Reform Judaism

Liturgical Obligations

2010-03-10T15:17:42Z

by Monica Cellio
Temple Sinai, Pittsburgh PA
Also posted on LiveJournal

I was recently in a discussion about the choices that worship leaders make, and I realized that the Reform Movement's approach imposes a higher literacy burden than I think most realize.

In an Orthodox service, the decisions made by the sh'liach tzibbur, the leader, pretty much boil down to what melodies to use. The actual text is fixed; you do what the the siddur tells you to do (and remember seasonal variations if the siddur doesn't mark them). I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying it's not too complex. While (in my experience) most Orthodox Jews who would be in a position to lead services are thoroughly fluent, technically the leader doesn't have to know what it all means and why the service is structured that way and so on.

Now consider the Reform movement, which from the beginning declined to follow the fixed liturgy. The early reformers eliminated some parts of the service (like musaf and many of the kaddishes) because they were repetitive, changed the texts of some prayers for ideological reasons (like objecting to resurrection of the dead), and introduced English readings that did not necessarily strictly follow the Hebrew they replaced. My impression is that they did the vast majority of this thoughtfully; later generations might disagree with their reasons, but they had reasons.

At least since the publication of Gates of Prayer, a siddur that offered many (and quite varied) alternatives to the leader, Reform services have tended to vary from one time to another, skip some of the Hebrew readings, use very "creative" English readings, and vary the music (which sometimes means varying the text because you want to use so-and-so's setting and it's a little different). The publishers of the siddur stuck to the same service structure, but at least from what I've seen in the last 12 years or so (as long as I've been watching), leaders have used it pretty freely. So it wasn't uncommon to do the Sh'ma/v'ahavta in both Hebrew and English (despite the repetition) but skip ahavat olam entirely, for instance. (Why yes, that does bother me, but that's a different essay.)

Mishkan T'filah, the new Reform siddur, corrects some of the problems in GOP. The theory is brilliant: here is a two-page spread including the Hebrew, a decent translation, and some alternative English readings; choose exactly one thing from this spread and then turn the page. But some of the English readings really aren't connected to what's supposed to be going on at that point in the service, so I see leaders break the pattern -- skip a few pages, then do both the Hebrew and one of the English readings from one spread, and so on. (That the editors sometimes violated their own format doesn't help this.) I was recently talking with a lay person who sometimes leads services in her congregation, and she told me she picks and chooses "just like [she] did with GOP". She didn't realize that she was repeating some things and entirely skipping others.

Why didn't she realize this? Because she is not highly fluent in the service -- she doesn't understand why the (Shabbat) amidah has seven sections and what each of them is for (and why that one English reading is terrible in that place...), or that kri'at sh'ma has more structure than "something before, sh'ma, mi chamocha" and that skipping parts breaks the theme, or why the v'shamru earlier in the service doesn't cover you for the sanctification of the day later even though they're both "yay, shabbat" texts, and so on. She hasn't studied this stuff and doesn't engage with it like I do. And I realized: most Reform Jews don't study this stuff. In another movement they might not have to, but in the Reform Movement, the leader is more likely to be making decisions about the content of the service and so, in my opinion, has an obligation to become fluent. By the nature of its siddur and its history, the Movement imposes, or ought to impose, a higher burden of fluency than would have been necessary if we'd just stuck with the traditional text.

Of course our rabbis are fluent, and often they are the ones leading services. We have occasional geeks like me who are also fluent and have occasional opportunities to lead. But sometimes we have people who have occasional opportunities to lead who aren't fluent and don't even realize it matters. As a community we apparently aren't willing to say to those people "get fluent or follow instructions without varying or get off the bimah". So we get services that are sometimes haphazard and disjointed, which makes it really hard for people who do know what's going on to achieve kavannah (intentionality).

Once people know a little about the service structure I suspect they're more likely to not mess with it, but how -- aside from one conversation at a time -- do we get people to that "a ha!" moment that causes them to even notice the issue?

Blessing

2009-12-08T17:49:28Z

by Leon Adato
(Originally published on The Edible Torah)

It was not your typical Shabbat candle blessing moment at our house. Usually, people group more or less by age around the table - teens bunched together whispering and laughing, younger kids up near the candles and challah hoping for a chance to light, pass, tear, or hold during the blessings, parents on the periphery shmoozing and watching out that their kids behave.

But on this particular night, families were huddled together, hugging. More than a few folks were (or had been) crying.

What was different?

Earlier in the evening I had pulled the "teenish" kids - those 11 or older - to join me for a brief bit of Torah study. It was the last portion in Bereshit (Genesis) - where Jacob gives his blessing on Joseph's sons Manasseh and Ephraim (not to mention the rest of his brood). We talked about how this moment in Torah had evolved into the traditional blessing over children - invoking the attributes of Manasseh and Ephraim for boys; while for girls we look for them to be like Sarah, Rebeccah, Rachel and Leah. We talked about why that would be any particular benefit - what those ancestors did which was noteworthy.

Then I tasked kids with finding their parents, and asking them for their blessing.

Meanwhile my wife had been briefly prepping the parents - telling them that their kids might come to them seeking a blessing. She handed out cards with the traditional Jewish blessing but let them know that they were free to improvise or to invoke a blessing from a different culture if it suited them.

Moments later the kids came into the room, some quietly and others brazen, to pull a parent aside. It was interesting to see that the younger the child, the more open and unabashed they were in asking while the teens were generally more restrained, even sheepish.

In every corner you could see private moments and hear snatches of whispered conversations. Some adults spoke haltingly, looking for just the right words. For others the words flowed like a torrent.

"You have my grandfather's name and his gift for making people feel welcome..."
"Yisimcha Eh-lokim k'Ephraim v'chi'Menashe..."
"...and I should remember to tell you more often..."
"...and it harm none, do what you will..."
"...then when I saw this week that you had..."
"...had some rough patches, but beyond that you know I..."

One young man, eager to hear his mother's blessing even though she was 3 states away, called her despite the time and the fact that she was likely in the middle of a dinner meeting. No matter how great cell phone companies say their network is, nobody has built a system with the capacity to transmit the quantity of love and pride her words held that night. Days later she told me that her dinner guests were bemoaning the lack of Jewish connection teens had, and how it was so difficult to get them to care about the importance of ritual. She was arguing that many do and a lot has to do ith adult role models. When her son's call came, she gave her blessing (which included the traditional Jewish version and her own personal message) while still seated among her dinner companions.

And so we all stood a while later, in front of the candles, wine and challah, both energized and introspective by the connection we had experienced. Some of us were raw with emotion, but in a good way. When the adults read the interaction between Jacob and his family later during Torah study, we all admitted to how it had a different feel, that the words resonated with us differently than we expected.

A friend who was there recently commented that we've never blessed our children together since that night. Given how successful it was, I am not sure why it didn't become part of our weekly routine. Maybe the experience was so intense I was afraid people would be uncomfortable with it week after week. Perhaps I was afraid of such a powerful moment getting lost if it turned into "just another thing to do".

Whatever the reason, the portion with Jacob's blessing is coming around again. In a time and culture where (in my opinion) the term "parenting" either implies "over indulging" or conversely "punishing", I think it's high time I made a place during Shabbat for (at least) a moment of honest communication with my kids: to tell them that I love them, believe in them, and hope the best for them.

Here, O Israel, We Take Our Stand - or Don't We?

2009-11-25T03:45:57Z

by Larry Kaufman

As always at Biennial, Shabbat worship was exuberant and inspiring. The most startling event of the services came when Rabbi David Stern, who led our worship on Shabbat morning, asked the congregation to be seated after the Barchu, and then discussed the long-standing Reform practice of standing for the Shma - a practice not typically followed by the other streams. He followed with the suggestion that this time we sit. (Some will no doubt quarrel with my characterizing his words as a suggestion, and I couldn't quarrel with anyone who preferred to call it an instruction.)

When I remarked on this in a post-Biennial email to my colleagues on the iWorship list-serv, it unleashed a torrent of dialogue, even controversy, that went far beyond the matter of standing or sitting for the Shma, and in fact spread beyond the list-serv and onto Facebook and into the blogosphere. I have now seen over one hundred comments on this and related issues, from some forty individuals, both lay and clergy, and there may be voices yet to be heard - including those stimulated by this report.

The comments fell into several different categories:

How dare the Union deviate from the time-honored Reform choreography of standing for the Barchu (or, in the neo-traditional style, for the hatzi kaddish that precedes the Barchu) and remain standing through the Baruch shem? (One worshipper accused the URJ of thus ruining her Shabbat.)
Was this innovation, as one commentator hinted, part of an ongoing conspiracy to push Reform Judaism one more step in its dangerous march towards Orthodox ritual?
When we talk about the Shma, should we be talking only about the six-word proclamation and its six-word response, or should we be talking about the passages that follow that historically were considered part of the Shma? This is a matter of particular concern for liturgist/blogger David A.M. Wilensky, whose own practice of sitting emerges from his view of the Shma and its blessings as a totality. Since in general Reform practice, we join him on our seats no later than the Ve'ahavta, his "big picture" analysis doesn't really impact on the consternation felt by some in Toronto.
Should the congregation be instructed on standing or sitting, or should this be a matter of individual choice, in keeping with the principle of autonomy?
Is this topic worth talking about at all?

