Each of my HUC-JIR classmates (Cincinnati ’60) has had a transformative impact on his congregation or community. (Yes, sadly we were a class of all men.) We taught and counseled, provoked and celebrated in ways that enriched and deepened the lives of those we served.
One of the members of our class had a particularly powerful impact on his community.
Bob Samuels made aliyah to Israel with his family in 1962 and never looked back. The saga of his amazing career is captured in a newly published book, Stepping Up to the Plate, Building a Liberal Pluralistic Israel, which Bob completed shortly before his death in 2016. Published by the CCAR, it is the first volume issued under its newest imprint, “Rabbis Press.”
Bob was my cherished friend and my hero. His entire life was powered by the ideals of the Hebrew prophets. Every day of his life, Bob translated those ideals into real life action that lifted up the fallen, fed the needy, and embraced those who live at the margins of society.
Bob understood that Progressive Judaism would flourish in Israel only if we raise up exceptional leaders. The Leo Baeck Educational Center in Haifa, which Bob built into one of the premier institutions in Israel, produced such leaders.
Bob was a force of nature. I have never known anyone with as many talents, as determined a spirit, and as much energy as Bob Samuels. A star first baseman at Brandeis who was scouted by Major League Baseball, Bob knew what it meant to “step up to the plate.” He never flinched. Even after he was diagnosed with a devastating disease, he continued to live a life of courageous determination, doing good and loving us all.
Our colleague Michael Marmur wrote, “This book tells his story. Reading it can do what Bob always managed to do in his life. Even if we are disheartened and out of new ideas, even if the next step seems unclear, it builds us up.”
I hope you will read and be inspired by this amazing story about what it means to be a leader of our people.
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Charles A. Kroloff is past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Currently Vice President for Special Projects at HUC-JIR, he is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanu-El, Westfield, NJ. Rabbi Robert L. Samuel’s book Stepping Up to the Plate, Building a Liberal Pluralistic Israel, is now available for purchase from CCAR Press.
“Why pray? And what is prayer, to you?” Rabbi Don Goor asked me as I sat in front of the crowd at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem last week. It was the evening of the Israel launch of my new CCAR Press book, This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day, and I was talking about my own recovery from trauma by writing prayers.
I began writing new prayers as an act of self-preservation. It was an effort to understand and to redirect my pain and grief after my wife passed away from traumatic brain injury eight years ago. I was looking for a way to climb out of a pit of sorrow into vitality. Prayer has been a doorway back to the love of life and the love of God. Each prayer I write strengthens my sense of God in the world. Writing brings me closer and closer to myself, our people and our God.
with Rabbi Don Goor at the book launch for “This Grateful Heart” at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem.
To pray is to be spiritually brave; to have faith in a power that operates beyond our basic senses. A force is created when the energy of words and emotions are combined with the intention of reaching out to God. We participate in this remarkably daring and courageous act because we believe prayer matters.
To continue to pray even when one doubts the connection between heaven and our prayers is prayer heroism. I’ve been in that place. Thankfully, by writing prayers I reconnected with my love of t’filah. For some, this place of struggle can last a lifetime.
Once, after teaching at a Limmud event, an elderly woman approached me. She explained that once she loved to pray, until her son died. She was in her mid-20s at the time. “I’ve been mad at God for the last 55 years,” she said. “Can you help me?”
“Perhaps only with an observation,” I replied. “You’ve been mad at God for a long time, yet you just attended a session on finding meaning in prayer. You might be mad at God but, apparently, you haven’t given up. You haven’t abandoned God or prayer, have you?”
“No,” she said. “But I’m not sure why.”
“And here you are, hoping to reclaim that joy,” I continued.
“Yes, but I’m not sure why.”
“Maybe,” I said, “That young woman who once loved to pray still has a voice left inside you.”
When one falls in love with prayer, that love often survives, somewhere inside, but the pain of loss can block the way. We pray side-by-side with these prayer heroes all of the time, those who keep praying in spite of their losses and their doubts.
To pray is a brazen spiritual act; to pray is to suggest that God desires our prayers, perhaps even needs them. It is to have faith that our words have an impact on worlds, the world of heaven and the world of earth. To pray is to declare that our words can ascend to reach divine realms and that they will be heard. Nothing short of sheer audacity.
This yearning for God to hear our prayers is echoed in Psalms: “When I call, answer me… be gracious to me and hear my prayer” (Psalms 4:2); “Hear my words, Adonai… Hearken to the sound of my outcry… at dawn hear my voice…” (Psalms 5:2-4); “Oh God, hear my prayer, give ear to the utterances of my mouth” (Psalms 54:4). The Psalmist prays to be heard.
