congregation, the New West End, favoured seat of the Anglo-Jewry gentry, did consider the triennial option.

According to the emeritus rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Sydney, Rabbi Raymond Apple, a former minister of Hampstead Synagogue, “the motivation was the feeling that Sabbath services were too long, and that members lost interest and began to fidget and talk once the Torah reading began” (oztorah.com).

Similar thoughts were entertained at Hampstead. But it was not a departure that was likely to muster support from the Chief Rabbi.

A shorter service would allow for more creative options in addition to it: a seminar or workshop to explore part of the Torah reading or liturgy, meditative prayer practice or even a book club. A few congregations may already be experimenting with similar things in breakout sessions — a trend which we may well see grow.