The answer to Question 5, or at least my answer and that of some forty others, is clearly yes, this is worth talking about - not just when to stand and when to sit, but who decides and with what authority. And at least part of the answer to that question follows automatically from the decision by the editors of Mishkan T'filah not to suggest or stipulate choreography but to leave it to the leader(s) of any particular service. This "local option" differs from Gates of Prayer, which stipulated that we rise for the Barchu and remain standing through Baruch shem - and also from the practice of the Union Prayer Book - rise for the Barchu, then sit, and rise again for the Shma and Baruch shem. (For a complete historical perspective, see the backgrounder from Rabbi Richard Sarason, which tells us, among other things, that the argument over standing vs. sitting goes back to the time of Hillel and Shammai.)

It's not my impression that the decision to omit stage directions from Mishkan T'filah was meant to leave all choreographic decisions to the individual worshipper, but rather to the leaders of the service. My impression is bolstered in two ways:

Elements of prayer choreography like bowing, turning, and rising on tiptoe are noted, in footnotes, preceded by the carefully chosen words, For those who choose. Calling attention to specific actions for those who choose seems clearly to mean that other actions are not matters of individual choice.
One of the prime aspects of Jewish worship that were seen in early nineteenth century Germany as needing reform was the every-man-for-himself chaos that characterized the prevailing worship style (and that still seems to prevail in Orthodox worship, at least to the uninitiated eye).

Thus I find little merit in the suggestion voiced in the on-line discussion that no stand-sit instruction be provided and that the decision be left totally to the individual worshipper. The Reform principle of autonomy extends to the autonomy of the community, but not to the freedom of the individual to disrupt the community; and in the Reform community, most of us do look to our worship leader for guidance in the protocol of worship.

Cantor Alane Katzew of the Union staff, who was deeply immersed in orchestrating worship at the Biennial, pointed out that a goodly number of participants chose to disregard the guidance from the bimah (and I infer from her comments that one reason for introducing the new/old choreography was to stimulate awareness of the freedom both the siddur and Reform Judaism give us to experiment and "try on" new worship modes). Conformity is no longer enforced in Reform worship - many of us remember when an usher would discreetly tap you on the shoulder and ask you to remove your head covering - but neither is non-conformity encouraged.

Marge Auerbach, who has cantorial certification from Maalot Seminary in Rockville MD, provided her informed theory that the recommendation to sit was based on musical rather than theological choices:

The choir was singing Doug Cotler's "Listen," which includes the Shma as part of the song. So it would have been intrusive for people to stand in the middle of the choir's and cantor's song. I guess we could have stood throughout the song, but that seems a bit silly. Maybe it was what we used to call in the ed biz a "teachable moment."

Marge's theory works for me, not only for the reasons she suggests, but also because my creaky bones don't mind standing, and don't mind sitting, but do rebel against a jumping jack regimen, where I constantly have to get up and sit down. This squares with Rabbi Sarason's suggestion that the change in GOP from UPB's instruction to sit after the Barchu and then get up again for Shma was practical rather than ideological

Peter Pundy, a vice-president of the Guild of Temple Musicians, and the accompanist for the Biennial Choir, pointed out the need to handle any worship change sensitively. Too little change, he reminded us, becomes monotony, certainly at different levels for different people, but sooner or later we all take "for granted" that which remains absolutely constant.

Unfortunately, there is more than a homonymic affinity between taking for granted and engraved in granite. If we ever allow ourselves to be so fettered by today that we can look neither at yesterday or tomorrow, we will no longer need the Biennial, because the Biennial is, among other things, our laboratory for experimentation, for innovation, and for trying on garments that we may once have outgrown but have now grown back into.

Elizabeth Lacher interpreted sitting for the Shma as an experiment, not that we were being asked to make any permanent change, to give us the opportunity to hear the prayer in a different way, and to approach it in the future with renewed kavanah rather than in a rote (albeit familiar) manner. And just as I was getting ready to email this post to the blog, Barbara Shuman added her comment: The issue for me is not whether this is a Reform or traditional practice, but what elevates my prayer. It is a spiritual challenge, not a political one.

I think Barbara is right on. The Shma experiment was intended to challenge us spiritually, educate us liturgically, and open our eyes to the range of possibilities offered by our movement's new siddur. It was not intended as a "statement," and certainly not as a mandate. My own stand on the Shma is unchanged - I will continue to stand until my rabbi suggests otherwise. But I have a better idea now than I did before of what I am supposed to Hear and why I am supposed to hear it. And I have a clearer understanding that, while our God is One, our ways of worshipping God are not.

Shabbat Solidarity

2009-09-30T01:52:43Z

by dcc
(Originally posted on The DCC)

The days between the High Holidays are a time of reflection, apology, prayer and introspection for the Jewish people. While Shabbat affords us this opportunity each week, I feel like the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Shabbat Shuvah, is all the more special and powerful. So last Friday night I joined more than 100 young adults (both in age and in spirit) at Temple Shaarey Tefila for Shabbat Unplugged. This service is a celebration of Shabbat, bringing together people of different backgrounds, creeds and orientations to sing, celebrate and be together as a community to welcome the Sabbath bride.

I take the community aspect of this service very seriously and feel it is perhaps the most important aspect of my Shabbat. That is why I got up early on Saturday morning to travel to Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope to help this community--a community of people from different backgrounds, creeds and orientations--enjoy and sanctify the Shabbat.

Unfortunately the Westboro Baptist Church, the infamous hate group, was outside of Beth Elohim trying to deny this community of its Shabbat Shalom, its peaceful and meaningful Shabbat. Hatred needs to be combated with love and support, so I went to stand in solidarity with this community as it celebrated a young girl becoming a woman in the eyes of the Jewish people, to sit together with members and guests to learn some Torah portion and to take action in the face of injustice and hate.

It was a pretty sad showing from the Westboro contingent; no more than six or seven people with disgusting signs that will not get air time on this blog. But on the good guys' side, there were more like 150 people from all walks of life. There were rabbis, priests and pastors. There were gay, straight and bisexuals community members (I know because the good guys had signs explaining these things). But the thing that was best about this was the positive message of the good guys' counter demonstration.

Rabbi Andy Bachman, who is the spiritual leader of CBE, took a strong stand against a counter-protest but was open to the peaceful show of communal support that was emanating from the crowd last Shabbat. He lead this group from different backgrounds, creeds and orientations in a Shofar service, using the ancient horn of the Jewish people to shock us awake from the indifference that allows the Westboro brand of hate to flourish. He also called upon us to, in the tradition of the God of compassion to welcome the stranger, to accept all human beings as God's creation and to never allow hate to triumph over tolerance.

He also called upon us to act in the tradition of the God of Groucho Marx and stick our thumbs on our noses and wave our hands at the protestors...you can't be serious all the time (even in Park Slope).

But all this show of hate and counter-tolerance was not the most important aspect of this day. After the visitors from Kansas left, we all went inside to services. A young woman became Bat Mitzvah. A rabbi celebrated his 50th anniversary of his Bar Mitzvah. A member of the congregation gave a d'var Torah that dug deeper than most sermons and a guest from the Upper East Side took part in a beautiful Shabbat Morning experience.

People told me I was doing a great thing and I happen to agree. But the singing and dancing in the face of the hatemongering anti-Semitic homophobes was nothing important. The real power and meaning, a place where we found true Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of return to the community and people of Israel, was that this group of people from different backgrounds, creeds and orientations, joined together in what we were going to do anyway. The evil of those Wichita-based bigots changed nothing. Together this community stood strong in the face of injustice, stuck our tongues out at hatred and joined together in a joyous celebration of the Jewish people.

Putting "Labor" Back into Labor Day

2009-09-03T15:31:11Z

by Jacob Feinspan
(Originally posted at RACblog)

When you hear "Labor Day", what are the first things that come to mind? A recent survey of friends included responses such as: end of the summer, last weekend at the pool, last hurrah at the beach, beginning of school, and a reminder that the high holidays are just around the corner. Not one of them associated the Labor Day with the reason it was created - as a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

But what if we actually put the Labor back into Labor Day? How could we use the opportunity to reflect on the amazing achievements of American workers and at the same time on the challenges facing working people in our country today?

At Jews United for Justice, our answer to these questions is Labor on the Bimah: an opportunity for congregations to integrate Labor Day into their services by focusing on workers' rights issues from the Bimah through a sermon, a conversation, or even through music. This year nearly 50 synagogues and minyanim in the Washington area will be joining hundreds of churches, synagogues, and mosques around the country for Labor in the Pulpits/on the Bimah/in the Minbar, a national program led by Interfaith Worker Justice and the AFL-CIO.

In fact, just yesterday the New York Times reports that in a new study, more than two thirds of low-wage workers had been victims of wage theft in the week before they were surveyed. And it wasn't just a dollar here and a dollar there. Researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage theft - out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay for workers living on the edge of poverty!

