If Yiddish has an equivalent to “musn’t grumble”, it’s not one I am familiar with. By contrast, kvetch remains in popular usage, for our culture supports an honourable tradition of complaint. We do not bear our irritations, let alone the slings of outrageous fortune, quietly. In which spirit, I ask you to indulge me.
Happy is the congregation that hosts many bnei mitzvah but for some the influx of visitors is a mixed blessing. In the past few years, there seems to be a growing trend of applause breaking out in synagogue for bnei mitzvah. And sometimes not even once but twice, after they have delivered their dvar Torah and when they have finished singing the haftarah. Giving a whole new meaning to happy-clappy, which makes regulars very clappy-unhappy.
Better to be a kveller than a kvetch, you may say. Should we curmudgeons not swallow our annoyance at what might be considered a harmless act of celebration and instead rejoice in a full house rather than bristle like Victor Meldrew in a tallit? But I hold that clapping has no place in a shul service. A barmitzvah is a sacred ceremony, not a performance. Applause belongs to secular venues and detracts from the spiritual occasion.
The shul-going faithful are at the best of times jealous of their traditions and any novelty is likely to meet resistance. Even the introduction of a new tune can lead to rising hackles. So how much more irksome is an unauthorised practice that has seemingly been imported from outside.
I don’t know how widespread the problem is but I know of at least one synagogue that announces at the start of the service that guests should refrain from applauding. But I wonder how the fad caught on in the first place. Somewhere a couple of people must have started clapping to show their appreciation, others politely joined in and slowly the habit spread across the suburbs.
Is it ultimately down to our cosmopolitanism – a welcome thing in itself – with people inviting friends from beyond the Jewish community to share in their simchah? Or is it that more of us simply have forgotten how to behave in shul?
In a recent videocast, a senior United Synagogue rabbi, Elchonon Feldman, of Bushey Synagogue, wondered whether we might be experiencing the demise of the “shul-goer”. By which he would have meant in the religious middle-of-the-road.
The raw stats themselves do not point to a drop in attendance. According to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, this has remained pretty stable over the course of a decade with 27 per cent of us saying that we went to synagogue most weeks. But then with the Charedi population becoming an ever-larger percentage of UK Jewry, you might well expect a rise in attendance overall.
So the headline figure could mask a decline elsewhere in the community. And if it were true that fewer in the centre ground were passing through the doors of the sanctuary, then knowledge of shul etiquette might be diminishing too.
Given the ubiquity of mobile phones, it is, however, surprisingly rare to hear a stray phone go off during the service. But then people know to switch them off when they go to a concert or the theatre so they will do likewise when they enter a place of worship.
There are enough established ways to mark bnei mitzvah without acquiescing in the adoption of alien ways. I dare say there are places that might regard a round of Siman tov umazel tov as unduly boisterous but it is part of the celebratory repertoire. And while I confess to a grinch-like distaste of throwing sweets – however did it get past health and safety? – it is longstanding custom.
To start plastering the building with signs asking people not to do this or that would look rather unwelcoming (I did once spot a notice in one shul – a very pious one – saying that talking was not permitted). But let’s bring to an end the violation of synagogue decorum and put a clamp on the clapping. If you are paying a visit to a shul for a simchah, I say: “Ladies and gentleman, please don’t put your hands together.”
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