There is a certain amount of power in being a service leader in a Liberal service. It is comparable to the power of a bailiff in a court of law. That is, you get to tell people to stand up and sit down.

When I was a boy, back in Temple Israel, in Saint Louis, MO, I remember my three rabbis using their hands instead of their voices, to levitate people and to situate them, like this: DEMONSTRATE

As Liberal Jews, we are used to having the leaders tell us when to sit and stand, and we think nothing of it. I surely did not. Even when I was in the Temple Youth Group, attending peer-led "creative" services, it did not occur to me to stand without an invitation, or to sit before the leader permitted it. And so, when it became my turn to be the leader of those services, I also levitated and situated the other kids. I am still doing that, but the kids are older and grayer.

Even in the Conservative congregation in my St. Louis neighborhood, where I attended many a bar mitzvah, the stentorian rabbi levitated and situated the congregation most of the time. This is not the case as much in the local Conservative congregations. And I will tell you why in a moment.

It wasn't until I went to rabbinic school in Jerusalem that I found out that things could be different. I decided to take advantage of the smorgasbörd of Jewish options which Jerusalem offers, and ventured out of the safe confines of our Reform services to the various and sundry orthodox synagogues. My very first such experience was at the Hillel at the Hebrew University. Not only was the service all davvened—meaning individually mumbled—and little of it sung there, but they did not rise for the Shma. I had been waiting to stand and sing the Shma and the v'Ahavta, but neither happened, and I found myself hopelessly lost in totally unrecognizable service in a rapid Hebrew beyond my then capacity.

When I became familiar enough with the different orthodox ethnic communities, I learned that there were different customs of standing for this or that prayer. I also learned that there would be no mention of levitation or of situation from the leader of the service.

An aside concerning standing and sitting for the Shma: I later found out that there is a tradition to remain in one's position in order to focus on the words and not on the movement. That is, if you are standing, you stay standing; if you are sitting, you stay sitting. The Reform movement later decided to accentuate the Shma as the "Watchword of our faith," and mandated that we all stand for it. As both customs are valid expressions of belief in action, I encourage you to do what it is that is meaningful for you—accentuate monotheism, or focus on revelation.

History of Levitation

Returning to the subject, I mentioned that in Orthodox service leaders do not announce rising, sitting, or even mention page numbers. This is due to two factors. First, the service has no alternative readings—it is always the same, for any given day, and everyone is presumed to recognize prayers by their beginning or ending phrases, as well as to be knowledgeable about when to stand or sit.

Second, all orthodox worshippers are, ironically enough, authorized to use their own initiative. Ironic, because Reform Jews, whose watchword is freedom, are not free to just stand up when they want—people will stare at you until you resume the appropriate altitude. However, in an orthodox service, people are always standing or sitting when they feel it is appropriate. Why would some be rising and some sitting simultaneously? Because when people arrived late, instead of looking at their neighbors' books to see where the congregation was, these latecomers felt the obligation to begin at the beginning of the service and pray on their own until they caught up, if they ever did. It is a little chaotic, with people standing and sitting, coming and going all the time. But it is very free.

As a born and bred Reform Jew, I was always more interested in the freedom than I was in the orthodoxy of any one congregation's or movement's customs. So I became enamored with this aspect of the freedom to begin at the beginning and worship at my own speed, not being bound to the pace of the many. I do stand when the major standings occur, so as not to insult people, but, if I am not leading the service, it is likely that I am not on the same page with the congregation. I stop and think, from time to time, or I skip and go ahead. Or I bring a book on some Judaic or Torah topic, and study it while people are praying or reading the Torah ritually. In fact, when I envision what an Etz Chayim synagogue could look like, I think of the Israeli synagogues whose walls are lined with books, and I see those worshippers taking book off the walls and studying them during services. That way, there is always a way to connect.

To return again, this chaos and freedom to create chaos was a little too free for our German Reform ancestors, who found it to be counter to their sense of decorum. And thus, in initiating the Reform prayer service, they followed Central European Christian customs of formal worship, and weeded out the spontaneous and individual experiences in favor of a uniformly formal format.

