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Machzor Blog: Waiting All Day for Yizkor

imagesThe hour of the day is late, but the seats in my congregation on Yom Kippur are full.  It is time for Yizkor, and despite the exhaustion and hunger draining us all, everyone is all here.  Many have been waiting all day – some, all year – just for this moment.

When I was a newly ordained rabbi, I had a hard time understanding Yizkor.  I had not experienced death or loss as an adult, thank God, and the power of Yizkor was a mystery to me.  I tried putting on the airs of a knowing wise rabbi, tried to put on my best well-modulated rabbinic voice as I conducted the service, but, honestly, Yizkor was an awkward hour for me.  Today, I can’t say I have any great chochmah about the mysteries of death and mourning much more now, but 15 years later, I do know some of my own losses.  I have sat with many more grieving people, held their loss with them, and shared their pain.  And as I grow older myself, I see the arc of my own life and, more and more, can project how, one day, it will reach its conclusion.  Like the rest of Yom Kippur, Yizkor is our ritual to help us confront our true doubts and fears about life.  As much as ever, we need our Machzor to be an effective tool to help us shape a meaningful Yizkor.

The poetry and readings of Yizkor in the old Gates of Repentance have taught me a great deal.   Their words echo in my mind throughout the year: “Scarcely ushered into life, we begin our journey to the grave…”  “If some messenger were to come to us with the offer that death should be overthrown, but with the condition that birth should also cease…”  “In the rising of the sun and in its going down…”  Gates of Repentance did set the stage for my generation of rabbis by teaching us what Yizkor could mean, how it could affect our lives.

And yet, updates are needed for the new machzor.  The Yizkor of Gates of Repentance (GoR) is crammed too full with words, at least for me.  It feels at times like a dry desert of words, when we need a spiritual pool to immerse in.  It still dwells too much on the martyrdom of the Holocaust, especially at its climactic moments.  The Psalms traditionally found in Yizkor are treated more like obligations than opportunities.  But music is critically important to the power of Yizkor.  The occasions for music in the GoR are almost all from the Classical, composed set, and very formal.   Elegant though they are, I believe today’s congregations appreciate more contemporary music, or music that is paired-down, even at Yizkor, and it would be helpful to have texts that facilitate this kind of music.  I fell in love with the Carlebach “HaNeshamah Lach” in GoR (page 485), and I thirst for more musical opportunities like this in the new Mishkan HaNefesh (the new machzor).  We might even ask:  Can the pages of a machzor encourage the use of niggunim?

IMG_4107Another note: The 23rd Psalm presents its own challenges, because the King James language is so well-known and beloved, but gendered, and the more modern gender-neutral versions are so clumsy (including, in my opinion, the recent attempts by the CCAR).   Leading a recent shiva minyan from Mishkan T’filah for a House of Mourning, I encountered quizzical looks and puzzled faces when we reached the new translation of the 23rd Psalm; the spell of the moment was broken by its awkwardness.  (“Where did ‘the valley of the Shadow of Death’ go?” one person wondered, let down by the new language.)

But the best words I speak on Yom Kippur are at Yizkor when I am simply silent, and just sit down.  A few years ago, I found instructions for a guided meditation at Yizkor that invites the congregation to re-experience their lost ones again, asking them to hear their voices, feel their touch, imagine the words they would share were they to encounter them once again.  We need the white space on the page to offer this experience at Yizkor.  More important than the words of prayer, the Machzor can facilitate our true experience of prayer.

Grief is very often accompanied by intense loneliness.  Sometimes on Yizkor I think the members of our congregations experience it in isolation, even in a crowded Sanctuary.  Our Conservative colleague Rabbi Harold Kushner writes that “the primary message of the twenty-third Psalm is not that bad things will not happen to us.  It is that we will never have to face those bad things alone, ‘for Thou art with me.’”  Although each person’s loss is personal and unique, often beyond expression, if the new Machzor could somehow build bridges among us all during Yizkor, and if it could help us feel that indeed we are not all alone, we would all be stronger.

