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CCAR in Israel: Highlights of Two Days

HUC-in-JerusalemMonday:

Undelivered cell phone kerfuffles did not hinder the important in-person conversations with HUC-JIR students. On our January Tikkun Olam and Solidarity Mission in Israel, CCAR incoming VP for Program, Debbie Bravo, co-chair Ariana Silverman, and I engaged with Jerusalem HUC-JIR students about their hopes for their careers and how CCAR supports them. They are excited to access our lifelong learning resources and opportunities for chevruta.

For some, these contacts have begun with relationships with many of you who have taught them, inspired them, mentored them and encouraged them in their rabbinic journeys. Indeed, on one side of Debbie Bravo sat a young man she knows from NFTY GER and on the other side sat a young woman she met as a unit head at Harlam.

I look forward to meeting them again on their respective stateside campuses over the next four years as each member of the CCAR rabbinic staff generally meets with almost each class, on each campus, each year, making approximately 20-25 times conversations over the course of each student’s seminary time. When possible, CCAR leadership volunteers also spend time with students. Over the course of these years our student members receive an orientation to CCAR and most importantly we develop personal relationships with each of them. In addition their student memberships enable them to access our teleconferences, webinars, newsletters as well as Convention. L’hitraot often in the years ahead.

 

Wednesday, by Rabbi Danny Gottlieb

 

100_8323Yesterday afternoon we visited one of the 14 student villages built by the Ayalim Foundation, which was established 10 years ago by five young people in memory of two friends who had been murdered in a terrorist incident.  The mission of the foundation is to build student villages as part of a larger plan to create communities in places that need them, such as deserted or difficult neighborhoods.  The students who live in the villages, in return for subsidized accommodations, accept an obligation to volunteer in the local community in a variety of ways that serve to strengthen the social fabric and the educational standard of the community.  They tutor children after school, support learning disabled children, provide after school activities and social programs, as well as being role models for the children in the neighborhood.
The village we visited, just south of Beersheva, was home to about 80 students of the Ben Gurion University.  The students volunteer for 8 hours a week in the local community, as well as one Friday a month when they help to clean up the neighborhood.  And also, during the Pesach and summer semester breaks, they volunteer to build the village.  You see, the village, which began with a single pre-fab building, has been expanded into a complete village, with 40 apartments, a student center, moadon and public square, all of which have been built by the students themselves (under the supervision of a construction foreman, of course…) A small alumni village exists alongside the student village, and there are plans to expand the alumni village. Financial support comes from a combination of private philanthropy, federation support and government grants.
In its 10 years of existence the Foundation has seen over 6000 students through its program.  These students have touched the lives of more than 25,000 children in the communities of which the 14 villages are a part.  At present, there are 5000 applications for 800 available spaces for next year.
4453260338_6f73a51f68_oThe other part of the Ayalim Foundation’s mission is to assist in the development of the Negev Region, which is seen as both the fulfillment of David Ben Gurion’s dream and the key to the future development of the State of Israel.  The Negev has vast land and solar resources, and is the center for cutting-edge research in conservation, eco-system and energy sustainability.  The idea is that if the students build the village and help to develop the local community themselves, they will feel a part of the community and they will choose to stay in the region.  And according to Danielle, a 22 year-old student from Jerusalem, it is likely that she will do just that.
The Ayalim Foundation belief is not that “if you build it, they will come” rather, “if they build it, they will stay!”

Rabbi Danny Gottlieb is the Rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel Judea in San Francisco, CA.  He is currently participating on the CCAR Solidarity and Social Action MIssion to Israel, part of the CCAR Leadership Travel series.

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CCAR on the Road General CCAR Israel News Reform Judaism

Our Day of Solidarity: CCAR Leadership Trip to Israel

To meet people who live in the area surrounding Gaza and to hear the personal stories reinforces the complexity of the situation demonstrated through their real life experiences.  Our mission visited Moshav Netiv HaAsarah, Kibbutz Kfar Aza and the town of Sderot on Election Day. AlanKatz1

Raz Shmilovitz, a tour educator and farmer from Netiv HaAsarah spoke of his parents being part of this community when it was established in 1975 in the Sinai. The uprooting of the moshav after the peace treaty with Egypt led to their present location on the northern border of Gaza within the original boundaries of Israel. They chose this locale so that no one would dispute their right to live on that land.  He used an expression based on two Hebrew words which have similar pronunciation but different spelling.  “If you don’t work (eebeyd with an ayin) the land, you will lose (eebeyd with an alef) the land.  Another member, Roni, spoke of her participation in The Other Voice, continues to believe that they must dialogue with Gazans.  During Pillar of Defense a friend from Gaza called her to ask how she and her family were doing.  She calls herself a realist and not a dreamer.  According to her the dreamers are those who think they can continue in the present state of affairs.

