A Jewish tradition of ‘ascent’ on Park Avenue

By Michael Wilner

The Park Avenue Synagogue. | Photo courtesy of The AP.

On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, nine men stand around anxiously at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning, prayer shawls yet to be adorned, hoping a tenth will arrive. The tenth man does not have to be a Kohane or a Levi—a member of a priestly tribe—though it would be preferred. He just needs to be a he, and he needs to be over 13. Once a tenth arrives, the Jews of this small Orthodox service at Park Avenue Synagogue will have the quorum, or minyan, required for the week’s Shabbat service. Without him, the Torah cannot be read aloud.

I arrive much to their appreciation, and the service begins in a room offset from the main prayer hall where a Bar Mitzvah will soon be under way. The two rooms look nothing alike, and according to the Torah, that is just fine; despite often being described as a religion of laws, the only temple in Judaism with specific architectural requirements is the Holy Temple of Jerusalem, which awaits its next resurrection. The unique result for these congregants is a prayer room with the layout of a miniature legislature hall, like a shrunken U.S. House of Representatives, with semicircular isles ringing around a central amud, or lectern, where the laws are read and the stories are told.

Park Avenue Synagogue, on 87^th Street between Park and Madison Avenues in New York City, is part of the Conservative movement of Judaism, a movement that believes in gender equality. However, one member, Bernard Goldberg, a prominent donor to the synagogue, set up an Orthodox-style auxiliary minyan to the main service, where only men are counted in the quorum. Goldberg leads the opening portion of the service on this morning, known as the shacharit. The service moves quickly to the second portion, in which Torah is read out loud in Hebrew.  Seven members of the minyan are given an honor at the Torah known as an aliyah: special blessings that are before and after the readings.

While much of the service happily adopts the sentiments that come with requirement and habit, with the reading of prayers as law and laws as prayer, aliyahs are somehow preserved as personal moments to those granted the honor, bringing them out of their intimate space and up to the amud, where they will hold a silver yad and point to where the year has taken Torah reading so far, and will give the great Book a kiss through the proxy of their tallit, or prayer shawl, now adorned and in full employment.

If a Kohane, a member of the priestly family, had been present this morning, he would have had the first honor. But only a Levi is present, so instead he is the first to aliyah—or ascend, when translated directly to English. Like many words in Hebrew, aliyah has a double meaning: it also refers to the immigration or “ascent” of Jews from around the world to the Holy Land of Israel.

But how are these coveted prayers selectively granted? When questioned, Frank Pollack, a New York jeweler active in the shul, rolled his eyes.

“Well,” Pollack sighs, “on a day like today, everyone plays a role,” referring to the scrape-small size of the minyan. “When there’s a groom to be married, we give him uff ruff. And then to those in mourning, as well, we’ll give to them.”

But Pollack rolled his eyes not at the size of the minyan; he knows that, in New York City, there exists no shortage of locations for Jewish men who straddle the “Conservadox” line, between orthodox prayer and conservative practice, to observe Shabbat. The options are as varied as a Kiddush platter. Rather, Pollack was reacting to the politics of the prayer in some synagogues: the bias toward newcomers over the loyal, toward donors over those perhaps with smaller pockets.

At least this morning, at this shul, politics were distant. After each aliyah, the chosen tribesman remains in the front of the room to oversee the next man’s performance on the amud before finally stepping down. He is greeted by his peers in the pews with the well-wishing prayer of yasher koach, a blessing of strength. And after all seven ascents are complete, the Torah is wrapped back in the comfort of its bejeweled, red velvet dress, shielded, and crowned.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 at 4:50 am. It is filed under Michael Wilner, News, View From NYC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.