Purim
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the S&P Purim is that dignity in the synagogue is maintained despite the festive and lighthearted nature of the day.
Although it is a time honoured custom in many synagogues, both Ashkenazi and Sephardi, to make a noise during Megillah reading when Haman’s name is mentioned, and in some cases to be rather noisy and frivolous throughout the service, this has never been the case in S&P communities, where "gravidade" has always been an overarching value.
Rabbi Moshe Isserles ("Rema", 16th century Poland) records the practice of several communities for children to draw the name or figure of Haman on two smooth stones or pieces of wood and to knock them against each other until the inscription was obliterated. Rabbi Leon de Modena (17th century Venice) similarly reports that it was customary for people to write Haman’s name on the soles their shoes and then stamp their feet at every mention of Haman during the reading of the Megillah. More recently the wooden “grogger” (Yid. = rattle), dating as far back as thirteenth-century France and Germany, has largely replaced the custom of foot-stamping. In our times firecrackers are even illicitly brought into the synagogue, although this is certainly a dangerous custom that should be universally condemned as a serious danger to everyone, especially the elderly and frail.
Noise-making at the mention of Haman was by no means ever universally accepted, especially as people often continue making noise when the reader resumes the Megillah reading, thereby making it impossible for congregants to fulfill their obligation (of hearing the whole reading). Additionally, it was considered a violation of synagogue decorum. In 1866, the Kehillah of Rogasen in Posen, Poland, promulgated a set of rules concerning synagogue demeanor and included the prohibition against using groggers in the synagogue on Purim. In Yemenite communities too, noisemaking was forbidden as contrary to the accepted synagogue decorum.
In 1783, the Mahamad of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London ruled that anyone causing a disturbance during the Purim service was to be evicted from the synagogue.
While Purim is a joyous and festive holiday - particularly for the younger generation - it is perfectly reasonable to teach our children that there are times and places for exuberance and lightheartedness, and times and places where sanctity and decorum are more appropriate. It would, however, be inaccurate to imply that nothing has changed since 1783, as "gravidade" notwithstanding, the Purim atmosphere has certainly "loosened up" considerably since then!
Mi Chamocha (Liturgical Poem)
On Shabbat Zachor (the Shabbat before Purim, when Parashat Zachor is read) the S&P insert a longish liturgical poem by R Yehudah Halevi into Nishmat Kol Hai. Nishmat contains the rhetorical phrase "God who is like you?" (mi chamocha), and this is used as an introduction to the poem, whose title is "Who is like you?, there is none like you!", praising God for the miracles of the Purim story. Several other Sephardi communities also chant this poem on this Shabbat, but do so either before or after the Torah reading. Only the S&P say it in its intended location, before Nishmat Kol Hai. As Keter Shem Tov points out, this is in line with the general S&P custom of maintaining liturgical poetry in it's intended place, rather than considering it an interruption and postponing it until the end of a service. The S&P do the same with various liturgical poems on the High Holy Days.
Over the years, under the influence of kabbalah, more and more communities have moved these poems out of their original location and context, and sing them instead at the end of the service - where they are incongruous and ungainly. One of the champions of the change was the Hidah (R. Hayim Yosef Azulai), another was the Ben Ish Hai (R. Yossef Haim of Baghdad), and in our times R. Ovadiah Yossef has also supported it, though allowing that communities with an established custom need not change.
Interestingly, among the Ashkenazim, there is a very similar rift. Here there was far less mystical influence overall, and liturgical poems in the prayers were traditionally far more widespread. In fact almost all communities inserted piyutim ("Yotzrot") in the Shema blessings on special Shabatot. Today, following the sustained kabbalistic influence of chassidut, the custom has all but disappeared, except among the Western Ashkenazim ("Yekkes"), whose traditional rationalist approach to halacha very much mirrors that of the S&P. However, even today, the Ashkenazi rite has many piyutim within the High Holyday services.
Here's the full text in a PDF file, scanned from the prayer book of the London S&P:
Mi Chamocha full text (PDF Document)
For more on the musical aspect of this poem, see the Purim page on the companion site to this one, here.
Purim food
Marzipan stuffed dates are a popular Purim treat among some Western S&P, though certainly not across the board, and with nowhere near the popularity of Hamantaschen! These may be dusted with icing sugar or - preferably - covered in a thin, crisp, toffee glaze.The Dutch Portuguese Jews have a Purim pastry named 'Huelos de Haman' (Haman's Ears), known also in Italian as 'Sfoglia de Haman'. This is a deep fried puffed pastry baked flat in the form of an ear and served sprinkled with icing sugar. This means that in addition to the widely known Hamantaschen (Yid. = Haman's Ears), there is yet another community that eats a replica of Haman's ears on Purim! It is, I suppose, a small mercy that at least the Dutch version does not include poppy seeds or any other representation of Haman's ear wax (shades of Prof. Dumbledore!). What the source of this unwholesome - cross-community - preoccupation with the Haman's ears might be is not known, but at any rate I can happily report that no such obsession is evinced by the London S&P.
Even decorum can be relative...
One cannot end a discussion on S&P decorum without mention of a famous reference to it - or the lack of it - in Samual Pepys's diary. The occasion was Simhat Torah, a day on which, like Purim, a certain levity enters the proceedings, as the Torah scrolls circle the synagogue seven times in a long service accompanied by song and prayer and - yes - a fair amount of chit-chat too:
...after dinner my wife and I, by Mr. Rawlinson’s conduct, to the Jewish Synagogue: where the men and boys in their vayles, and the women behind a lattice out of sight; and some things stand up, which I believe is their Law, in a press to which all coming in do bow; and at the putting on their vayles do say something, to which others that hear him do cry Amen, and the party do kiss his vayle. Their service all in a singing way, and in Hebrew. And anon their Laws that they take out of the press are carried by several men, four or five several burthens in all, and they do relieve one another; and whether it is that every one desires to have the carrying of it, I cannot tell, thus they carried it round about the room while such a service is singing. And in the end they had a prayer for the King, which they pronounced his name in Portugall; but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew. But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this. Away thence with my mind strongly disturbed with them, by coach...
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 14 October 1663
Decorous as they may have been, it would seem that the decorum of Simhat Torah is simply not that of a seventeenth century church service!
