Image: A rabbi and three other worshipers read from the Torah scroll. Photo by Linda Burnett.
I’ve been looking at the Google search strings again, the words that people use to get to this blog. Yesterday one set caught my eye: “Jewish Rabbi Vestments.”
I’m going to take that to mean, “What special clothing does a rabbi wear?”
The most accurate answer to that is that a rabbi does not wear any special clothing. Rabbis are ordinary people with specialized knowledge. Unlike a priest, we do not have special powers. A rabbi is a person who has studied Torah, Jewish law and tradition. Someone, either an institution or another rabbi, has declared that they can call themselves “rabbi.” Rabbinical study involves multiple languages (Hebrew and Aramaic, at least) and it generally takes five or more years.
Rabbis wear what other people in their community wear. A rabbi from a Hasidic group will dress like other adult men in his group. I dress like a 60 year old woman from the Bay Area of California. If I lived in New York City, I’d dress up a bit more (because, New York!) but otherwise I would look very much like one of my congregants or students.
I imagine this person was thinking about worship. To lead a service at any time of day, most rabbis will wear a tallit, a prayer shawl, and they will wear a head covering, called either a kippa or a yarmulke. But any service leader will wear the same things; those are not reserved for rabbis. And in theory, any adult Jew should be able to lead a service. (In Orthodoxy, men only can lead the service, unless only women are present.)
In a morning service, adults may wear a tallit (in a Reform service, some will wear one, in a Conservative service, most adult men and women will wear them, and in an Orthodox service, you will see the tallit on adult males only.) Alternatively, some men wear the fringes you see on the prayer shawl on a sort of undershirt, so you don’t see the tallit but the essential part, the fringes, are there. In addition, in the morning service, in Conservative and Orthodox synagogues you will see people wearing tefillin, also known as phylacteries. Those are the black boxes attached to head and arm with leather straps.
Here is a photo, showing a boy and two men dressed for morning prayers. Notice that they are not all dressed alike. We cannot assume from the dress that any of them are rabbis.
In an afternoon or evening service, you will not see the tallit except on the leader (it shows who is leading) and you will not see tefillin at all. Head coverings will still be in place. For an example, look at the first photo on this page, of U.S. Air Force Rabbi Chaplain Captain Sarah Schechter leading an evening service. Notice that except for the tallit, she is wearing her uniform.
Now, there are some Reform congregations that have a custom for the rabbi to wear a pulpit robe (like a judge’s robe) with or without a tallit. They are increasingly rare, though. Also, I anticipate (and welcome) comments about the customs at local synagogues, or in various communities: there is a great variety of Jewish practice, and my statements here about what Jews wear for worship are meant only to be general.
Rabbis and cantors are primarily teachers: the rabbi teaches Torah, and the cantor or chazzan, is a specialist in the language of the service and in liturgical music. Both also officiate at lifccycle services, like baby namings, funerals, and weddings, and if they went to accredited schools, they have training in things like premarital counseling, grief support, and in navigating the gray areas and complexities of Jewish custom.
But we really don’t have special outfits. My “vestments” for prayer are exactly the same as you would see on any other observant Jew in my community. Gender can make a difference, depending on the tradition of Judaism in question.
We all stand before the Holy One as members of our community. We each bring different gifts and different skills, but our clothing is basically the same.
For more about the synagogue service and how to get the most out of a service without understanding any Hebrew, check out these articles:
What Goes On in a Jewish Service? (Especially for Beginners)
Lost in the Service? How to get the most out of a service even if you don’t understand Hebrew.
Dancing with the Rabbis An article about the movements you see people make in the service.
What is a Machzor? It’s the prayer book for High Holy Days. Read this if your first service will be a High Holy Day service.
Kissing the Torah: Idolatry? The procession with the Torah involves people kissing and touching the Torah scroll as it passes. If you are curious about that practice, this article explores it.
What’s a Chumash? What’s a Siddur? An article about the books we use in the service.
In the Boston area, rabbis (in the ~4 Reform synagogues I attend, plus 1 Conservative) seem to wear very formal business suit plus tallit for men, or for women a step down to ‘nicer end of business wear but not a full suit’ plus tallit.
In a couple, they seem to be wearing vestments/robes like priests, but I would need to look closer, they may just have very billowy/full tallitot. I was very struck, though, by how similar the look was to a priest’s vestments. I was told that reflects the strong influence of German Christian revival on Reform Judaism (also seen in temple design and stained glass).
Yes, that’s the influence of what is often called “Classical Reform.” I attended services 20 years ago at the Temple in Louisville, and it felt quite similar to a
Lutheran service, right down to the hymns. I have no idea how things may have shifted since though. The Reform movement as a whole has moved in a Conservative direction.
Always glad when worship leaders wear pulpit robes.
I like pulpit robes, too, PJ, but we seem to be in the minority these days.
I am wondering if there is anything special a rabbi would wear for a funeral? Would the Tallit or the tzitzit be worn? Specifically wondering about what would be worn at the burial site?