This is the only promise of Jewish prayer: that God hears us. Perhaps, at first, it seems like a narrow promise. Simply that we will be heard.
God witnesses our lives. God witnesses our joys and sorrows. The eternal divine Soul of the universe bears witness to our brief time on earth. Even our suffering. This is a spot where it is easy to fall into a trap. ‘Hearing’ and ‘answering’ are not the same.
When we share our deepest desires with God, we offer a kind a praise. It’s the praise of desire to be in relationship. It’s the praise of knowing – or at least wanting – God’s loving presence. When we share our heartbreaks with God, God offers us a profound blessing: the blessing of being heard.
Perhaps this is the only reason to pray through a wall of grief.
Pray bravely. To be heard.
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Alden Solovy is a liturgist, author, journalist, and teacher. He has written more than 600 pieces of new liturgy, offering a fresh new Jewish voice, challenging the boundaries between poetry, meditation, personal growth, and prayer. His writing was transformed by multiple tragedies, marked in 2009 by the sudden death of his wife from catastrophic brain injury. Solovy’s teaching spans from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem to Limmud, UK, and synagogues throughout the U.S. The Jerusalem Post called his writing “soulful, meticulously crafted.” Huffington Post Religion said “…the prayers reflect age-old yearnings in modern-day situations.” Solovy is a three-time winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism. He made aliyah to Israel in 2012, where he hikes, writes, teaches, and learns. His work has appeared in Mishkan R’Fuah: Where Healing Resides (CCAR Press, 2012), L’chol Z’man v’Eit: For Sacred Moments (CCAR Press, 2015), Mishkan HaNefesh: Machzor for the Days of Awe (CCAR Press, 2015), and Gates of Shabbat, Revised Edition (CCAR Press, 2016). He is the author of This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day, from CCAR Press, now available as an eBook.
CCAR Press has created unique programs for you to host at your congregations, schools, libraries, and Jewish Community Centers. Want to host a Grateful Heart Event? Click for details. Contact us with questions at info@ccarpress.org or (212) 972-3636 x243.
As a young boy, it seemed to me, being a rabbi was a profound and precious use of a Jewish soul. To inspire Torah into hearts and into the world, oh my! So, at the age of 18, when I asked my own rabbi about going into the rabbinate, I was crushed.
My rabbi told me that I was already behind in Torah studies. That it would take me twice as long as the other students to catch up. Even then, my Hebrew was so bad that I wouldn’t begin seminary with my peers. If I made it – if I made it, he said – I’d always be a rabbi, that the entire Jewish world would constantly judge my actions, that the entire Jewish world would be represented me always. He asked if I had the strength to do that.
What I heard, as an insecure and uncertain teen, was this: “We don’t want you. There’s no place for you in Rabbi-World.”
He was a brilliant Torah teacher. I still reread his books. I remember sermons he gave decades ago. I remember the joy of our Friday morning Talmud class. He gave me my first glimpse of the depth and beauty of diving into Torah. Since then, I’ve considered the rabbinate several times. Even at 60, there’s still a wound in my heart with the words: “Not a rabbi.”
So, I collect rabbis. What does that mean? That I still allow my heart to be open and vulnerable to rabbis. That if you touch my heart, you’ll always be my rabbi. The balm on the wound is to collect the vibrant golden hearts of Torah teachers, tikun olam leaders, healers, blessings in the flesh. The balm is to add a bit of your heart to mine.
You were at my wife’s deathbed and comforted my children at her shiva. You taught me Torah. We stood together at the Kotel defending women’s prayer rights. You taught me how to say the Shema with my entire being. You’ve encouraged my writing, challenged it to get better. You’ve brought me to your synagogues to teach. We made music together. You call yourselves Rabbi, Rav, Rabba, chaplain, educator, pastoral care counselor, editor, coach, friend.
Here I am, early on Monday morning at the Central Conference of American Rabbis convention. Some of my rabbis are here, some didn’t make it. Most are Reform. Some Conservative, Orthodox, Renewal, Reconstructionist, Havurah, Haredi, defiant of labels. Some are AIPAC and some are JStreet. Some are men, women, trans, gay, lesbian. Writers. Teachers. Scholars. Activists.
