Categories
Books Inclusion LGBT

‘Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells’: A Project of Hope

Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells, edited by Rabbi Denise L. Eger, was published by CCAR Press in the spring of 2020. In this post, Rabbi Eger shares how the book came to be.

Some rabbis collect their sermons and publish them. They are pearls of wisdom for the ages.

I may yet do that at some point.

But more urgently, I saw the need to center the voices of the LGBTQ+ community. Throughout my years of service as a rabbi, I had to create ceremonies and prayers for my community when there were no resources. I was ordained in the late 1980s in the midst of the AIDS crisis, at a time when our beloved HUC-JIR still wouldn’t ordain openly LGBTQ+ people as rabbis or cantors. We lived in fear and in the closet. Maybe that is hard to believe now for our many openly LGBTQ+ rabbis and seminarians, but it wasn’t that long ago when we gathered secretly at CCAR Conventions late at night in someone’s room to connect with other queer colleagues.

Over the years, I wrote prayers for Pride Month and National Coming Out Day. I would write invocations and blessings for interfaith gatherings affirming the worth and dignity

of LGBTQ+ people, their families, and people with HIV. I had to invent, create, and imagine an authentic queer Jewish life when there was little liturgy available.

Religion is so often used to shame and hurt LGBTQ+ people. Too much violence and hatred are directed at the LGBTQ+ community in the name of religion. I purposefully write from a different perspective.

I tried to create prayers in a genuine Jewish voice that uplifted, instilling hope and healing. I tried to combat homophobia through prayers and reflections that reinforced the theology that all are created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image. I tried to convey what today we call audacious hospitality, writing naming ceremonies for those transitioning gender, wedding ceremonies before we had any templates, and rituals for coming out. I wrote my first ceremony to celebrate someone coming out as gay in 1986! It was centered around an aliyah to the Torah, as a riff on benching Gomel and a Mi Shebeirach for well-being.

But luckily, over these same three-plus decades, LGBTQ+ Jewish life has grown and blossomed. We have seen tectonic shifts in not just welcoming LGBTQ+ and non-binary Jews home, but embracing queer life and queer Jewish voices.

Often when Gay Pride Month would roll around, many of you, my colleagues, would call or email me to ask for materials for Pride Shabbat. I shared whatever I had created that year. Clearly there was a need for a collection of resources to help communities live out our commitment to be welcoming and embracing places of LGBTQ+ folx. Not one for sitting around, after my time in leadership of the Conference, I knew it was the right moment to collect not only some of own writings, but to invite others to share their poetry, prayer, and passion—centering the voices and experiences of our queer Jewish community.

Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells was born out of this effort.

Mishkan Ga’avah represents some of the collected wisdom, voices, and experiences of Jewish LGBTQ+ people. It is a spiritual resource for both the individual and the community. I hope it inspires others to write creative liturgy and prayers using their own voices. And I hope it will offer comfort, solace, inspiration, and hope to LGBTQ+ people everywhere—a beautiful strand of pearls for all of our Jewish community to wear.

—
Rabbi Denise L. Eger is the editor of Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells: A Celebration of LGBTQ Life and Ritual (CCAR Press, 2020) and a past President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. She is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, CA.

Categories
member support

The New NCRCR: Nurturing Sacred Communities

Among the most cherished values of our Reform Movement is the idea of sacred partnership between clergy and lay leaders. While a sacred relationship of trust, transparency, and collaboration is our highest ideal, challenges can arise that affect these relationships, especially during this time of pandemic crisis. We want you to know how the North American Commission on Rabbinic-Congregational Relationships (NCRCR) can provide support and healing to lay leadership and rabbis alike.

The NCRCR is a joint commission of the URJ and CCAR whose mission is to advise, support, and nurture sacred partnerships and healthy relationships among lay leadership and rabbis. Ideally, we are called early enough to help repair these relationships so that a resolution results in the rabbi maintaining their position in the congregation. At other times, the NCRCR process will clarify that a rabbi and congregation would both be healthier by parting ways. In that case, NCRCR can assist a congregation and its rabbi with an honorable and healthy parting.

