Tag: CCAR Press

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Books CCAR Press

What Is the Shir Shel Yom (Psalm of the Day)?

Rabbi Debra J. Robbins is the author of New Each Day: A Spiritual Practice for Reading Psalms, now available from CCAR Press. In this excerpt from the introduction, she examines the history and purpose of the Shir Shel Yom (Psalm of the Day).

I don’t know if the great modern Hebrew Israeli poet Lea Goldberg had a spiritual practice of reading a biblical psalm each day. In one of her poems, she sings like the Psalmist, “Teach my lips . . . a hymn of praise . . . lest routine set my ways,”[1] suggesting that even this inspired writer of poems needed a source to give voice to the world she saw around her in early twentieth century Palestine. It was a world filled with the diverse beauty of fruit trees, the decay of leaves at the turn of the season, the injustices of war, poverty, and suffering of neighbors, yearning for hope and peace. She turned her personal observations and universal feelings into poems, much like the ancient psalmists did, echoing their language in her hymn of praise, as her blessing, to the Holy One who renews our days.

Drawing on the description of a biblical ritual described in the Mishnah, around the second to third century of the Common Era, Jewish tradition developed the custom of Shir Shel Yom (Psalm of the Day), adding a cycle of seven psalms, biblical liturgical poem/songs, to the daily morning liturgy. The rabbis who selected and placed these psalms may or may not have been Lea Goldberg’s teachers, but they certainly have been mine. Reading a different hymn of praise each day helps ensure that we don’t see the new day as the one before. The seven-day cycle propels us forward, inviting us to notice the bright beauty of creation and the darkness that shrouds human systems of justice. This routine allows us to look into ourselves and beyond ourselves—to see others as vulnerable regardless of how vulnerable we may feel—in the community that needs us.

I like routines and have learned from Lea Goldberg that the best ones should not be too routine and completely set our ways. The cycle of Shir Shel Yom offers the ideal balanced practice: the psalms remain constant, but the person reading them and the surrounding world are new each day, making it impossible for “routine to set our ways.” It is always Psalm 24 on Sunday, 48 on Monday, 82 on Tuesday, followed by 94 on Wednesday and then 81 on Thursday. Friday is assigned Psalm 93, and the week culminates on Shabbat/Saturday with Psalm 92. The psalms identified two thousand years ago have amazingly remained the same, but what has not endured beyond the briefest of explanations of the choices is the answer to the question “Why these seven psalms?” I’ll share six possibilities, confident that you, the reader, will provide a seventh as a result of engaging in this practice.

  • With 150 psalms to choose from, why not start with Psalm 1 and just keep reading one a day for 150 days and then begin again? A cycle of 150 doesn’t match anything in the natural cycle of Creation, but a cycle of seven matches God’s days of Creation from the Torah and the human creation of the “week” to reflect it.
  • Some of the psalms are very long—Psalm 119 has 176 verses—and others are short— Psalm 117 has plenty of power packed into its two verses. The Shir Shel Yom package of seven is well-balanced: the shortest selection is five verses (Psalm 93 for Friday) and the longest only twenty-six (Psalms 94:1–95:3 for Wednesday).
  • The content of the 150 psalms is as diverse as human emotions and experiences, and the seven selected are well curated to reflect the possibilities and trajectory of daily and weekly life, keeping the focus on arriving at Shabbat.
  • Certainly in biblical times, and at least until Johannes Gutenberg began to print Bibles in 1454, very few individuals owned their own books or could read; in contrast, the singing of psalms—biblical poems set to music—was accessible to all. Mastering a repertoire of seven, in addition to some of the others for special occasions, was a manageable lifetime achievement.
  • Another option might have been to allow each person to select their own seven psalms. This (at least for me) is daunting, and I’d likely spend my lifetime simply trying to choose rather than engaging in the practice.
  • Most compelling is the connection that comes with the practice. These seven may not be my favorite psalms, but they are the treasures and traditions of my ancestors, like the pearls I wear that belonged to my great-aunt or the recipes I make from my grandmother’s cards on Passover. I feel connected across time to all the generations before me who have offered the same poems—in different languages and using different translations—for more than two thousand years. I feel connected with others in my generation whom I will never know, but with whom I am in relationship as we share the same practice, engaging with the same text every day.

I have come to love these psalms and the steady flow from week to week that comes with their practice. On this Monday I am not the same as I was the Monday before, and the light is not the same and the temperature is not the same; events in the world, in my life, have all shifted in ways large and small. And a Tuesday in November, between Election Day and Thanksgiving, is not the same as the Tuesday in January after Martin Luther King Day, or in August during the Hebrew month of Elul, when our time to prepare for the High Holy Days draws near. Each week and each month is different, but Shir Shel Yom anchors us and gives us a secure mooring as our lips learn, over and over again, to offer blessing.

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 (2019) and New Each Day: A Spiritual Practice for Reading Psalms (2023) from CCAR Press.

[1] The entirety of this poem by Lea Goldberg (1911–70) can be found in Mishkan T’filah: A Reform Siddur (New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2007), p. 145, adapted. Thanks to Rabbi Jonathan Slater for identifying the original publication in Barak Baboker, as part of a three-part collection Shirei Sof HaDerech, published around 1955. This poem has been set to music by Cantor Benjie Ellen Schiller.