We don't have to look far in this week's Torah portion to be reminded of our communities' biblical struggle against exploitive work conditions:

And the Egyptians treated us cruelly and afflicted us, and they imposed hard labor upon us. So we cried out to the Lord, God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out from Egypt with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm, with great awe, and with signs and wonders. (Deuteronomy 26:6-8)

Jews United for Justice is using this Labor Day to focus attention particularly on the struggle of day laborers, who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation because they do not have formal work arrangements with employers. (For more information about our work, download our Labor on the Bimah Resource Packet, which includes information about the problem of wage theft and connections you can make to the Torah portion.)

But wage theft and the exploitation of day laborers are hardly the only struggles facing workers this year. First, check out the resources that Interfaith Worker Justice and the AFL-CIO put together on Health Care Reform, and then visit my colleague Sybil Sanchez at the Jewish Labor Committee, who makes a powerful case for the Employee Free Choice Act in this op-ed that recently appeared in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

While most headlines are focused on health care reform, labor law reform should stay on our agenda -- specifically, the Employee Free Choice Act. This much-needed legislation has three important principles: Workers would more easily be able to join or form a union; employers who break the law in efforts to stop union organizing would face more stringent penalties and workers who have chosen to form a union would have a clear path to an initial collective bargaining agreement with their employer.

Today, 44 percent of newly formed unions are unable to reach initial agreements, a serious problem the current law fails to address. The majority sign-up route to union recognition provided by the Employee Free Choice Act has a long history and is in widespread use today in the United States and many other countries. But there's a catch: Under current law, workers can form a union via majority sign-up only if their employer agrees to it -- which most employers refuse to do, even when worker support for the union is overwhelming.

Supporting this legislation is a no-brainer if one supports workers' right to collectively negotiate for decent wages and working conditions.

I hope that you'll join me and thousands of Jews across the Washington area in putting Labor back into Labor Day.

Jacob Feinspan is the Executive Director of the Washington, D.C.-based Jews United for Justice. He is a former Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

Blue Cup Oneg Shabbat

2009-08-26T17:01:05Z

By JanetheWriter
For as long as I can remember, I've been hearing the same "blue cup announcement" during Shabbat services from the bema of my home congregation, Temple Emanu-El in Edison, New Jersey: "If you're new to the temple, please use a blue cup for your beverage during the oneg Shabbat so that we can identify you and welcome you personally to the congregation." I'd always presumed that visitors and new members heeded this request when choosing their cups, but beyond acknowledging it as a creative idea, I'd never given it too much thought.

Last Friday night, I attended services--as I have for much of the summer--at a large congregation in New York City where I've been a member for about four months. Upon entering the building, I was greeted by the darshei shalom just outside the sanctuary and, in fact, chatted with one I happen to know from my work at the Union. On this particular night I was alone which--even though I've cast aside any illusions that I'll meet my bashert in a synagogue--was just fine with me. Once seated inside, I was perfectly content to relax, unwind and concentrate on letting go of the past week. (As I understand things, that's just what God had in mind when God created Shabbat.)

As always, I enjoyed the service, the rabbi's remarks, the music, and the sense of community, even in the large sanctuary where I recognized only one person--another solo attendee, a woman I've met on several previous occasions who has children and grandchildren who live out of town. And, indeed, on the way out of the sanctuary, we wished each other a Shabbat shalom and chatted briefly. She was not staying for the oneg Shabbat so as I headed into the social hall, she headed out of the synagogue onto the street.

Once in the oneg Shabbat, I poured myself some juice and, scanning the room for a familiar face or two, saw only clusters of congregants socializing with others they already knew. Standing alone amid strangers, the sense of community I'd felt earlier in the evening evaporated and my wallflower tendencies kicked in. So, I spent a few minutes perusing the off-to-the-side table of program and activity flyers before I slipped out and headed home.

What I wouldn't have given for a blue cup at that oneg Shabbat...

Galilee Diary: Tradition, tradition

2009-08-11T15:47:16Z

by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Galilee Diary and Ten Minutes of Torah)

Rabbi Johanan said in the name of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai: If Israel were to keep two Sabbaths according to the laws thereof, they would be redeemed immediately. -Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, page 118b

When Shorashim was founded by about a dozen young families in the early 1980s, the group decided that while they were not (yet) affiliated with any particular denomination of Judaism, they wanted Shabbat to be an important part of the life of the community. They decided to hold services Friday evening and Saturday morning. Shorashim did not have a rabbi or other professional religious leadership, so the tasks of conducting services, preaching, and reading Torah were divided up among those with the requisite skills and willingness. Alas, there was only one competent Torah reader in the community, and he, like everyone else, wanted occasionally to spend Shabbat with friends or relatives elsewhere in the country - or even to go abroad. A problem: what would we do in his absence? A solution: commit to Shabbat morning services every other week. On "off" weeks, the Torah reader - and everyone else, would be free to travel (or sleep late) without letting the community down. Friday evening services could still be held weekly.

Almost thirty years later and we still don't have any professional leadership. That original Torah reader moved away twenty years ago, but in the meantime, the list of competent Torah readers has grown to well over a dozen adults and teens, as the community has expanded to 75 families, and the pool of members with other liturgical and teaching skills has grown proportionately. However, the tradition of biweekly Shabbat morning worship has continued. Indeed, on the off-weeks we have an adult study session on Saturday morning that has its own loyal following, mostly, but not entirely, comprising the core of regular attendees at on-week services. That means that we have around 25 Shabbat morning services a year (plus, of course holidays, which are independent of the regime of alternate weeks), of which maybe as many as ten include a bar/bat mitzvah. It feels silly when we have to explain our "system" to outsiders, but somehow, it works for us.

Last week, at the off-week study session, N., a veteran member who recently began to attend services regularly, asked for the floor and stated that in his opinion the time had come to start behaving like a "normal" synagogue, with Shabbat worship every week. After all, the original reason for our unusual custom has long been irrelevant, as we certainly have the manpower to sustain weekly worship. I have to say that on one level, I agree with him, and I know there are others in the community who feel that alternate-week Shabbat worship feels strange, incomplete. There is simply no good reason to continue our tradition. However, interestingly, the general tone of the conversations "in the street" after N.'s little speech was quite negative. For one thing, doubling the frequency of services would double the burden of preparation - and of "compulsory" attendance - on all the "regulars," for even with our growth we remain a relatively small community; the same pool of about 20 people who share the liturgical responsibilities biweekly would now have to commit to coming every week. Beyond that, I think that most of us (even some like me, who believe that weekly services would be appropriate), have gotten comfortable with our less demanding tradition, and rather like it. There is something to be said for sleeping in on a Saturday morning without guilt.

It will be interesting to see what develops. Local traditions, even when they have no rational basis - even when they are in conflict with central Jewish tenets - have a life of their own.

Let Shabbat Happen To You

2009-05-11T19:16:03Z

By dcc
Saturday afternoon until early Sunday morning I was at our friends' house for what was an extended and wonderful dinner and night of talking and relaxing when, after our friend suggested that we write a new blog together, I realized I have not written for RJ.org in some time now. This relaxing and delicious evening was after a lovely Friday night service where two of our other mutual friends were blessed by the rabbi for their auf ruf.

So I got to thinking that I had had what could only be described as the perfect Shabbat. I prayed a bit. I celebrated with my friends who are soon to be married. I ate a lot of very good food. I had interesting and thoughtful conversations. But, I must say that this was not the plan. This week, it seems, that Shabbat kind of happened to me.

Lately I have been working a lot. Weeks just roll one into the next and on most Fridays and Saturdays I sleep as opposed to going out late or taking-in a nice afternoon of friends and food. But this weekend I did force myself to go out and take in some of the things that I could not do during the crazy workweek.

The friend experience is imperative to human existence. I mean that without being snooty or pretentious (all while being a bit redundant). You feel better when you can share something with someone; be it learning some Talmud or just a nice cold beer on a Saturday night on the roof of your friends' apartment, having someone to share that with is pretty snazzy.

This Shabbat was lovely, less than "traditional" and perfect for me. In addition to the Z Pack kicking in and my sinus infection finally going away, this Shabbat was very relaxing and invigorating (and somewhat less redundant than the last double adjective explanation). I place much of the success of this Shabbat on the shoulders of my wife and our friends because now I am feeling ready for the week ahead, a feeling I have not had in quite some time.

I guess what I am getting at is that the Jews were really on to something with this weekend-slowdown-and-reflect-thing that we call Shabbat. It is a useful respite from our crazy lives. Whether your perfect Shabbat is a chicken dinner with the family, a full day of prayers and tradition, or more like mine starting with musical services followed by a gourmet meal prepared by a chef friend in his apartment and a long lazy Saturday with friends, I urge you all to use the next Friday to Saturday to take Shabbat and make it yours.