Last night here at CCAR17, I was blessed to hear many kind things about my writing and my new book, ‘This Grateful Heart.’ I confess: part of me – the ‘not a rabbi’ part – doesn’t know what to do with these words, so I put them into the box of inspirational fuel for my work as a liturgist.
I’m still collecting rabbis, so this is the place for me to be.
It appears that some rabbis are also collecting liturgists. This Grateful (sentimental) Heart is touched.
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Alden Solovy is a liturgist, author, journalist, and teacher. He has written more than 600 pieces of new liturgy, offering a fresh new Jewish voice, challenging the boundaries between poetry, meditation, personal growth, and prayer. His writing was transformed by multiple tragedies, marked in 2009 by the sudden death of his wife from catastrophic brain injury. Solovy’s teaching spans from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem to Limmud, UK, and synagogues throughout the U.S. The Jerusalem Post called his writing “soulful, meticulously crafted.” Huffington Post Religion said “…the prayers reflect age-old yearnings in modern-day situations.” Solovy is a three-time winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism. He made aliyah to Israel in 2012, where he hikes, writes, teaches, and learns. His work has appeared in Mishkan R’Fuah: Where Healing Resides (CCAR Press, 2012), L’chol Z’man v’Eit: For Sacred Moments (CCAR Press, 2015), Mishkan HaNefesh: Machzor for the Days of Awe (CCAR Press, 2015), and Gates of Shabbat, Revised Edition (CCAR Press, 2016). He is the author of This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day, from CCAR Press.
We are surrounded by holiness. By beauty. By wonder and awe. At the same time, we must live life as it’s offered to us, sometimes messy, sometimes challenging, potentially painful, potentially traumatic, a mixed bag of joys and sorrows. No matter what, our lives are enriched by prayer. Prayer gives our hearts a voice. There’s no moment too small for a prayer. Or too large for that matter. A single petal of a rose. A field of wildflowers. A birth. A death. And there’s no moment too small or too large for gratitude.
Composing prayers is a natural expression of my desire to move closer to God. In response to various life tragedies I began a spiritual journey of prayer, meditation, daily journaling and making gratitude lists. This writing evolved into a regular practice of composing prayers. The practice was a large part of my healing from those tragedies, including the loss of Ami z”l – my wife of 27 years – from catastrophic brain damage.
The act of creating a prayer is healing. One aspect of that healing comes in recognizing the yearning, the deep desire that needs a voice. Another element of healing is the writing itself, which attaches those yearnings to language – often lyrical, but sometimes blunt – evoking a prayer of the heart. I recommend it.
In our Siddur, whether it’s Mishkan T’filah or any other Jewish prayer book, we say that God is the one shomeah t’filah, the One who hears our prayers. The faith that our prayers are heard gives prayer power. We don’t have to be alone in grief. We have a witness, perhaps the ultimate Witness, to both our troubles and our triumphs. Our extraordinary times will be heard by the One who hears.
The core of This Grateful Heart, my newest book from CCAR Press, however, is bringing prayer into the routine flow of our lives. Waking in the morning. Going to sleep at night. The change of seasons. Holy days. Regular days. Shabbat. We recognize that the regular practice of gratitude in prayer will enrich our days and help us get through the tougher times.
To create this collection I reread every one of my pieces, more than 600 liturgical works. As you might imagine, with such a large body of work I’d lost my connection with some of these prayers. Creating This Grateful Heart gave me an opportunity to reconnect with my own prayers, to remember the love that went into each piece. To remember why I wrote each one. That was a real gift.
This book is aimed at both personal and communal prayer. That was a key challenge in creating this anthology. By design, most of the pieces in This Grateful Heart can do ‘double-duty.’ While individuals and families will find voice for their hopes and aspirations, rabbis will find prayers and readings that engage us in t’filah – in worship – as well as a rich resource for counseling congregants.
The flow and organization of the prayers, matching the rhythms of our lives, gives This Grateful Heart a unique warmth and charm. The experience is much different than reading a classic anthology organized by topic. This Grateful Heart connects deeply into the flow of time and seasons. It can be used in private prayer and in communal worship. As a book of prayers, it’s versatile. As a spiritual guide, it brings both intimacy and tenderness, as well as a sense of strength.
Prayer and gratitude elevate us. Prayer and gratitude light our way. This is not always easy. My own love affair with prayer has had rocky moments, moments when I resisted prayer, moments when I resisted my higher gut instinct that prayer would guide me to healing. That’s one of the reasons that this book moves with the cycles of our lives. Any day a prayer is needed, any day someone decides to say a prayer, or to deepen a personal prayer practice, there’s a doorway here, in this book.
