My Shabbos go much better with musical instruments in shul but my uptight synagogue won’t go along with this.
Dennis Prager says that just because the Romans destroyed our temple 2,000 years ago that shouldn’t mean we can’t groove on Shabbos to some nifty tunes (I’m translating his words into the more modern lingo that my audience demands).
You say I’ve got a dirty mind. That I’m a mean go-getter… Well, come on feel the noise. Girls, rock your boys. We’ll get wild, wild, wild…
I remember one Shabbos afternoon in 1995 at Stephen S. Wise temple, I was really getting into the music and dancing and feeling very spiritual and aroused when the rabbi turned everything off and announced Yitzhok Rabin had been assassinated.
Over the past decade or so, it has become more popular for non-Orthodox synagogues to use musical accompaniment as a way of enhancing their Shabbos prayer services. This has received ongoing press coverage but some recent articles highlight this innovative attempt to further vitalize synagogues (I, II). The question we raise here is the halakhic propriety of this practice.
I. Playing a Musical Instrument
Playing musical instruments is rabbinically prohibited out of concern that one may come to fix the instrument (Beitzah 36b). This is the same rabbinic prohibition that applies to clapping and dancing (link). This would seem to rule out playing a musical instrument on Shabbos. However, things are not that simple.
Click here to read moreThe Rema (Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chaim 339:3) notes that people are in the practice of clapping and dancing on Shabbos, and suggests that this may be justified because today people are not sufficiently expert in fixing musical instruments. From a comment of his earlier (338:2), it seems that he believes in theory but not in practice that even playing a musical instrument is permitted (cf. Magen Avraham ad loc., 5). However, he would not go so far as to permit it but allowed asking a Gentile to play a musical if it is for the sake of a mitzvah (e.g. for a bride and groom), which is otherwise forbidden. This would turn the act into a double rabbinic prohibition (asking a Gentile and playing an instrument, both only rabbinically forbidden) in the case of a mitzvah (a shevus di-shevus be-makom mitzvah). A shevus di-shevus be-makom mitzvah is permissible. Later authorities (e.g. Minchas Elazar 1:29) differentiate between clapping/dancing and playing a musical instrument, but the Rema seems to reject that differentiation and is lenient in theory (and in practice when it is a shevus di-shevus be-makom mitzvah).
If not even the Rema allows a Jew to play a musical instrument on Shabbos, even for a mitzvah, then it seems clear that the recent practice of playing music to accompany Shabbos services is forbidden. However, that is only if a Jew plays the instrument. If a Gentile plays the instrument, then perhaps this would be allowed.
This was the line of thinking used by reformers in the early 19th century in defending the practice of using an organ in a synagogue on Shabbos. The arguments are contained in two books from 1818 titled Nogah Ha-Tzedek and Or Nogah, by Eliezer Lieberman and Aaron Choriner.