Rabbi Andy Vogel is the rabbi at Temple Sinai in Brookline, MA, a 300-family congregation.  He was ordained at HUC-JIR in New York in 1998, and is a member of the Machzor poetry committee.

Learn more about the new CCAR Machzor.  For more information about participating in piloting, email machzor@ccarnet.org.

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Books News Prayer Reform Judaism

Machzor Blog: Parades and Prayer Books – Considering the Music in the New CCAR Machzor

Many years ago, even before I thought of attending cantorial school, I applied for a job with Macy’s department store in New York City to be an associate in the 346036616_640
division responsible for the Thanksgiving parade. As part of the interview process, I was told how planning for the parade goes on year–round, with the next year’s parade preparation beginning the day after the current parade concludes. The giant helium balloons are just barely in their crates, the marching bands aren’t even back on their planes, and the Thanksgiving festivities are being organized for the next year!

For many of us who lead services, the planning of High Holidays is a similar venture. True, there are no marching bands and giant helium filled balloons, but the preparation for these Yamim Noraim– the Days of Awe – is a continuous, ongoing process. As a cantor, I am constantly reviewing new music, thinking of new liturgical possibilities, and along with the rabbis envisioning how to bring the message of the High Holidays to our community in ways that will enrich all of our lives and touch our souls.

One of the challenges cantors face in the planning of our High Holiday services is the incredible wealth of musical material from which to choose. The palette of 991091
Jewish music is ever widening and broadening as each year new compositions are composed. One of our roles as shalichei tzibur – messengers of the congregation- is to determine which musical settings of our prayers meet our needs and the congregation’s in best portraying the text. An ongoing question as I
prepare for the High Holidays is: “Does this setting of this particular prayer meet the specific needs of my community at this moment in the liturgical arc of the High Holidays?” This requires that I cull through many musical settings of these prayers always attempting to find balance between tradition and modernity, contemporary music and Mi Sinai tunes, the familiar and the unknown.

At the present time, I serve as the cantorial representative to the CCAR’s editorial committee for a new High Holiday machzor. This new High Holiday prayer book will feature substantial changes from Gates of Repentance and is the first High Holiday prayer book written for the Reform Jewish community in over a generation. Based on the layout of Mishkan Tefillah, the new machzor features the now familiar multi-vocal approach to prayer by featuring Hebrew text, an English translation, interpretations of the prayer, and in many cases additional explanation and illumination. The new CCAR machzor not only presents modern interpretations of many of the High Holiday prayers, but it also includes many traditional ancient and medieval liturgical poems (piyyutim). As a member of this committee, I am constantly aware of not only of the theology and philosophy presented by the editors and authors of this new machzor, but I try to imagine what will the services actually sound like. As part of this project I wonder: How does the addition of new text and new prayers affect the sound, the music, and the melody of the High Holidays? Are we as cantors prepared to meet the musical, artistic, and liturgical challenges that a decidedly 21st century machzor proposes?

An illustration of these very real challenges is manifest in the presentation of the text for Avinu Malkeinu. Gates of Repentance includes some of its verses, but the new machzor attempts to include more of the traditional text as it informs the liturgical and theological movement from Rosh HaShanah through Yom Kippur. How will we adapt the much loved and familiar setting of Max Janowski’s Avinu Malkeinu to a new machzor, for example?

Listen Listen1

Will this traditional interpretation of Avinu Malkeinu fulfill our needs as a community of worshippers alongside contemporary interpretations of the same prayer?

Listen Listen2

Will comparatively new settings of Avinu Malkeinu better serve our needs as a congregation as they present a different view of the text?

Listen Listen3

Perhaps an Avinu Malkeinu that mixes traditional melody with contemporary harmonies will be an Avinu Malkeinu that provides the mystery and majesty we seek during these Days of Awe.

Listen Listen4

We as a community of clergy and congregants need to not only explore the musical settings currently available, but we need to encourage a new generation of composers to share with us their interpretations of our hallowed prayers. The new CCAR machzor will pose both considerable and exciting challenges to our High Holiday worship, and as a community we will meet these challenges by re-imagining tradition while considering the new. As we look forward to publication of the new machzor perhaps the words of Rav Kook may serve to guide us: “May the old become new and may the new become holy.”