At Kfar Aza, Chen Avraham, who works for the IMPJ, came back to the Kibbutz to raise her son in this wonderful environment.  Now her challenge is to keep his perspective to not hate all Arabs.  During the war a rocket landed just outside of her grandmother’s home who was safe with her caretaker in the shelter but found her bed covered with ash and broken glass. From both of these places we were able to look out across the border, a few hundred yards away, even seeing a few Gazans who were chased away from approaching too closely.

In both communities many of the women and children were evacuated but others remained.  We witnessed people of tremendous resilience as many continue to suffer from traumatic stress disorders.  And yet on this sunny day we saw children and adults seemingly living a normal life.  At Netiv HaAsarah an artist designed a peace mosaic to which we able to add pieces of ceramics.

 AlanKatz2

In Sderot, a town most heavily bombarded in the area we met with Noam Bedin of the Sderot Media Center.  His message was to get out the truth on what he called the “rocket reality.”  Not only has the greater area had over 12,000 rockets shot during the past 7 years since the disengagement from Gaza, but 97% were shot from civilian areas.  He also spoke of the many dilemmas such as the mother who hears the alert while in a car and has to decide which child to pull out first to bring them to a shelter.  Anat, who works with Noam, was evacuated from a community just across the border from Netiv HaAsarah, which now lieAlanKatz3s entirely in ruins.  She loves the area but spoke of the anxiety and fears that she and others have at such minor things as a clicking sound which reminds them of the tzevah adom (Red Alert) warnings.

Noam summed up his feeling as we looked at a playground and soccer field surrounded by bomb shelters.  His claim is that those images together are in and of themselves an abomination.

Rabbi Alan Katz is the Rabbi of Temple Sinai in Rochester, NY.  He is currently traveling in Irsael with the CCAR Israel Solidarity and Social Action Mission, part of the CCAR Leadership Travel series.

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General CCAR News Prayer Reform Judaism

An Interfaith Prayer for an Interfaith Crowd

Rabbis Steve Foster & Steve Fox at the National Prayer Service 2013
Rabbis Steve Foster & Steve Fox at the National Prayer Service 2013
Rabbis Steve Foster & Steve Fox
at the National Prayer Service 2013

 

This week I attended the National Prayer Service in the Washington National Cathedral on the day after the Inauguration. The service was beautiful and moving, a dignified end to a whirlwind of parades and inaugural galas.  However, as we sat in the pews of the National Cathedral, with its soaring vaulting and stained-glass windows, I couldn’t help my mind from racing with questions around the issue as to whether a national prayer service is appropriate?

Can you gather together a room full of rabbis, priests, pastors and imams to actually pray together for a national leader?  Are we being disingenuous to sit together in a church as prayers are offered for our country that do not reflect our own beliefs?  Can we pray together without leaving each other out?  Does prayer even belong in a national setting?

On the National Cathedral website, the spokeswoman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee said, “President Obama’s own faith has played an integral role in his life, his commitment to service and his presidency, and this important tradition will celebrate the values and diversity that make us strong”.

That statement, and for that matter most of the press covering the National Prayer Service, seems to mix a multitude of issues.  President Obama, a person of faith, wants to worship in his “own faith” with his ministers in his tradition; so, how do we respect his tradition?   How do the faith leaders of the National Prayer Service decide on appropriate prayer to respect Mr. Obama’s traditions, while still “celebrating the values and diversity that make us strong”?

The issue of appropriate prayer in interfaith settings has been the subject of discussion recently among CCAR members, with colleagues and scholars sharing many thoughts on all sides of the questions:

Do we try and find a common prayer?  Or do we pray in parallel, each along the lines of our own traditions? 

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For me the answer is simple—we each pray in our own tradition.  The opportunity to gather with religious people of many faiths in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul (the National Cathedral’s actual name) requires us to open our ears, minds and hearts to respect someone else’s tradition, to allow each to pray in his/her own way, and to appreciate the celebration of diversity and inclusiveness.  The success of inclusivity at the National Prayer Service from the diverse group of clergy and other religious leaders comes from the commitment to gather together in support of something harmonious and peaceful.

