10 | JANUARY 27 • 2022 

opinion
Importance of 
In-Person Prayer
T

he Jan. 15 hostage 
situation at 
Congregation Beth 
Israel in Colleyville, Texas, has 
inspired many fears: that there 
will be more violence directed 
at synagogues, 
that this 
attack will fuel 
Islamophobia, 
that increased 
policing at shuls 
will harm Jews of 
color.
I think there 
is yet another danger, less 
immediate but nonetheless 
worth discussing.
As Jewish communities talk 
more about security, safety 
concerns may encourage 
the continued migration 
of services to Zoom and 
discourage the resumption of 
in-person collective gatherings.
When the pandemic started, 
liberal and Modern Orthodox 
synagogues overwhelmingly 
canceled in-person services. 
Such shutdowns saved lives. 
Many communities began 
experimenting with online 
programming. For Purim 
2020, I went straight from 
reading the megillah in-person 
at an office to reading from it 
for an online broadcast, when 
my Chicago congregation 
canceled its large, in-person 
reading.
Online services present 
problems for the traditionally 
observant, like me: Can one 
convene a prayer quorum, or 
minyan, over the internet? 
Which technologies are 
permissible or not on Shabbat?
Then again, Zoom services 
fill important spiritual and 
social needs for people stuck 
alone at home. And they 

even have advantages over 
in-person gatherings, as 
remote services are accessible 
to homebound seniors and 
people with disabilities 
who couldn’t attend even 
before the pandemic. They 
allow synagogues to reach 
sympathetic audiences in 
far-off places. Eventually, 
communities could save on 
expensive, large physical 
buildings. Little by little, a 
stopgap measure begins to 
seem appealing as a long-term 
choice.
Concerns about security 
will only increase this appeal. 
Providing security is costly 
and logistically complicated, 
requiring additional staffing 
and training. Moreover, 
fears about hostile attackers 
encourage us, as COVID-
19 does, to imagine public 
in-person gatherings as 
dangerous, fraught occasions.
Given the horrible attacks 
on synagogues in the last five 
years, what regular synagogue-
goer has never felt nervous 
about security?
Moreover, we worry about a 
security threat for some of the 
same reasons we worry about 
a virus. In-person synagogue 
services are public; we let 
everyone in, which means we 
give up control over whom we 
encounter.
Reading through an Anti-
Defamation League guide 
called “Protecting Your Jewish 
Institution,” I am struck by 
how the word “public” is 
used to signal danger: Avoid 
providing directions to your 
institution online because 
they will be “public.” Do not 
“publicize” details of a trip 
too widely. Be wary of the 
“security concerns created by 
“going public.’”

The more the “event is 
open to the public,” the higher 
the risk. Security protocols, 
like health protocols, involve 
managing, controlling and 
inherently limiting the public. 
Of course, such management is 
far easier over Zoom.
But that ease comes at a cost.
One reason I attend religious 
services in the first place is 
that they are public. Much of 
our social life is not: Domestic 
spaces are usually restricted to 
the intimate circles of friends 
and family; workplaces are 
ruled by private employers; 
leisure spaces frequently 
require purchases to enter.
A religious teacher of 
mine once said that we pray 
communally to learn to 
tolerate how obnoxiously other 
people pray — a suggestion 
I then found confusing, but 
which now seems wise. Part 
of the point of a synagogue is 
that you do not have control, 
that you are exposed to others, 
that you are forced to sit next 
to those you might otherwise 
eschew, with whom you would 
never have thought to share an 
intimate, spiritual experience.
I treasure in-person 
prayer for other reasons: 
Participatory singing does not 
work online, for instance, and 

Zoom services tend to divide 
communities into “performers” 
and spectators.
But even if that were solved, 
what is lost online is precisely 
what makes synagogues 
inflexible, difficult to 
manage, sometimes sensorily 
unpleasant or even menacing.
I remember how, when I 
spent a summer abroad in a 
small European community, 
two men who had a long-
running personal and financial 
feud would both wince and 
smile when they saw each 
other at Shabbat afternoon 
services — because each knew 
he needed the other to make a 
minyan.
That uncomfortable 
dependence is a benefit of 
the rigid inflexibility of place-
based Jewish prayer.
A community is defined by 
association with people who 
will never be your friends. 
Many trends in contemporary 
life reduce such unpleasant 
experiences: You enjoy the 
food you like at your dining 
table, without having to deal 
with the other diners; you 
exercise not in a gym, let alone 
a public park, but at home with 
an app; you share virtual space 
with people chosen for you 
individually by an algorithm.

KELLY SIKKEMA

PURELY COMMENTARY

Raphael 
Magarik 