  1. Avinu Malkeinu, by Max Janowski. Sung by Cantor Lisa Levine. From Gems of the High Holy Days.
  2. Avinu Malkeinu, traditionalmelody, arranged by Elliot Z. Levine. Sung by The Western Wind with Cantor Alberto Mizrahi. The Birthday of The World, Part II: Yom Kippur (WW 1872).
  3. Avinu Malkeinu. Composed and sung by Cantor Meir Finkelstein. From Sh’ma Koleinu.
  4. Avinu Malkeinu. Composed and sung by Cantor Ramon Tasat. From Teshuva Liturgical Explorations for the Days of Awe.

Cantor Evan Kent, a 1988 graduate of the HUC Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, has been the cantor at Temple Isaiah for twenty-five years.  Evan is also on the faculty of HUC-LA and is a doctoral candidate at Boston University where he is studying how music at Jewish summer camps helps to inform Jewish identity. In July 2013, Evan and his husband, Rabbi Donald Goor, will be fulfilling a life-long dream of making aliyah to Jerusalem.

Learn more about the new CCAR Machzor.  For more information about participating in piloting, email machzor@ccarnet.org.

This blog post appeared previously on the URJ Ten Minutes of Torah.

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Books General CCAR Prayer Reform Judaism

Machzor Blog: “I’m Not A Sheep”

IMG_0361“Please Dad, tell them I’m not a sheep.” Those were my teenage daughter’s parting words to me as I attended the first “Think Tank” in 2008 for creating a new machzor for our movement. All invited to that meeting were asked to reflect upon what we wanted to see in our new High Holy Day liturgy and convene congregants in advance to glean ideas as to what was meaningful and problematic in their worship experience.

What a challenge it is for the machzor editors to be responsive to numerous perspectives, while being faithful to Jewish tradition and creative in the spirit of Reform Judaism! Based upon the pilot editions, I believe they are definitely on the right track. Our congregation experienced both, the Rosh HaShanah morning service during a mock Yuntif service in April, serving apples and honey for flavor and we incorporated the Yom Kippur afternoon service into our actual worship this past fall. Many of the suggestions from that original Think Tank are incorporated into the draft editions. Let me be more specific.

Our congregation enjoys Mishkan T’filah. Having the traditional prayer, transliterations, creative alternatives and commentaries to enhance our High Holy Day GalaApplesHoney2
worship experience was desired. One of my members offered that just as a child likes to hear the same story read repeatedly, as a comforting part of bedtime ritual, he/she also likes different books. So too, our machzor needs to offer customary spiritually nurturing opportunities, whether through spoken word, Torah text or musical expression. Faithful translations that attempt to be literally and poetically correct invite access to tradition, along with creative alternatives, which add perspective. There is still a challenge to be careful lest a “contemporary” prayer be appropriate for 2013, but irrelevant 20-30 years from now. I am recalling the “coal miner’s prayer” from the UPB and Vietnam War era references in Gates of Repentance.

All will agree that Avinu Malkeinu is one of the central prayers of the High Holy Day experience. The cadence of reading and the melody that Moshe Rabbeinu whispered to Max Janowski are expected by our worshippers. Offering paths to the familiar, along with creative expressions is critical and our editors have done that.

But altering the Shofar service by scattering its three sections strategically throughout the service? What’s that all about? Going into the process, my members looked forward to creative, perhaps even radical thinking in the spirit and tradition of Reform Judaism to be part of the process. Much to my surprise, when we piloted Rosh Hashanah and experienced the new format, it met with almost universal positive reaction. Should this change become permanent, the first year will be a shock. The second year will be a bit disconcerting and by the third it will be Reform tradition.

Annually as the Holy Days approach, colleagues on line ask about Yom Kippur afternoon alternatives to Gates of Repentance. So I was delighted to pilot the service in that time slot this past year. Though we did not read Torah, a simultaneous study group, led by Rabbi Barbara Metzinger resonated to the teachings in Leviticus 18, which suggests that our people are open to Torah text diversity. One desire expressed by my members from 2008 was to focus on Jewish values. Having the middot allowed us to learn and grow, as well as creating the feel of what is typical during Shabbat. The two worship experiences should be different, but not completely.