In this instance, as President Obama’s tradition involves his belief in Jesus, we respect this tradition and do not expect him and his clergy to expunge the name of Jesus from their prayers, just as we do not expect clergy of other faiths to pray from our traditions.  When there is a Jewish president, the rabbis leading the service should expect and deliver the same—a service guided in Jewish tradition, with clarity as to our expectations of other clergy.

You can call it a National Prayer Service or a joint prayer service or whatever you like.  But as each of us sit in the National Cathedral or in our churches, or synagogues, or mosques, or even in our own living rooms, we each invoke our own prayers in our hearts to guide President Obama through his second term.

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Prayer

Machzor Blog: Wrestling With God

ShofarOne of my favorite things about Judaism is struggle. We are the People who are destined to struggle with God (Am Yisrael). This is our inheritance—a good thing! That said, when it comes to the High Holy Days, I often wish there were just a little less struggle involved.

The concept of God and the practice of maintaining a meaningful relationship with God are challenging on any day of the year. But the language of the High Holy Days, especially as it defines and describes God, has always added to that challenge for me. As a high school student I was so alienated by God’s roles as presented in U’n’taneh Tokef especially, but really throughout the machzor, that I would simply choose not to attend High Holy Day services. As a late-teenager and early twenty-something, these images of God significantly contributed to my decision to identify as an atheist. I simply could not relate to this anthropomorphic, male, judge. In rabbinical school, no longer an atheist, I spent individual class sessions, seminars, and even an entire semester wrestling with the God imagery of the machzor, not only for myself, but so that I could attempt to support others in their journeys through the Yamim Nora’im.

cairo_genizaLanguage is at the heart of this God struggle. The words used to capture and define an experience as vast as God will of course be inadequate. And, while the original Hebrew of the traditional machzor is an obstacle for me, the English of Gates of Repentance turns a fence into a solid wall. Each year I am more frustrated with our outdated text, and ever more eager for our movement’s new machzor.

This year, our congregation piloted the draft Yom Kippur afternoon service from the new machzor. It turns out that my enthusiasm is not unfounded. I felt immediately more at home in this service than I do in Gates of Repentance. As I do, our new prayer book understand the service experience as a journey—almost a choose-your-own adventure. There are multiple options for different prayers, opportunities for individual reflection, and even guiding questions for small group discussion. I see each of these approaches as a way of helping service participants to overcome the obstacles of accessibility that are, I think, inherent especially in High Holy Day prayer.

And then there’s the language. In an earlier post to this blog (“Faithful Translations”), Rabbi Leon Morris draws our attention to the incredible care that has gone into the translation of Hebrew text. I find these translations infinitely richer and more accessible than their equivalents in Gates of Repentance. But for me, it’s the recognition of struggle that is present in so many of the English alternative readings that really supported me in my own prayer on Yom Kippur afternoon. These readings both honor and elevate the challenges of the big concepts of the Yamim Noraim—forgiveness, starting over, living up to our own potential—as well as of course the challenges of the imagery used to describe God.

A most excellent example of these readings is Avinu Malkeinu: A Prayer of Protest, written by Rabbis Janet and Shelly Marder (reprinted in Rabbi Leon Morris’ post to this blog, “How ‘current’ should a prayer book be?”). Avinu Malkeinu is not a prayer that I find too difficult as a result of its presentation of God—thanks, in large part, to the study I did with Rabbi Richard Levy as a rabbinical student!—but by the time we reach Yom Kippur afternoon, we have recited this prayer at every service of the High Holidays, we are exhausted and hungry, and it’s just plain difficult to find the same kavanah [intention] for this final repetition that we may have had for the earlier recitations. This Prayer of Protest was, both for me and for several of my congregants who commented on it afterwards, a shot in the arm as we moved into our concluding services. It reminded us to look around the room and see the people with whom we were sharing this moment. It reminded us of our purpose for being present in the synagogue on Yom Kippur afternoon. And, of course, it reminded us that this process of struggle, this protest, is a tremendous gift. Ultimately, it reminded us of who we are. We are Am Yisrael, the People Who Will Struggle With God.

Rabbi Rebekah Stern is the Assistant Rabbi at Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame California.