If you have been to our Shabbat services, you know that I do a minimum of levitation and situation there. I have tried to lead by creating a "vacuum of leadership," whereby the congregants have to read the stage directions on the page, and initiate the movements themselves. There are enough people now who know both what to do and when to do it and that I am counting on them to be brave enough to stand up or sit down and set an example that the congregation can function without my traffic control. And this sermon is an advertisement for more of you to take the plunge, so to speak, and rise to the occasion of leading your fellow congregants higher and lower with your own brave actions.

Levitation or Elevation?

Now I know that I should have been using the word elevate instead of levitate. Elevate means to make something rise up. Levitate means to raise it off the ground completely. But I decided to use this word because it also has the accidental association with the word Levite, as in the Priestly Tribe: Levite-tating. And, in fact, whenever the leader levitates us in the congregation, he or she is acting as a priest, and not as a Shaliach Tzibbur, which, in Hebrew, means the "representative of the congregation." A Shaliach Tzibbur is someone who is presenting the prayers to G0d on behalf of the congregation, which is why in a traditional synagogue, the Shaliach Tzibbur faces the ark and not the congregation.

However, in a Reform Temple, Officiants faces the congregation and leads them in what to do. And one of the things this "Acting Levite" does is Levite-tate.

This is so ingrained—that the rabbi faces the congregation and not the ark, that one of my colleagues, an old friend who is the rabbi of a large Reform congregation, made a comment at the last rabbinical conference that he never bows when he leads the Barchu because he is facing the congregation, and does not want to bow to them. So I asked him why he doesn't just turn around and face the ark when he says the Barchu. He looked at me like I had dropped off the moon. I guess I was looking at him the same way.

The way I try to lead services is in such a way as to inspire the congregation to be a "kingdom of priests" as Exodus 19:6 calls us, and not a people "dependent upon priests." I try to do this by example, by education, and by that vacuum of leadership that calls leadership to step forward.

Why We Stand for some Prayers

In the Bar and Bat Mitzvah family class last year I asked the students and their parents to talk about what it feels like to stand and sit for various parts of the service. As you can imagine, the answers were many and varied, ranging from the answer, "I don't notice it much," to the "I feel silly when I'm standing up for them." Few of the participants responded viscerally to the prayers we stand for as being levitating experiences in and of themselves. And that is one of the reasons it is difficult for us to put a logical meaning on the times we stand and sit. It's not like a sports event when our side scores and we spontaneously stand up and cheer. Services are not that exciting for most of us. And if someone did jump up in a Jewish service, shout Halleluyah, and start to dance around, well, we would probably run for the net.

Our standing and sitting is all scripted, stylized, formal, and not due to personal passion. I try to get past that by dancing myself, anyway, to the beat of the music, and when I shout Halleluyah, I do it in my head, most of the time, so I won't embarrass my kids too much, or scare you to run for the net.

There are three reasons we stand nowadays. One is to give respect to G0d. One stems from the fact that there were no chairs in ancient worship sites. The third reason is mystical. Let us start by looking at respect for G0d.

Reason One: Rising For G0d

When we stand to give respect to G0d, it was originally because our ancestors assumed they should treat G0d as one would a flesh and blood king, for whom one stood in ancient times under pain of death for disrespect. Certain prayers are considered to be invoking ourselves actually standing in G0d's Heavenly Throne room. These are the Barchu, the Kaddish, the Amidah, and Avinu Malkeinu, where we directly plead our case, as it were, before Malkeinu, the Universal King, the Creator of the forces in the You-niverse that can shatter, mangle, pierce, burn, and blast us if we do not properly respect them.

It is not the image of G0d as Avinu, a loving Parent, that most of us hold most dear. We can go about most of the time relating to Avinu, but we should never forget that Malkeinu's forces do exist, so we rise to show that we are aware of them. Fires will still burn us and earthquakes crush us, even if Avinu loves us. So we need to respect these forces, and make our homes fire safe and earthquake safe. We stand in awe before the power that created such forces.

Rising For G0d's Torah

Similarly, we rise for the Torah. When a bailiff calls out to everyone in the courtroom to rise as the judge enters, it is not the personage of the judge we are rising for—it is the authority of the law. Similarly, whatever our understanding of the origin of the physical book we call the Torah Scroll, we treat it as the representation of G0d's mitzvot, those commandments that Immanuel Kant called "categorical imperatives," which are moral laws so basic that they derive from the existence of the You-niverse. When we react with moral outrage to the many evils people do, the emotion of outrage stems from our belief that someone has trampled a fundamental principle of the You-niverse.

