A QUIET YOM KIPPUR
Synagogues turn to live streams for high holidays
We are trying to be flexible, trying to teach lessons, to pivot — to look for blessings when they are not that obvious.
During Rosh Hashanah prayer services last weekend marking the beginning of a new year in the Jewish calendar and the start of the high holy days, there were about 30 congregants in the 1,200-seat sanctuary at Montreal's Shaare Zion Congregation — a sanctuary filled in other years to capacity during the high holy days.
The sanctuary was almost like a monastery in its stillness, said Rabbi Aubrey Glazer, the synagogue's spiritual leader.
Yet “even with the emptiness, something is alive,” he said. “There is a divine stillness in the sound and in the silence.”
In Judaism, Glazer said, there are different kinds of songs.
“There is the outward song of great jubilation, which you feel when there are 1,000 people around you. There is also the inner song — the still, silent voice. And I think we have tapped into that for the first time.”
One congregant whose family has been part of the synagogue for three generations told him it was one of the most powerful, meaningful services she had ever attended.
The Shaare Zion sanctuary will be similarly still when Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in Judaism and the culmination of the 10-day period of soul-searching and penitence known as the Days of Awe, begins at sundown Sunday — as will the sanctuaries of other Montreal synagogues. The COVID-19 pandemic has kept most worshippers at home.
Although 250 people were permitted in houses of worship, Montreal synagogues had no more than a few dozen worshippers on Rosh Hashanah, all wearing masks, all social distancing. Indeed, rabbis said only about 60 per cent of congregants who had signed up actually attended services. As COVID-19 cases crept up toward the end of last week, a couple of synagogues decided at the 11th hour to cancel services.
Following the Quebec government's announcement on Sunday that Montreal's alert level was intensifying to orange and that the maximum number permitted in houses of worship would drop to 25, a few synagogues chose not to even open their sanctuaries for Yom Kippur; the rest had no issue with complying with the new limit.
“I think we are learning tremendous lessons,” said Rabbi Michael Whitman, spiritual leader of the Adath Israel Poale Zedek Anshei Ozeroff Congregation, which will be open for Yom Kippur, keeping each service to a maximum of 25 people with all the safety precautions in place.
“We are trying to be flexible, trying to teach lessons, to pivot — to look for blessings when they are not that obvious,” he said.
Orthodox synagogues don't sanction the use of technology on the Sabbath and certain holidays that include the high holy days; several have pre-recorded holiday prayers or will hold Zoom services either right before or just after Yom Kippur, which ends Monday evening.
In May, the Conservative movement issued a ruling allowing congregations to livestream services during the pandemic on the Sabbath and holidays including the high holy days. In addition to the handful of worshippers on hand for Yom Kippur services at the Shaare Zion, thousands more will attend virtually: For the first time, the synagogue is livestreaming its high holiday services.
Cantor Adam Stotland said he was concerned at first about the spirit of the holiday being captured on Rosh Hashanah in a service that was not being experienced in person, but based on feedback, he need not have worried. People are able to see “the intensity and seriousness” in the expressions of the clergy, said Reverend Asher Tannenbaum, the congregation's ritual director.
Glazer had been advocating before COVID-19 became part of our collective vocabulary for the installation of a livestreaming system. Last year, when a congregant with advanced cancer wanted to follow the high holiday services from her hospital bed, a private stream was organized — and he realized there would be other cases. Then came the pandemic, with its devastating isolation for so many.
The synagogue will livestream its Yom Kippur services (www. shaarezion.org/live), starting before sundown on Sunday.
“Our goal is to do outreach,” Glazer said, “and for there to be no obstacle for people connecting to their Jewish spiritual lives.”
Temple Emanu-el–beth Sholom (www.templemontreal.ca) will livestream its Kol Nidre service for all.
The Shaare Zedek congregation, another Conservative synagogue, also installed permanent cameras for livestreaming.
“When I got over the sadness of an empty sanctuary and realized there were 37 people in the synagogue and more than 1,000 people online, it was a different dynamic,” said Rabbi Alan Bright, the congregation's spiritual leader, of Rosh Hashanah services. There were participants from other synagogues and across the country and “once we got into it, it became quite moving,” he said.
Shaare Zedek will livestream its Yom Kippur services; all are welcome to join via the synagogue's website (www.shaarezedek.ca). Bright encourages people to dress as if they were actually going to synagogue and to set aside a place at home. As they look into their screens, they are replicating as closely as possible the experience of being in the synagogue, he said.
“When it is live, it forces people to have some form of holy experience as it is happening.”