Learn more about the new CCAR Machzor.

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General CCAR News Reform Judaism

Faith in America’s Future Includes Our Faith.

Inauguration 2013
Inauguration 2013

I was honored today to represent the CCAR at the Inauguration of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States of America, as he was sworn in for his second term.  Words cannot really describe the experience of viewing the ceremony with my own eyes – and the experience was at certain times surprisingly emotional. It was quite moving to watch Mr. Obama, his family, and the representatives of the American government walk through this ritual with all of the pageantry that has developed since the inauguration was moved to January back in 1933.  But even before the ceremony began, the crowd in our area burst into spontaneous cheering as Tuskegee Airmen walked by us to their seats.  Once the program began, speakers honored the legacy of great Americans from the founders of the Republic to Dr. Martin Luther King.  It was touching when entertainers of several generations including James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson and Beyoncé sang American patriotic songs and a Cuban-American poet, Richard Blanco, shared his work.

All morning I was struck by the confluence of old and new; the diversity of America’s population as represented by the people all around us; our country’s history and legacy intersecting with our need as a nation to be reenergized and rejuvenated.

As honored and humbled as I was to receive the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s invitation, I know that the invitation was actually meant for the 2,000 rabbis of the CCAR, the rabbis who lead Reform Jewish life in North America and other places around the world.

Each invite I have received from the White House for a briefing or a meeting with key leadership or even for the Chanukah celebration serves as an important

With Newark Mayor Corey Booker at Inauguration 2013
With Newark Mayor Corey Booker at Inauguration 2013

recognition of the key leadership role that Reform Rabbis play in American Jewish life.  The arrival of that White House envelope on my desk means that the United States Government has recognized CCAR members as thought leaders and community builders in all aspects of the Jewish community, in every major Jewish organization, and on the ground working with their community members from all walks of life every single day. The honor bestowed upon CCAR Rabbis who were present today is one of the many ways in which CCAR Rabbis reinforce our roles as intermediaries between policy makers in Washington and our congregations and communities.

The theme of the 2013 Inauguration was “Faith in America’s Future”.   Most people will understand this to mean that President Obama’s second term should be looked forward to with “faith” (i.e., hope).  I believe “faith” has a secondary meaning for us as Jews.  If you interpret the word “faith” as do many of our rabbis and their community members (i.e., religion, culture, spirituality or the like), then my invitation to the inauguration as a CCAR representative makes perfect sense.  Faith in America includes our Jewish Faith.

As we send President Obama into his second term with our heartfelt prayers, we should each take this moment to reenergize and rejuvenate, as we move forward to face our the challenges of our communities with a faith that is grounded in tradition, while at the same time inclusive and forward looking.

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General CCAR Prayer

Love and Loss: Leaving the Pulpit

When I walkJewishCenterNWJerseyed to the end of my driveway the day after Sandy, my neighbor across the street was already standing at the foot of hers.  Together we surveyed the huge pile of detritus that lay in the street between us. The winds had uprooted the old maple on my front lawn and caused it to fall on the telephone wires between my house and my neightbor’s.  Two telephone poles had snapped like twigs, pitching the transformers into the street and causing a brief fire to flare in the middle of the road.  We had been lucky, my neighbor and I agreed.  The damage could have been much worse.  The tree could have fallen the other way and landed on my house.

“Someone was watching over you,” said my neighbor.  Another neighbor came by, picking his way over the fallen wires. He stood looking with us for a moment before observing, “Someone was watching over you.”   What terrible theology, I thought to myself. Does this mean Someone wasn’t watching over the people whose houses burned to the ground in Breezy Point? Or the people down the Jersey shore who had lost everything to the storm surge? The thing about being in the rabbinate all these years is that you see sermons in everything, including morning-after storm damage.  I didn’t feel a need to share my theological disagreement with my neighbors because I knew I had a place to express my ideas.  Assuming the upcoming bat mitzvah would go on as scheduled, I could easily make a linkage between my neighbors’ theological conclusions and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Do you really see the hand of God in these so-called Acts of God? How do you understand the damage done to the innocent?  This would all dovetail nicely with the d’var Torah the bat mitzvah had already prepared.