We pray in joy, fear, sorrow and loss. We pray to celebrate, to mourn, to create a connection with beauty, hope and love. Prayer is an expression of our inner voice. We pray as an expression of gratitude. I hope that people will see This Grateful Heart as a prayerbook, a resource kit, a spiritual practice, an inspiration, and a source of hope.
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Alden Solovy is a liturgist, author, journalist and teacher. His writing was transformed by multiple tragedies, marked in 2009 by the sudden death of his wife from catastrophic brain injury. Solovy’s teaching spans from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem to Limmud UK and synagogues throughout the U.S. The Jerusalem Post called his writing “soulful, meticulously crafted.” Huffington Post Religion said “…the prayers reflect age-old yearnings in modern-day situations.” Solovy is a three-time winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism. He made aliyah to Israel in 2012, where he hikes, writes, teaches, and learns. He is the author of This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day, now available from CCAR Press.
Passover Seders in my family were always large affairs. Persons who had no place to go for Seder (“Welcome the stranger…”) and persons of other faiths joined family members in celebrating the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt more than three thousand years ago. Whether conducted by my grandfather (mostly in Hebrew), my parents (much more in English) or my father-in-law (a Reform Rabbi who used a healthy mix of Hebrew and English), we joyously celebrated together.
Several years ago, I began to attend a series of programs focusing on interfaith issues for Jewish professionals and lay leaders conducted by the Outreach Training Institute (now Reform Jewish Outreach Boston). After attending panel discussions, workshops and seminars over several years I decided to write a Passover Haggadah for the contemporary Jewish family – which may include members who were born Jewish, those who have chosen to be Jewish, and family members of other faiths. Looking across the spectrum of knowledge, religious practice, and faith – from the observant to those for whom Judaism and Jewish Festivals and traditions were new – my purpose was to create a text for a joyful and inspirational family Seder.
The result of my efforts is Sharing the Journey: The Haggadah for the Contemporary Family published by the Central Conference of American Rabbis Press (CCAR Press). It is illustrated with magnificent original art work by the contemporary Jewish artist Mark Podwal. Sharing the Journey is an inclusive Haggadah that addresses the needs of every family member. For family members and guests who are attending their first Seder or do not know what questions to ask about the observance of Passover, Sharing the Journey explains the meaning of the symbols and rituals of Passover in language that is clear and understandable. For family members whose participation in a Seder is an important religious occasion, Sharing the Journey provides an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of God’s teachings through the story of the Exodus and to renew and strengthen commitment to the pursuit of freedom, tolerance, and justice. For everyone, Sharing the Journey provides the framework for a joyful and meaningful Passover celebration – enabling all family members to truly experience the power of the Seder and the story of the Exodus: A shared Jewish experience that has historical and contemporary significance to persons of all faiths.
Best wishes from me and the entire Yoffie Family for an inclusive, joyous, and inspirational Passover Seder.
Alan S. Yoffie is a former president of Temple Emanuel in Worcester, MA and an active member of its Jewish community. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Worcester Jewish Community Center and The Jewish Healthcare Center and as a member of the Ritual Committee of Congregation B’nai Shalom in Westborough, MA. In addition to Sharing the Journey: The Haggadah for the Contemporary Family, Mr.Yoffie wrote a Seder Leader’s Guide, also available from the CCAR Press, which includes two CDs (instrumental and vocal) that provide a “musical companion” for the Seder.
There is so much going on around us that it is easy to let information slip through the cracks. As we head toward Convention, our annual opportunity to come together as a community face-to-face, we want to take a moment and bring you up to date on some of the resources now available to you from CCAR Press.
The CCAR Press has been providing essential resources for the Jewish community for over a century. With the recent addition of our new imprint, Reform Jewish Publishing (RJP), as well as our ongoing development of a wide-range of electronic products, we find ourselves in an exciting new position. Now we are able to extend our support to rabbis worldwide, whether through eBook versions of classic texts, our growing collection of Visual T’filah, or any one of our liturgical publications. And by providing such support, we are blessed with the opportunity to support our Jewish community at large. As the primary publisher of the Reform Movement, we see it as our responsibility to not only provide the highest standards of support to our members, colleagues, and friends, but that we are able to directly connect with and strengthen the many communities of which we are lucky enough to be a part.