The NCRCR provides three types of services: consultation, conciliation, and mediation. All conversations and services provided by the NCRCR are confidential. For consultation services, the congregation’s president or rabbi, separately or together, can reach out directly to one of the NCRCR’s co-chairs, Rabbi William Kuhn or Ms. Robin Kosberg (contact information below), for a confidential discussion by telephone, email, or videoconference.

When a president and rabbi together request an NCRCR conciliation case, we utilize volunteers from the North American Board of the URJ and members of the CCAR in our work. A trained volunteer team of one URJ lay leader and one CCAR rabbi will usually travel to the congregation for two days of intensive meetings with all of the key stakeholders of the congregation: clergy, lay leadership, and staff (though other arrangements will be made during COVID-19). Soon thereafter, the team and the NCRCR provide a report to the congregation and rabbi with detailed findings and recommendations. There is no charge to congregations or clergy for our services. Because we understand the sensitivity of the information we learn about a congregation and its clergy and staff, all members of the NCRCR, chairs, and team members rigorously maintain confidentiality.

In a recent case, one congregation’s rabbi said, “The NCRCR visit was crucial in our current success as an institution. The process elevated two concepts that have transformed our community. It definitely nurtured and improved the sacred partnership between the president and myself. The NCRCR also helped us see that governance needs nurturing, planning, and refreshing.”

The president of the congregation said, “Our congregation was facing an existential crisis, but the NCRCR process enabled our rabbi and me to better understand our respective concerns. The honest advice and mentoring we received from the NCRCR team truly helped us make our congregation stronger. For any congregation having difficult relationships between lay leaders and clergy, I confidently recommend engaging NCRCR. It is one of the best kept secrets of the Reform Movement!”

The NCRCR can also facilitate a mediation process by referring the case to a member of the URJ or CCAR trained in mediation services. The goal is to obviate the need for arbitration, although occasionally the rabbi or lay leadership may find it unavoidable.

In any given situation, contacting the NCRCR earlier is always better than later. The chairs of the NCRCR are available to talk to congregational leadership or clergy, together or separately. If a rabbi or congregational leader perceives a pattern of issues in the congregation affecting the rabbinic-lay relationship, it is time to reach out.

—
Rabbi William Kuhn is co-chair of NCRCR and rabbi emeritus of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia where he served as rabbi for 23 years. The NCRCR is chaired by Rabbi William Kuhn, on behalf of the CCAR and Ms. Robin Kosberg on behalf of the URJ. Reach out to either Rabbi Kuhn at rabwik@gmail.com and (215) 603-5130, or Robin Kosberg at robinkosberg@gmail.com and (214) 240-4944.

Categories
Inclusion LGBT Social Justice

Transgender Day of Remembrance: An Opportunity for Safety and Visibility

Besides coronavirus, there is another epidemic raging in our communities: the ongoing scourge of violence targeting transgender people, particularly trans women of color. Transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people [ɪ] are more likely to be denied equal access to jobs, housing, and medical care, and they are frequent targets of violence—including murder. Trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folx are afraid to go to the police for help; when they do seek out legal remedies or safe harbor, they often are further harassed by law enforcement, facing violence at the hands of the very people charged with protecting them.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), “In just seven months, the number of transgender people suspected of being murdered in 2020 has surpassed the total for all of 2019.” Black and Latinx transgender women have been particularly targeted. NCTE’s US Transgender Survey, which included more than 28,000 participants, found that nearly half (47 percent) of all Black respondents and 30 percent of all Latinx respondents reported being denied equal treatment, experiencing verbal harassment, or being physically attacked in the previous year due to their transgender identity. 

The Family Research Project has shown that nearly three out of four trans and gender-expansive youth have heard family members say negative remarks about LGBTQ people, and over half of transgender and gender-expansive youth have been openly mocked by their families for their identity.

