The Worship Relationship: Inside the Outer Courtyard

One of the ways you can relate to Jews is by praying with them.

Jewish communities, for a variety of reasons, typically do not proselytize and do not make a show of inviting non-Jews into their houses of prayer.

Nevertheless, just as the Holy Temple had a place for non-Jews, you can find a place in a beit k’nesset (Hebrew for the more common Greek root: synagogue) as an invited guest, an uninvited visitor, and even as a regular worshipper.

Non-Jews are often invited to Shabbat services to witness a bar mitzvah boy make his first aliyah and read from the Torah and Tanakh. Less often, guests are invited to services to share in another simkha (rejoicing), perhaps surround a wedding or the birth of a child.

In most communities, you can also simply go to Shabbat services as a visitor, perhaps out of intellectual curiosity or perhaps you’re exploring your own path.

As a guest or a visitor, your ability to pray probably will be limited your unfamiliarity with the liturgy and the Hebrew. However, a surprising number of non-Jews pray regularly at batei k’nesset (plural of beit k’nesset), either because they are on path toward conversion or because they can think of no more appropriate place to pray.

The alternatives, for non-Jews who identify with monotheism and do not associate with Christianity or Islam or other religions, are to fellowship with each other, to pray alone, or not to pray at all. The last two alternatives are not very satisfying. The first is available in only a few areas, and there is argument about whether assembling apart from the Jewish community is a good idea at all. The basis of that argument is that non-Jews, according to the rabbis, “may not make a new religion or invent religious events for themselves, not even based on the Seven Laws themselves.” (See Seven Colors of the Rainbow: Torah Ethics for Non-Jews by Rabbi Yirmeyahu Bindman.) While organizing into fellowship communities of praying non-Jews does not constitute inventing a new religion per se, it provides and inevitable temptation to invent religious practices unique to the non-Jewish community. Better, I think, to orient oneself to the beit k’nesset of the Jewish community.

While your place in a beit k’nesset is necessarily on the edge of the action – just as your place in the Holy Temple would have been in an outer courtyard – there are good reasons for praying with Jews. Chief among them is that the shekhinah (divine presence) is said to rest in a minyan (a ritual quorum of ten Jewish males). I cannot vouch for this, but I can tell you that I always have the feeling that I am with the right (that is, chosen) people at the right time in the right place when attend Shabbat or festival services. There are few times in the week when I can say that.

Here are a few "Do’s" for attending a shabbat service in an Orthodox beit k'nesset:

	Do dress well and modestly. In the U.S., men tend to wear suits and ties on shabbat. Women wear modest dresses that cover the shoulders, elbows, and knees.
	Do park your car a block or two away from the beit k'nesset. Jews are not supposed to drive on Shabbat. While you, as a non-Jew, are not expected to observe the prohibition against driving, you support the spirit of Shabbat on the premises by parking our of sight.
	Do sit in the appropriate section – men in the men's section, women in the women's section.
	Do greet the rabbi. If it is your first time, let him know that you are visiting and that you are a not a Jew. If you have been there before, wish him shabbat shalom.
	Do greet other members of the community by saying shabbat shalom (or gut shabbes, a yiddish phrase that is more common in the U.S.)
	Do attend the kiddush (after-service refreshments) if you're invited. If people invite you, they mean for you to attend.

And a "Don’t":

Don’t pass yourself off as a Jew. If invited to go up to the bimah for an aliyah or other honor, simply thank the person and indicate that you are not a Jew.

– KENNETH GUENTERT

Schueller House
515 Manitou Ave.
Manitou Springs, CO 80829
719-685-1861 Ext. 45

E-mail your questions and feedback.

URL: www.schuellerhouse.com/goyworship.htm