The High Holy Day prayers traditionally carried the assumption, not born out in our experience, or in the reality of the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, with which we will begin our Congregational Torah Study this year, that breaking G0d's moral laws are punished appropriately, measure for measure, by one of those deadly forces of nature that G0d also created. Many of us, rationalists included, hope, on occasion, that the evildoers in the world will meet untimely ends by these forces. Still, whatever we feel about where the fundamental obligation to moral law comes from, the Torah Scroll represents both the authority of the Law, and our connection to our ancestors' respect for it.

Therefore, we stand whenever the ark is opened, or the Torah is held up. As soon as the Torah is laid back down on the reading table, or as soon as the one who will raise it high after the reading sits down, we may sit. If the Torah is up, we should be, too. You can now do this on your own initiative, and will not need a leader to ask you to do so.

I think, in many ways, it is more meaningful if we do it ourselves. If the reason we stand or sit is because someone tells us to, then that is not the same as doing it to honor the Torah, or to honor G0d. If we stand as soon as we see the ark open, or the Torah held up, then we are doing it out of our own love and respect for the Torah, and not for our obedience to some authority figure.

Second Reason: Rising in Memory of the Ancient Worship

The second reason we stand for prayers is that in ancient days there were no chairs in the worship places. Everyone stood. It is for this reason that we remain standing while praying the Amidah, which, itself, means "standing." The Amidah is a prayer which is the official replacement for the sacrificial service, during which all the people stood. They not only stood in the Temple, they also stood in their villages and recited the Levitical prayers while, for two weeks of each year, animals from their administrative district were sacrificed as the daily offerings in the Temple.

It turns out that when the Temple was destroyed and our ancestors were exiled to Babylon, those village ma'amadot, or "standings", as they became called, became the precedent for non-Temple worship as the norm, to which we owe our form of worship here today.

Third Reason: Mystical Experiences

There is also a third reason we stand up which we owe to our ancestors who had mystical experiences. For example, look on page 32. There you will find the Kedushah, the acknowledgment of G0d's utter holiness. The Isaiah verse: Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh—Holy, Holy, Holy, is quoting the angels in heaven as they flutter in straight-legged flight. In order to imitate the angels in Isaiah's vision, we not only stand, but flutter as we say Kadosh.

The mystics also initiated the practice of standing at the end of the Sabbath Song L'cha Dodi. In fact, they stood for the whole song. L'cha Dodi means "Friend, let's go greet," and the mystics of 17th century Galilee would get up at sunset and go out into the field to greet Shabbat as if she were a queen and an bride, and then to escort her into town. Nowadays when we do this in a synagogue, we only rise for the last stanza. As we sing the last two words, "Bo'ee Kalah—Come, Bride," we first face west, toward the sunset, where Shabbat begins for everyone, then toward the door through which we entered the synagogue, where this Shabbat began for us.

Let me just conclude this part of the talk by repeating that the stage directions are written on the page, and, by vacuum of leadership from the bimah, we will encourage everyone not to wait for instructions, but to use your own initiative to levitate and situate yourselves, for your own reasons, and not because somebody has ordered you to.

Which is why I will spend a minute on the implications of taking a stand,
I mean rising to the occasion,
or was that just getting high?

Taking a Stand

Amidah means standing, as I have already said. In Hebrew, the root of the word stand—Emdah, also means a principle, as well as a point of view. We also have it in English: it is our stand on an issue.

Why do we use the word stand to mean principled position? Because, in my mind, we have to stand up for ourselves against those who would trample our position. We take a stand and defend this line, this boundary, and show others that we are serious about this place, this principle, this community.

Here I stand. This is what I care about. This is my stance on the issue. These are my principles. I do not need you to tell me to take a stand. I know what is important to me. I stand here. I may stand with you, and I may stand alone.

Have you ever wondered if someone was going to tell that man he was doing something wrong? Or if someone would tell that woman that she just littered? Or suggest that someone recycle their cans instead of trashing them. Or have you waited for someone else to introduce the new people all around? Or wondered who was going to help the one person who was cleaning up or setting up? Or wondered who was going to stop by the side of the road to help?

