Categories
High Holy Days Machzor Mishkan haNefesh Prayer

To Be – I Am Alive Again: Further Reflections on Mishkan HaNefesh

When the new edition of a Reform Siddur for Shabbat and Festivals, Mishkan Tefilah, was published a few years ago, some of the changes and some of the choices embedded in the liturgy necessitated conversations in congregations about how we would pray some of the prayers.

One example was the second paragraph of the Amidah, often referred to as the ‘Gevurot’ (strength/power), for it begins with the phrase, ata gibor l’olam Adonai – Your power is eternal, Adonai. In earlier generations of Reform prayer books a change had been made to the language of this prayer as you would find it in a Conservative or Orthodox prayer book. In three instances the traditional prayer referred to God as m’chayei hameitim, literally ‘who brings the dead back to life’. For decades in Reform congregations we recited this prayer with a change in the wording, declaring m’chayey hakol – who gives life to all things. Conceptually, this didn’t rule out the idea, discussed in early rabbinic sources, that one day the dead would come back to life. But neither did it assert this doctrinal belief in the way that the traditional phrase seemed to do so definitively.

So why, when a new edition of a Siddur was created, do we now find the words ‘hameitim’ offered in brackets as an alternative choice to ‘hakol’? There were those who argued that there were allegorical ways of understanding ‘who brings the dead back to life’ and that we could use the more ancient liturgical language without having to accept a messianic doctrine of the revival of the dead. We all have times when we feel like we’ve hit a dead end. Maybe we are stuck trying to solve a problem at work, deal with a difficult family member, or so lost in grief that we cannot imagine ever experiencing the joy and blessing of life again. And yet… somehow we do. We go home and we start the next day anew, and maybe we see a solution to our problem that was beyond our grasp the day before. Perhaps we try to reach out to that family member in a different way, or perhaps something changes in their life and we unexpectedly get a message from them to indicate a desire for reconciliation. And while we have good days and bad days, perhaps a grandchild comes to visit and brings us joy in the midst of our grief, or a walk in the fields on a particularly beautiful day brings us some awareness of beauty. Each of these are experiences of m’chayey hameitim – we have had a powerful experience of a revival of life. Our ‘being’ is not only in the past tense; now we feel some hope in the potential of our future ‘being’ too.

In Mishkan HaNefesh, the draft Rosh Hashanah morning liturgy presents us with a poem by the Israeli poet, Zelda, as a contemporary text facing the Gevurot passage. In this poem Zelda, in the midst of grief, reflects on how the smallest things around her can suddenly bring her back to life:

 

In the morning I said to myself:
Life’s magic will never come back.
It won’t come back.

All at once the sunshine in my house
is alive for me
and the table with its bread
is gold
and the cups on the table and the flower –
all gold.
And what of the sorrow?
Even in the sorrow, radiance.

 

The closing phrase of the blessing (chatimah, or ‘seal’) is translated: You are the Source of all blessing, the life force surging within all things. Bringing our awareness to all that surges with that life force can open up the possibility of feeling the presence of blessing in our lives once more. It is an invitation to return to life.

Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz serves Congregation Congregation B’nai Shalom in Westborough, MA.

 

Categories
Social Justice

Remembering September 11th

Every day this month, prior to the Jewish High Holy Days, Jews will sound the Shofar, the rams horn, to herald the coming of the Days of Judgement and Atonement. One of the reasons given for the call of the shofar is to remind us of the eternal voiceless cry of the soul.

This thirteenth anniversary of September 11th and the symbolism of the shofar are expressed by this soulful prayer for our time of remembrance this Thursday:

*May the cry of the shofar remind us of the 2,973 lives that were taken that day. May the shofar’s sound echo like the sirens of the firefighters. police officers and first responders whose heroic sacrifices were extraordinary on that day.

*May the shofar’s plaintiff call remind us how fleeting and fragile this life is.

*May the voice of the shofar serve to comfort all who were wounded in body and spirit; those who lost loved ones and friends, and all whose hearts were broken by witnessing the pain of others.

*On this 13th anniversary, may the blast of the shofar drown out the shouts of cruel extremists who threaten us and who would destroy our lives and our freedom.

*On this 13th anniversary, and every day yet to come, may we find hope and strength in a world that is broken and needs healing. And let us pray that all caring and compassionate human beings will not surrender to evil and will summon the courage to repair our fractured world.

And let the shofar be like a siren that alerts us to danger and summons us to act.

May there come a day when we, and our children, and our children’s children, will live unafraid in a more tolerant, just, and peaceful world.

Rabbi Hirshel Jaffe has lived a courageous life of involvement and dedication. He led a Unity March against the Ku Klux Klan, rallied to free Soviet Jews, and was a member of the Clergy Delegation who visited the American Hostages in Iran. His participation in the New York City Marathon earned him the nickname, “The Running Rabbi.”