Planes, Performances & Presence

I kept getting distracted by large koi fish leaping out of the water and splashing back into the pond. I resisted turning my head to watch them; I was supposed to be facing east, directing my heart toward Jerusalem, praying the central Jewish prayer for the prerecorded religious services I was hired to create through Hillel International’s Higher Holidays. I had to be present. I had to be professional. I had to ignore the koi.

I had it all wrong.

As a former academic with training in critical theory, I’ve always hated it when people complain about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services by calling them “performative.” The term does not mean, as one might assume, “fake,” “put on,” “over-the-top,” “like a performance.” I’ve always been the kid who wanted to correct everyone for imprecise word use; it didn’t help that I taught Writing the Essay at New York University, red pen in hand, literally paid to correct imprecise word use.

But there’s another reason I hate it when people use the word “performative” as an injunction against religious worship services they don’t like, or don’t respond to: Religious worship is supposed to be performative.

“Performative,” a term coined by J.L. Austin in his book How to Do Things with Words, describes a speech act in which the words and the conditions under which they are spoken…