2.4.3 Internal Social-Structural Interaction
The leader immigrated with his family in 1992. He ministered to Russians already in their home nation and in the United States. Soon after his arrival in Israel he met Russian Jewish believers. They met in an immigrant's home, to study the Bible and elementary Hebrew. In 1995, „after much prayer”, they opened a synagogue in an industrial compound. Within one month they had transformed a factory into a synagogue.
House groups serve as the building block of congregational life. We are actively preparing to create new groups, so as to release the abilities that God has placed in each person and reach many neighbourhoods. The warmth and intimacy of our homes provide an atmosphere that is a safe haven from the enormous pressures of daily life. This kind of safe environment helps people to become healed themselves and to reach out to extend this healing to others. Through weekly services at the conclusion of Sabbath and the celebration of biblical holidays, we are returning to the Jewish roots of faith in Yeshua. Authentic Jewish life among our people expresses the fact that life in Messiah restores our heritage. It is time for Israel to discover her Messiah as the king redeemer of the Jews, not the inspiration for history's tragic persecution of the Jews by the church (30/97).
Today, the congregation operates as registered organization. It has a bank account and meets the requirements of „a total legal framework”. Here too, they do not call the leader rabbi, but he is nevertheless „treated that way” (30/97). 35It appears to me that abroad Messianic Jewish leaders are more easily called rabbi.) The type ℸ (daleth) congregation functionally has deacons, which were not yet recognized officially as such. The leader decides which persons could meet which communal needs. He temporarily gives particular responsibilities to specific persons, to find out if they can fulfill them. If things go well, the person can become officially recognised and receive a corresponding title. According to the leader, members operate as a team within a pattern „of what is written in the New Covenant” (30/97). The leader is a specialist regarding knowledge and interpretation of the Bible, Jewish scriptures, tradition and culture. He has the contacts with organizations and authorities in Israel and abroad that support the organization.
The internal activities of the type ℸ (daleth) congregation appear very similar to those of type ℷ (gimel). The Sabbath service, the opening and closing of Sabbath, weekly Bible studies are very similarly. I will not repeat them here. Type ℸ (daleth) apparently displays more effort in social activities than in academic activities, which type ℷ (gimel) displays. This could be a result of contingencies, such as being in an area that has to absorb many new immigrants. This appears more typically along the coast and in the North of the country than in other parts. Also, type ℸ (daleth) appears to express its Jewishness in a less assertive manner than type ℷ (gimel), and similarities to Christian groups appear not such a threat to the individual and group identity.
Messianic Jewish leaders open a round dance for the congregation with much vigour, and quickly get joined by a few men. The leaders can also dance alone while the congregation watches, claps hands and sings along. At other times women will join and soon prevail. Black and Asian men were the most quick and enduring to dance. Men among themselves dance wild and faster than women and mixed groups. Still, even in a fast dance of men, a child, joyfully insisting on it, can be taken into the round dance by the men and so participate. When another, even smaller, child wants to be taken along, one man can take it on his arms and carry it while dancing fast. I regard these dances as visible expressions of combined and balanced power and gentleness, of particular human beauty, joy and family spirit. Someone can push a disabled person in a wheel chair into the middle of the round dance. So, even a disabled member can participate in the experience of bodily expressed collectivity, harmony and oneness. If many people participate in a dance, they do so in different concentric circles. Dancers slowly move outside in, making room for others to join. Advanced dancers can create an additional, separate circle, and dance with obvious ease and relish.
Charismatic songbooks of the seventies show photos of young women dancing. They showed dancing men only in graphics, drawings (Jugend mit einer Mission 1977, 1980). Contemporary Messianic Jewish books on Messianic dancing show also dancing men on photos (Silberling 1995: 29). Israeli Folk Dance (Doko 1990), Yemenite and Hasidic dance elements are discernable, expressing unity with the Jewry and its heritage (Silberling 1995: 49-55). The worshippers can dance to prerecorded or life music. A band can interact with the dancers, ask what music they want or if they shall repeat a song or part of it. The band can end a song with a sort of polyphony, which allows worshippers to sing along in tongues, which they consider to be a higher form of singing. For the spectator, there are no words to discern, but there is a mood of intense delight. Musicians can use a song to bring the dancers and the congregation to complete silence. Then the musicians make room for a sermon, announcement, or something else.
While this dancing appears to be very spontaneous, it requires thorough organization and exercise to arrive at such easiness. The group needs to discern a dance leader, which can be the wife of the rabbi, or someone else. They have to teach members the steps, how to move hands and body, also those who may be clumsy. Then they must coordinate the movements of the individuals into a round dance. Any dance appears to have one or more leaders. Dancers will automatically look to their teachers and experts to follow their movement. As a group spirit evolves this can happen unobtrusively. Intuition and mutual familiarity create collective harmonic expression and movement. The orientation to the dance leader, female or male, requires some subordination. Nonverbal communication is trained, and mutual sensitivity develops. The individual appears much less important than in a disco dance. In a sense, Messianic round dance appears like an antithesis to modern narcissistic dance expression. Common partner dance and ball room dance is rejected. The perception is that among Jews, the individual is anyway less important than in the West, which would also fit the Levantine culture.
If a small group of women performs a special dance, they wear wide white skirts and long white leggings. Specialised dancers express strong concentration and devotion. They have disciplined and controlled their movements. They express worship, not performance. In the first place, their dance appears not directed to human spectators, but to God. They can ask members not to applaud. Some will still do, as they get carried away by the beauty they see. At a festival, one man and one woman, specialised dancers, specially dressed, e.g. like Yemenite Jews, can dance together. They express then the relationship between the „male” supernatural and the „female” humanity, between the God of Israel and his people. On the dance floor, without any words, a story of affection, wandering and failure and final reconciliation evolves. At another instance a small group of men, dressed like Brooklyn Orthodox with typical black hats and trousers, can dance a special dance and reveal themselves as poor dancers. If they are cheered, it is less for their performance than for their courage. The motive appears to count more than the result.
The dancing appears to allow the expression of a wide range of emotions and to raise an experience of intensive belonging. Watching faces, I had the impression that some dancers also released their frustration, loneliness and pain. If so, then dance becomes an aesthetical and regulated emotional, maybe even social safety-valve. Singing and dancing can take a considerable amount of the time when believers are together. The rhythmic, simultaneous movement expresses belonging, or at least the wish for it. It expresses shared emotions and intentions and a unity perceived as given by and experienced in a supernatural source. To join hands in a round dance symbolises the joining of hands, and the closing of ranks, in view of the aspired spiritual and humanitarian goals. This may be felt as great help considering the external, societal pressures.