MRR 82-86

HALTING RELIGIOUS SERVICES AS A PROTEST

QUESTION:

In a large Eastern congregation, it was decided a number of months ago, as an expression of good will, to honor President Hesburgh of Notre Dame University at the synagogue. Some time after the invitation was issued, Father Hesburgh announced a strict policy which he would follow against sitins at his university. He has received much publicity because of this statement. Since he has now become identified with a possibly strict policy against university sitins, a group in this Eastern city has declared its intention to disrupt the religious services in the synagogue at which Father Hesburgh would be honored. Somebody encouraged this group by saying that there was actually a Jewish law which permits the services to be interrupted as a protest. What is this law, and does it justify the disruption of these services by such a group? (From Vigdor Kavaler, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.) ANSWER:

THE PALESTINIAN Talmud ( j . Kedushin I:7) gives the following narrative: Rabbi Jose and Rabbi Jonathan were studying together. A man came up to them, bent down, and kissed Rabbi Jonathan’s feet. Jose then asked, “Why did this man kiss you so reverently? What favor did you do him?” Jonathan answered, “This man came to me and complained that his son refused to provide food for him. Thereupon I told the man to close the synagogue and not permit the services to proceed. The son was thus put to shame and thereafter provided food for his father.”

It was, evidently, upon the basis of this narrative in the Talmud that the famous tenth-century Rhineland rabbinic leader, Rabbenu Gershom, the Light of the Exile, included among his various decrees the following one: If a man, though summoned to give testimony, refuses to obey the summons of the Jewish court, the aggrieved party (who needed the testimony for his defense) has a right at a certain point in the services to stop the services and thus, out of shame and community pressure, the recalcitrant witness would give in and consent to present his testimony.

This decree is recorded in the various early legal writings which transmit the decrees of Rabbenu Gershom, and various limitations were put upon this right of the aggrieved to stop the services. Some of the formulations of the decree speak also of community decrees, (Vitry, p. 799) which can be protested against, but this part of the elaboration of the decrees of Rabbenu Gershom was not developed nor cited in the later literature. The law as it is now found in the codes deals exclusively and only with the right of an aggrieved individual to protect his rights. It is mentioned in the Shuchan Aruch in quite an offhand way. In Orach Chayim 54, the question is dealt with as to whether one may converse between the second section of the morning prayer and the third or main section; i.e., between the prayer Yishtabach and the Yotser (Barchu). Joseph Caro says it is a sin to interrupt with conversation at this point, but he adds: “However, some say that for the needs of the congregation or to supply charity, it is permitted to converse at this point.” To this Isserles adds: “From this [permission] the custom has spread in many places to give prayers for the sick [at this spot in the service] and to complain in the synagogue that justice be done to him.”

The whole custom seems always to be referred to in the words, “Some say,” etc. So in Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 5:2, Isserles says: “Some say that we may not complain in the synagogue during the month of Nisan nor during the ‘Days of Awe.’ ”

Of course, this mode of spiritual pressure could only be effective in the days when it was a thing of horror to a community if it could not conduct or participate in any single one of a weekday’s service (the first interruption had to be on a weekday service). And Moses Sofer of Pressburg (in his responsum, Orach Chayim #81) takes that as an evidence of the piety of the former days as compared to the lack of piety today, that merely stopping a weekday service could have created so great a public pressure against a stubborn witness that he would be forced to give his testimony.

It was soon evident that this power to stop the service could lend itself to great abuse. In fact, as early as the eleventh century, the Sefer Chasidim, also written in the Rhineland (edition Margolis, 107, 108) says that if the community heads tell the protester that his complaint is unjust, and if the protester persists, he forfeits the very future of his soul. And in the sixteenth century, one of the greatest rabbis of that period in Poland, Solomon Luria (“Maharshal,” Responsa #20) had a case of a quarrel over the sale of kosher meat; after the case was adequately settled by the court, the complainant unjustly tried to stop the services and prevent the cantor from continuing. Luria protests against this abuse of an old privilege and says that he is resolved “to break the power of those who would abolish the service in the house of the Lord and say, ‘Let this house be closed.’ ” See also the fine note by Reuben Margolis to Sefer Chasidim, #107.

In other words, this ancient privilege, which Rab-benu Gershom in the tenth centutry based upon the action of Rabbi Jonathan as reported in the Palestinian Talmud, was meant for the defence for a single ag-grieved individual, and not as an opportunity for disruption by those whom Margolis calls baale machloket,” men of disputatiousness,” nor to give them a forum by interrupting the service. It was not intended for them at all, but for an individual victim of injustice, and even this right was severely limited in the Sefer Chasidim and by Solomon Luria.

It is evident, therefore, that no organized group has the moral right, certainly not according to Jewish legal tradition, to interrupt the service as a mode of expressing their objection to the honoring of Father Hesburgh. And all decent, legal means should be taken to prevent such an unjustified disruption of the worship.