In an effort to better serve you and every one of your unique communities, we have launched several new Press initiatives. The first, our CCAR Press Resources initiative, provides material and event planning services to lay leaders, gift shop professionals, and congregants. Whether seeking educational resources for Temple programming, customized material for upcoming events, or a message of inspiration to share with the community, CCAR Press is here to help! Coupled with our 2015 Gift Shop Initiative, which provides resources for gift shop professionals at significantly discounted rates, our new Resources initiative makes it as easy as possible for you to introduce and utilize the most current and essential Jewish resources to your friends, family, and congregants. Please contact info@ccarpress.org for questions and tailor-made materials.
This is a time for learning and conversation, and we believe that in fostering community-wide conversations with accessible Jewish resources, we can aid in restoring and sustaining the unity and strength of our community worldwide. To that end, we’ve also introduced our Host an Event Program, created to help you organize and host community events in your congregations, schools, libraries, and Jewish Community Centers. Here at the CCAR, we know that no community is the same, and we’re excited to work together to determine how we can best meet your distinct needs.
Launched in 2016, The Sacred Calling Event Program continues to connect and inform congregants throughout the nation, and we are excited to announce that this program remains available for communities through 2017. Meant to facilitate an ongoing conversation about the impactful reality of women in the rabbinate, this program uses the narratives provided in the award-winning CCAR Press publication, The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate, as a launch-pad from which communities may begin to add their own voice to the continuing narrative of equality in the Jewish world. In celebrating the accomplishments of the past, we encourage you to consider the future, and to discuss the actions you can take against prevailing inequalities in your own communities.
New in 2017, we also offer a Grateful Heart Event Program, which features our new publication from poet and liturgist Alden Solovy. This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day provides a uniquely original anthology of modern day psalms and prayers to lift us up, inspire our days, and mark our milestones, spanning topics from the simple delights of daily living to the complexities of grief and sorrow. We offer this program not only with the conviction that Solovy’s words will speak to our own personal moments of grief and joy, gratitude and struggle, but with the hope that these prayers will speak to your collective hearts, giving you the opportunity to bring your community together with the simple yet formidable power of prayer. For more information about these programs, please see the links above. For a full list of upcoming events, visit events.ccarpress.org.
Finally, and in response to requests, we have launched Your Jewish Library, a one-stop-shop for the home libraries of anyone who hopes to further immerse themselves in the rich heritage of our tradition. From CCAR Press classics to critically acclaimed Torah commentaries from RJP, we offer essential Jewish resources to enhance your Jewish life and learning. All titles included in Your Jewish Library are offered at a discount, providing the perfect opportunity for congregants to stock their shelves with important Reform resources.
As always, we continue to develop new publications, resources, promotional material for your bulletins and mailings, and programs that will help us to help you in strengthening your communities and, ultimately, in strengthening our Movement. Please contact us to learn how you can work with your local libraries, gift shops, and JCC’s to better introduce Jewish resources to your communities, continue important conversations pertaining to our Movement, and to come together in empowerment and gratitude over our shared heritage, traditions, and faith.
Please plan to visit the CCAR Press area at Convention. Meet our staff, and find out what we can do for you. See you in Atlanta!
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Rabbi Hara Person is Publisher of CCAR Press and Director of Strategic Communications for the Central Conference of American Rabbis
“Come, Rain” is not only a prayer for rain, it’s a metaphor for the blessings of love. Love waters our lives, our hopes, and our dreams.
It was a sleepless night. Cold. Blustery. I tossed and turned in a one-man tent at a campground overlooking the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee.
The rain came in waves, one storm following another with brief periods of calm. Between the storms, the jackals howled in the distance. Then the wind would rise and the rain would begin again.
In Israel, rain is considered a blessing, a tangible sign of God’s love and dedication to the covenant with the Jewish people. “If, indeed, you obey My commandments … I will grant rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late …” (Deut. 11, translation from Mishkan Hanefesh, Yom Kippur, p. 34). When the rains come, surely blessings will follow.
This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day
That night, unable to sleep, I put on my headlamp, sat up in my tent and took out the small black moleskin notebook I use for writing new psalms, meditations, and prayers. As yet another wave of rain blew over the campground, I began to write, welcoming the blessings of rain. I imagined myself as the ground – parched and barren – yearning for blessings. The rain would water the dry land. The rain would also water my aching heart.
It was a hard night. On one hand, I was off hiking and camping with dear friends. It was the second night of a charity hike supporting Tsad Kadima, a wonderful organization that provides education and other services for kids and adults with cerebral palsy. I was with my closest companions in Israel. On the other hand, I was feeling particularly lonely and distant from my family and other dear ones back in the States. I have an amazing life here. At the same time, I’m a world away from my daughters.
