I was in Berkeley a couple shabbosim ago and thought about how much time it took for them to take out and put away the Torah. They take it out, walk it around and everyone kisses it,the women put it away and they make a big deal of walking it around the ezras nashim and then stand at the ark while the congregation takes forever to sing a bunch of songs before everyone had to sit though a speech which proved to me that no matter how pro-woman I am – I can’t stand their divrei Torah in shul. In yeshiva we took the Torah out there was no sing song, if you wanted to get some play, you had to walk up to the Torah for a smooch – it never just came to you with open legs.
Those are the two extremes and it’s pretty obvious, the frummer you are, the less time you spend dealing with pesicha and all that jazz. Left wing modern orthodox and hippie shuls take the longest, modern orthodox has a whole range, but the frummer the shul the less likely they are to walk it all around the shul like they were taking a road trip or something. The frummer folks tend to sing less and just want to jump into laining.
This is all just my personal observations, but of course I tend to observe a lot more than the regular Yid – so that kind of makes me an authority on the practices of them in their temples. So now I bet some of you are wondering why this happens to be, why someone who’s less religious would make a bigger deal about a Torah they tend to follow less than the more religious folks? It’s a good question and my attempt at answering it may fall flat, but the simple reason is that when you live a Torah life you tend to take out the Torah more often – how many people who are in attendance at the average lefty shul are coming on Mondays and Thursdays to shachris? How many of them are going to be at shabbos mincha? It seems to me that the whole song and dance that goes on is more about the song and dance than the actual Torah that doesn’t seem to be being followed much by these crowds.