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Books CCAR Press Torah

Challah as a Creative Language: Rabbi Vanessa Harper on Shaping Challah into Torah in Her New Book, ‘Loaves of Torah’

Rabbi Vanessa M. Harper, author of Loaves of Torah: Exploring the Jewish Year through Challah, offers a preview of the book and reflects on how to creatively engage with Torah.

The most important preparation I had for the rabbinate (aside from my training at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, of course) came from my experience as a preschool teacher. And one of the most important things I learned in that role is that play and the exploration of different creative languages—like clay, paint, movement, song, cooking, etc.—are not only vital to our development when we are children, but that they open up entirely new pathways of thinking, learning, teaching, and experiencing the world even when we are adults. 

One of my soul’s creative languages, as it turns out, happens to be challah dough. This discovery gave rise to @lechlechallah—an Instagram-based project of interpreting Torah and Jewish tradition through intricate challah designs and accessible commentary—which in turn gave rise to a book of Torah commentary, Loaves of Torah: Exploring the Jewish Year through Challah.

Loaves of Torah is, at its heart, an invitation to engage with Torah differently. As with @lechlechallah, the first thing you see when you open to a chapter is the image—a shape made from what is recognizably (in most cases!) challah dough, but not in the typical form we’ve come to expect; and each one an interpretation or teaching of Torah, though again, not in a form we typically expect Torah to take. It’s playful and serious, contemporary and traditional, immediately accessible and requiring interpretation all at the same time—much like Torah itself! 

The images invite one into the written commentary, which expounds upon the same verse as the midrashic challah image; the commentary is intended to be fresh and accessible to students of Torah at many levels. The really good stuff is what comes next: the questions for further study and the prompts for exploring the themes of the parashah or holiday through a creative medium or approach of your choosing. These are the invitations to the reader to take Torah into their own hands—not just to look at my response to the text, but to use it as inspiration to create a response of their own, in whichever language they wish to express themselves, whether it’s in words or a different creative medium (pro tip: there are a few years’ worth of Torah study discussion questions and classroom activities in here). And yes, there is a challah recipe, as well as instructions for how to shape the basic building blocks of my challah designs, for those who want to try their hand at making their own interpretive challot.

During the Revelation at Sinai, we read of the Israelites’ experience that “all the people saw the voices (ro-im et hakolot) and the flames and the voice of the shofar and the mountain smoking” (Exodus 20:15). That the Israelites saw sounds at Sinai is already interesting, but that they saw kolot, voices, is especially so. The Rabbis expound on this phenomenon in Sh’mot Rabbah, teaching: “Come and see how [God’s] voice would go out among Israel: each and every one according to [their] strength….Since the manna, which was one type, changed to many types according to the need of each and every one, all the more so, the voice…would change for each and every one” (5:9). The Rabbis teach that God spoke to each Israelite in a different voice at Sinai—hundreds of thousands of individualized voices of God speaking at once, using the precise language that each soul would best understand. Every person standing at Sinai that day experienced the same Revelation, but no two people experienced God’s voice in the same way. So too, all of us, whose souls were also present at Sinai, carry a different divine voice within that reveals a unique facet of Torah.

Each of these pieces of revelation is precious, and each comes with a different divine voice. A person’s Torah, therefore, is only revealed when we create space for the language that their soul speaks to flourish. My deepest hope is that Loaves of Torah creates some of that space for new Torah to be revealed by inviting more languages, more voices, into our Jewish learning and living spaces, as we continue to shape the collective Torah which we will pass on to the next generation.

Rabbi Vanessa M. Harper is Senior Director of Adult Jewish Living at Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and Reform Rabbi in Residence at Gann Academy. She is the author of Loaves of Torah: Exploring the Jewish Year through Challah (CCAR Press, 2023).

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Rabbinic Reflections Statements

Remembering Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD, z”l: ‘At the Turning: Reflections on My Life’ (2014)

The Central Conference of American Rabbis mourns the death of our beloved rabbi, teacher, and friend, David Ellenson, PhD, z”l (1947–2023). The former president and chancellor emeritus of our Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Ellenson was a mensch of the highest order who imparted wisdom and kindness in addition to sharing his voluminous knowledge and scholarship.

Rabbi Ellenson was a devoted and generous member of the CCAR and a friend to CCAR Press. His forewords or afterwords appear in three CCAR Press volumes: The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival, The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality, and From Time to Time: Journeys in the Jewish Calendar. In fall 2014, to mark the close of his first term as HUC-JIR’s president, CCAR Journal published “A Tribute to David Ellenson,” with articles by Rabbis Robert Levine and Rachel Adler. The issue also contained an autobiographical piece by Rabbi Ellenson entitled “At the Turning: Reflections on My Life.” We share excerpts of that piece in his memory.

The forces that have animated my life and work cannot be understood without recourse to my family and my past as a Jewish boy growing up in the South during the 1950s and 1960s and the multilayered world I experienced. Everything in my world talked about difference and exclusion. My grandparents had all emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States in the early 1900s. My maternal grandparents had settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while my paternal grandparents improbably came to Newport News, Virginia. My parents, Rosalind Stern and Samuel Ellenson, met at Harvard Hillel in 1945, immediately after World War II, and they married in 1946. A year later, I was born, and six months after my birth, my father, a degree from Harvard Law School in hand, returned with my mother and me to Newport News, where he began the practice of law….