“Come, Rain” is not only a prayer for rain, it’s a metaphor for the blessings of love. Love waters our lives, our hopes, and our dreams.
The rain was relentless that night. I wrote “Come, Rain” in one draft. Like the rain itself, this prayer simply poured out. It’s one of two prayers for rain that appear in This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. The other prayer, “For Rain,” is simpler, both in language choice and in message.
“Come, Rain” and “For Rain” can be used as meditations on changing seasons, either in personal prayer or communal worship. Several other seasonal prayers are also included in This Grateful Heart: one for each of the four seasons, as well as a “Harvest Prayer.”
Alden Solovy is a liturgist, author, journalist, and teacher. He has written more than 600 pieces of new liturgy, offering a fresh new Jewish voice, challenging the boundaries between poetry, meditation, personal growth, and prayer. His writing was transformed by multiple tragedies, marked in 2009 by the sudden death of his wife from catastrophic brain injury. Solovy’s teaching spans from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem to Limmud, UK, and synagogues throughout the U.S. The Jerusalem Post called his writing “soulful, meticulously crafted.” Huffington Post Religion said “…the prayers reflect age-old yearnings in modern-day situations.” Solovy is a three-time winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism. He made aliyah to Israel in 2012, where he hikes, writes, teaches, and learns. His work has appeared in Mishkan R’Fuah: Where Healing Resides (CCAR Press, 2012), L’chol Z’man v’Eit: For Sacred Moments (CCAR Press, 2015), Mishkan HaNefesh: Machzor for the Days of Awe (CCAR Press, 2015), and Gates of Shabbat, Revised Edition (CCAR Press, 2016). He is the author of This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day, to be published by CCAR Press in 2017.
I am sitting in the Metropolitan Opera House waiting for my favorite moment. Those majestic crystal chandeliers start rising high into the sky and the spotlight reveals an elegantly attired conductor. The house goes silent, the baton lifts, and the orchestra begins. The sounds of the music go straight into the hearts of the 3,800 people who are enraptured. This is my favorite moment: the overture.
S’lichot is the overture for our High Holy Days and my favorite part of the holiday. With sadness, I wrestle with the fact that roughly 0.001% of my congregation is present for the overture. Would those same congregants walk into the Metropolitan Opera House late? I have to wonder.
How could we draw more people to be present for S’lichot? Yes, I know. It’s the food. Bring them in with food. But even food won’t keep them there and wanting to come back. Neither will a good performance. They can go elsewhere for good food and good performances. We can only hold them with what we do best: focus on meaning, tradition, faith, and a touching of that spot in the heart where no one else can go.
When the chance came to pilot the CCAR’s new prayerbook for Elul and S’lichot, I jumped. My biggest challenge was going to be bowing out of the regional S’lichot service that had been a tradition for years, notwithstanding that it was a tradition that, if the feet do the judging, was not working for us because no one came. The opportunity to pilot the prayerbook for Elul and S’lichot was my chance to make a radical change and offer our own S’lichot service. Our Cantor was game to try it. Our Ritual Committee was game to try it. We decided to try it. One benefit of our regional S’lichot was that our lack of participants wasn’t so noticeable, but if no one came this time it would be patently obvious for all to see. But they did come. And I am convinced that Mishkan HaLev is why they will come again next year.
The overriding reason why Mishkan HaLev works is that it is rooted in joy. The season is so somber and the work so heavy, how refreshing it is to begin our overture for the High Holy Days in joy. We actually celebrate the fact that we can change our lives. The name of the prayerbook – Mishkan HaLev – promises a connection to the other Mishkan prayerbooks in our lives, but also the focus on the heart. Mishkan HaLev focuses us on the joyful heart.
I am privileged to work with an awesome cantor. He and I read through the pilot copy together. We read it out loud with just each other. We agreed that our purpose was not a concert by cantor or choir. There was far too much material to utilize, so we had to edit ourselves down. We were able to do so by noting the individual movements of the service: Havdalah, Entering the Gates of S’lichot, the Promise of Forgiveness, the Path of Return, the B’rit of Compassion and the Call of the Shofar. We chose our selections from each of these sections to provide balance and direction for the service. We chose musical selections that we wanted to teach prior to Rosh HaShanah and those that would be familiar and make the heart beat faster.