After you do it, send in your thoughts on the Shabbat. I would love to read what you did. Therefore, I am declaring next Shabbat the international "Let Shabbat Happen to You Shabbat." I know I will start it off with the second to last Shabbat Unplugged service of the year at my congregation, but after that it is up in the air. I want to hear from you, because as the story goes, if everyone in the world celebrates and honors Shabbat the Mochiach (messiah) will come. I don't believe that is true at all but I can tell you this, we will all be happier and healthier people.

So Let Shabbat Happen to You next week, and send in you story to rjblog at urj dot org to tell the world (or the readers of this blog) what happened!

Galilee Diary - Green thoughts IV: Ponzi and Heschel

2009-04-07T15:08:54Z

by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Galilee Diary and Ten Minutes of Torah)

The solution of mankind's most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it. In regard to external gifts, to outward possessions, there is only one proper attitude - to have them and to be able to do without them. On the Sabbath we live, as it were, independent of technical civilization: we abstain primarily from any activity that aims at remaking or reshaping the things of space. Man's royal privilege to conquer nature is suspended on the seventh day.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (1951)

American immigrants here always used to joke about how the new developments and cultural fads of Europe and North America generally took a decade or two to find their way into our mainstream. Often we had the sense of living in a state of delayed development. We were still carrying reusable baskets and even refillable bottles to the market when America had long changed to disposables; we were still mostly riding the buses when everyone in America had a car. Now, however, the time lag has shrunk considerably, probably to zero. Indeed, I think we were even ahead of America in the use of ATMs and later, of cell phones. So now, the world-wide fad in environmentalism has arrived here pretty much simultaneously with its flowering elsewhere. We too now recycle plastic bottles (though only the 1.5 liter ones); we too now use cloth bags instead of plastic at the supermarket; the elites are even buying hybrid cars and installing solar panels.

I wonder, however, if these admirable actions are not merely band-aids on a cancer. As I suspect is the case elsewhere, it is not clear that these visible fads are associated with a deeper understanding of the fundamental problem. We may put our stuff in cloth bags, but are we buying less stuff? We may be building greener homes, but are we building fewer and smaller homes? We may be using more fuel-efficient cars, but are we driving less? My sense is that these measures, which are certainly good and useful, do not address the deeper cultural phenomenon of consumerism, of the assumption that the goal is to make, have, build, and buy more, that growth is necessary. But if in fact resources of space, and energy, and water, are ultimately limited, then, sooner or later the system has to fail. A few months ago only business historians knew what a Ponzi scheme was. Now the whole world knows. And as a number of commentators have pointed out, the category seems applicable to the entire consumerist system - we keep distributing dividends to ourselves by taking more from the next wave of investors, who in this case happen to be our children; when the oil/water/open space run out, we won't be around to suffer the consequences.

For decades, many of us - and not only the Orthodox - thought that there was something right and appropriate that Shabbat in Israel was an official day of rest, when businesses were closed. That seemed part of what a Jewish state was all about. Of course it led to hardships and inequities and made life difficult for many people, and one could always argue about how rigidly it should be enforced - and about who should have the authority to decide just what should be allowed. Ultimately, over the years, the claim of individual rights has trumped that romantic notion of a Jewish state, and the capitalists and secularists have "won" over the clericalist bureaucrats - many malls are open on Shabbat, and are packed with shoppers, for shopping is, after all, a form of family recreation (at least here we don' t yet see child-size shopping carts with the sign "consumer in training"). So we have a victory for individual freedom - and a sad failure by Israel to demonstrate the power of our tradition to stand against the tide of consumerism, a missed opportunity to find a way to integrate the powerful universal message of Shabbat (as articulated so well by Heschel) into the culture of the Jewish state.

Im ein kemach, ein Havdalah? I'm unconvinced.

2009-02-18T17:49:47Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
(Originally posted on The Reform Shuckle)
A debate has raged this week at iWorship, the URJ's listserve for synagogue Ritual or Worship Committee members, regarding the timing of Havdalah.

In this late stage of halachic development, I'm a little amused and taken aback that such a debate could rage at all. Certainly, the timeframe for Havdalah is well established. It must be done after dark, once three or more stars are visible. Simple, right?

Nonetheless, the following query was brought before the list earlier this week:

After many years of only observing B'Nei Mitzvah at Shabbat Morning Services, our Ritual Committee and Congregation determined a few years ago that Shabbat Minchah B'Nei Mitzvah would be an alternative available to each family.
The start time of our Shabbat afternoon B'Nei Mitzvah is 5:30 p.m. (The service concludes with Havdalah.) In recent months, three families have asked that the start time be made later, up to an hour later. The requests have related to spring and fall B'Nei Mitzvah, when the sun sets later. Until now, we have denied those requests. Our Ritual Committee now plans to take up this issue.
So, my question is really directed at those whose congregations already hold Shabbat Minchah B'Nei Mitzvah. What time do they start and is there any flexibility regarding the start time?

List members reported, without variation, that, no, in their congregation there was no variance in the start time of Shabbat Mincha B'Nei Mitzvah.

I was shocked, though perhaps I shouldn't have been. Growing up in the Reform world, I'm used to the mentality that Kab Shab must begin at the same time every week, or else the sky will fall. I don't like it, but I'm used to it. Yet, in the synagogue I grew up, where Havdalah was not a weekly occurrence, when it did happen, it happened after dark, regardless of the time of year.

In Reform, we all agree that we can exempt ourselves from halachah when we so choose. But we do not do so at whim. We do it for reasons, I hope. Yet no one could seem to give a reason, a Jewish reason, as to why Havdalah should begin in broad daylight.

One rather eloquent iWorship member, one whom I usually agree with, brought up the principle of "Im ein kemach, ein Torah." It means, "With no bread, there is no Torah." The idea behind the saying is that being a Torah scholar is great, but if you do at the expense of your material needs, that's a problem. It's a principle meant to keep us from venerating impoverished scholars.

The thought behind bringing up "Im ein kemach" in this discussion was that (I think, I'm still not totally clear on the point!) if synagogues aren't Bar Mitzvah factories, bowing to every whim of Bar Mitzvah families, and if synagogues don't have everything start at easy to remember, inflexible times, all of their members will leave and take their money (kemach, bread) with them. I fail to see how this argument plays out logically.

This same list member asked me, on the list, "Who said everything has to make sense?"

If we look back at Reform history, we'll find that "Does it make sense?" is one of our central questions. Does it make sense to keep kosher? I don't think so, therefore I don't. Does it make sense to wear tzitzit? I think it does, so I do. Does it make sense to begin Havdalah, a ritual about darkness and steeped deeply in the symbolism of light and dark, when the sun is up? No. So what's the deal folks.

This conversation on iWorship shows us that ritual decisions are being made in synagogues acorss America with no thought being given to their meaning. And I feel like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness.

When we don't think about our religion as a religion, when we turn it into a customer service department, we are doing ourselves a grand disservice and we are spitting at our tradition. We're saying that we think our tradition is pretty, but that it doesn't deserve any real thought.

And in the end, I'm just not convinced that publishing a different start time every week is going to turn Ritual Committee members into starving scholars.

Getting Yourself Organized for the Real World

2009-02-06T15:54:10Z

By Jake Adler
(First posted on the Kesher blog)
Jake Adler shares his struggles to find balance in religious ritual, time management, and ultimately, life.

My family has never been particularly big on routines. We rarely ever lit Shabbat candles or had Shabbat dinner together in my home. It was never part of our schedule. As the mood took us, we would have Chinese, French, sushi, or my mom's favorite, the local steakhouse. This novel indecisiveness could be thrilling, but at times it was also confusing. With so many options available, it's sometimes difficult to narrow down your options. As a result, I often had trouble knowing when to stop putting things on my plate.

In high school and college, I had to learn to balance coursework, social time, extracurriculars, and personal time. But whereas in high school I had the structure of the school day and the gentle nudging of my parents to keep my schedule in check, in college I could join as many clubs as I wanted to, stay up as late as I wanted, and had no one to answer to but myself. The lack of boundaries made it too easy to over commit, and my freshman year, I burned out on all of the choices. I became the president of the Jewish Student Union, became a DJ for the campus radio station, sang in the choir, had the lead role in a play, edited the school newspaper, and stayed up late shooting the bull with friends. Eventually, I learned to balance my schedule. By my senior year, I was a master at iCal. My weeks were packed, and color-coded, a cornucopia of different activities that led me to spend time with a variety of colorful personalities.

After graduation, I found myself "in the real world," a renaissance man. A jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I had lots of interests, but I struggled to identify my passions. Although in college I had drifted slightly from my high school ambition of becoming a rabbi, it returned after I graduated. I got a summer job running the high ropes course at Olin-Sang-Ruby, the original URJ summer camp in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. I interned at the URJ, helping with the 2007 Biennial. When that ended, I was hired as the administrative assistant for the URJ's Social Action Department.

A full-time job brings another set of time management issues. It was easy to break up my college day into 2 or 3 hour chunks of class time, or hour-long meetings, but another thing entirely to have a job where the most accurate way to represent my day on the calendar is an 8 hour block labeled "Work." The chaos of having unpredictable work can be frustrating and frightening. Additionally, becoming financially independent (particularly in New York City) involves a fair amount of self-discipline (and is another cause of stress).