And this reaction would have come and gone routinely were I not leaving my congregation this coming June.  Instead, a new and painful feeling intruded itself: “What will I do when I no longer have the pulpit as a forum?”  Most of the time, the idea of retiring from my congregation after 19 years (33 total years since ordination) seems more theoretical than real.  As I look at next September’s calendar, I note with gratitude that I won’t have to spend yet another August writing sermons for an obscenely early high holy day season.  As I read the newspaper, I automatically reach to cut out an article that seems like a good idea for a high holy day sermon, then remember  that I won’t be writing those sermons next year.  I usually allow myself an awareness of the prospective gain but not the loss.  But as I stood looking at my tree in the road, a moment of anticipatory grief had leaked through.

Rabbi Ellen Lewis BlogAs much as I have complained over the years about not having the time to write sermons, not having any ideas, feeling uninspired, having other things that felt more pressing, I confess that I have come to enjoy preparing sermons for this particular congregation. I have worked in congregations where people came to services like critics to a Broadway show, but not this congregation.   They come not as critics but as students, open to what I have to say and interested in taking something away with them.  Sermons are just another piece of our relationship.  And it is that relationship I will miss.  When a 9th grader says to me accusingly, “How can you not confirm me? You named me, you bat mitzvahed me,” the loss – both hers and mine – lives for a moment between us.  When a congregant says, “Next year, you can still lead our Sisterhood retreat because you will be our Rabbi Eminence [my very favorite corruption of Emerita],” I silently react defensively.  Does she really think I am leaving the temple so I can come back and lead a retreat, I ask myself?  But in the next moment, I let my armor slip and share in her conflict,  accepting that this is just her way of holding on when she doesn’t want to let go.

When the Board emailed the congregation about my leaving, they used the word “retirement.” I balked for a moment. This isn’t really retirement for me.  It is just leaving the synagogue so I can devote more time to my private practice and experience weekends without work. The word “retirement” just makes my leaving them more palatable. But on second thought, I realized that  they are correct that this is my retirement. I am not interested in another pulpit.   If I wanted to continue in the congregational rabbinate, I would stay where I am. But I know the time has come for me to go.

When I told one of my sons about that pang of loss at not writing sermons, he replied unsympathetically, “So you’ll start a blog.”  Thank you, CCAR, for this invitation.

Rabbi ElleBlog-RabbiEllenLewisn Lewis (www.rabbiellenlewis.com) has a particular interest in the integration of religious and psychoanalytical concepts and has worked at developing models of clinical supervision for rabbis, cantors, and other religious professionals.  In her private practice, she works with rabbis and cantors in therapy and supervision.  After her ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1980, she served congregations in Dallas, Texas, and Summit, New Jersey, where she was named Rabbi Honorata.  Since 1994, she has been the Rabbi of the Jewish Center of Northwest Jersey in Washington, NJ (www.jcnwj.org).  

Rabbi Lewis is also a certified and licensed modern psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, New Jersey and in New York City. She received her analytical training in New York at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (www.cmps.edu) and at present serves on the faculty of the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis (www.acapnj.org).  She is a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (www.aapc.org). She can be reached via email at rabbiellenlewis@rabbiellenlewis.com or in her NJ office 908 766 7586.

 

Categories
Ethics General CCAR Reform Judaism

Recapturing Our Prophetic Voice

This week’s Torah portion recalls for us God’s promises that fill the four cups from which we drink each year at the Pesach Seder—v’hotzeiti, “And I will take you out from oppression,” v’hitzalti, and I will deliver you; v’ga-alti, “And I will redeem you,” v’lakachti, “And I will take you as My people,”—and one additional promise that fills the cup we leave untasted, the Cup of Elijah: v’heiveiti,  “And I will bring you into the Promised Land” (Ex. 6:6-8),

For our ancestor Reformers, this country was the Promised Land, and for the Reformers who founded PARR (Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis), the West was
the Promised Land—deserts and palm trees and oceans, and in the north, rain in abundance.  But we know that California and the other Western states have not lived up to that promise—we know that there is much deliverance and redemption yet to be accomplished.
Copy of fn21 Our colleagues in the last century, hearing the call of our prophetic movement, thundered from their pulpits in support of labor, marched in Delano with farm workers, went South—or lived in the South—to help free African Americans, marched on draft boards to end the war in Vietnam, smuggled themselves into Moscow and Leningrad and Kiev to give succor to refuseniks—all the while yearning to drink the wine of Elijah’s cup in a toast to a world in which the promises had been
fulfilled.

