“Is there a preacher in this assembly who can boast of a crowded synagogue at any of the statutory services with the exception of those for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?” the Rev. M. S. Simmons asked in the course of his paper on “A Plea for Supplementary Services,” read today at the Conference of Anglo-Jewish Preachers.
“We all know,” he said, “that the main cause of our empty synagogues is the clash between economics and religion for the possession of the Sabbath. Dare we say to the vast majority of our congregants, ‘either come to the existing statutory Sabbath services or pray in privacy?’ I submit that it is the function of the synagogue to supply promptings to devotion, and that in extreme cases of danger to the persistence of the religious life, individual communities have the duty, not merely the right, to create new services to supplement the old. The question may be asked, will not these supplementary services oust the statutory services? I do not think so. It seems to me that the synagogue is large enough to house both the statutory and the supplementary forms of service. We need not fear that the mere accidental utilization of Sunday, as being, perhaps in most cases, the most practicable day, because of the greater leisure enjoyed, will be misconstrued as an attempt to substitute Sunday for the historic Sabbath,” Rev. Simmons stated.
The Rev. E. Kahan, in the discussion on the paper, said that Sunday services in places of the Sabbath service would deal a blow at the Sabbath itself. Sunday was a day essentially Christian and, in fact, in some aspects anti-Jewish. Sunday services had been tried on the Continent, in America, and England, and they had been failures. They drew people away from the allegiance of the Sabbath where they were held, and they did not return after the Sunday services failed, but went further away from Judaism. They should learn from past experience and not try to improve their synagogues by means of proved failures and by methods that encouraged Reform Liberal Judaism.
The Rev. A. A. Green said that the idea of Sunday services was a delusion.
The Rev. S. Frampton said that Orthodoxy and the loyalty of many people who attended the services and who would never go over to Reform or Liberalism, was strained to breaking-point by certain features in the Sabbath services. There was a place for supplementary services within orthodox limits. He disagreed with the idea of Sunday morning services, which he declared radically and repulsively un-Jewish and a danger.
Rabbi Gollop urged the holding of the traditional Friday evening services, which had been a great success in America.
Rabbi Dr. Samuel Daiches said the program of the Rev. Simmons could be carried out only if the Jewish community turned Christian. The Sabbath did not exist for the services-for prayer; but prayer existed for the Sabbath. The Jewish spirit must be (Continued on Page 4)
Rabbi Harris Cohen made a plea for attractive services. Not only was it true, he said, that the Jewish spirit must be brought into the synagogue, but the synagogue must be a centre for creating that Jewish spirit. It must be the centre for Jewish life and activity. He instanced the fine work done by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland in this direction, which might well be followed.
Rev. A. Barnett said that the tide of Liberal Judaism was swelling; it was making great strides and if they desired to stem that tide they must pay attention to their own synagogues. All reform started with dissatisfaction with the synagogue service.
The Chief Rabbi said that the remedy proposed by the Rev. Simmons had been proved in other communities to be a quack remedy. From his experience in America, all these jazz attractions fail. Jewish Jews don’t come and un-Jewish Jews won’t come. Ninety years ago this quack remedy of Sunday services was tried in Berlin and failed miserably. So that the section which adopted it was a corpse which refused to be buried. Unless you have an outstanding genius, and there would be one that evening at the Zionist meeting in Kingsway Hall (Rabbi Dr. Wise), they were foredoomed to failure. You can’t plant spirituality in the Jew if you start with the orchestra. And you cannot create that inward spirituality by means of externals. The problem could only be solved by the teaching of the Torah.
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