But I have found comfort in ritual. I go to services and am reminded of familiar words, thoughts, ideas. Shabbat dinners have become a (more) regular part of my life, thanks in large part to the support of friends. I learn new old traditions, and am able to proceed at my own comfort level, without feeling nervous or incompetent. The burden of choice is also a blessing, and we as Reform Jews must never forget that. From Adam and Eve to Abraham to Jacob to Nachshon, we make choices, make mistakes, wrestle with our past, our future, the holy and the mundane, but we always grow. Adult life is a reminder that things are always changing. Staying abreast of the changes helps me to only put what I can handle on my plate.

Jake Adler is the administrative assistant for the URJ's Commission on Social Action. He graduated from Earlham College in 2007.

Now More Than Ever, We Need Shabbat

2009-01-09T14:57:08Z

By JanetheWriter

War's raging in Gaza,
Israelis are dead,
Children are crying; they need to be fed.
Now more than ever, we need Shabbat.

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haolam,
Who hallows us with mitzvot and commands us to kindle the lights of Shabbat.

May they illumine these difficult days,
May they guide us to brighter tomorrows.

Gone are jobs,
The Dow is down,
Who knows about the coming rebound?
Now more than ever, we need Shabbat.

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haolam,
Creator of the fruit of the vine.

May its sweetness remind us of happier times,
May it point us toward the good days yet to be.

Corruption is rampant,
Scandals abound,
The world's moral compass is turned all around.
Now more than ever, we need Shabbat.

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haolam,
Who brings forth bread from the earth.

May it sustain us today,
May it give us strength for the future.

Now more than ever, we need Shabbat.
Now more than ever, we need Shabbat.
Now more than ever, we need Shabbat.

Shabbat shalom.

Making Shabbat Your Own

2009-01-08T21:13:14Z

by Art Grand
During Shabbat morning services at the URJ Board meeting in mid December three Board members were asked to share their personal Shabbat journeys, to speak about how they celebrated Shabbat and how they have thought about Shabbat observance as part of their lives. Art Grand is a member of Temple Or Rishon, Orangevale, CA, President of the Pacific Central West Council, Chair of the Joint Commission on Worship, Music and Religious Living and a member of the Board of Trustees.
(Originally posted as part of Ten Minutes of Torah)

I can't tell you how lucky I am to speak at this point in the service - right after the blessing for Torah study. My whole Shabbat - my whole week, in fact, revolves around co-teaching Torah study with my rabbi. For me, Shabbat is 24 hours of prayer, teaching, and study.

Many things have influenced my understanding of Shabbat, but my children have been my greatest teachers.

I have a 25-year old son who became Bar Mitzvah before I began my Jewish journey. He's a lot like the person I used to be - a workaholic with very little connection to Judaism. Two years ago, he called me up in a very agitated state. He was working too hard, he told me, and he was getting burnt out. Graduate school was just too hard. I listened for twenty minutes as he told me all the reasons why he couldn't possibly slow down, and then he got to the payoff: "I take time to watch the NFL every Sunday", he told me, "but it doesn't help. I've got to change my whole life around. Instead of watching the NFL on Sunday, I've got to watch college football on Saturday".

I suddenly realized that this wasn't a conversation about the pressures of graduate school. In his own tentative way, my son was asking me for permission to choose his own Shabbat practice - a practice very different from my own. It was so hard for him that he couldn't even use the word Shabbat. All he could talk about was the importance of resting on "Saturday". So I gave him my blessing. "It's OK", I told him, "lots of Jews rest on Saturday".

My son regards that conversation as a turning point in his life - the day he switched from the NFL to college football. A few weeks ago, I called him on a Friday afternoon and I asked him if there would be any good games on. "No", he told me, "but the important thing is to rest on Saturday".

My daughter is 7 ½ years younger, and she went to shul with me during all the years of my Jewish journey. My daughter is a guitarist who just started college. A month before she left for school, she told me that she would be giving a final concert at a local coffee house. "It's the last Friday night before I leave for school", she told me. "It's the only night they would let us perform". My daughter was testing me, as she had many times before. What was more important to me, her or my beloved Shabbat? But this time she added a kicker. "I'm going to miss my adult friends in the congregation. Could you invite them?" So I emailed all of my friends, the board, the Torah study group, and the Sisterhood. "Jenny is having a concert", I told them. "Could you please come?" And then I added, "This is the only time in your life that I will ever tell you not to go to Shabbat services".

There were forty people in the coffee house that night, including the president, the immediate past president, senior citizens, a two year old, and people who had known my daughter since she, herself, was two. One of the board members brought Shabbat candles. We didn't actually light them, but we knew that it was Shabbat, and the Shechinah was present.

Since she's gone off to school, my daughter has developed a habit of calling me on my cell phone just as our Oneg starts. She talks to me for a few minutes, and then she says, "Who else is there?" I pass the phone to someone else, and it can be an hour before I see my phone again. My daughter has moved away, but she is still a part of the community.

My children's Shabbat practices are very different from mine, but they are just as important to them as mine are to me. More than Israel has kept the Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept Israel.

Lakachat Shabbat--To take a day off

2009-01-02T18:33:47Z

by Jane Wishner
Member of Congregation Albert, Albuquerque, NM
and member of the Union Board's Executive Committee
(Originally posted as part of Ten Minutes of Torah)
Shabbat has meant different things to me at different times in my life. And different factors influenced my observance: my parents, community, location (am I at camp or living in Albuquerque), my age, my marital status, my children and the age of my children, my work, my travel, my participation in the Jewish community, and the combination of difficult choices I've had to make at every stage of my life about what I do and how I spend my time. And, for me, as a woman and a mother attempting to balance family, work and community, Shabbat observance has been shaped by the self- imposed obligations regarding what it is I need to do to sustain all three of them, often leaving out what I need to do to sustain myself.

We did not observe Shabbat at home when I was young. I found worship services at my synagogue boring and uninspiring. But in junior high and high school, I discovered youth group, "creative" services, and music. And we began lighting candles and saying the blessings in my home on Friday night.

The most engaged Shabbat experiences in my life were at camp - Olin Sang Ruby Institute in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. When I went to Israel to live on a secular Kibbutz for several months, I was stunned to hear Israelis use the phrase Lakachat Shabbat -- literally to "take" a Sabbath - to describe a day off from work in the middle of the week. Even at age 17, I knew that Shabbat means more than a day off from work.

My Shabbat observance has changed as my life circumstances have changed. But even when I've done things regularly, it has never been every single week. When we were first married, my husband and I did blessings on Friday night - even if it was before going out to eat. This was something I had not done when I was single and living alone. Later, our children became the focus of our observance through a mix of activities: monthly family services, Friday night blessings and dinner at home, Shabbat dinners with other families, Saturday mornings making French toast from challah, and then more frequent services as b'nei mitzvah study began. In recent years, I have volunteered to read Torah on occasion to engage myself in the text. Now, my favorite thing is Shabbat morning worship in our chapel - for me it is a return to the engagement with liturgy and music that originally inspired me decades ago. (This is fostered by the exquisite guitar and music of our rabbi, Joe Black.)

As a woman and a mother, I've struggled with the traditional role of the woman on Shabbat. I would love to smell chicken soup in our home, and have a beautifully set table every Friday night, but I want someone else to prepare it. During periods when I did not work fulltime and the children were young, I enjoyed preparing a Friday night meal for my family and for our friends. But at this stage of my life, on Friday evening, I am exhausted and want to have someone else cook or I feel like relaxing and watching a movie. Giving myself permission not to fulfill the traditional woman's role in creating Shabbat space on Friday evening has been hard.

So I have struggled and explored different practices during different periods of my life.

In writing this, I realized that every observance I have emphasized today has been with other people - my husband, our children, our congregation and community. What do people who are alone do to observe Shabbat? How do people without children observe Shabbat? How are our congregations creating welcoming Shabbat experiences for everyone?

For the first time in my overly busy life as Rob and I approach life in our empty nest, I think about what true rest and spiritual renewal mean. I am not rigid or hard on myself. But at this stage in my life, I see Shabbat as a gift that God has commanded us to give to ourselves: a gift, not a duty; an opportunity, not an obligation.

Shamor v'zachor - Observe and Remember

2008-12-30T00:08:26Z

by Daniel Crane
First-year rabbinical student at HUC-JIR
Originally written for blogHUC and Daniel's blog Journaling in Jerusalem

I've been involved with interfaith dialogue since my first year of college. So when I signed up for Rav Siach, an interdenominational rabbinical student discussion group in Jerusalem, I expected an interesting and smooth experience. The past two months have definitely been interesting, but I could hardly call them smooth!

For the past eight weeks, four fellow HUC rabbinical students and I have been traveling to Melitz, a pluralistic education center in Jerusalem, to meet a handful of our future colleagues from other denominations. There are about a dozen participants with three facilitators, and we come from Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, "orthodox," and non-denominational backgrounds. Thus, we come to the table not only with our personal perspectives but also with the weight of our "movements" on our shoulders. And all that weight has made for some very heavy conversations. We discuss and debate issues like commandedness, the role of the rabbi, and denominational distinctions, and we strive to keep our minds open while attempting to understand the thoughts of the others. This can be a significant challenge, but our mutual respect gives us the motivation to try our hardest.