 Our group wanted the editors to deal with the word “sin.” I know they are still struggling with how to best translate chet. So far they are not wrong, but may have missed the mark.

Finally, there are many theological issues to creating a liturgy that leaves room for the spectrum from customary beliefs to extreme doubt, as reflected by my microcosm of the movement. Some reject the words of Unetaneh Tokef and no matter how much you provide in teaching or metaphorical form, it does not fly. Still, others embrace it. Alternative theological opportunities abound in the early editions. But, alas my dear daughter, “We are Your flock; You are our shepherd.” is still to be found, but maybe, if you ask nicely, the rabbi may elect to read the Nelly Sachs poem on the other side of the page.


Bob Loewy is rabbi at Congregation Gates of Prayer in Metairie, LA since 1984, currently serves as Program Vice President for the CCAR and grew up in the Reform movement.

Learn more about the new CCAR Machzor.  For more information about participating in piloting, email machzor@ccarnet.org.

 

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Machzor Blog: The Rhythm of the Page

The rhythm for the conversation was clear to me from the start.  As we began to pilot the new CCAR machzor, my congregation’s diverse volunteer group would discuss specific passages and the general tone. Topics would include the positioning of the Hebrew on the page and the very numbering of the pages.  I could predict the conversation’s rhythm, but not that our attention would be drawn to the very rhythm of certain pages.

The setting of the Al Cheit prayer was among those very pages.  Considering the list of sins in this prayer, we knew we would discuss content, but we also found ourselves pondering layout.  My congregants have been impressed equally by the machzor editors’ openness to considering items as diverse as the translation of Al Cheit Shechatanu and of the very rhythm of that prayer’s page.

Currently, most Reform synagogues use Gates of Repentance, first published in 1979 and updated in 1986.  I have had the honor of worshipping in over a dozen synagogues over the years, as a child, student, rabbi, and even just an adult worshipper.  The style of these synagogues has differed greatly in the music, the balance of Hebrew and English, and the general level of formality.  However, all of these Yom Kippur services have followed the basic rhythm for reciting Al Cheit, and some other prayers.  We have alternated the two languages

HEBREW

ENGLISH

HEBREW

ENGLISH

continually down the page.  We have followed what I would call the “rhythm of the page,” whether we have read, sung, or alternated our way through Al Cheit. Sure, other prayerbooks, including the Reform Judaism’s earlier Union Prayer Book, don’t have this alternating rhythm.  Sure, there are Reform synagogues that don’t move back and forth between the two languages.  However, clearly what I have experienced is not uncommon.  Reform congregations tend to work our way through the prayer’s pattern by following the rhythm of the page.

The Al Cheit is a great window into the creative process of our editors.  At one early moment, we faced a very different rhythm of the page.  The page’s layout challenged our worship.  We could read or sing the Hebrew and then read or skip the English, but it was awkward to alternate in our familiar pattern.  My volunteers immediately understood one of the issues at play.  Our current machzor includes just Hebrew and English.  The pilot book juggles Hebrew, English, and transliterated Hebrew.  At one stage, the page presented itself as

HEBREW       TRANSLITERATION

HEBREW       TRANSLITERATION

ENGLISH

ENGLISH

though in fuller form.  How might we balance these three aspects of the prayer on one page? How might we honor familiar modes of Reform Jewish worship? Yet, how might we challenge ourselves to pray in new ways?

How pleasant it was to discover a different, yet more familiar, rhythm of the same basic prayer in a later version of the machzor.  Here, all three versions of the words are included.  We preserve a layout that enables us to pray as we have for decades.  We are granted the opportunity to recite these prayers in other ways, if we so choose.  There is nothing sacred about a rhythm of

HEBREW       TRANSLITERATION

ENGLISH

HEBREW       TRANSLITERATION

ENGLISH                                     

However, there is something beloved and familiar.  Reform Jews have a remarkable ability to critique our very manner of worship.  Yet, those same worshippers enjoy a certain level of comfort in the practices of our synagogues.  A new machzor will encourage exciting new approaches and tones to our communal and personal prayers.  However, the editors of the ever-evolving CCAR machzor clearly are valuing the touchstones that shape our services. 