Who would take a stand? When I think of standing up in services, I think of standing up for the good, standing my ground, standing guard, standing in for the one who cannot be there, and standing here together as a community for those things we believe are right. That is what I think when I rise to the occasion.

Rising To The Occasion

We have a Hebrew word for rise up—aliyah. Aliyah comes from the word Al, meaning to go up. Israel's national airline is called El Al, both because it is quoting the prophet Ezekiel, and because it means "El —to Al—up," or, "Upward." An aliyah to the Torah is called that because we have to go up to the bimah, the stage, to do it. That is, except at our Shabbat morning services, where we have no bimah. But still, we have to rise to the occasion. We have to get over stage fright, rustiness in prayer, and the plague of frogs in our throat, to go up.

Rising to the occasion is the same as taking a stand, except, sometimes, we are taken by surprise when we rise to the occasion. That is why it is called "an occasion." It is a sudden change of circumstance that elicits behavior in us of which we may not have been previously aware. We find we have a principle. Or we find that we are the uniquely qualified person to do something.

The Talmudic tractate Pirkey Avot has the seemingly misogynous maxim, "Where there is no man, you strive to be the man." This does not mandate cross-dressing in an absence of males. It really means, "if you notice a situation where no one is taking charge, then you are in charge." You must rise to the occasion. Ready or not, male or female, young or old, here you come. You da man!

So, the next time the prayerbook suddenly summons you to rise at a time when you are not quite ready to stand up, think of yourself as being called to rise to the occasion. Fantasize about the last time you were similarly summoned, how you reacted, and how you would react the next time.

Getting High

And while you are fantasizing, let go of the floor, and let yourself go. Go flying, like the mystics who wrote L'cha Dodi. and the Kedushah.

I mentioned that the Kedushah is based on Isaiah's vision of the Divine Throne room. It is the beginning of chapter six of the Book of Isaiah. Chapter six, as in six-pointed Jewish star, as in the six wings each angel has. Read it. It is a trip.

But the part of the vision that few commentators emphasize is that Isaiah was daydreaming while in Temple. It says only that he saw G0d's robes, as well as smoke, filling the Temple, and the Temple doors rattled at the sound of all the angels calling out Kadosh! It is a cryptic little statement that indicates to me that Isaiah was standing in the Temple, watching the sacrificial service, and all of a sudden he tripped out and imagined that the world had dissolved, and the reality behind all of it had appeared.

Now I know that the tradition has imagined Isaiah—he was a prophet, after all—as being bodily summoned to heaven by G0d. I read it differently. I think he started fantasizing about how he looked from G0d's point of view. I think he just checked out and went his own mental way, leaving the Levites to go on with the service without him.

Many of you have heard me say what I am about to say many times and in many ways. But here is my invitation to you again: the words on the page of our book are just suggestions to get our thoughts going. They are not litmus tests of allegiance and obedience. If something moves you to go off on a tangent of personal thought and inner quest, then go with it. We can sit silently the whole time instead of read along, hum the tunes instead of sing the words, argue with statements that sticks in our craw. Personal distraction in holy assembly is, to me, one mechanism by which G0d reveals to us what we seek to know.

So, the next time you rise for the Torah, keep going if the momentum takes you higher. This could be your own private Fellini movie, where all of a sudden you rise above this crowded room and find yourself looking down on it all, then being wafted away, just like Isaiah, to your own personal vision.

Every talk needs an end, and in the yeshiva they teach us to end by summing it all up. So I will.

Let the reason you stand in services be to indicate where you stand as a Jew.

If you can physically rise to the occasion of prayer, then do so as a leader.

When you see on the page that it is a prayer for which we stand, and you are physically able to do so, then rise to the occasion, and lead the way up for others. And when the page tells you that standing is no longer necessary, sit, if you feel like it.

Otherwise, stand to your heart's content.When you see the Torah revealed in an open ark, or raised in the arms of one of us, rise up to greet it.

And if you are not paying attention to the words, or to whether the people are standing or sitting, you probably have already risen higher than we are standing anyway. Stay there, have a good time, and come back when you are good and ready.

Amen!