One of the most intense components of Rav Siach has been our recent Shabbaton, which began when we departed from Jerusalem at 7:15 am on a Friday morning for the Arbel. The Arbel is a plateau overlooking Lake Kinneret, Sfat, Tiberias, and the coastal plain. From so high up, one can see for miles in any direction, and the views were simply stunning.

The wife of one of our facilitators is a tour guide in the Arbel, and she led us through paths down the side of the Arbel and around the face of the cliff. We rested in the abandoned caves that had been inhabited by the last remnants of the Hasmonean Dynasty that had gained control of the land of Israel following the events commemorated by Hanukkah, and we read the historical account of their eventual defeat in these very hills. Afterward, we climbed back up the cliff, gripping iron handholds and stealing final glimpses of the plains and hills laid out before us. When we reached the top, we ate our packed lunches and headed to the hostel/conference center where we'd be spending the night.

The actual hours of Shabbat were fascinating on many levels. First of all, there were a number of interesting lessons offered by our peers. Some of the topics included a comparison of the parsha with a selection from Homer's Odyssey, Reform Responsa (religious/legal decisions in the Reform movement), and the recent ruling in the Conservative movement to allow for the ordination of openly gay rabbis. We walked on Saturday afternoon to the Kinneret Cemetery, where several influential figures in early Israeli history, including the poet Rachel, the songwriter Naomi Shemer, and the Zionist labor leader Berl Katznelson are buried. And, of course, the food was plentiful and terrific!

Two particular events especially defined the scope and depth of the Shabbaton for me. The first occurred on Friday night, when we walked to our assigned room to pray together. Upon arrival, we discovered that the light was off, and to turn it on would be a violation of the rules of Shabbat in the eyes of our observant participants. As this value isn't part of my own Shabbat practice, I thought I could fix the situation by simply turning on the light in the room. I knew that it was unacceptable to ask someone to turn a light on for you, so I quickly walked to the room and flipped the switch on without saying a word. What followed was a wholly unique experience.

Immediately, the group had transformed. Everyone was in shock. What had I done? Although I didn't know this at the time, it's additionally not allowed for one who observes strict laws of Shabbat to make use of the result of a fellow Jew's breaking those laws. In other words, though I had tried to make the room suitable for our use, I had actually made it entirely unkosher.

I've come head-to-head with halacha before, but this was the first time that I had really affected people that I cared about. Words were exchanged, apologies were made, and discussion ensued. This certainly serves of an example of the principle that being told something doesn't make up for experiencing it firsthand. Never before had I felt so much access to the world of halacha as when I entered that world and shattered it for others. It was a painful lesson but an important one, and certainly the most important to me over the course of the Shabbaton.

On the other side of the spectrum, the spiritual high for me came on Shabbat morning. Our non-denominational rabbinical student led us in meditative morning blessings, and the combination of singing and silence launched me into a spiritual experience. While our voices had been in debate and discussion, not until this moment were they in harmony. I felt our small community coalesce into a praying body, and I was proud and delighted to be a part of it.

In my eyes, the Shabbaton was a terrific success and showed that pluralistic Shabbat experiences may not be easy but they can absolutely be transformative. Many of the Rav Siach participants now feel a renewed interest in such programs, and I believe that we're all better equipped to lead and learn in pluralistic environments in the future. While I'm disappointed that our official group will be coming to a close in a few weeks, I look forward to continuing my relationship with these future colleagues and continuing to learn from them for years to come.

Shabbat Shalom

2008-12-25T22:06:27Z

by Jim Ball
To talk about my relationship with Shabbat, I must speak about this week's Torah portion, Vayislach.

It's a portion has a special meaning for me. Twenty-five years ago, I became a Jew, and took the Hebrew name Ya'akov. Like the place that Jacob visited in last week's Torah portion, Beth El, I was a member of Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, MA , and my Beth El, like Jacob's, was and still is, a holy place for me.

This week Jacob, returning to his birthplace and homeland, prepares to meet Esau again, something which leaves him with some trepidation. In fact, he is terrified. He and his retinue come to the River Jabbok and must cross. Having to ford this river is, of course, highly symbolic to the task of having to cross through his own fears and reluctance to meet Esau.

After he's taken his family and possessions over, Jacob goes back across the river alone and, we are told, wrestles with a mysterious "man," who some interpreters take to be an angel, and others suggest is Jacob wrestling with himself, attempting to allay his own fears and better understand where he is going and what he is about to do. And after this struggle he is transformed. He is renamed Israel.

So what does this have to do with my relationship to Shabbat? Twenty-five years ago, one of the rabbis on my asked me an intriguing question: "if you had to give up everything about being Jewish except one thing, what one thing would you keep?"

My answer then was Shabbat--because, I said, if I had Shabbat, then I'd have everything else, because Shabbat, it seemed to me, encompassed the essence of being Jewish--studying Torah, being with community, prayer, rest and reflection. A facile answer perhaps--but then, what did I know? I was just a newly becoming Jew, about to be literally wet behind the ears as I went into the mikveh.

What I didn't realize then is that I would spend the next 25 years struggling, like my namesake Ya'akov. Struggling with Shabbat. Trying to figure out where I'm going and what I am supposed to be doing when it comes to Shabbat. Struggling, like Jacob, with a strange man, myself.

Struggling with trying to keep Shabbat and not always succeeding; listening to the nagging voice that tells me what I SHOULD be doing. To just stop--to leave the computer off, to go to temple, to study, to have lunch with friends and commune--to just be.

It doesn't always work. But when it does, I'm always amazed at how good it is, and how good it makes me feel. And then, the next week comes and...well, there's that river again, and that stranger to wrestle.

My wife and I have found that as with many pieces of Jewish practice, it's important to take baby steps. Do small things, introduce a little at a time. And bit by bit, add something more. We're not there yet, but I like to think we're on the way. I figure it's a lot like the way to get to Carnegie Hall...practice, practice, practice.

And to tell the truth, struggling isn't always so bad. It leads to greater answers--and it seems so Jewish.

So here is my prayer this morning: God, help me cross that river. Help me come to that place on the other side, to not have to go back over again. Help me find the truth of that answer I gave 25 years ago. But don't ever let me stop struggling.

Baruch atah, Adonai	Praised are you Adonai
Eloheinu, Melech Haoloam	Sovereign of the Universe
She-asani Yisrael.	Who has made me a Jew.

A JTS Shabbat

2008-12-08T20:25:15Z

By JanetheWriter
Last Friday evening, my longtime friend, Jeanne, arrived at Penn Station for an overnight visit with me. Before we could poke around in SoHo, though, or begin to catch up on each other's lives, we headed uptown for Shabbat dinner with her son, Jeremy, a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Along the way, Jeanne told me that JTS students are required to be shomer shabbos. Before we entered the building on Broadway, therefore, I shut off my cell phone.

Once inside, we climbed two flights to Jeremy's living space and, after a quick tour, climbed an additional flight to the Rabbinical Students' Lounge, where a long table had been set for nine, and a number of his friends had gathered. After brief introductions all around and blessings over wine and challah, we enjoyed a traditional Shabbat dinner -- chicken, rice, vegetables and salad, all prepared by Jeremy, following his Friday classes. Over dinner and beyond, the students -- some in the rabbinic program, others in the graduate program -- engaged in lively discussion and debate prompted by two particular teachers, Dr. Neil Gillman and Rabbi Joel Roth.

Although I followed only a few threads of the philosophical and intellectual discourse, I picked up enough to sense that among some within this group there existed deep disdain for Reform Judaism and its dismissal of halacha. Nonetheless, I disclosed to Aviva, the young woman across the table from me, from whence I came, and she in turn told me that she works part-time at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, and was surprised at how "traditional" a congregation she's found it to be. She further disclosed that she "can't do the imahot," and we chatted about the wide spectrum that is Reform Judaism, the autonomy of individual congregations, and the trend toward more traditional practice within the Movement. As is often the case, I was proud to be a Reform Jew.

Following dinner we "benched" - the familiar birkat ha-Mazon sandwiched (no pun intended) between seemingly endless text and melodies that were wholly unknown to me. I found it nearly impossible to keep up without losing my place in the bencher despite a transliteration of the prayers. Not since early in my first semester of college, when I attended a kabbalat Shabbat service sponsored by Hillel at Lafayette, had I felt such a blush of shame at my Jewish illiteracy. And yet, my sense of having entered sacred time was palpable. There was no urgency, no rushing, no gotta-get-it-done frenzy. Rather, a joyful calm filled the lounge and all of us in it.

As Jeanne and I made our way back to the subway a short while later, I pulled out my cell phone. Ready to turn it back on, I remembered the lounge -- and that joyful calm - and, still off, put it back into my bag. Whatever messages it contained could certainly wait until the morning.

