The Line Between Worship and Entertainment

By Ethan Goldberg
Brandeis University

Everyone, it seems, knows that "you don't clap in shul," that is, you don't applaud after a prayer is sung or a speech is given. I'm sure you've cringed as I have the few times I've seen it happen. I've always understood the lack of applause to designate that worship is fundamentally different from performance: the audience is not the people in the seats who bought tickets; rather, it is God, before whom the community performs. Thus, no matter how moved you are from a worship experience, you refrain from applause, a recognition that you are not a passive audience member, but are part of the cast of the show, and the audience is the Almighty.

Yet this distinction, policed though it may be by the clapping rule, is not absolute.

It's no accident that the first American movie with sound, The Jazz Singer (1927), told the story of a musical Jew caught between his father's wishes for him to become a cantor and his own desire to apply his muse to a popular art. Indeed, the history of American Jewish music seems to teeter on the question of tradition and novelty, between a distant past and the creative "now." Worship music in the 20th century is clearly influenced by surrounding entertainment music, but the more interesting case is when the opposite occurs: when music created for entertainment finds its way back into worship or other religious settings.

The best example from our times of worship music as entertainment is the cantorial concert. For the post-war generation, cantorial music became a form of high entertainment akin to attendance at the symphony or opera. In fact, two famous cantors of that era, Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker, split their time between the pulpit and the stage at the Metropolitan Opera. For Jews, this represented the synthesis of American and Jewish values they often sought. Tucker and Peerce navigated both worlds with ease, proving that a person could be successful in American and Jewish circles.

Another example of this cultural synthesis is the 1956 publication of Perry Como's rendition of the beloved "Kol Nidre" melody. Como was a pop singer, and neither a cantor nor even Jewish. But his singing hearkened the listeners to their childhood musical memories, with the added approval of a bona fide "American" singer. This record demonstrates the entertainment and cultural, but not necessarily religious, values of published cantorial singing in this period. In our times, young cantors like Yitzchak Meir Helfgot and Yaakov Lemmer have begun a revival of old-time cantorial music, appearing in major concert halls with large orchestras to sell-out crowds. While such high-maintenance music has virtually disappeared from its original context in the synagogue, it may well live on as highbrow entertainment for generations.

But Worship/Entertainment is a two-way street. Many of the songs we sing in contemporary prayer services were first intended for the concert stage. Indeed, it seems like "everyone" (Israelis, Americans, young, old, Reform, Orthodox) knows songs like Nurit Hirsch's "Oseh Shalom" or Shlomo Carlebach's "V'haer Eynenu." These songs were in fact commissioned by the "Chassidic Song Festival" in Israel in the 1960s and 70s. "Chassidic" songs (short prayer or Bible texts, set to catchy, repetitive and singable tunes) were something of a fad in Israel at that time, and were quickly adopted by American synagogues. The texts returned to the prayer service from which they came, but this time wearing a new Israeli tune. This is music from the concert stage that filtered back to its source in the Jewish worship service.

So the next time you sing one of these songs in shul, clap along if you want, just be sure not to applaud afterwards. But if you go to a cantorial concert, be sure to give a hearty round of applause at the end.

Ethan Goldberg is a rising senior at Brandeis University, where he studies Music and Judaic Studies.

[Posted 8/1/11]