Rating: 2/5- As a friend of mine so eloquently described it, it was just “bleh”
Service Attended: Saturday Morning Services
Date: September 6, 2014
Observance: Reform
Time of Service: 9:15am-11:30 am on Saturday Morning
Mechitza: None, open seating
Women: Full participation
Meals: Very light kiddush (two cakes). No offer of meals
Frequency: Every Friday Night and Saturday Morning
Family friendly service: Friendly to families. There’s a play area at the side of the sanctuary for kids
Sermon: Hebrew sermon, announcements in Hebrew and English
Neighborhood: Baka’a
Review: Kol Haneshama is one of, if not the only, Reform prayer community in Jerusalem, and one of the few in all of Israel. It’s located in a beautiful building in a beautiful sanctuary that fits around 150 in Baka’a. Unfortunately, it was maybe a third full on this morning, and the crowd gathered was rather aging.
I arrived before the beginning of the service, and we waited until there was a minyan. While the people there were very friendly, and I was given an aliyah, I found the service very disjointed and the nusach (melodies) very inconsistent. We’d start by reading a prayer together out loud, getting to a line where someone at some point wrote a song using those words, and then we stared singing the song, regardless of whether it fit into any nusach. In the span of P’sukei D’zimrah and Shacharit, we covered ‘Stand By Me’, multiple Carlebach songs, some tune that sounding like it could have been taken from a musical, and other tunes to which I found it quite hard to sing along with, let alone harmonize with. Keeping with the more American style davening, prayers were typically sung together, as opposed to the more Israeli/Orthodox style of davening out loud at your own pace with in a framework. The entirety of the service was, as my friend who grew up reform described it, just kind of ‘bleh’.
If you are looking to be a part of an egalitarian service with somewhat non-traditional nusach in line with the American Reform movement, than you might consider Kol Haneshama. It also starts later than many congregations, so that is nice.
Kol Haneshama is located at 1 Asher Street, Jerusalem, in Baka’a. For more information, visit their website.