Sharing the Gift of Shabbat

2008-12-04T08:12:29Z

by Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz Ph.D.
Congregation B'nai Israel, Bridgeport, CA
Excerpted from Dr. Gurevitz's keynote address at the Union's Shabbat Symposium, January 2007
I have realized that there are a number of things that I bring to my work or the things that I hope to do in my work as a rabbi that have been in direct response to negative experiences that I had as a lay member of a community sometime in the past. And Shabbat is actually one of those things.

I want to start off with a little bit of that lay experience: Back in 1996, I was a member of a Reform synagogue in London. I wrote a two-sided proposal that I sent to both rabbis. It was called Yom Shabbat. And what I was highlighting was that I was conscious as a young adult, single, that congregants would come to services--in the UK, more Reform congregants do come for a community service on Shabbat morning, and that is partly because we have a different history. The bar/bat mitzvah never sort of took over the service in the same way that it has done here.

But we would come to services and then that would be it and people would go their separate ways. Nothing else happened at the synagogue, and I had no idea whether or not other people did Shabbat things, whether the rabbis did Shabbat-related things--I had no idea. I just knew that I was basically by myself.

So I made the suggestion that maybe every now and again, we could have people share lunch together at the synagogue and maybe engage in some Torah studies, some discussion. Maybe some people would want to get together and take a walk on the nearby Hampstead Heath. Maybe they would like to show up a little bit later in the day and do something cultural together and close off with Havdalah. We know this program: Some synagogues are doing it; sometimes they use the label Synaplex. There are places that do things like this these days in this country. But back then, I never got a response from either rabbi to the proposal.

There are so many different ways...that we could be coming at this subject. So it has been difficult for me to try to focus on one area. But I do want to start with the top, with the leaders. We [think about] how we can encourage our congregants to engage with a day of Shabbat and the fact that in our society and in our communities "because Torah tells us to" doesn't by itself work. So one of the important things we must think about when we talk about how to communicate with others is the question of "Why" or, to put it another way, "What is the question to which Shabbat might be a compelling answer?"

Those of us who are leaders of all kinds, whether we be clergy or educators or lay leaders, I think we have to start by thinking back to our own experiences and looking at ourselves: How do we observe Shabbat? Why do we observe Shabbat? And if we actually feel enriched and nourished by what we do on Shabbat, then we shouldn't be keeping that a top secret. We have to share that gift with others in as many different ways as we can.

And I think that how we, as leaders of different kinds, give explicit and implicit messages to our congregations is very important. I have heard that we have to recognize that giving more and more work to the professional leadership sometimes feels like it is taking away from their personal time, from family time. But I am going to put that aside for just now because we do have to think what message we give as leaders. The message that I got from those two rabbis in the UK--and, by the way, I changed synagogues about three months later--was that they had no interest whatsoever in celebrating Shabbat with their community once the services were over. I had no idea whether or not in fact outside of leading a service, those individuals observed Shabbat in any shape or form whatsoever.

So when we as the leaders see our Shabbat as work, consisting of leading the services and doing the Torah study, and then we want absolutely no more part of Shabbat with our congregants, then I don't think we are providing much of a role model. If we are planning to take a walk, why not sometimes do that with our congregants? If we are planning to make Havdalah, why not sometimes do that with our congregants?

We have in our congregation a new program, once a month, called A Havdalah Happening. And it is very much in the line of what Carol was suggesting--the small group with the big questions; it was a lay initiative by one person who just wanted to be able to have that deeper kind of conversation with other people. He just kicks it off in a gentle way, starts off with a theme, and then the conversation just takes off of its own accord, with very little facilitation. We have about fifteen people who come. Everyone is deeply touched by it. I have been attending because I have to ask myself, If I feel I don't want to be there because it is my time off, then why should I expect anybody else to show up at the synagogue at four o'clock on Shabbat afternoon? If it doesn't enrich my Shabbat to share that conversation with people in my congregation, then why should it enrich anybody else's?

A Sense of Shabbat Worship

2008-11-28T08:07:53Z

by Rabbi Victor S. Appell
Director, Small Congregations,
Union for Reform Judaism
Just yesterday at dinner, my seven year old son asked why we never sign him and his brother up for "Parent's Night Out." This is a program run by our local YMCA. Once a month on a Friday evening, parents can drop their children off at the Y for several hours of babysitting. While the parents get to go out, their children enjoy pizza and a movie along with their friends. We explained that Friday evening was Shabbat and a time we spend together as a family. It always involves dinner, either at our home, or at the home of friends. When our temple has a Shabbat Alive or Family Service, we try to attend. As a family, we seem to have figured out Friday evenings. My three year old asks all week when it will be Shabbat. And my seven year old, channeling some inner-Chasid, could eat an entire challah, piece by piece, dipping each piece into his grape juice.

Saturday still presents a challenge. While my congregation is beginning to explore such worship opportunities, Shabbat morning options at most congregations are not child friendly. We avoid chores such as grocery shopping or trips to the dry cleaner. But sporting activities and birthday parties still beckon with great regularity. We try to do things our children will enjoy like trips to children's museums. In the warm weather we go to the pool and in the cold weather we may go to a movie. All of this we frame for our children as enjoyable things we get to do because it is Shabbat.

So while my children will, hopefully, have a sense of Shabbat rest and Shabbat joy, I worry that their sense of Shabbat worship will be incomplete. I am not sure how they will become familiar with the Shabbat morning liturgy, the weekly telling of our people's story, or the power of hearing the Torah being chanted. My appreciation of these did not come until I was well into my adult years. I hope my own children will not have to wait as long.

Reclaiming our profound identity on Shabbat

2008-11-21T21:59:43Z

by Dr. Carol Ochs, Adjunct Professor of Jewish Religious Thought
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion - New York
Excerpted from Dr. Ochs' keynote address at the Union's Shabbat Symposium, January 2007
Why keep the Sabbath? Because it is commanded? That really doesn't sit well with Reform Jews. Because it is traditional? Well, then, are we talking about a museum or a living faith? Because it gives us community? That's good, but not good enough.

I think Shabbat is about our relationship to God. We don't know who we are, we don't know who God is, and we are invited to be still and know that I am God. One of the things that has kept the Jewish people from falling into the bitterness of other groups that have been exiled or enslaved or treated badly over 2,000 years is that once a week they say, "I am not what they are calling me. I am a person in relationship to God." They bathe themselves in this identity and it inoculates them against less glorious names.

We still don't know who we are. We are still enslaved. We think we are our job, so that when we are unemployed, we want to disappear. We think we are the tasks we have to perform for other people. Once a week, we are given a chance to take on, whole, a different identity.

I used to teach comparative religion at Simmons College in Boston, which is a militantly secular school. They said if the calendar worked that way they would be open on Christmas. And the students loved Comparative Religion, except when they got to their own faith. Then they didn't want to hear anything because they had learned their faith as a child and it was a childish faith. With each faith that we studied, I made them keep a practice. So that when we studied Hinduism we learned how to meditate. So when we got to Judaism I said, "I want you to keep Shabbat." And the Jewish students started screaming and the others said, "What does that mean?" I said, "For twenty-five hours, you belong to yourself and God. You don't do your homework anyway, but at least you won't feel guilty about it."

They came in the following Monday and the non-Jewish students could not get over the experience, that they could actually choose to spend the time with themselves or with those people who valued them. They could take a walk, they could look at the world and not feel a sense of obligation to other people. Now that is not the whole of Shabbat. We want to talk about community, too. But the idea that we have a profound identity that we have to reclaim once a week I think is terribly important.

Dr. Carol Ochs
Adjunct Professor of Jewish Religious Thought
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion - New York

Because Tomorrow is Shabbat

2008-11-21T20:59:05Z

By dcc
Join with me now: (To the tune of "We're Off to See the Wizard")

Today is Yom Shishi, Yom Shishi is day six, Yom Shishi is day six and that's the day we get our kicks, because tomorrow is Shabbat the day we like a lot a lot, a lot a lot a lot a lot a looooot, Because tomorrow is Shabbat (do dot do do do do dot), Today is Yom Shishi, Yom Shishi is day six!!!!!!!

As a child I went to a summer camp in Southern California that was crazy about Israeli Dance, Song Session and Shabbat prep. I spent many a summer in the hills of Brandeis, CA getting sun burned, making good friends and building the framework of my Jewish identity. One of the senior staff members would always introduce the above song as something that someone else would sing on Friday mornings, as we ate breakfast on the dance pavilion so the dinning room could be cleaned for Shabbat. It was camp, so the story would get more and more exciting each time. My guess, by now, the writer of this song was Harold Arlen with lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. (They wrote the original...)

Ten years later, I was working at Greene Family Camp in Bruceville, TX as a cabin counselor and I asked if I could lead the camp in the Yom Shishi song. The kids loved it; the staff hated me. While the kids would leave breakfast singing this song at the top of their lungs, the staff would shoot me with their eyes asking why oh why would a grown man (ok just a kid in his twenties) introduce such a get-stuck-in-your-head kind of song.