These harrowing statistics don’t have to be the norm. There is an urgent need for education and awareness-raising about transgender issues, both in our Jewish communities and in the cities and towns in which we live. As rabbis, we can make our synagogues places of safe harbor and support for transgender and gender non-conforming people, whether they are Jewish or not! Just as we build coalitions with interfaith partners, our congregations can build important bridges, becoming advocates for our Jewish transgender and non-binary members while providing connection, safety, and partnership for the larger transgender and non-binary community. One way we might do so is by reaching out to local LGBTQ organizations to sponsor and host ceremonies for Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Every year, November 20 is designated as Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). The week prior is known as Transgender Awareness Week, with the goal of increasing visibility of transgender people and addressing the painful issues their community faces. TDOR was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was murdered the previous year. The vigil commemorated all of the transgender people lost to violence since Hester’s death, beginning an important annual tradition.

This year, TDOR is on a Friday. Perhaps at your Shabbat evening service, you will invite a transgender activist to speak and educate your community. Perhaps during the Kaddish, you will read aloud the names of transgender victims of murder from this past year. Or in the week before TDOR, perhaps you will schedule a program to help raise visibility and acceptance of transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people.

In my book, Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells, published this year by CCAR Press, there are several powerful prayers and readings for TDOR. Here’s one to consider using:

A Prayer for Transgender Day of Remembrance

Rabbi: We praise You, Holy One, for the gift of life, precious, stubborn, fragile and beautiful; we are grateful for the time we have to live upon the earth, to love, to grow, to be.

Congregation: We give thanks for the will to live and for our capacity to live fully all of the days that we are given;

Rabbi: And for those who have been taken by the devastation of violence used against them. We remember them and claim the opportunity to build lives of wholeness in their honor.

Congregation: We give you thanks for the partners, friends, allies and families who have been steadfast in their love; for the people who have devoted their life’s work to the prevention of violence, support and making transitioning from one gender to another possible with passion and commitment,

Rabbi: For the diligent science, brilliant ideas, and insights that have led to new life-giving procedures, for those in leadership who have acted to provide health care for people who are in transition.

Congregation: We give thanks for those whose prejudice and judgment have yielded to understanding, for those who have overcome fear, indifference, or burnout to embrace a life of caring compassion.

Rabbi: We praise You, Eternal One, for those who have loved enough that their hearts have broken, who cherish the memories of those we have lost, and for those who console the grieving.

Congregation: God, grant us the love, courage, tenacity, and will to continue to make a difference in a world even with the violence aimed towards our community;

Rabbi: Inspire us to challenge and stand strong against the forces that allow needless harm and violence to continue—prejudice, unjust laws, repression, stigma, and fear.

Congregation: Into Your care, we trust and lift up the hundreds of souls who have been tortured and murdered.

Rabbi: We lift up to You our dreams of a world where all are cared for,

Congregation: Our dreams of wholeness,

Rabbi: Our dreams of a world where all are accepted and respected,

Congregation: A dream we know You share.

[ɪ] The Human Rights Campaign has a useful glossary for anyone unfamiliar with these terms.

Rabbi Denise L. Eger is the editor of Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells: A Celebration of LGBTQ Life and Ritual (CCAR Press, 2020) and a past President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. She is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, CA.

Categories
News Poetry

A Post–Election Day Prayer for National Healing

On November 4, 2020, Americans woke up to an uncertain outcome of the U.S. presidential election. People across the political spectrum are experiencing a roller coaster of confusion, fear, and hope. In response to this difficult moment, Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar shares “Grace in the Wilderness,” a prayer for national healing.

Grace in the Wilderness
God, creator of light and goodness,
may we find grace in the wilderness. (Based on Jeremiah 31:2)

Help this great nation emerge from chaos and fear to
healing and tranquility.

We ask our leaders to act with insight and honor,
to carry authority with humility and compassion.
Righteousness exalts a nation. (Proverbs 14:34)

And as for me, Holy One of Blessing,
may this be my prayer:

Still my troubled being,
for I yearn to emerge from darkness and confusion.

Lift me, carry me, set me upon a rock
that I may feel safe within the storm.
I have sat in the valley of tears long enough. (Based on L’chah Dodi)

Strengthen my resolve that I may be a force for good,
a light when there is darkness.

