The Shtiebel and the Synagogue

Great Synagogue at Capernaum, which sits on the site of the Synagogue that
Jesus taught at in Capernaum. Image by Eddie Gerald/UNESCO

“Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man

and drink his blood, you have no life in you...."

He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

~John 6:53,59

One thing that becomes very clear about the synagogue and also the Temple itself in Jesus' time is, ANYBODY could stand up at the lectern and give his two cents about anything relating to the interpretation of scripture. Or apparently, anything God-related whatsoever. The fact that Jesus could stand up in the synagogue at Capernaum and say an absolutely outrageous thing by First-Century Jewish standards is testimony to that. Now, the Jews of the First Century were in no way more tolerant than people today or less likely to condemn, but it was an established principle that at least any adult Jewish male could stand up before the whole congregation and say what was on their mind, God-wise. The Rabbi lent some order to this chaos, but the Rabbi did not DO or PERFORM synagogue. The members of the synagogue did synagogue. Aside from handling the Torah and doing weddings and assuring that things did not descend to fistfights, the Rabbi mostly got out of their way and let them do their thing.

The synagogue was also a place where Jewish males just gathered to hang out and talk about God or study scripture or disagree about scripture sometimes. And this happened when no "services" were taking place, and technically a prayer service could take place any time 10 or more Jewish males gathered together. You didn't even need the Rabbi there. The synagogue was a meeting house and a house of prayer in the most general sense: as long as people were talking about God or studying scripture or praying, they pretty much could be there. In fact in Israel today there are storefront shtiebels, mini-synagogues hardly more than stalls, open all night even, where any time you get 10 dudes together you have "church." Now the male-centrism isn't so nice, but otherwise what a refreshing difference from a Christian church!

On the other hand, the churches of Christianity have a terrible leader complex. Attendees to church services are not so much participants in church but spectators in a religious spectator sport: the priest or pastor stands up front and speaks or performs mass or whatever, the choir sings, and the attendees are just standing or sitting or kneeling or sitting or are compelled to recite text of some sort and otherwise are passive spectators to the priest/pastor "doing" church. In most cases, attendees are not invited to get up and speak unless it is to give canned testimonials on how they were "saved" and what wretches they were previously. And however nice a smiley face of tolerance you want to paint on doctrine, most churches are absolutely utterly inflexible as to what is and is not acceptable belief. It is their way or the highway, period. Sure, sometimes they might dress that up a bit, but at core all Christian churches have some dogma on which they are utterly inflexible, and sometimes that dogma is quite extensive. So for instance myself as a non-Trinitarian could never attend any Christian church because they all either recite the Nicene Creed or at least certainly believe it and might recite it, and I don't ascribe to it. This is why every difference of opinion becomes a new schism, with new self-righteous leaders who are just as certain that their way is right and the other way leads to hell, as the church they split from.

Synagogues at least in Jesus' day (I am not familiar with modern ones) were places where any (adult male) could speak and be heard, and differences were clearly accepted to varying degrees as being embraced in the overall umbrella of Judaism. Sadducees and pharisees for instance had strongly divergent beliefs, but they were both Jews and both groups more or less accepted the other as Jews. They didn't attend different synagogues and have different Temples. Jesus' followers were accepted as Jews, at least initially. Zealots may not have been liked by everyone, but they were considered Jews. None of these as far as it is recorded had to attend different synagogues because of it, because synagogues were not thought of in that way. They were a meeting house and house of prayer for Jews, of whatever kind.

I would not be accepted as a Christian in most Christian churches, nor is discussion part of the program. Differences of opinion are not simply disagreed with, they are denounced as heretical. Still, to this day, Christians call other Christians heretics. This is medieval thinking. Used to be, they would burn them.

This intolerance of difference and dissent is a toxic gas choking Christianity. Essentially, not to put too fine a point on it, all the non-Christians who consider Christians and their churches to be intolerant narrow minded self-righteous doctrinaire zealots are in the majority of cases completely correct. That is a fair and largely correct judgment. It is a wonder Christianity has survived this toxic atmosphere this far. Arguably, real Christianity hasn't survived it except for the perseverance of a tiny minority of tolerant Christians. The beginning of this intolerance in the very early centuries A.D. leading up to the ecumenical councils like Nicea were the corruption of true Christianity. Reformers periodically seek to rediscover "primitive Christianity" or the "Christianity of the Book of Acts" but habitually fail because they fail to open up the forum to friendly dissent and they embrace the very causes of Christianity's fall which is the ecumenical councils and the rigid application of dogma.

It is past time to return to the synagogue of the First Century. Now I am not recommending a return to the Law of Moses or anything like that, but to the freedom and openness of a meeting-place dedicated to the worship of God, the study of scripture, and the polite but free and open discussion of ideas on such matters. Where anyone who calls themselves a Christian is welcome and not forced to recite creeds they don't ascribe to. Christianity with a focus on Christians themselves and not their leaders. The practice of Christian churches today practically require passivity and blind obedience. Yes, the Judaism of the First Century had many rabbis and leaders and charismatic figures, but they were merely literate Jews who the people chose to listen to and they could just as easily go listen to someone else or start talking themselves. What did you need to be a rabbi? You needed to be able to read and write and have people start calling you "rabbi." That was about it. That is what strikes one as so different from Christianity: even a child like the 12 year old Jesus could up and go teach in the Temple, and if people listened to him they listened, and if not, well there were other people saying interesting things. That is such a drastic and damning difference from Christianity.

You will never get to First-Century Christianity, original real Christianity, unless you get back to the First-Century synagogue. When Christianity left the synagogue or was forced out, it stopped embracing the right of people to think for themselves. Without that, if Christianity has a future, it is only one of further confusion and apathy. 

A Shtiebel, an informal mini-synagogue or meeting house
for people to meet for prayer.

NOTE: I am definitely no expert on modern Judaism, but I understand that the Christian style of "performance worship" has tended to influence synagogues a great deal in the recent past, particularly I think in the U.S. If so, that would be very unfortunate. I do not know to what extent the relatively freewheeling and member-centric First Century synagogue recorded in the Gospels are typical of Synagogues in all time periods. I would guess though that Christian influences in worship style would be more or less limited to the modern era or at most the last 300 years or so. Also even in previous times, one would think that smaller congregations have the advantage as far as member participation and discussion go. If you have a congregation of 2000 males, obviously opportunities to speak and for individual voices to be heard would be somewhat more limited.