Losses and gains from Zooming

CERTAIN THINGS create an ambience that’s conducive to prayer. A leisurely stroll to shul to collect your thoughts. A friendly face at the synagogue door to remind you of the importance of community. Or a building with impressive décor reflecting your rich religious heritage.

Similarly, certain things dramatically impede prayer. The presence of an over-tired pre-teen knocking over kitchen furniture while attempting a tik-tok dance. Watching the service on a sofa, surrounded by piles of laundry. Or trying to follow the service while your harassed life-partner demands to know where their phone charger is and why every socket in the house is being used to charge devices they didn’t know we own?

And yet, in these days of Corona, I’ve become acclimatised to such conditions in order to enjoy a Shabbat service from my own home.

As every social commentator tells us, these are unprecedented times. And the current crisis has led to some creative responses to the challenges of maintaining community under lockdown. None more so than the Zoom prayer service.

Many synagogues, especially among Progressive denominations, have been live-streaming their services for some time. But previously, just a handful of housebound congregants followed along online. Now, housebound prayer leaders, cantors and rabbis are delivering the entire service via a computer screen.

I’ve sampled a number of online services and the experience has been worth the effort. Indeed, there are certain aspects of the Zoom service that are a distinct improvement on the original. And I’m not just talking about its aptly-named “gallery view”.

For example, in a zoom service, every screen has a name. So when I logged on to Bromley Reform Synagogue’s virtual Shabbat service, I could see that “Stephanie” was leading prayers, “Judi” was singing, and Torah readings were read by “Larry”. Not only that, but I could see the names of the other congregants, too. Now, although it would be ridiculous for everyone at a regular service to wear name badges, this seemingly insignificant aspect of Zoom means I was ‘‘introduced’’ by name to the whole congregation. (With the exception of “Dad’s Ipad” and “Mum’s work account DO NOT USE for school!!”)

A delightful phenomenon of the Zoom service is what I call “Battle of the Books”. In a work setting, accepted advice is to position yourself against as blank a background as possible. But for synagogue services, it seems the position of choice is in front of your personal library of impressive Jewish tomes. I’ve yet to attend a virtual service in which the rabbi or cantor was not sitting proudly in front of the entire Encyclopedia Judaica, all 28 volumes of the Babylonian Talmud and, where applicable, a fair few copies of their own book.

Bromley Reform Synagogue doesn’t currently have a rabbi, so it avoided this bibliographic point scoring. Instead, Stephanie sat at her desk, with her sunny lounge on display in the background, while Judi, whose singing of the prayers was absolutely delightful, fittingly displayed a musical stave wall-sculpture.

Perhaps the most pressing decision of the Zoom service is ‘‘‘to mute or not to mute’’. If participants are unmuted, the service can be ruined by incessant chatter and a painful electronic reverb. And though it might seem preferable for everyone to join the singing, the actual result is a godless cacophony. Most importantly of all, if you don’t mute, you run the risk of all participants overhearing the indiscreet gossip of one congregant about another. (Almost all services I’ve attended begin with frantic hand waving, as people understandably search for familiar faces, and then an audibly panicky “Sshhh! We’re not on mute!”)

For these reasons, most services mute participants, and BRS was no different. But the result, and I say this without criticism and purely to reflect the realities of the technology, was that the prayers sounded rather flat. There was none of the momentum of a live service. Indeed, when Stephanie instructed us “Let’s read together” we didn’t actually read together. We listened to Stephanie read. And in that contrast, between the memory of collective prayer, and the sound of Stephanie’s sole voice, I was painfully confronted with the enormity of what we have lost.

Stephanie, Judi and Larry were accomplished prayer leaders. They seamlessly segued from one screen to another with the professionalism of Emily Maitlis and Huw Edwards on Election Night. But this was prayer as performance. Watching from my screen, I felt the weight of the shift we have all made, from participating congregant to passive viewer.

There is a profound loss in that shift, and I can’t expect anyone to fill it, however impressive their book collection. But in these difficult times, it was better than nothing.

And until I can visit in person, I found comfort in Judi’s closing rendition of Adon Olam. “God is with me,” she sang “I am not afraid.”