Help me be guided by acts of love and kindness,
compassion and understanding.

May I find the way to transcend my inclination for strife
and be a bearer of hope and righteousness.

Though I have fallen, I rise again;
though I sit in darkness, God is my light. (Micah 7:8)

Guide me, comfort me, grant me strength.
May this be my prayer.

—Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar, November 2020

__

Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar is Senior Rabbi at Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Deerfield, IL. She is the author of Amen: Seeking Presence with Prayer, Poetry, and Mindfulness Practice and Omer: A Counting, both published by CCAR Press.

Categories
Economy Rabbis

CCRJ Working Conditions Study 2020: Developing a Structure for Comparing Canadian and United States Rabbinical Employment Conditions

In early 2020, the Reform Rabbis of Canada (RROC), Canadian Council for Reform Judaism (CCRJ), the URJ, and the CCAR commissioned David Baskin to look at the question of how we compare United States and Canadian rabbinic salaries. Baskin is a lawyer and wealth management professional in Toronto with deep ties to our Canadian Reform Jewish community. We are grateful that he threw himself deeply and enthusiastically into this challenging puzzle.

For years, rabbis and congregations have confronted the issue that while both Canada and the United States refer to their respective currencies as “dollars,” the purchasing power of those dollars differs greatly because of their relative value to each other and the structural differences in the social and economic systems of both countries.

This document lays out the areas that should be considered when comparing compensation packages in the U.S. and Canada.

As Baskin points out, “A very common error is taking a U.S. package of, for example, $150,000 USD and saying, well, that’s equal to $200,000 Canadian dollars, so those are comparable salaries. This ignores a lot of nuance and complexity.”

A slightly better approach is to compare after-tax packages, which will vary from state to state and province to province. This is easy to do with online resources. Even better, if more complex, is to look at after-tax and after-healthcare costs. The RPB and the CCAR do not have comprehensive data on U.S. health care benefits, and this can be a major component of the cross-border comparison.

Finally, it is a mistake to ignore “soft” factors such as purchasing power, employment standards, parental leave, human rights protections, and child-related expenses. 

This document is a first-of-its-kind and a long-overdue attempt to help both rabbis and congregations make better use of the CCAR Rabbinic Compensation study data and comparisons as it relates Canadian congregations and their rabbis. (The CCAR is currently at work on the next iteration of the compensation study.)

A huge thank you to David Baskin for his diligent work on this project, and to Pekka Sinervo, Sandy Pelly, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, Rabbi Ron Segal, Rabbi Hara Person, and Rabbi Cindy Enger for their help and support for this project.

—
Rabbi Dan Moskovitz serves Temple Sholom in Vancouver, BC and also serves as the Chair of Reform Rabbis of Canada. Please visit our website to view the full CCRJ Working Conditions Study 2020.

Categories
Holiday Rituals spirituality

Always in God’s Sukkah

You shelter me in Your sukkah at a not-good time…
in Your solid presence I am uplifted.

— Psalm 27:5

Your sukkah, God, I am sure, does not look like mine.

You need no beams or boards, no tubes or trestles,

no Velcro or duct tape or twine to hold the parts together.

You create with words all the structures and shelters, 

all the connections and interconnections,

the gravity and the glue to keep 

our bodies breathing, our planet spinning, our universe expanding.

Of course, the decorations of Your design are stunning in their beauty.

Constellations, maple trees and quaking aspens,

even the matrix of molecules that fuel a deadly virus, 

each unique and awe inspiring, like You.

We too are Your decorations—works of beauty in Your sukkah—

shining light on a dark day and into the night, 

finding words of praise to sing or whisper to each other and to You, 

feeling alone and afraid, and then brave and patient, and then not.

Ever hopeful.

With my feet on the ground I feel you, solid as concrete, like a rock beneath me; 

with my fingers outstretched I sense You in the air around me;

with my head raised high, above the chaos that swirls all around me, 

without my own sukkah, I celebrate in Yours, 

and with abundant gratitude for the harvest that is my life, I offer blessing:

Blessed are You Adonai, Ruach of the Universe, for the obligation to sit in Your sukkah.