Now it is our turn to lend our voices to the needs of people in these states, to walk the prophets through the halls of the Legislature, to work to protect the stranger from being uprooted from what has become her home, to enable these states to better teach the Torat Chayim to all their students.  Like the rabbis who have gone before us, the rabbis taking the lead in this effort tonight, and all of you who have been working on these issues much of your lives, we know that teaching Torah takes a different form in the streets and the halls of power than in our study groups, Hillels and synagogues—Torah may look like a bill in the legislature, or a lobbying effort with state senators, but Torah it is, and as Reform rabbis we have a duty to teach it wherever God calls us to speak—and to act.

Our forebears knew that to work for redemption they had to be bold.  In a time when many rabbis and rabbinic students are urged to be careful, we are preaching March-on-Washington-Central-Conference-of-American-Rabbisanother message: a prophetic movement must take stands for justice, a prophetic movement must take risks for justice—else we risk forfeiting this title our movement has borne so proudly since our founding.  We must study Torah—we need always to study more Torah—but we must also take Torah into the streets with us, hold it proudly aloft as we proclaim: v’zot ha-Torah asher sam Moshe—this is the Torah which Moses and all who followed him have placed in our arms: a Torah of justice, of truth, of compassion.  We need to work on these issues— to explore how we can carry the Torah we love so deeply into a world whose people yearn so deeply for its application to their lives.

Four cups sit waiting in this week’s parasha—fill them full of your passion and your wisdom and your strength, so that we can come that much closer to filling Elijah’s Cup, to seeing the promise of this great western land fulfilled.

My fellow klei kodesh—may God fill us all to overflowing in the year to come.

 

– These remarks were originally delivered at PARR, on January 7, 2012, as part of the “Reform CA” Program –

Rabbi Richard N. Levy is the Rabbi of Campus Synagogue and Director of Spiritual Growth at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, CA. He completed a two-year term as the President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and was the architect of the Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism, the “Pittsburgh Principles,” overwhelmingly passed at the May, 1999 CCAR Convention. Prior to joining the HUC-JIR administration, Rabbi Levy was Executive Director of the Los Angeles Hillel Council. He is also the author of A Vision of Holiness: The Future of Reform Judaism.  

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Books General CCAR Prayer Reform Judaism

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.

Categories
News Prayer Reform Judaism

Machzor Blog: A Sin By Any Other Name

11505867Folks out there – colleagues and laypeople alike – feel quite strongly about the use of the word “sin” in the new machzor. Or so it seems from the feedback we’ve heard in the piloting process.  But these strong feelings about the word “sin” fall into two opposite camps.  There are those who object to the English word sin because of its Christian overtones, the sense it carries of permanence and of somehow being stained.  Others suspect that our decision to largely use other words (though not exclusively) such as “wrong” reflects a kind of moral relativism where nothing can be catagorically labeled as, well, a sin.

 The three words that are predominately used in the Torah and in our liturgy are cheyt, avon and pesha.  According to a baraita cited in Tractate Yoma 36b, each of these words refers to a distinct kind of sin.    Cheyt refers to inadvertent sins.  Avon references deliberate sins.  Pesha, the most severe, refers to sins committed as a way of rebelling against God.

 In our Kol Nidre service, these terms are translated in one place as “wrongs,” “act of injustice,” and “moral failures.”

The word most often used throughout the liturgy is cheyt, and the translation utilized by the new machzor most often is “wrong.”  This word seems to address both those who are looking to the machzor to provide clear moral standards, as well as those who fear that the word “sin” doesn’t carry with it the possibility for change.

Here is how the Vidui Rabbah is translated in the Kol Nidre pilot draft, page 47a:

 For the wrong we have done in Your presence by the spoken word,

And for the wrong we have done in Your presence through insincere promises….

 In the draft for Yom Kippur Minchah, we introduced a very different translation of the word cheyt.  Drawing upon the oft-cited etymology of the word as derived from “missing the goal” the pilot draft, page 50a and b, offered this translation:

 For missing the mark in Your presence through a selfish or petty spirit,

And for missing the mark in your presence through stubbornness.

 Maybe it was the absence of a commentary or explanation below the line, but this creative way of translation cheyt was viewed as highly objectionable, and laypeople and rabbis alike told us that this translation simply will not work.

