Temple Sinai Slichot service mixes drama and prayer

From left, David Eisner, Colin Mochrie, Debra McGrath and Avery Saltzman perform at Temple Sinai and Harold Green Theatre’s Slichot service Sept. 5.

Temple Sinai Congregation of Toronto held a unique Slichot service on Sept. 5 that Rabbi Michael Dolgin, the Reform synagogue’s senior rabbi, said can be categorized as “neither show nor shul.”

As part of a larger effort to challenge people’s assumptions about prayer, Temple Sinai created an innovative Slichot – the series of penitential prayers and liturgy typically begun on the Saturday night preceding Rosh Hashanah and read each night until Yom Kippur – by fusing traditional Jewish writings with Jewish theatrical texts and traditional synagogue music with music one would find in a Jewish theatre production.

“We want to let go of the idea that religion and culture are separate things,” Rabbi Dolgin said.

This merging of modern drama and music with standard liturgy was first piloted at Temple Sinai’s Slichot service last year, in partnership with the professional, non-profit Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company.

Temple Sinai has had a partnership with the theatre for over five years.

This year, Rabbi Dolgin and Temple Sinai’s Cantor Charles Osborne created a fresh program along with Harold Green’s co-artistic directors David Eisner (also a member of Temple Sinai) and Avery Saltzman.

The service was held at the Toronto Centre for the Arts and drew a crowd of over 700 people. 

Described by Rabbi Dolgin as “a combination of the kind of talents you usually expect from clergy mixed with those you usually expect from theatre performers,” the evening featured two cantors –Osborne and the shul’s other cantor, Katie Oringel – Rabbi Dolgin and Temple Sinai’s Rabbi Daniel Mikelberg, plus four professional actors, three professional singers and a 10-piece orchestra arranged through the Harold Green Theatre.

In addition to traditional liturgy sung or recited responsively by clergy and audience members, the program included a dramatic telling of the story of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, a rendition of Bette Midler’s song From a Distance, a scene from Rich Orloff’s play Can This Marriage be Saved, about an imagined divorce between God and humanity, and an improvised skit performed by Canadian actor and comedian couple Colin Mochrie and Debra McGrath.

“The idea is that each [element] informed the other. The traditional liturgy gave grounding and roots to the modern cultural elements, and the latter opened up the liturgy and made it accessible,” Rabbi Dolgin explained.

 He added that the purpose of the night was to give congregants or any interested members of the Jewish community a “chance to prepare for the holidays in a way we believed would be more accessible to people who wouldn’t attend shul with regularity,” other than on the High Holidays.

Congregational participation was encouraged, and attendees were given prayers to recite in unison throughout the performance.

Temple Sinai has taken this new approach to prayer as a way of appealing to congregants who aren’t comfortable with normative services or are looking for different ways to get meaning and spiritual connection from a synagogue experience. 

Rabbi Dolgin said the synagogue certainly won’t be dispensing with conventional prayer services, but noted that the shul is hoping to work toward enriching other services, like those held on Shabbat and other holidays, with this “new kind of Jewish communal prayer… this mixture of traditional liturgy, teaching and cultural and musical pieces.” 

 He acknowledged that many congregants still want traditional services, but “a lot of people are hungry for [other kinds of] spiritual experiences… We hope the collaboration with the theatre company can help provide that.”

Temple Sinai has been asked to share its new approach to prayer at the Union for Reform Judaism’s biennial convention to be held in Florida this November.

There, Rabbi Dolgin and other Temple Sinai staff will demonstrate before the several thousand convention delegates a prayer service that combines contemporary Jewish drama and ancient Jewish tradition.