—

Rabbi Debra J. Robbins serves Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas. She is the author of Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27: A Spiritual Practice for the Jewish New Year, published by CCAR Press. 

From Mishkan T’filah for Youth Visual T’filah

Categories
Healing High Holy Days

We Cannot Breathe Until All People Can Breathe

I have lived in Louisville, Kentucky for over ten years, working on countless projects with the mayor’s office, the Louisville Metro Police Department, and even the FBI, to try to bring healing, justice, and peace to this city. It is therefore with profound sadness, horror, rage, and disgust that I watch what is unfolding in this “city of possibility,” that crowned itself as “compassionate.”

My current work in Louisville—as Director for Program Development with Interfaith Paths to Peace—has led me to support the interfaith peace-making and justice-seeking efforts in this city. Clergy of all faiths have been intervening to de-escalate tensions between police and protesters, often inserting themselves between them to protect their right to peacefully demonstrate.

What small shreds of hope we still had were crushed by the announcement of the Attorney General that no charges would be made against the police officers who shot Breonna Taylor. The double standard of the law is glaring, and the city is grieving. Because of the forced curfew, those grieving are being arrested for exercising their right to protest because of a curfew that is imposed to perpetuate the stereotype that people of color are dangerous, when the last several months have demonstrated that they were peaceful and supported by clergy from across the community. 

Squelched grief has become a ticket to a non-socially isolated jail and fines that perpetuate debt and social inequality. It is just too overwhelming to see the glaring contrast between the ease with which a protester, clergy or lay, can be arrested and the inability to indict a police officer that turns off his camera, falsifies documents, and shoots a woman dead in her home for just sleeping.

And so, here we are, approaching Yom Kippur, reflecting upon our sins and the need to atone—our rabbis teach that we should confess our sins in the plural because even if not all committed the crime, all are guilty for not trying to stop it—and so it is. We confess—ashamnu. We have sinned.

We sin as a nation when we call ourselves a democracy but maintain an electoral college that was created to perpetuate slavery and the belief that people of color should not have the same voting power as white people.

We sin as a nation when we continue to enslave people of color… when this nation continues to target them and imprison them so that they can work without pay to fuel the profits of our privatized prison system and the corporations that derive profit thanks to the slavery amendment of our constitution.

We participate in the sin of slavery every time we buy something from any of the countless companies that rely upon unpaid prison labor.

Today, in between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, we collectively confess our sins: the sins of this nation, for each of us who vote and pay taxes in this country and in this city, each of us are responsible for what is happening.

And today we affirm that we all share responsibility for our current reality—and as clergy we decry our continued complicity with these sins. And today, we join our brothers and sisters of all faiths, to publicly confess these sins and to reclaim the prophetic voice that calls upon us all to atone, make amends, and work for justice, peace, reconciliation, and a new start where all human beings are recognized as created in the Divine Image.

As we approach Yom Kippur, who amongst us can say that we have not sinned? 

Each of us has contributed in some way to the rapidly growing weight of our nation’s collective sins.

For the sin of children in cages and mothers with forced sterilizations.

For the sin of police officers who murder and are only sometimes held accountable if someone is videotaping.

For the sin of thousands upon thousands of deaths due to a virus that we have collectively refused to manage appropriately.

For the sin of destroying this Earth that was given to us to safeguard.

For all these sins and more, we confess—we are guilty.

Our sins continue to be an alphabet of woe, and this week, we add another shocking sin.

For the sin of failing to indict or charge officers who turned off their cameras, falsified documents, and murdered Breonna Taylor: we confess—ashamnu.

For the sin of remaining silent and failing to use tochecha to rebuke our brothers and sisters who support policies that perpetuate the systemic racism that leaves each of us with blood on our hands.

For all these sins and more, we confess our guilt and ask for Your help in making amends and working to atone and be worthy of forgiveness.