We can’t just talk about layout when developing a new machzor. We must also discuss the choices of what to include and how to translate each passage.  However, layout matters.  My congregation and I have learned that we are in search of a certain rhythm of a page, the very layout itself, that will enable us to connect and consider our lives as we recite Al Cheit and other prayers.  The machzor’s challenge is clear, yet even broader, because other prayers might call for other rhythms on the page.

Rabbi Andrew Busch serves Baltimore Hebrew Congregation.

Learn more about the new CCAR Machzor.  For more information on piloting the machzor, email machzor@ccarnet.org.

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Machzor Blog: Piyyutim and the Machzor

There was a time, more than century and a half ago, when piyyutim were seen largely as a kind of cultural burden to be cast aside in order to make the service shorter and more meaningful.  Early liturgical reformers argued that the siddur and machzor had grown too lengthy and no longer inspired modern Jews.  Piyyutim – medieval poetic extensions of the traditional prayers, with allusions incomprehensible to the average congregant – were first on the chopping block. The irony, however, lies in the fact that the piyut was itself a sort of liturgical reform.  While earlier generations of Jews were unable to change the statutory service itself, piyyutim allowed for an imaginative embellishment of that service.  It highlighted and expanded particular parts of the liturgy.  It added additional opportunities for congregational singing.  It was, in short, an early version of the “creative service.”

Over the past decade, there has been a growing phenomenon in Israel centered around the rediscovery and revival of medieval piyutim – not just in the synagogue (in fact, largely not in the synagogue), but rather in the cultural realms largely controlled by self-defined “secular” Jews.  Once seen primarily as an impediment for the modern worshiper, piyyutim are now being studied and sung by local “kehillot sharot” / singing communities that gather weekly in homes and community centers.  These groups combine community building, ethnomusicology, history and text study.  New CDs by popular artists are constantly being released with new musical settings to these piyyutim. Piyyut festivals in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have drawn hundreds of people of all ages.  The interest in reviving piyut is fueled in part by the small but significant programs and projects that driven by native-born self-described “secular” Israelis rediscovering the Jewish bookshelf, and reclaiming Jewish heritage on their own terms and in their own way.

There is an amazing website that has a staggering collection of recordings of piyyutim from dozens of different communities, explanations of the piyyut’s authorship and history, and the lyrics.  One piyut alone might have a dozen recordings made from paytanim, chazanim and congregations.  The most robust part of the site is in Hebrew only, but a significant selection of materials is available on the English language part of the site.  Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York convened a conference a few years back aimed at bringing the piyyut phenomenon to America, and some materials that emerged from that effort are also on the English language part of the site.

Creating a new Reform machzor that will be used for the next 30-40 years requires us to pay attention to this growing piyyut revival. From these creative efforts, our congregations may find new models for re-introducing this classic poetry to the Reform synagogue.

The new openness to expanding the number of piyyutim is found in several places within the machzor, but most especially with the selichot prayers of Yom Kippur, particularly the most fully developed version in Kol Nidre.

So here are two piyyutim that we have included in the draft of the new machzor, and a link to one traditional and one contemporary recording of each.  Enjoy.

Here is Yonatan Razel singing Adon HaSelichot (Chatanu lifanecha.)

Here is the same piyyut sung in the traditional style of Jerusalem Sefardi community.

Here is Meir Banai singing his arrangement of Aneinu.

And the same piyyut sung by the Cochin Jews of India.

Learn more about the new CCAR Machzor.

 

 

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Books General CCAR Prayer

Machzor Blog: Faithful Translations

Some Rabbinic texts suggest that the first translation of the Torah into Greek received a kind of divine imprimatur by the Holy One himself (or, herself).  Seventy translators each produced an identical translation, a miraculous feat!  In contrast, other Rabbinic sources explicitly assert that the day the Torah was translated into Greek was as disastrous to the Jewish people as the sin of the golden calf.  So, for the past 2,500 years, translation has been fraught with danger and also with very strong reactions. And so, too for our machzor.

