GOP Convention Attendees Gets Awkward As Prayer Leader Goes Carlebach Style

“Bring in that Star Spangled Banner girl instead!”

Milwaukee, July 22 – The crowd and the Republican National Convention stirred uncomfortably in their seats last night when a spiritual leader invited to conduct a convocation pulled out a guitar and began chanting in the folksy, slightly-off-key, accented, hippie style of an influential twentieth-century Rabbi whose services always took twice as long as anyone else’s.

Rabbi Mark Schechter of Beth Jacob Synagogue in Savannah, Georgia, strode to the podium at the convention center holding the instrument, which he then strapped on and began strumming, to the exasperation, horror, cringing, and audible resigned sighs of the tens of thousands in the arena. Thus, on a mass scale, the GOP stalwarts, journalists, and other attendees got to experience what Jews undergo Friday evening when the leader at a standard synagogue begins chanting the familiar introductory tunes by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach to go with the Kabbalat Shabbat liturgy, or Greeting the Sabbath.

Camera shots showed most of the audience squirming, pinching the bridge of their nose, suddenly interested in specks of dust or their own shoes, feigning a sudden need to go to the restroom, or sitting with visible tension in their posture. Some also wore forced smiles. When the two-line passage concluded, fifteen minutes later, polite applause became a sigh of relief as Rabbi Schechter departed and the tension along with him.

“Bring in that Star Spangled Banner girl instead,” suggested an Alabama Congressman, referring to country singer Ingrid Andress, whose butchering of the national anthem before Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby sparked national ridicule and criticism. “At least it would be over sooner.”

This November will mark thirty years since Rabbi Carlebach’s death. Despite controversy surrounding the outreach figure’s treatment of women, his influence on Jewish music – both celebratory and liturgical – has only grown in the years since. Numerous synagogues have styled themselves “Carlebach shuls,” dedicated to chanting or singing at least part of the Sabbath and festival services in his style. The style makes occasional appearances at services in conventional synagogues, but when unannounced, most of the congregation reacts much in the same way that the RNC crowd did, since Sabbath evening services take place on the immediate heels of the workweek, and congregants prefer no delays in reaching dinner and bedtime.

“They could have warned us, at least,” complained a conservative podcast host. “Hasn’t that rabbi ever heard of the concept of tirha d’tzibbura?” The Aramaic term in Jewish law refers to concern for the public’s time, and the avoidance of unnecessary delays during synagogue ritual.

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