Our hearts break as we watch the consequences of our failure to act and our willingness to accept our divisions…our hearts break as we see what happens when we choose “shalom bayit” (to keep the peace) rather than to speak out against injustice.

We cannot breathe under the growing weight of our collective sins. We cannot breathe alongside our brothers and sisters. We cannot breathe until all people can breathe. Until all people can sleep soundly in their homes without worrying that their tax-funded dollars will pay for police officers to come and kill them in the middle of the night and not get charged.

This Yom Kippur may we confess, atone, and begin the difficult work of making amends, seeking justice, and becoming worthy of forgiveness.

Our rabbis have taught us to kindle light where there is darkness. As we grieve the darkness that continues to thicken and suffocate us all—let us find the strength to kindle light.

Blessed is the Source of Light who made us holy with commandments and ethical principles and who commands us to kindle light in the darkness.

Here in Louisville, we have begun a new interfaith ritual that I pray will radiate out into our country. In the midst of our communal brokenness and with our diverse experiences and perspectives we invite you to hold our city, and indeed our nation, in prayer, presence, and love.

The flame represents our common humanity and the different candles our unique expressions of its light. Since Wednesday, September 23rd and through the election season, we are asking everyone at 8:00 PM to light a candle and stand at a street corner in their neighborhood, or outside their home, or from their window to light a candle of hope and as an expression of love and healing prayer.

May each of us, enveloped in despair and rage, draw strength from these lights, kindled across our nation, and may this Light inspire us to rise up with the righteous and prophetic rage that needs to be expressed and channeled into the work of justice and healing.

May this new year usher forth the healing, peace, and justice for which we all pray, and may our prayers inspire us to act and make amends. 

—

Rabbi Dr. Nadia Siritsky, MSSW, BCC, is Director of Program Development and Engagement at Interfaith Paths to Peace in Louisville, Kentucky.

Categories
High Holy Days

Un’taneh Tokef for 5781

Ripe juicy apples with honey on wooden plate

Let these words of our prayers ascend
As we stand embodied, virtual, in our homes, on this screen, alone, together.

Knowing You are God, not knowing what that means…
We proclaim the sacred power of this day,
The sacred power of the shofar’s blast,
The power of the internet connecting us 
While the power of an infinitesimally small virus reshapes the meaning of what human power can and cannot do…
It is awesome and full of dread. 

Our prayers proclaim: You are Judge. You inscribe and seal.
This year we say: We are judged by our own choices, fates sealed by our actions. 
Will we remember all that we have forgotten? 
Will we remember civility and respect, conversation and kindness?
Will we remember the dignity of personal responsibility, the privileges and obligations of belonging to a community?
Can we awaken in time to our own soul truth: that every moment bears the promise, the opportunity of t ‘shuvah, of choice, of change, of return?
What will fill our Book of Memories in this year to come, when so much is still possible?

A Great Shofar will cry–t’kiah!
A still small voice will be heard.
But will we hear it? Will angels tremble? Will we, with our better angels, tremble? Will we awaken to wisdom and compassion? Or will we remain like slumbering sheep? 

On Rosh HaShanah it is written; on the Fast of Yom Kippur it is sealed:
How many will pass away from this world; how many will be born into it.
How many of us will rise with compassion; how many of us will drift into numbness.
How many will be stricken with a novel virus; how many will be thrust into novel life paths.
Who will reach across barriers with love, and who will have barriers hurled upon them?
Who will recognize the ways life has given them advantages, and who will help others gain advantage?
Who will fall in love, and who will stumble in hate?
Who will find new perspectives, and who will see the world through a prism of banality?
Which book will you write yourself into this new year?
We have this as our guide: Tzedakah is the route of connection to others. T’filah is the route of connection to Source. And Tshuvah, is connection to the root of the soul[1]. These are the ways we choose life. These are the ways we choose love. These are the ways we choose You.

—

Rabbi Annie Belford has served Houston’s Temple Sinai since 2009 as Houston’s first full-time female solo pulpit rabbi. She is the mother of three amazing souls, loves visiting our National Parks, and is a proud member of the CCAR Committee for Worship and Practice. 

