Shabbat Morning at Der Nister
On Shabbat morning, Downtown is quieter than normal. The cacophony of sirens, protests, crowds of partiers and barhoppers, honking horns, the drones of helicopters and buses — they don’t go away entirely, but enough to help you understand that it is OK to be calm. If you’re lucky, you can hear the local trumpeter who knows about five songs, one of them being “Shalom Aleichem.” We don’t know who taught it to him.
If you know the code, you dial it in and hope it works. If not, you just wait patiently for someone to let you in, or maybe you figure out how to work the arcane electronic directory system with the mostly faded instructions and find Der Nister on the call box so we can let you in.
Odds are, you are one of the few, the proud. No, not Marines. Der Nister Shabbat morning goers.
Our stated start time is 10:30 am, which is already on the later side. Like our start times for cultural events, the time listed is to encourage one to at least get to the door with some moderate sense of punctuality. But the truth is that Rabbi Henry Hollander will engage you in conversation and some coffee. Rabbi Zach Golden might also, but also pace back and forth nervously wondering if Rabbi Hollander is aware of the time.
The very large and comfortable beige chairs were originally part of the American Jewish University Beit Midrash room plan. Ultimately, they must have taken up too much space, or went out of style, and were consigned to the library warehouse space on campus. Henry was offered a chance to take a fairly large amount of books in a U-Haul when the campus was being closed not more than a year ago. Zach tagged along to help, but made an annoying request.
“Let’s take these chairs!” Henry, weighing this against the limits of storage capacity, did not jump for joy at the idea of storing 15-odd massive chairs somewhere. But it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Off they went into the truck.
The main compulsion was the idea that people shouldn’t be sitting in folding chairs, even padded ones, for an hour or two if they don’t have to.
The key for an enjoyable Shabbat morning service in our opinion is to not have it be raucous, exciting, on your feet, or really all that extrovertedly physical.
When you travel to another country, one of the key landmarks of a given city is their church or mosque. Beyond visiting it for its aesthetic beauty and history, people feel attracted to it for a moment of peace and contemplation, sorely needed after wandering around for hours. Religious services at home, with its comprehensible language, smaller scale, and dull, or conversely intense emotionality, are disappointing. Maybe there’s something good about sitting somewhere aesthetically pleasing, on very comfortable chairs, drifting away into the Hebrew and the song…
A boring experience is one that is both quiet and offers you nothing. Quiet contemplation is an experience that allows one's spirit to flow into the mind.
Zach’s personal pleasure is singing khazzanus, the old Ashkenazi cantorial art. It takes a certain amount of getting used to, and he needs a certain amount of time to warm up. In the back room, with the Turkish lamp, wall of Yiddish books, plants and Torah stand with a green tablecloth stretched over it, and a divan with Persian pillows, you get comfortable. He’ll call out the page numbers, you’ll follow along, but you’re also…there.
Sometimes there are opportunities to sing along, particularly the same handful of psalms, the moment to rise at the Song of the Sea. We glide past the Barchu, as we likely are lacking a minyan (a quorum of 10), sometimes barely, sometimes dramatically. The piyyut El Adon is primetime to join in song, using a hasidic melody.
When we reach the silent Amidah, the standing prayer, we orient ourselves to a corner in the room. Downtown is on a diagonal from the regular grid, thanks to Spanish city planning principles. The Spanish laid out the grid based on what would best allow for a breeze to flow through, not what would be the easiest to navigate. Then comes the Torah reading aka studying, essentially a chanting recital read from a very big red Tanakh and running commentary from Zach. This is interspersed by conversation and questions about the various ideas that emerge from this study. Then Zach turns to Henry and says, “tell us the good news.” By that he means, please give the drash, the sermon.
Thanks to Henry’s diligent study of the Torah portion as part of his preparation for our Monday Torah study on the roof of Disney Hall, he usually finds the means to extemporaneously weave anecdotes and observations of life into the experiences of the parshah; and the conversation flows further from there.
We usually transition to V’Shamru and Kiddush, and then the meal that Henry creates, eating it in the main section of the room. To be clear, we would rather have a full Torah reading and do Musaf with a minyan — but we do this no matter what because we love being here.
Our Shabbat community has grown over time. It’s amazing to see people from all different backgrounds and walks of life grow naturally together in this strikingly unusual and yet traditional service. You learn how special everyone is by getting to know them and how they care for each other.
Come take time, slowly, quietly and majestically with us. Write to golden@dernister.org for the code for the building. We would love to have you.