The fresh, poetic translations found within the new Machzor are perhaps the very first thing that pilot congregations have noticed.  The philosophy that our primary translators, Rabbis Shelly and Janet Marder, have embraced is to achieve a faithful translation that is the equivalent to the original Hebrew, but not identical to it.  Shelly writes in the introduction to the pilot for Rosh HaShanah morning: “We want to replicate the beauty, the poetry, and the richness of imagery and metaphor that the Hebrew prayer presents.  That is all but impossible if one translates word for word or phrase for phrase; to replicate beauty, poetry, and richness we must translate ‘idea for idea’ and ‘feeling for feeling.’”

Our own discussions about translation find some surprising parallels within the Catholic Church.  The English-speaking Catholic Church recently introduced a new missal for the Mass.  It chose English words that reflected a more “accurate” translation of the Latin.  But such a philosophy of translation ran counter to the wishes of many laypeople and clergy.  You can read more about this here.

In the pilot machzor, Shelly writes, “We strive here for English renderings that are as pleasing to heart, mind, soul, and ear as the original prayers are in Hebrew.”

Here are 3 renderings of the prayer, Hayom Harat Olam compiled by Shelly.  Though they differ from one another, the translations below are considered by their authors to be faithful renderings of those Hebrew prayers.

Gates of Repentence (1978, Reform)

 This is the day of the world’s birth. This day all creatures stand before You, whether

as children or as slaves. As we are Your children, show us a parent’s compassion; as

we are slaves, we look to You for mercy: shed the light of Your judgment upon us, O

awesome and holy God.

 

Mahzor Lev Shalem (2010, Conservative)

 Today the world stands as at birth. Today all creation is called to judgment, whether

as Your children or as Your servants. If as Your children, be compassionate with

us as a parent is compassionate with children. If as Your servants, we look to You

expectantly, waiting for You to be gracious to us, and as day emerges from night

bring forth a favorable judgment on our behalf, awe-inspiring and Holy One.

 

Our forthcoming Reform machzor (a work in progress)

 This day, the world is born anew, and all creation awaits Your judgment.

We are Your daughters; we are Your sons —

So love and remember us in the way of mothers and fathers.

We are Yours in service —

so let there be light to guide us in the corridors of justice and on the path of holiness.

 And here are 3 different translations of Areshet S’fateinu:

 

Gates of Repentence (1978, Reform)

 O God Supreme, accept the offering of our lips, the sound of the Shofar. In love and

favor hear us, as we invoke your remembrance.

 

Mahzor Lev Shalem (2010, Conservative)

 May the words of our lips be pleasing to You, exalted God, who listens, discerns,

considers, and attends to the sound of our shofar blast. Lovingly accept our offering

of verses proclaiming Your remembrance.

 

Our forthcoming Reform machzor (a work in progress)

 Taste the sweetness our lips sing to You, God Most High. You are knowing and

attentive, watchful and aware when we call out: T’kiah! Lovingly, favorably receive

our Service of Zichronot!

 

What strikes you most as you compare the three translations of each prayer?

What is most important to you about the English translation of a Hebrew prayer?  What are the qualities about a translation that you value most?

 [Find out more about the new CCAR machzor.]

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Greetings from CCAR Trip to Israel!

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://ccarravblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/hp_photo.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Rabbi Hara Person is the Publisher & Director of CCAR Press. [/author_info] [/author] No matter how many times I travel to Israel, the actual entry into the country never ceases to move me.  From the moment we enter Israeli air space, to the actual landing on Israeli soil, I am still filled with a sense of awe at what it means in the scope of Jewish history to arrive in the State in Israel.

Today is officially the first day of the CCAR Israel Fam Trip and Solidarity Mission.  The original purpose of this trip was to teach rabbis ordained in the last ten years how to lead a congregational or community trip to Israel (hence “Fam”, short for familiarization).  Because of the events of the last two weeks, we also opened up the trip to colleagues who wanted to come and support Israel at this challenging time.