Rabbi Debra Kassoff has made her rabbinic career primarily in Mississippi, first at the Institute of Southern Jewish Life and since 2010 with Hebrew Union Congregation, which she originally served as student rabbi, in a previous century. She is also the new Director of Member Engagement for Mississippi Public Broadcasting Foundation. She lives in Jackson with her family.

[1] Rav Avraham Isaac Kook, Orot HaTeshuvah

Categories
High Holy Days

God Knows Us by Name

God numbers the stars; God calls them each by name. (Psalm 147:4)

Imagine that. The vast numbers of stars, the infinite number of them, not just in our night sky, in our Milky Way, but beyond—star after star after star. They are not mere dots in a dark sky to God. They are individual lights, each special in the eyes of the Holy One. How much more, then, are we, created in God’s own image, b’tzelem Elohim, בצלם אלוהים, important to God as who we are. Each person, with our quirks and talents, our strengths and our sins, each of us, unique before God, named and beloved.

My friend Gino grew up on a small farm. She tells me that when you know sheep from the time of birth, you can tell them apart. It’s like looking at a group of dogs of the same breed, she explained; if your dog is among them, or if they are all your dogs, you would see their individuality, to call them by name. 

I asked her about this because I’ve been thinking about the Un’taneh Tokef, the prayer we read during the High Holy Days. It is often thought of as ominous: “On Rosh HaShanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.” Part of the reason it might frighten us is its pure honesty: “Who will pass on and how many will be created; who will live and who will die?” The reality is that every year, babies will be born and some of us, whether gathered in shul saying these words or in the larger world, will die. Everyone who is born will someday die. And this prayer makes us face that awe-full truth.

The Un’taneh Tokef describes the underlying metaphor of the Days of Awe: the Book of Life. “May you be written for a good and sweet year,” Jews wish one another at the New Year. What is this Book?  God remembers everything, the Un’taneh Tokef proclaims, even that which has been forgotten by humans, by those of us whose memories God is keeping for us. God will open our book of memories and read. There is no escaping our past; there is a Book of Life for each of us, and it bears the signature of every human being.    

“All who enter the world will pass before You like sheep. As a shepherd searches for his flock, and has his sheep pass under his staff, so too will You record and recount and review all living beings as You have them pass by. And You will decide the end of all creatures, and write down their sentence.”

Scary stuff, indeed.

But the image of God as shepherd suggests otherwise. God as judge, as prosecutor, suggests a Divine urge to judge us. God as shepherd, however, is a Holy One who wishes to care for us, each of us in our foolishness and wayward behavior. What is the point of the shepherd’s staff? To make sure that no lamb goes astray, gets lost in the field or wilderness. God’s staff is there to ensure that each of us is included. 

God as “author and sealer, recorder and recounter” might also be less judgmental than traditionally understood. Perhaps our Book of Life might be like a journal, kept for a class. Each year, God takes each of us aside, and reviews our progress. “How’s it going?,” God asks us. “No, really. I know you’ve been working on being more honest in your relationships. Any trouble there?,” God might say. Or, “How is your energy being split between work and family? I know they are both important to you.”

This is a time to look honestly at ourselves: our goals, our failings, our hopes, our regrets. This is God as a Teacher, a Coach, a Parent, putting an arm around us and saying, “Let’s look at your life together. How might it be better? I, God, the Holy One of the world, am here to help.” “For you want them to turn from their path and live.”

If God knows the stars by name, God certainly knows me. Not just my name, but me. The Divine knows the divinity in me, and the not-so-divine. At the turning of the year, God warns us not just that some will die, but that most will live—and how? Can we accept God’s guidance to return to ourselves through repentance, turn to God through prayer, and reach out to others through righteous action. These will not prevent us from dying, but will show us how to live, how to attain a good name, a name that God will be honored to pronounce. 

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Rabbi Sandra Cohen teaches rabbinic texts, provides pastoral care, and works in mental health outreach, offering national scholar-in-residence programs. She and her husband live in Denver, Colorado. She may be reached at ravsjcohen@gmail.com.