To this day, I cannot fully capture how very much I love the South and the Peninsula. The approximately 2,000 Jews located on the Peninsula lived peacefully and prosperously among more than 150,000 gentiles…. My entire extended family lived in the same pleasant neighborhood, and my childhood and adolescence were filled with family gatherings and events at which aunts, uncles, and cousins were present. …

I was and remain at some very deep level of my being a Virginian. However, I was also a Jew and that was “the rub.” I never felt I fully belonged. My being a Jew in a Christian world made me an outsider and different from the time I was a small boy, an observer even as I was an eager participant in the larger world. It left me feeling alienated even as I was overwhelmingly social and active.

In sum, the fabric of my identity was fraught with tensions. The inequities and evils I witnessed as a child and as a teenager in matters of race and gender and the sense of being an outsider as a Jew to the gentile culture in which I was raised all left a permanent mark on me….

* * *

I enrolled [eventually] in the Religious Studies Department of the University of Virginia, where I received an M.A. degree… There, for the first time, I read the works of Durkheim and Weber, where I was provided the beginnings of a vocabulary that would allow me to frame and illuminate my concerns. It was also equally clear to me that I had so much more to learn if I was to ever explore seriously the nature of what it was to be a Jew in the modern world.

This led me to move to Israel for two years. The first year I lived on Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek in the Jezreel Valley—where I worked in the fields and advanced my spoken Hebrew—while, in the second year, I enrolled in the rabbinical program at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. Although I seriously considered remaining in Israel and making aliyah at the end of that year, I decided to return to the United States, where for the next four years I would pursue rabbinical ordination at HUC-JIR in New York and doctoral studies in Religion at Columbia University….

The precise character of my [doctoral] work was shaped by two men. Towards the end of my formal graduate education in 1976 and 1977, I came under the tutelage of Fritz Bamberger of HUC-JIR and Jacob Katz of Hebrew University, who was then at Columbia as a visiting professor…. [Professor Bamberger’s teaching made] me aware that the hermeneutic of tension I have employed in all my work is embedded in a narrative that emerged from my own childhood experiences as a Jewish boy in Virginia…. Professor Katz provided me with the content and even more importantly the methodology that would guide and inform my work for decades to come. [He] pointed out that Germany was the crucible in which modern Judaism was born. It was here that the conflict between an inherited Jewish tradition and a highly acculturated Jewish community first played itself out… Indeed, it is a primary reason that I wrote my dissertation on Rabbi Hildesheimer, an Orthodox Jew completely committed to Jewish tradition, who received a doctorate from a German university and who was completely comfortable in Western culture. A study of his life would indicate precisely how Jewish religious tradition could be and was adapted to the demands of the time and place in which he lived. In so doing, I could hold up a mirror to my own being and provide a case study of how Judaism could be adapted to the modern world….

My decision to employ his model to study Rabbinic responsa and prayer book compositions in Western Europe, North America, and my beloved Israel reflect my deepest personal commitments to Judaism and the State of Israel. It also led me to believe that academic scholarship was a vital means to illuminate an understanding of life for myself, my Jewish community, and others in the larger world…

* * *

As a Jew who is commanded every day to remember my bondage and my exodus from Egypt… I cannot forget the books of my Jewish past, nor do I want to. Instead, I hope that my children and my students and their descendants, as our daily liturgy phrases it, will be “yodei sh’mecha v’lomdei toratecha” (knowers of God and students of Torah). My years as president of the College-Institute have been an extension of my entire life and all my values. I have aspired as a Jew born in America and connected deeply both to Israel and the larger world to place myself and my students in a chain of Jewish tradition that is humane and inclusive. Rabbi Leo Baeck provides me with a language for that aspiration…:

Every generation by choosing its way, its present way, at the same time chooses an essential part of the future, the way of its children…. Ways bind, wind, and wander. When a man forms his life, he begins to create community. He is not only born into community as if by fate, but he has now been called to the task of molding it.

My own Jewish way has wandered. Surely, the ways of my own children and grandchildren as well as my students will wander as well. Nevertheless, I and they are also bound, and my way, just as theirs, emanates from those who lived before us. I have tried—through my researches and through my work as a teacher and as president of the College-Institute—to honor the way I have inherited even as I have struggled to mold a direction for a way that reflects who I am. I look forward with confidence to how the students and graduates of HUC-JIR… will mold their own directions for the Jewish people and humanity in the days ahead.

Read the entire piece here.

Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD, z”l (1947–2023), served as president of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion from 2001 to 2013 and again from 2018 to 2019. He was a prolific scholar of modern Jewish thought and history.

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Books CCAR Press Social Justice

Guarding and Tending the Land: Rabbi Andrue Kahn on ‘The Sacred Earth’

Rabbi Andrue J. Kahn, editor of The Sacred Earth: Jewish Perspectives on Our Planet, reflects on the inspiration behind the project, the unique approaches taken by the book’s contributors, and why Jews can play an essential role in the fight against climate change.

How did you get interested in the topic of climate change?