I am excited to get to know this diverse group of colleagues, who come from around the country, and represent many different ordination years.  Rabbi Michael Weinberg, of Temple Beth Israel, Skokie, IL, is our group leader and I am honored to be the CCAR staff leader.  We are also joined by Rabbi Jonathan Stein, CCAR President, from Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City.  I am also looking forward to learning from Uri Feinberg, our wonderful madrich from ARZA World/Da’at.

Even though I have been to Israel over thirty times since I first came to Israel with NFTY’s CAY program in 1983, I know from my experience on the previous CCAR Fam Trip that I will learn much and get to see Israel anew.I am also looking forward to using the new CCAR resource for Israel trips, Birkon Artzi: Blessings and Meditations for Travelers to Israeledited by Rabbi Serge Lippe.  This fantastic resource will help deepen and enrich our experience as we travel around the country. As we opened with our first discussion this afternoon, we began with a beautiful reading from the book, which helped set the tone for what will be an intensive, emotional and thought-provking time together.

Now we’re off to Kehilat Yotzma, to pray with our colleagues Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon and Rabbi Nir Barkin, and then to Shabbat dinner at our madrich‘s house.

Shabbat shalom!

 

 

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Books Prayer Reform Judaism

Machzor Blog: How ‘Current’ Should a Prayer Book Be?

Machzor Page-spread

There are those who look to a prayer book to reflect – in language and in tone – the lives we aspire to live.  The words of prayer should uplift, sanctify, and elevate.  For others, when confronted exclusively with such language, they feel as though the prayer book is irrelevant, that it has nothing to real say, that it is, at best, a relic.

The 2-page spread format for this new machor, like Mishkan T’filah, enables us to do both.  Or at least to try.  And sure enough, many respondents to pilot versions of the Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur draft services responded by saying things like, “I found my own voice in this prayer book,” while others were offended by the very same readings.

Calibrating this balance between the real and the ideal can be tricky.

Just a single word can make a reading seemingly inappropriate for a prayer book, as the editorial team is learning from piloting feedback.  In a pilot version of Rosh HaShanah morning, a left-side reading from the Orthodox theologian, Yitz Greenberg, offered an alternative on the part of Emet v’Yatziv  (the blessing after Sh’ma that speaks of redemption) this reading:

Where does Israel get the strength –

The chutzpah –

To go on believing in redemption

In a world

That knows mass hunger

And political exile

And [refugees]?

 

How can Jews testify to hope and human value

When they have been

Continuously persecuted,

Hated,

Dispelled,

Destroyed?

 

Out of the memories of the Exodus!

(Where does Israel, “Jewish Courage in the Hope for Redemption,” Irving Greenberg, in Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation, Dov Peretz Elkins, Jewish Lights, 2010, p. 68.)

Many respondents commented that they didn’t want the word “chutzpah” in their prayer book, and suggested that it was chutzpadik for us to put it in there.  The word is too colloquial, too irreverent, they said.

On the other hand, there are cases where the language was perceived as so lofty, indeed so “highfalutin”, that it was experienced negatively as well.  For example, opposite Mi Chamocha, we put the following by William Blake:

Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau:
Mock on, Mock on, ‘tis all in vain!

You throw the sand against the wind,

And the wind blows it back again.

 

And every sand becomes a Gem,

Reflected in the beam divine;

Blown back they bling the mocking Eye,

But still in Israel’s paths they shine.

 

The Atoms of Democritus

And Newton’s Particles of Light

Are sand upon the Red sea shore,

Where Israel’s tends do shine so bright.

This poem by Uri Zvi Greenberg, was placed opposite Birkat Avodah (the “R’tzei – the fifth blessing of the festival Amidah).  Some felt it to be too racy to be read aloud in a synagogue, and it was removed from the second draft.

Like a woman who knows that her body entices me,

God, You taunt me:  Flee if you can! But I can’t flee.

For when I turn away from You, angry and heartsick,

With a vow on my lips like a burning coal:
I will not see You again –

I can’t do it,

I turn back

And know on Your door

Tortured with longing

As though You had sent me a love letter.

