Pittsburgh Shooting: Answering Questions about the Service

This morning, a shooter entered a synagogue in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and killed many people attending a service, then shot several police officers there to stop him. The story is still evolving and I am sure there are plenty of news sources better qualified to provide the details of the event. I can tell you that I do not personally know anyone who attends that synagogue, but a friend of friends is currently (8PM Saturday) unaccounted for and may have been one of the victims.

In the news stories I have heard, I have noticed a lot of confusion about the service where the shooting occurred. Was it a baby naming service? Why weren't there any children there? Why did someone say that there would have been more victims if the shooter came later? I would like to clarify these issues.

What kind of service was this?

The service where the shooting occurred was a normal Shabbat (sabbath) service, the same kind of service that most synagogues have every Saturday morning (some synagogues only have Shabbat services on Friday nights). A Shabbat morning service is, by most people's standards, a very long service. It typically starts between 9 and 10 AM and continues until noon or later (at which point there is usually an "oneg," a gathering with food in the social hall). Shabbat morning services at Tree of Life * Or L'Simcha Congregation (where the shooting occurred; the name "Or L'Simcha" means "Light of Joy") start at 9:45 in the morning. The shooting apparently began around 9:50.

Why were there so few people there?

Shabbat morning services are quite long, and begin with a section called P'sukei d'Zimra ("Verses of Song") that are sort of a warm-up, mostly psalms and such. These prayers can be done privately at home, even by the most strictly observant. Many people do not show up until the meat of the service, the Barchu prayer (about 30 minutes into the service), the Shema, the Amidah, or the Torah reading (an hour or more into the service). 

At the start of a typical Shabbat morning service, usually only a few hardcore members are usually present. In fact, a friend once joked that you can identify the gentiles at a Saturday morning bar or bat mitzvah because they show up on time. A gentile friend once asked me if Jewish services usually start late, because hardly anybody was there when he arrived on time for a bar mitzvah.

This shooting occurred within 15 minutes of the start of services. I'm actually a little surprised there were already 13 people present at the time of the shooting. A former rabbi from that synagogue darkly joked that there would have been more people to shoot if the shooter had showed up later. I know a lot of people were offended by the comment, but I think the former rabbi was right.

UPDATE 10/28: I saw a British newspaper say that there were 60-100 people present. I think this is probably a mistake. I can't imagine anyplace would have that many people within five minutes after the start of a Shabbat morning service. Perhaps 60-100 is the number of people normally at their Shabbat services by the end.

Why weren't there any children present?

Religiously speaking, children are not required to perform any religious observance, including attending services until they pass the age of bar or bat mitzvah. On top of that, Shabbat morning is a very long service and not many children have the patience to sit through it all. If children are present in Shabbat morning services, it is usually for the later parts of the service, the Torah reading and so forth (unless they are present to attend someone else's bar or bar mitzvah, in which case they might come earlier, particularly the gentile ones, whose parents may not have been aware of the length of the service).

The synagogue's calendar actually indicates that they have a weekly educational program for children to learn the service and participate in it. The calendar says it was supposed to start at 10:15, which was more than 20 minutes after the shooting started, so it is very lucky the shooter didn't arrive later!

Was this service a baby naming?

Some stories have said that the synagogue was observing a baby naming at the time of the shooting, which left many surprised that the baby managed to avoid being shot! I don't know if there was actually a baby naming scheduled that morning (it's not on the synagogue's calendar), but this point definitely requires some clarification.

A baby naming is not an entire self-contained religious service. A male child is given his formal Hebrew name during his brit milah (circumcision) on his eighth day of life, a small, private family event. A female child, of course, does not have a circumcision so her formal Hebrew name is often given publicly during a synagogue service. Sometimes, this is done for a male child if his circumcision is delayed (e.g., for medical reasons), or if the parents just want to show off their new son, but usually it is only done for female children.

During the Torah reading in a Saturday morning service, the father (or both parents) take an aliyah (say a blessing over a part of the week's Torah reading), then introduce the daughter to the congregation by the formal Hebrew name, perhaps explaining the source of the name and telling a little about the person (usually a deceased relative) that the child was named for. There is normally much rejoicing, and usually some extra special food at the oneg (gathering with munchies after the service).

Because this naming occurs during the Torah reading, it is usually an hour or more into a Saturday morning service, and of course one cannot expect a newborn child to patiently sit in a synagogue that long, so usually the child and parents arrive for the naming much closer to the time of the reading. I am not at all surprised that no baby was present within 15 minutes of the start of the service, regardless of whether a naming was planned.

UPDATE 10/28: A New York Times article said that "a bris, a ceremony to mark a child’s birth, was among the ceremonies taking place Saturday..." I cannot imagine that a circumcision (the usual meaning of "bris" aka "brit") was being performed in a synagogue, but it is possible that this Conservative synagogue uses the term "bris" (which simply means "covenant") to refer to the naming ceremony for girls in the name of gender parity.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion!

UPDATE 10/28: I've seen on various Philadelphia news stations a clip of the community gathering in support of the Pittsburgh, where people are singing with candles. I am sure that the gathering was to support Pittsburgh, but the happy song they were singing (Ya di di di di di di di ....) is Havdalah, a weekly prayer marking the end of Shabbat (the sabbath), normally sung or recited in the dark lit only by candlelight. It is not surprising that Havdalah was being observed at the time because it was Saturday night! But it is odd that the news seems to be presenting this as if it were part of the mourning.