I have always found nature to be a source of spiritual richness. Growing up in Tacoma, Washington, a particularly beautiful part of our country, I sought out the sense of gravity, mystery, and wonder in our parks and beaches. As I grew older, I maintained that sense of connectedness to wild spaces, but never really considered the place of Judaism within that nexus. As associate rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, I was approached by a particularly passionate congregant, the indefatigable Peg Watson, who wanted to push our community to get more involved in environmental justice. She connected us with Karenna Gore at the Center for Earth Ethics, and through many conversations and much planning, it became clear to me that the best way to awaken our community towards greater commitment to and involvement in protecting our ecosystem was to cultivate resources for individuals to connect their Jewish identity and practice more closely with the more-than-human world of plants and animals, mountains and oceans, and forests and deserts.

What can readers learn from The Sacred Earth?

The most important lesson within The Sacred Earth, reiterated throughout every page, is that Judaism has always seen humanity as part of the intricate web of intermeshing life on this planet, and that God is the creator of the entire system. Many have posited that Judaism has no Earth-based ethic due to our exile from the land of Israel, the geographic locus of our genesis as a people. In reality, this volume helps us see that our state of exile has given us a valuable viewpoint on humanity’s relationship to the planet. Our presence in every ecosystem—and our ability to be contributors and partners with others in guarding and tending the land—has given us a global perspective well before globalism became the norm.

Can you describe some of the different approaches taken by contributors to The Sacred Earth?

The Sacred Earth is as full of approaches as it is of contributors! From poetry, to reflective biographical essays, to halachic thought, to kabbalistic mysticism, to practical guides for ritual practices, each chapter is its own gateway into more deeply understanding our role as Jews on our shared planet.

Why is it important that we, as Jews, engage in environmental activism? 

Just as is true with so many other justice causes, environmental activism is deeply important for the Jewish people to engage in both for our own interests, and for the wider interests of the world. We are part of the wider network of communities that links all people and places throughout the planet, and are therefore responsible for maintaining that system. Beyond our universal commitments, the truth is that Jews all over the world are and will continue to be deeply impacted by the ongoing climate shifts. Even our ancestral and spiritual homeland itself is at deep risk of being uninhabitable within my lifetime if we continue trending towards greater rise in global temperature. Finally, our Torah teaches us that humanity was charged with the responsibility of guarding and tending the world, and there is no better way to maintain our connection to this mitzvah than to join with our fellow humans in working to protect against further destruction.

What gives you hope that we can rise to the challenge of addressing climate change?

When I look at the history of our people and our resilience in the face of thousands of years of challenges, it becomes clear that the Jewish people’s ability to survive and thrive everywhere and everywhen is undeniable. The unsustainable practices that have led to climate change will inevitably lead to their own demise. Our beautiful planet is incredibly resilient, if on its own timeline rather than a human timeline. Ultimately, the question is whether we as a species are willing and able to change how we approach our planet, our relationship to its inhabitants, and our modes and methods of consumption before we are forced by the ongoing shifts to make the changes under duress. What gives me the greatest hope in the face of these challenges are the many people who are devoting their lives to changing minds, hearts, and systems. The Sacred Earth is full of the thought and passion of just these kinds of people, tzaddikimin our midst, and I believe that whether we change by choice, or change by force, these tzaddikim will continue to work towards a better, more just world.

Rabbi Kahn and select contributors to The Sacred Earth are available to visit communities for speaker events and book clubs. For more information, please email bookevents@ccarpress.org.

Rabbi Andrue J. Kahn is Associate Director of Yachad and Adult Education at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, NY. He is the editor of The Sacred Earth: Jewish Perspectives on Our Planet (CCAR Press, 2023).

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Books CCAR Press

A Universal Call: Interview with Rabbi Bernard Mehlman on ‘The Way of Humanity’

Rabbi Bernard Mehlman is one of the translators of the recently published  The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching, from CCAR Press. In this interview, he shares new discoveries made during the translation process.

Why did you feel a new translation of The Way of Humanity was needed?

The first English translator of Der Weg des Menschen is unknown. That translation is overly literal and made little attempt to reshape the long, nested German sentences of the original for the English reader. We felt this literary gem deserved a translation which considered the sensibilities of English readers.

What was the research and translation process like for this book?

The research for the book centered mainly on the Martin Buber Archive of the Hebrew National Library, located at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. We were able to read correspondence relating to Buber’s work. Most importantly, we discovered a series of radio talks that Buber gave in the autumn of 1945, in Hebrew, for Kol Yerushalim, the British Mandate radio service. These enhanced our work greatly.

The epilogue presents a unique discovery that you and Dr. Padawer made while working on this translation. How does this discovery change how we think about this work’s origins?

When we found the Hebrew radio talks he delivered, and a handwritten outline by Buber of the content in both Hebrew and English, we learned that Buber was already thinking about The Way of Humanity as early as 1945 and perhaps earlier. His invitation to speak at a gathering of a Dutch Protestant religious and socialist workers organization, the Woodbrookers in Bentveld, the Netherlands in 1947, became the setting in which Buber presented his “lectures.”

What can contemporary readers learn from The Way of Humanity?

This book is filled with wisdom told with a rhythm and melody created by Martin Buber. It has an urgency cloaked in the world of Chasidic storytelling that begs the reader to probe the meaning of life on multiple levels. It urges the human reader to affirm the world and the self. It is at once a specific and a universal call to be present and affirm life.

 The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching is available at CCAR Press.

Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman, DHL, senior scholar at Temple Israel in Boston, Massachusetts, teaches midrash and homiletics at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. Formerly, he was Distinguished Lecturer in Judaics at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Along with Dr. Gabriel E. Padawer, z”l, Rabbi Mehlman translated the new English edition of Martin Buber’s The Way of Humanity, now available from CCAR Press.

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CCAR Press High Holy Days Prayer Technology

‘Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27’: What Will Season Five Bring?

It’s been four years since the publication of Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27: A Spiritual Practice for the Jewish New Year by CCAR Press. I have not only been blessed to engage in this work myself, but I also have been able to share it with my congregation and students around the world, sometimes in person, and more often and regularly, online. As Elul’s 2023 season of reflection and renewal begins, I am preparing to see this psalm and myself as new, yet linked eternally to the past. This is your invitation to the practice.

The month of Elul begins on Friday, August 18, and with it the daily practice of reading Psalm 27 for seven weeks—from the arrival of the month to the close of the festival season on Simchat Torah. With only fourteen verses and 149 Hebrew words (roughly two hundred in English depending on the translation), it’s a psalm to savor. Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav understood the danger of the twenty-first-century binge when he wrote, “…But even if you are not motivated to t’shuvah”—the spiritual work of turning, changing, being at one with oneself, others, and God—“. . . the regular recitation of Psalms will lead you to awakening; you will come to the gates of t’shuvah and find the key to open its closed gates. In this manner you will attain complete t’shuvah.”[1] It does not matter if we read or sing, in Hebrew or English. What matters is that we engage with Psalm 27 slowly over the seven week season; in this way, the psalm holds the keys to open the gates of the heart.

At this season of the year, I try to be a strict adherent of the poet Wendell Berry’s advice, “Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air … stay away from screens…”[2] It’s not easy to stay away from the phone or computer screens, but I am successful in staying away from television screens. I don’t watch much TV to begin with, but there are times when I miss an entire season of a show and binge-watch it to catch up. The seasons of TV shows, going back to school, even vacation, have become linked to frenzied rushed behavior rather than an embrace of the unfolding evolution of seasons in nature or the healthy pace of this sacred High Holy Day season in our Jewish tradition. Each season of the year is different, just like each year is unique, and so too our experience with Psalm 27, year after year, or for the first time.

Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27 was published in 2019, and Season 1 began with celebratory singing and chanting[3] at each private reading and public gathering. Season 2 launched in Elul 2020 as the COVID pandemic pushed us apart. Words of Psalm 27 shared weekly online were a light and a salvation,[4] and in those moments we were not abandoned.[5]

The Psalm 27: Opening Your Heart app arrived in time for of Season 3 in 2021, bringing photographs, music, multiple voices, and gentle guidance to the sacred work. There were still enemies roundabout[6] and each day was chaotic[7] but from our Zoom boxes we saw God’s face[8] in each other; this gave us hope and courage to continue to wait[9] until we could be together in person again. By the start of Season 4 we were confident that we could make our way along an apparent path[10]; each of us and each word of Psalm 27 could be new each day.

And what to expect in Season 5? Surely the original characters of fear and doubt will reemerge from their hiding places[11], and alongside them, courage and hope.[12] Season 5 is also Season 1, meaning it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been reading the psalm for five years or fifty years. In this 2023 season, it is: fresh and new, an invitation to rest on a rock[13], seek shelter in a sacred place[14], lift the head and raise the gaze[15], to offer an offering[16] in song or deed, to seek out a new upright road[17] and to continue to wait and hope, to do the spiritual work and find the keys to open the heart in this new year.

Any season was and is a great time to begin the practice, and any day is great. It is never too late and never too early, and there’s no need to catch up or cram. This season is a gift of our tradition, a time to lounge and linger with the language of Psalm 27, finding in it the keys to open the gates of memory and tears, of gratitude and faith, of t’shuvah and transformation.

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 and the app that accompanies it, Psalm 27: Opening Your Heart. Her second book, New Each Day: A Spiritual Practice for Reading Psalms, will be available from CCAR Press in December 2023.

[1] Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, Kitzur Likutei Moharan, PartII 73:1. Poetic translation by Rabbi Jonathan P. Slater.

[2] Wendell Berry, “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself),” in Given (Washington, DC: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005), p. 18.

[3] Psalm 27:6

[4] Psalm 27:1

[5] Psalm 27:9

[6] Psalm 27:6

[7] Psalm 27:5

[8] Psalm 27:8

[9] Psalm 27:14

[10] Psalm 27:11

[11] Psalm 27:11

[12] Psalm 27:14

[13] Psalm 27:5

[14] Psalm 27:5

[15] Psalm 27:6

[16] Psalm 27:6

[17] Psalm 27:11

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Books gender equality Women in the Rabbinate

Eradicating the Concept of an ‘Ideal Rabbi’

The CCAR and the Reform Movement have recently celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of women’s inclusion in the American rabbinate, which began with the ordination of Rabbi Sally Priesand in 1972. As a part of this celebration, CCAR Press has published The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis, a heartfelt tribute to women rabbis and their indelible impact on all of us. The book features voices from across the Jewish spectrum—many of them pioneers themselves—reflecting on the meaning of this anniversary.

Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi, PhD, is one of the contributors to The First Fifty Years. In her piece, she addresses the term “woman rabbi,” discussing the beauty that differences bring to the Jewish community and why we should eradicate the notion of an “ideal” rabbi.

Simply declaring that I am “a rabbi, not a ‘woman rabbi’” does nothing to change the underlying structures and assumptions that continue to hold back our progress as a Reform Movement.

I want to be accepted and celebrated as a woman and a rabbi because I want to eradicate the notion that there is an ideal rabbi, a standard model—white, heterosexual, male, Ashkenazic, etc.— against whom all others are labeled lesser than, deficient, exceptional, strange. Erasing the specificity of my gender or any other aspect of my identity that does not fit a narrow stereotype of “rabbi” might open doors professionally. But at what cost? How much of myself must I leave at the threshold?

As Jews, we should know deeply that difference and distinction and variety are not the problem.

When we bless “separation” at Havdalah, we don’t say, “Thank God there’s Shabbat, so we only have to tolerate those horrible six days temporarily.” No! We say instead, “Thank God there are different kinds of time.”

I want to say: Thank God there are different expressions of sex and gender. Thank God for women rabbis, and nonbinary bet mitzvah students, and transgender cantors, and interfaith families, and folks who have chosen Judaism in myriad ways. None “lesser than.” None the “default.” None the “exception.” None the “distraction.” All feeling truly as though we belong.

Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi, PhD, is a freelance rabbi dedicated to connecting folks to the breadth and depth of Jewish tradition through inclusive, innovative, and insightful Jewish teaching, speaking, and ritual. You can learn more about her work at www.rabbinikki.com. Rabbi DeBlosi currently serves as Vice President of Varied Rabbinates for the Central Conference of American Rabbis. She is a contributor to The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis.

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Books CCAR Press

Translating Martin Buber for Today: Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman and Gabriel E. Padawer on ‘The Way of Humanity’

Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman

Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman, DHL, and Gabriel E. Padawer, ScD, z”l, are the two translators responsible for the new English edition of Martin Buber’s Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassidischen Lehre (The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching). In this excerpt from the book’s introduction, they discuss the origins of Buber’s classic work and why they decided to undertake this translation project.

In April 1947, Martin Buber (1878–1965) delivered a six-part lecture with the title “Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassidischen Lehre” (The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching) to the Woodbrookers at their convention center in Bentveld, Holland. The Woodbrookers (Vereeniging Arbeidersgemeenschap der Woodbrookers, Association of Workers Community of Woodbrookers), a Dutch religious-socialist workers’ organization with connections to English Quakers, and Martin Buber were no strangers; Willem Banning (1881–1971), Protestant pastor, cofounder, and some-time leader of the Woodbrookers Workers Community, had known Buber for many years and had been influenced by Buber’s socioreligious and philosophical outlook. When it became known in 1947 that Martin Buber would visit Holland as part of a seven-country lecture tour organized by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Woodbrookers invited him to be their featured speaker at a specially organized educational conference…

From his earliest years, Buber had been fascinated by the legends, traditions, and mystical teachings of the eighteenth-century Eastern European Chasidic rabbis. He chose a legendary tale from the Chasidic masters as a theme for each one of his six lectures and then expanded on these six tales to show their relevance to mid-twentieth-century thinking and sensibilities… A “Notice to Members,” found in the archives of the Woodbrookers Workers Community (now housed at the International Institute of Social History, in Amsterdam), notes that Martin Buber delivered his address on Sunday, April 20, 1947, in two sessions (at 10:30 in the morning and 4:00 in the afternoon) to an appreciative audience of about 150 listeners.

Martin Buber
The David B. Keidan Collection of Digital Images from the Central Zionist Archives

One of these auditors was Henri Friedlaender, who was a skilled calligrapher, graphic designer, and some-time poet who previously had published his writings on his own small press, Pulvis Viarum. Friedlaender was so much taken by Buber’s lectures that he approached Buber and was able to persuade him to let Pulvis Viarum publish the lectures as a German-language monograph with the title Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassidischen Lehre (The Way of Humanity: According to Chasidic Teaching). Friedlaender augmented Buber’s German lecture notes with a glossary explaining lesser-known terminology and place names and published it at the Pulvis Viarum Press in 1948.[1] To this day it is the only one of the sixty-odd lectures delivered during Buber’s seven-nation tour to have been published (and later translated into many languages) as a stand-alone monograph…

We decided to undertake a new English translation, based on the Pulvis Viarum 1948 German-language publication, for several reasons. The first was that the original (1950) English translation had been all too faithful to its German urtext, frequently resulting in complex and overlong sentences, with many nested clauses and parenthetical modifiers that were difficult to comprehend. One of us has had firsthand experience teaching the 1950 English text to young adults; they frequently had difficulties with the material and soon lost interest.

The second reason for a new translation was that we believed Buber’s work deserved a more scholarly presentation, including numerous notes about historical figures (included in the notes and glossary), references to biblical quotations, and explanations for some of Buber’s literary allusions based on themes from early twentieth-century Western European culture that would be unfamiliar to contemporary readers.

Third, we gave due regard to the importance of making our text gender-neutral, while preserving the literary and stylistic character of the work. To do this, we adopted the simple device of eliminating every occurrence of the pronouns he, his, or him, by transposing the sentence structure from the third person singular to the first or second person singular or else from the singular to the plural. Only direct quotations from external text sources were allowed to retain their gender-specific pronouns.