God bless the Yehuda Amichai poetry throughout the prayerbook. How does he do it? A profound tying of the ancient and the modern and a message that jumps out and hits you on the head without being moralistic or pendantic. “From the place where we are right…” is but one example. The appearance of that poem alone makes Mishkan HaLev worthwhile.
Praying with a prayerbook that we knew was not yet “cast in stone,” was part of the excitement. Like our human selves who were present because of the possibility of changing ourselves, so too the draft prayerbook. How will the draft version continue to change before going to the printer? I don’t know. I hope there may be more chatimot following English readings to better connect them to the original Hebrew prayers, and I hope that layout decisions may afford the opportunity, as in Mishkan T’filah, for the open spread to all reflect one body of work with the more traditional on the right and the interpretive on the left.
But most significantly: I believe that Mishkan HaLev helps to open our hearts to the tasks at hand. I saw it with my own eyes and our synagogue has already put in its order for the printed version. It will be in our hands to open the gates of 5778.
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Rabbi Stacy Offner serves Temple Beth Tikvah in Madison, CT.
“How does one determine the proper way to keep Shabbat?” I get that question regularly from Jews who do not follow halachah traditionally, but who do not consider it irrelevant, and want a means of deciding such things as whether to write or ride or use electricity then.
Because the commandment to keep Shabbat appears in the Torah adjacent to the discussion of building the desert sanctuary (the Mishkan), the Rabbis interpret Shabbat work to include any item connected with that sanctuary’s sacrificial cult—thirty-nine activities in all, including sowing and plowing, kneading and baking, spinning and tearing, slaughtering and writing, kindling or dousing a fire, and so on (Mishnah Shabbat 7:2).
Liberal-minded Jews often wonder about these things. Kindling fire was difficult work back then, they say, but flicking an electric switch is hardly backbreaking labor. Their bafflement is understandable, but they miss the biblical point. While they may well decide that turning on lights is permissible for them on Shabbat, that decision can hardly be based on the amount of actual toil involved. The Rabbis’ concept of work goes much deeper than that.
The thirty-nine forms of sanctuary work fall into four categories: baking bread (for the priests), preparing fabric (for the Tabernacle’s curtains), preparing a scroll (for writing), and building (the Mishkan itself). These four, however, are part of a larger category: they are all part of the human project of building and preserving culture.
This insight arrives by way of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who noted that every human society cooks food, mandates clothing, builds and decorates homes, and transmits learning from generation to generation. This insistence on converting raw nature into cuisine, style, art, and a historical record is what makes us fully human.
The rabbinic forms of work, then, are no mere laundry list of random items. They are all exemplifications of the grand human project of transforming nature into culture.
“Work” is not just going to a job or doing the housework, therefore. It is the ongoing human effort to leave our mark upon the world—a human project that inevitably engages us, because it is the means of staking out our worth and, in the end, leaving behind what we will be remembered for. It’s what gets us up in the morning.
But at the same time, it’s what we lose sleep over. So Shabbat is the day that provides a break from the ongoing task of advancing the human project, as if God says, “I hold you responsible for perfecting My world—but not today.”
Here, then, is how I, a liberal Jew, make Shabbat decisions. I consult halachah with seriousness; I then measure my life by its principles, but not by all its specific regulations. One such principle is to take time off from the human project. So anything connected with that project’s work and worry gets put on hold.
On Shabbat, I do not (for example) write my books, articles, and columns, but I do e-mail personal notes to friends and family. My Shabbat reading can be about anything—but not connected to my research. I study Torah, but not any section on which I am writing an article. I do no errands, but I drive to synagogue and leisure-time activities that enhance life’s fullness.
On Shabbat, I cherish the gift of family and friends; I fill my soul with music and art, love and laughter, nature and nurture, solitude and community. My responsibility for the human project will return soon enough, when Shabbat is over.
I have the highest regard for Jews who follow the traditional halachic guide to keeping Shabbat. But stipulating just that single path to proper Shabbat observance puts Shabbat beyond the reach of those who find its halachic details unpersuasive but who nonetheless want to honor Shabbat in a reasonable and satisfying way. This underlying “Principle of the Ongoing Human Project” can be a compelling guide to making Shabbat matter in our lives.
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Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD, is professor of liturgy, worship, and ritual at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion.
Editor’s Note: Most of the blogs on RavBlog are written by CCAR members. Occasionally, we share a blog by a special guest with a unique message. We are pleased to share this blog by poet Jessica Greenbaum.