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High Holy Days News

Rabbi Hara Person’s High Holy Day Message to CCAR Members

As CCAR members prepare to celebrate the High Holy Days and lead services safely distanced but spiritually connected to their communities during the coronavirus pandemic, Rabbi Hara Person shares her gratitude for their deep commitment to strengthening the Reform community.


As these really strange High Holy Days approach, I keep thinking about that Baal Shem Tov story about going into the forest, finding just the right place, and the right prayer, and lighting the fire, and saving the people from danger. And how every subsequent generation loses a little bit of original ritual but it’s still enough.

Together, we are writing the next chapter of that story, in which, many, many years later, our people once again face incredible danger.

In this new story, it wasn’t clear what to do at first. The elders recalled bits and pieces of old stories, but there were many conflicting versions and no concrete direction. The rabbi didn’t know what to do and so she had to figure it out as best she could. There was no longer a forest—it had long ago been turned into a suburban development and a sprawling mall. As for the special prayers, those hadn’t been part of the rabbinic school curriculum when she was a student. And she couldn’t light a fire, as no one wanted to risk starting another wildfire. So the rabbi wove together the bits of the different stories she had heard, and talked to her wise colleagues who offered ideas and suggestions, and brought together the community.

Because of the great danger, they were spread out in many different places, each person participating in the service remotely through a computer. She told them the story of the past as best she could, and offered up prayers. The community participated with open hearts, and their fervent hopes for a better future reached right from their souls up to the heavens. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t way things had been done in the past. But it was enough.

What we’re doing this year, no matter how different it is from the past, is enough. All the planning you’re doing, all the incredibly hard work you’re doing to make these holidays happen, to keep your community connected, and to take care of them, is enough. Everything you’re doing to take care of yourself, and to take care of those you love, is enough. 

These High Holy Days are going to be different than ever before. They definitely won’t look like the Holy Days of yesterday. But that’s okay. We’re adapting to the present. Despite the strangeness of this experience, you’re still opening up your heart and creating space for others to open theirs. You’re enabling people to gather in creative and virtual ways. You’re helping them speak the yearnings of their souls. Yes, it will be different, but because of your careful work, it will still feel familiar and comforting.

It’s a lot. It’s really a lot. If you’re feeling exhausted and wrung out from all of this, you’re not alone.

Thank you for facing this moment with courage, creativity, and hope.

Thank you for pouring the best of yourself into making these upcoming Holy Days the best they can be under the circumstances.

Thank you for what you are doing to strengthen our community and our people at this difficult time, in all the many ways you are doing so.

Thank you for caring for our college students, our elderly, our sick, our youngest, our newest, our noisiest, our quietest, our bravest, and our most afraid.

Thank you to those just starting your rabbinic careers in a way that no one could have predicted, thank you to those for whom this will be the last time leading High Holy Day services, and thank you for those in retirement for being role models, mentors, and cheerleaders as we navigate unfamiliar terrain. 

Thank you for being part of our rabbinic community, for supporting each other throughout this time, for sharing your ideas and your concerns, your resources and your love.

And thank you for doing all this while balancing your own families and loved ones, perhaps schooling and playing with your children, caring for your parents and other family members, maybe dealing with the loneliness and isolation of distancing, trying to take care of your own health and wellbeing, dealing with fears and anxiety about your financial security and livelihood, perhaps mourning those you’ve lost, the tremendous turmoil of postponed or radically different life cycle events, no summer camp, cancelled plans, and that doesn’t even cover it.

I’m going to end, therefore, with a plea—once the holidays are behind us, please make time to recover. Take time to replenish your souls and nurture yourself. Please take care not only of those you serve and those you love, but also of yourself.

The forest, the fire, the prayers are all being reinvented this year, and how lucky we are to have your leadership in doing so in such a myriad of ways. And it is indeed enough.

L’Shanah Tovah.

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Rabbi Hara Person is the Chief Executive of the CCAR.