This translation developed over time. Our understanding and appreciation of Buber’s ideas deepened in the process. Our aim was to make the text and its ideas accessible to readers with an English sensibility by employing colloquial American English speech and usage. At the same time, we made every attempt to find English words or phrases that mirrored as closely as possible the meaning, both explicit and implicit, of Buber’s original German, so that Buber’s poetic melody and rhythm would not be “lost in translation.”

[1] Martin Buber, Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassi- dischen Lehre (The Netherlands: Pulvis Viarum, 1948).

Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman, DHL, senior scholar at Temple Israel in Boston, Massachusetts, teaches midrash and homiletics at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. Formerly, he was Distinguished Lecturer in Judaics at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Gabriel E. Padawer, ScD, z”l, who emigrated to the United States as a refugee from Nazi persecution in 1938, was a registered professional engineer, a Fellow of the National Science Foundation, and a lifelong student of Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy.

Rabbi Mehlman and Dr. Padawer are the translators of the new English edition of Martin Buber’s The Way of Humanity, now available from CCAR Press.

Categories
Books Social Justice

Changing the Cycle: Jewish Tradition as a Response to the Climate Crisis

Rabbi Andrue J. Kahn, editor of The Sacred Earth: Jewish Perspectives on Our Planet, reflects on the traditional practice of the sh’mitah year, its applications to climate justice, and how we can build a sustainable future for all.

In New York City’s Union Square, if you look up right above Nordstrom Rack and Best Buy, you’ll see a series of red numbers counting down. Right now, it reads something like six years, some amount of days, and some amount of hours, minutes, and seconds. This is a climate clock, and others just like it exist in Seoul, Rome, Berlin, and Glasgow. These clocks are counting down to the presumed date at which our planet’s temperature will have increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius due to humanity’s carbon emissions. Climate scientists suggest that this temperature shift “could trigger a cascade of tipping points, which would irreversibly alter the global climate system and further exacerbate warming.”[1]

This viewpoint is steeped in the modern mindset. Modernity, the outcome of the European Enlightenment, focuses on a view of history as a continually straight line of progress charted on human timelines, centering ourselves, our lifetimes, and our goals. This is often viewed in the positive sense—that we, as a special species and a planet, are always progressing inevitably forward. But it is not quite how the biblical, or rabbinic, world understood the nature of history.

Our Torah teaches a practice of connecting to the land called the sh’mitah system, which in many ways runs precisely contrary to our modern sense of straight-line progress. It creates seven-year cycles of stopping work, stopping growth, and, after many cycles, returning all back to an original state, undoing anything that could be viewed as financial or wealth accumulation.

God tells Moses:

Speak to the Israelite people and say to them:… Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Eternal: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. (Leviticus 25:2–4)

This cycle continues seven times itself, every forty-nine years. The seventh cycle of the sh’mitah year is the yoveil year, in which all things are returned to their original status. If land has changed hands between families, it goes back to the original families. If someone has become enslaved or indebted, that slavery and that debt are canceled. Every forty-nine years, the society returns to its starting point. The year 5782, or 2021–22 in the Gregorian calendar, was the last sh’mitah year. This major cycle of the Jewish calendar is aligning directly with the environmental countdown clock. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the countdown clock at Union Square is also counting down to the next sh’mitah year, 5789.

One of the most brilliant Torah scholars of history, Moses ben Nachman (Ramban), sees within the sh’mitah practice of the Torah a symbolic system of cycles in time that point us towards not just human social structures, or human-centric histories and futures, but the underlying pattern of the cosmos.

He writes:

The six days of creation represent the duration of the world, and “the seventh day is a sabbath of Adonai your God” (Exodus 20:10). Just as the seven days of the week allude to what God created in the beginning, so the seven years of the sabbatical cycle allude to what will happen during all the rest of creation. That is why the text is so strict about it, invoking a penalty of exile for violating it. (Ramban on Leviticus 25:2)

Ramban is suggesting that our entire universe works in these cycles of seven, starting with six “days” of work, and then a seventh “day” of rest. This continues out fractally in time, forever. We have six “years” of work, and then a seventh “year” of rest, which then multiplies out to a seventh degree as well, with a complete societal reset every seven cycles.

This system of seven continues ad-infinitum, and the end of time will come at the end of one-thousand cycles of seven, in which the “World to Come”—the Jewish phraseology for the messianic era—will be established. There will then be one-thousand years of peace and prosperity, a Shabbat to end all Shabbats, which will then end with a total return to nothing, perhaps to start all over again.

In her recent book Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira writes about looking at stories so radically different from our normative modern viewpoint of straight-line progress through history, not for their literal truth, but as a process to think with.

She refers to this as worlding, using stories as a guide to how to be in the world. She writes:

Worlding stories invite us to experiment with a different relationship between language and reality. These stories do not require anyone to believe in anything; rather they invite you to believe with them. However, these stories cannot work on you without your consent. Taking worlding stories seriously makes possible a significant change in your ways of seeing, sensing, and relating to the world.[2]

So I invite you, now, to try worlding with this very different cosmology that the Torah and Ramban are putting forward. We have a little over six years until the climate countdown clock hits zero, and our next sh’mitah year begins. What this cycle of sevens brought to us by our tradition teaches us is that time moves in predictable patterns that we cannot change—but we, ourselves, can change our own behavior within the patterns. By reflecting on our own behavior within them, we are able to change the outcomes of the cycle.