Even the best translation and the most insightful commentary below the line cannot fully unpack the notion of sin, or wrong, or failure.  In the same 300px-Kol_Nidrei-2Talmudic sugya referenced above the Rabbis are bothered by the fact that the order of the three primary words for sin in High Priest’s confession doesn’t make sense in light of their own definitions.  For the Rabbis, the order to sin, in increasing severity, should be cheyt, avon, and pesha.  This therefore should be the correct order of the High Priest’s confession.  But Leviticus 16: 21 prescribes that the sins transferred to the scapegoat by the confession are avon, pesha, and cheyt.  Likewise, in Exodus 34:7 (the verse that forms the basis of our selichot prayers), God is described as nosei avon, va’pesha v’chata…

The Talmud solves the problem in an ingenious way. Rabbah bar Shmuel said in the name of Rav: The halakhah follows the view of the Sages. Moses was saying before the Holy One of Blessing, “Master of the Universe, at a time when Israel sins before you and then repents, transform for them their deliberate sins into inadvertent sins.”

In other words, the order of sins in the Torah comes not to teach us the order of the High Priest’s confession, but rather to teach that repentance has the power to change the order of what we’ve done, to transform even deliberate and rebellious sins into less severe inadvertent sins.

With regard to our translations then, might we say that teshuvah can turn “sin” into “wrong,” or even in to “missing the mark.”

Learn more about the new CCAR Machzor.

 

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Arming Rabbis? Not in My Time, I Pray.

Yes, I have fired a gun on more than one occasion; most recently at a training range on a Kibbutz in Israel* in 2009 and early on as a teenager at target practice with a friend and his dad.  The experiences unnerved me; the echoing boom, the kick of the weapon and even more, the thought that the gun I fired, no matter how small, had the potential to take a human life.

Mourning in Newtown, CT
Mourning in Newtown, CT

My limited experience with weapons affirms for me the sentiments I have been hearing these past two weeks from my colleagues, friends and so many grieving families across the nation.  Guns are far too easy to use — and misuse — and we must continue to demand from Congress reasonable regulations for guns and assault weapons.

The “solution” suggested last week by the NRA- placing armed guards in schools- is beyond absurd. Even since Newtown there have been other mass shootings, including in a church, to which Gail Collins of the NY Times said in context of the NRA’s comment, “We will await the next grand plan for arming ministers.”

Not in my time, I pray- may we not see armed ministers, rabbis or school security guards.

For decades the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) has decried “the power of the NRA in controlling the debate on gun control” (2000) and called upon “the U.S. Congress to eschew the support of the NRA and to vote their support of stringent gun-control legislation”(1987).

Our resolution has not changed; we continue to support meaningful gun control legislation that will stem these senseless episodes of mass violence.  In the CCAR’s recent public statement about the Newtown shootings, we expressed our condolences to whose who suffered losses, sympathies for those wounded, and fear that the NRA will continue to thwart not just legislation, but even conversation, about the need to stop the gun violence.

But expressing these feelings is not enough.

Reform Rabbis who are on the front lines of Jewish communal life can join together, and with clergy of other faiths, to advocate in support of meaningful gun control nationwide and in their own communities- (studies indicate that “states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death”).  At the CCAR we remain committed to providing rabbis with resources on ways that they may advocate and organize, such as in partnership with Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center.

Importantly, the CCAR also provides our rabbis personal support and resources as their communities turn to them for religious and pastoral comfort in time of tragedy.  Our volunteer Rabbis on Call and Rabbinic Hotline, as well as CCAR’s Rabbinic Staff, support rabbis who themselves offer prayer and comfort to their communities.  We also provide resources grounded in Jewish text, theology, and philosophy on subjects ranging from the sanctity of life to the abhorrence of violence.

Our rabbis also benefit from the strength of partnership.  At the end of last week, the CCAR joined forces with the Rabbinical Assembly (the Conservative Rabbis), and the Religious Action Center to provide hundreds of rabbis the opportunity to learn from other leaders in our faith; including one of our rabbis who is serving Newtown as the Director of Spiritual Care at Danbury Hospital; a rabbi and advocate for Faiths United Against Gun Violence; and from the Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

In the CCAR’s latest statement, we expressed our understanding that comprehensive laws cannot stop all gun violence.  But we must continue to act in the words of our tradition: “one who saves one life saves a whole world.”

*Important footnote:  As to the incorrect statements made last week by the pro-gun lobby, Israel is actually a country with strict control over weapons in the civilian population.