(Like a woman who knows, Uri Zvi Greenberg, translated and adapted by Chaim Stern, in Gates of Forgiveness, CCAR, 1980, p. 30.)

Some didn’t want the prayers to make them feel sad.  A reading and a poem about Alzheimer’s disease that paralleled the Zichronot section of the Rosh HaShanah morning service were disturbing to some.  In the reading, we included the following text:

 Let us use our gift of memory to remember all who are affected by illnesses that cause dementia, along with loved ones, friends and caregivers.  Let us find ways to share God’s message of love and blessing.

A poem by Donna Wahlert, entitled, Here Let Us: Late Middle Alzheimer’s Disease accompanied the text in the first draft of the service.

Here let us sit together

under the weeping beech

here let us talk about milk glass

chifforobes and elderberry wine

here let us sooth your ankles

swollen with childhood memories

we won’t remind you that your mother

has been gone for thirty years

that the house you want to go

home to is no longer there

that your children are drown and gray

that you are the last of your friends

here let us drink our wintergreen tea

and talk about this primrose

the thing spaghetti you had for lunch

the nurse who brings you Hershey bars

here let us not dream about the days to come

here let us sing you your mother

here let us sing you your children

here let us sing you home. 

(Here let us sit, Donna Wahlert, “Here Let Us: Late Middle Alzheimer’s Disease,” in The First Pressing: Poetry of the Everyday, iUniverse Inc., 2003, p. 123.)

There are readings that feel too raw to some.  Take, for example, Linda Pastan’s poem The Bronx, 1942

When I told him to shut up,

my father slammed on the brakes and left

me like a parcel in the car

on a strange street, to punish me

he said for lack of respect, though

what he always feared was lack of love.

I know now just how long

 

forgiveness can take

and that is can be harder than respect

or even love.  My father stayed angry

for a week.  But I still remember

the gritty color of the sky through

that windshield, and how, like a parcel

I started to come apart.

(The Bronx, 1942, Linda Pastan, Carnival Eve­ning: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998, NY: 1998, W.W. Norton, p. 274.)

Or, how about this alternative reading entitled, “Avinu Malkeinu: A Prayer of Protest”

Avinu Malkeinu –

Hear our voice:
Some of us have cancer.

Some have lost strength of body; some have lost memory and speech.

Some of us are in pain.

Some can’t find work.

Some of us bear the marks of human cruelty – inside, where the scars don’t show.

Some live with depression; some battle addiction; many feel alone.

Some have known shattered marriages, trust betrayed, hopes destroyed.

Some of us have lost the ones we love, far too soon.

And some of us have lost a child.

All of us have seen suffering in our midst.

All of us know the ravages of war – for which there are no words.

 

Avinu Malkeinu, why?
Avinu Malkeinu, are you there?  Do you care?

Avinu Malkeinu, hear our pain.

Hear our anger. Hear our grief.

Avinu Malkeinu, here is our prayer:
Give us the strength to go on.

Give us reasons to get up each day; give us purpose and persistence.

Help us to fend off fear and to hold on to hope.

Help us to be kind.

Don’t make us bow or grovel for your favor.  Give us dignity and give us courage.

 

Avinu Malkeinu –

Show us the way to a year of goodness.

Renew our belief that the world can be better.

Restore our faith in life.  Restore our faith in you.

(Copyright © 2012 by CCAR Press.  All rights reserved)

Can the Machzor simultaneously inspire, while speaking to the reality of our everyday lives?  Is there a place for sadness, regret, sensuality, anger, and doubt within the pages of the prayer book?  What do we lose by including such readings, and what do we gain?  What would be lost if we left them out?  We’re interested in your thoughts.

Rabbi Leon Morris is on the editorial team of the new CCAR machzor, and is the rabbi of Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, NY. 

[Find out more about the new CCAR machzor.]

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New Title from CCAR Press: Beyond Breaking the Glass

Beyond Breaking the Glass: A Spiritual Guide to Your Jewish Wedding, Revised Edition

Nancy H. Wiener, D.Min.

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