The Sacred Earth: Jewish Perspectives on our Planet provides a multitude of ways to world with this idea—to find our Jewish footing in this system of cycles in order to change our behavior, and perhaps change the outcome of this cycle towards the tipping point of global warming. Each chapter of this book reflects on Jewish modes of understanding our relationship to God, the planet, and each other through different aspects of our tradition’s wisdom systems—from theology, to halachah (Jewish law), to prayer, to personal practice in nature. This volume seeks to be a key to a vision for a future perfect with nature and with the Divine rather than the straight lines of human-centered history.

As we look forward to our next sh’mitah year, and perhaps this tipping point of climate change, may each of us find within our tradition ways of worlding with our ancestors, our tradition, and our Torah, to build a future for all of us.

Rabbi Kahn and select contributors to The Sacred Earth are available to visit communities for speaker events and book clubs. For more information, please email bookevents@ccarpress.org.

Rabbi Andrue J. Kahn is Associate Director of Yachad and Adult Education at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, NY. He is the editor of The Sacred Earth: Jewish Perspectives on Our Planet (CCAR Press, 2023).

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/1.5-degrees-climate-change-tipping-points-2030#:~:text=As%20the%20planet%20rapidly%20approaches,in%20the%20next%20few%20years.

[2] Machado de Oliveira, Vanessa. Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, 46–47. North Atlantic Books, 2021.

Categories
Books CCAR Press Death

Regaining Grounding after Loss: Rabbi Lisa Grant and Cantor Lisa Segal on ‘The Year of Mourning’

Rabbi Lisa D. Grant and Cantor Lisa B. Segal discuss the motivation behind their new book The Year of Mourning: A Jewish Journey, the complementary digital app, and what they hope readers and users will gain from the project.

What inspired the creation of The Year of Mourning?

Rabbi Grant: During the months following my mother’s death I formed a “Kaddish club” at my synagogue where I invited other mourners to join with me in sharing memories of their loved ones, in studying Jewish sources related to mourning, in singing and praying together, and in being a supportive community to one another as we journeyed through our process of grief. The Year of Mourning grew out of these experiences and includes many of the same components that were part of those in-person gatherings.

The book and app are composed of seven units. Can you describe these sections and how they correspond to various parts of the mourning experience? 

The material is organized around seven themes that are common experiences of mourning (pain, brokenness, sadness, comfort resilience, acceptance, gratitude). Each theme includes seven units, which begin with a song, which can be listened to on the app version. This is followed by a question that sets an intention for exploring the materials to follow. Then there is a brief text to study with guiding questions, followed by a contemporary poem. Each unit concludes with the Mourner’s Kaddish, which also can be heard on the app. Just as mourning does not follow a predictable path, we invite mourners to use the materials in ways they find most meaningful.  

What makes the app different from the book? How can the two be used in tandem?

The book and the app are identical in terms of their content, but the app allows the user to carry it with you in your phone, and to access the materials in a variety of different modalities: reading, journaling, and listening to the music.

One of the major advantages of the app is the beautiful recordings that can be listened to as part of each given unit: one can explore a theme, or a kavanah or sacred source, and listen to the music connected to them. Alternatively, any of the musical selections can be listened to by pressing the Music icon, at any time or in any order. In addition, for those unfamiliar with reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish, we also provide a recording to follow and to gain literacy and grounding in that experience.

To help you move through weeks of mourning, you can set daily reminders in the Settings menu and a notification will appear with a quote. As with the music, you can always just scroll through those quotes. There is also a handy option in the app to write reflections in a journal that can be saved or edited as you go along.

Music is a key part of The Year of Mourning. What role can music play for someone experiencing bereavement?

While our traditions offer so many deep and comforting texts and rituals created to hold us in our losses, for many mourners, music holds a special place. Music can touch our hearts and souls in ways that transcend words. Often, in the journey of mourning, we find ourselves unable to articulate or express a feeling or emotion, and music has the potential to touch those recesses to comfort us or help us express the inexpressible. There is an intentional repetition of a number of the songs as expressions of different emotions and themes, recognizing the fluidity of the way music can speak to us within varied emotional states. We hope that the musical choices we made for the app—in both text and style—connect to and enhance the units’ themes, kavanot, poetry, and sacred sources.

What are your hopes for this project’s impact? 

We hope that rabbis and cantors will recommend these resources to mourners in their communities who are looking for sources of support, wisdom, and comfort during this time of grief. These resources are intended to help individuals regain their grounding after the death of a loved one, by making deeper connections to memories and to the richness of Jewish wisdom and tradition.

The Year of Mourning: A Jewish Journey is available in print and as an Apple and Android app. Rabbi Grant and Cantor Segal can visit communities to teach on the topic; please email bookevents@ccarpress.org for details.

Rabbi Lisa D. Grant, PhD, is Director of the New York Rabbinical School program, Eleanor Sinsheimer Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish Education, and Coordinator of Special Seminary projects at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion.

Cantor Lisa B. Segal serves as cantor and is a founding member of congregation Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.