Studying Congregational Music: Chapter 13
“When Jews pray, no one stands between us and God. We need no one to pray for us.
But if we don’t need anyone else to talk to God on our behalf, then what exactly is the leader—the cantor, the rabbi, the song leader—doing as she or he stands before the congregation leading worship?”
Searching for a metaphor: what is the role of the Shaliach/Shalichat Tzibur (leader of prayer)?
By Jeffrey A. Summit
Abstract
In this essay, Summit shares a number of metaphors that can be used when we study and describe the role and function of the prayer leader. While he writes from the perspective of Jewish worship, Summit believes that these images can stimulate a deeper consideration of how scholars conceive of the role of the leader in congregational worship across faith traditions. Through this series of metaphors—high priest, Levite, teacher, train conductor, tour guide, role model and more—he explores the dynamics and the relationship between the music/worship leader and the congregation.
Summit begins by describing the personal stance from which he considers the phenomenology of interaction between the leader and congregation in the ritual performance of congregational worship. Here, Summit draws both from his perspectives as an ethnomusicologist and as a rabbi serving diverse Jewish communities on campus. Summit’s examination of the meaning and experience of communal worship is influenced by Harris Berger’s work on stance, a phenomenological approach to assessing meaning in culture. He also employs Erving Goffman’s concept of frame analysis in order to understand and analyze the meanings of this ritual performance. In congregational worship, holiness becomes real through community, through prayer and through sacred text. Through the power of music, the leader binds these elements together, and provides an approach to the divine.