I’ve resisted the impulse to tour our country’s beautiful deserts because of my clashing impulse to take a swim most days of my life. These two things just don’t go together. However, caught in that life-cycle moment of watching my youngest daughter gleefully wave goodbye from the window of her freshman dorm, I vowed to set out on new territory myself. Unlike Dante’s mid-life figure of The Inferno who finds himself in a dark wood, I found my mid-life self transported to the squint-inducing sunlight of Mesa, Arizona, which highlighted the orange and red striped canyons, and blue skies of the Tonto National Forest. The “forest” part was clearly tagged on to prize its rarest asset. Like the “green” of icy Greenland. I came to the desert ranch with a tour company that specializes in open water swimming vacations. Yes, they exist! They had mapped out a week’s course through three of the dammed lakes of the Salt River, also within the national forest. So, no problem swimming, but another problem loomed. Yom Kippur fell in the middle of the only week they offered. I took 40 seconds to think. Then, like any good tourist, I paid my money and packed my machzor.
As it works out, and for reasons fascinating only to myself, I was already waist deep in the most solitary experience of the holidays that I can remember. Unexpectedly, Rosh Hashana had been without my husband and girls: just me, Mishkan Hanefesh, and my laptop open on my quilt, for synagogue livestreaming. Whatever the congregation was doing virtually on the screen, I tried to follow on analogous pages. Just when I was getting teary about the yarzheit of my grandmother, I turned the page and—there it was! Stephen Ackerman’s awesome poem, “Effortless Affection,” which begins: “All last requests are granted / and this is mine: grasp my affection / in your hand and hold it there . . .” Beshert. I had my prayer book, so I had my shul.
Well that had been okay for a Rosh Hashana Plan B in Brooklyn. But determined to hear Kol Nidre in person, I arranged that during my trip I would attend an Arizonan congregation. I brought Mishkan Hanefesh with me in case they were using some old wooden machzor—which they were. I turned to my own when my mind wandered. As uninspiring as the service was, the tiny congregation was hamishe, I was with other Jews, and I needed that. Packing my own machzor made me feel faintly ancient. All those stories of the Jew traveling from one town to another and ducking in somewhere for services . . . all I needed was a donkey.
But what to do on Yom Kippur day? I could return to the shul, but enjoying my first real vacation for nine years, shouldn’t I spend every day of it swimming with the tour? Two words stopped me: Sandy Koufax. If the great pitcher could sit out the 1965 World Series and inspire John Goodman’s line in the movie The Big Lebowski “Three thousand years of beautiful tradition: from Moses to Sandy Koufax,” well, couldn’t I skip a day? The surrounding canyon walls and idiosyncratic menorahs of saguaro cacti designed the most tasteful tabernacle from here to Woodstock. I decided to hang out with Mishkan Hanefesh. I told my fellow swim lunatics to plow on without me. I livestreamed my favorite NYC synagogue and practiced a mix of e-Judaism and reading, wandering around the immediate canyon with my MacBook open and machzor in hand, singing along. The new ner tamid looks like an apple with a bite out of it. Somehow this goes together.
Well, I never spent so long in services. Here’s what I liked about it. At that remove, I happily couldn’t miss the fantasy congregation—of close friends and family—I had never actually had. I was better able to concentrate on the demand Yom Kippur makes on the conscience. I wrote down those aspects of my personality I needed to confront. ( . . . page 2. . . .) The livestream lets viewers chat in the screen’s margin, a cyber gathering of the disenfranchised from all over the world. So you could still tell latecomers what figurative page we were on! If the NYC congregation was mumbling or otherwise leaving me behind, I could page through my machzor and find what I needed, learn what was there for me. I wasn’t bothering anyone when I fidgeted. I wasn’t thinking what I had to bring to break the fast, or if the brisket would be done. I had my prayer book so I had my shul. When the rabbi took a break for two hours, I took a little dip in the ranch pool. I know you’re not supposed to. But a little swim let me return to the pages and the services and take in what I could even if I wasn’t fasting when I was wandering. The desert and canyons surrounded. I was getting someplace, I could feel it.
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Jessica Greenbaum is poet living in Brooklyn, and is the author two volumes of poetry, Inventing Difficulty (Silverfish Review Press, 1998), winner of the Gerald Cable Prize, and The Two Yvonnes (2012), which was chosen by Paul Muldoon for Princeton’s Series of Contemporary Poets. She is the poetry editor for upstreet, received a 2015 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America in 2016. Some of her poems are featured in CCAR publications, including The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, and Mishkan HaNefesh.