This is why: Camp Shabbat is something special. I loved getting dressed in all white. I loved listening to the boys' head counselor give his Shabbat speech. I loved walking together, having services, eating dinner, singing songs and dancing until late in the evening. The kids might remember this song or most likely they do not. But it doesn't matter. Because on those Friday mornings, they got a little song, a bounce in the step and were excited to welcome the Sabbath Bride.

Shabbat Shalom

Closed on Shabbat

2008-11-11T21:23:37Z

By JanetheWriter
A recent post on her blog by Rabbi Phyllis Sommer (aka Ima on (and off) the Bima) reminds me that Baruch College could learn a thing or two from Isaac and Moishe Nava, proprietors of La Casa de Isaac, a Jewish-Mexican restaurant in the suburbs of Chicago that's closed on Shabbat.

This week at Baruch, it's time to register for the spring semester and as is the minhag of the school, students, based on the number of credits earned to date, are assigned a specific timeslot in which to complete their online registration. Although I certainly am not shomer Shabbos in the traditional sense, I do enjoy celebrating Shabbat and the holidays in a liberal sort of way. I was dismayed, therefore, to receive an email notifying me that my online registration appointment is this Friday, November 14 at 8:15 p.m.

By assigning me this timeslot (before which the system will not accept my registration), Baruch has very effectively disrupted my plans to shul shop and, in fact, to observe Shabbat in my own, personal way. And, while I might consider waiting until after Shabbat to register for the spring semester, in so doing, I risk being closed out of the specific section and course that I wish to take, one of only two core courses that remain in my curriculum.

So, should I just "suck it up" and register on Friday night? Wait until after Shabbat and risk losing a seat in the course I need? Request a different appointment, knowing that in so doing I may end up with a more undesirable timeslot during the following week? Or, should I register when assigned and then try to contact the appropriate office in the behemoth CUNY system to oppose the Friday night assignment?

At this point, I'm just not sure... What would you do?

Joyful Judaism in Cheshvan

2008-11-11T18:25:03Z

By Marge Eiseman
I just realized that I offered to teach "Joyful Judaism", my own sometimes rambling take on why I love being Jewish, during the month that is often called "bitter" (mar Cheshvan). What an interesting irony - the month is called bitter because there are no special holidays. Since it follows the holiday-laden month of Tishrei, I actually greet Cheshvan each year with relief and joy. Finally, Shabbat can rise to take its place again as the crown of the week.

So as I focused my thoughts on what to teach, given the range of possibilities (contemporary Jewish music, the new Mishkan T'fillah prayerbook, the amazing book I'm currently reading, Witnesses to the One: The Spiritual History of the Sh'ma by Rabbi Joseph Meszler, Jewish cooking, Storahtelling, etc.), I kept heading to teach things connected with Shabbat that I love.

The first week, we braided dough and baked Challah, and hung out in the kitchen to share the warm, sweet crust with butter and talk about the beauty of Jewish food and memory. We also listened to "Gesher" the self-titled CD from the Nashville group. Since there was only one student, it was more of a conversation than a class. But she promised to come back, and the next week, there were four of us.

The next session, I realized that I wanted to focus on the blessings of Shabbat, but not the ones relating to ritual objects or food. No, I went after "Eshet Chayil" and "Birchot haMishpachah" - for former is also called "A Woman of Valor", and is the ode from Proverbs that a husband recites to his wife, extolling her virtues, and the latter is the blessing that parents bestow on their children at the beginning of the Sabbath meal, asking that they be like our ancestors and receive the Priestly Benediction. It occurred to me, as I faced my divorced and separated friends and then thought about my never married or childless friends, that these were rather exclusionary prayers.

We experimented with reading Danny Siegel's poem, "In Loco Eshes Chayil", and it was better, expressing the appreciation of the beloved for the interpersonal support, rather than the "work of her hands". But still, the instruction at the top of the page reads, "Husband embraces and kisses wife, then takes her hand and recites:, and that sets this firmly back in the realm of "only married people get this blessing".

Doesn't everyone deserve to be welcomed to the Sabbath table and be blessed for their friendship and contribution to the community? How can we accept the exclusion of anyone at our table, and make them bystanders to the intimate exchange of blessing words flowing around the table? It makes me acutely uncomfortable. So we're going to fix it, and that's what I find so joyful about Judaism the way I live it. At our next session, we'll be writing our own Blessing of Welcome to our Shabbat Table, to be shared by everyone. We'll test it out - tweak if necessary - and report back soon.

What Lingers On

2008-10-29T07:05:55Z

By Marge Eiseman
Many years ago, I got married in my parents' living room. For years afterwards, every time I walked into that room, I felt the warmth of that day, as if the love still lingered in the walls and the air.

At the time, there just wasn't any good space at our synagogue for a small-ish wedding - either one used the conference room which held 20-30, or the sanctuary, which looked empty with less than 100. Now of course, we could use our new Living and Learning space, one of the five simultaneous additions/renovations of our synagogue that was recently completed.

Congregation Sinai in Milwaukee is proudly gearing up to host the URJ/WRJ Great Lakes/Chicago Regional Biennial Shabbat morning service, featuring an address from Rabbi Eric Yoffie. Our sanctuary will be filled with Reform Jews, praying and singing together as one large congregation on November 8, led by our clergy, Rabbi David Cohen and Cantor Rebecca Robins.

Even though I can't attend the entire conference, I always figured I would attend the service. Then the invitation came to sing in the choir for this event, and I couldn't turn it down, in part because our brand-new cantor is so excited to be singing for this kahal. She chose two pieces for us to sing and even bought us new white choir binders.

I'm excited, too. I never get blasé about being part of a large group of Jews. Every year, I go to at least one (and often more) such gathering, and every single time, I'm energized by the magnitude of the group. I love hearing the harmonies, knowing the words, being part of the scene.

I expect that in months and years to come, when the memory is strong, we'll sense the lingering hint of our shared experience of this service. Ken y'hi ratzon.

Tzedek, tzedek tirdof: My Father's Legacy

2008-10-20T06:55:03Z

By Andi Rosenthal
My father Leo - may his memory be for blessing - had some definite ideas about justice. A 22-year veteran of Manhattan South Homicide, a detective first grade, and later in his second career, a tireless VP of Protective Control for Bank of New York, he spent a lifetime bringing people to justice, righting wrongs where he could, never afraid to stand up for what was right and see that the appropriate penalty was handed down. And he managed to do it all with tremendous style. Above all things he found a way to connect with people whether they were do-gooders or perps, always with an irrepressible grin and a twinkle in his eye. His way with people was a weapon far more powerful than the .44 he carried or the Glock he kept in the kitchen cabinet.

He cared about justice as much as he cared about his family, because he cared about families who had been touched by the damage that unchecked injustice can do. He never forgot a victim, never forgot a name, always made sure that he remembered that no matter what sort of evil or physical or emotional mutilation or destruction had occurred, that what he was bearing witness to was the human relationship of life-to-life in an ultimate transaction gone awry. He understood that all human beings contained the yetzer ha-tov and yetzer ha-ra - the good and evil impulse - in equal balance. But what he never let himself understand or accept was how people could justify their actions when they led to such a destructive end.

I saw him lose hours of sleep poring over the details of a case file, and come home in the early morning hours after a night spent in pursuit of a suspect. I remember the morning he came home after finally breaking the case of the murder at the Metropolitan Opera, when I was eleven years old. "We did it, Schnickelfritz," he whispered proudly as I padded down the stairs to greet him at our front door at five in the morning. And then, hurrying into the kitchen to grab a quick bagel with American cheese, he took the stairs two at a time to go up and change for the Commissioner's press conference. There was no mistaking it: justice realized energized him.

My dad understood that pursuing and obtaining justice was a team effort that required the cooperation of many discrete souls working towards one sacred goal. Fellow detectives. The officers who'd first responded, the coroner's office, the EMS teams, the crime scene technicians. The witnesses, the friends and family of the victim. And the random people you'd meet while following a lead, from the guy in the coffee shop or the mechanic or the bartender or the lady who lived next door to the crime scene. My dad could make a friend of all of them. You never knew who would give you what you needed to solve the case.

The toughest people he had to work with were the wrongdoers themselves. He hated the excuses, the lies, the rationalizations people gave him for doing the unspeakable - acting on their own selfish and destructive impulses, robbing people of their dignity, destroying the souls of the people left behind, turning a fellow human being into a victim, needlessly and recklessly abusing the ultimate power of G-d - ending a life -- and taking that power into their own hands. He could pretend a friendship with a criminal for the sake of getting what he wanted out of them - a confession of wrongdoing and if he was lucky, a willingness to accept responsibility for what they did. He was a big fan of the allocution process, when a person has to stand up in court and tell, for the record, what they did, in an unvarnished and factual statement. No justifications, no embellishments, no embroidering of the facts to manipulate the listener.

There were so many other people that my dad encountered during the course of an investigation - objective people, people with no investment in the outcome - who could tell the truth in a way that made it easy to see when someone else was lying. Not only did he work with the best in the business, but years of gathering honest testimony and witness statements made him absolutely pitch-perfect when it came to detecting the body language, tone of voice, and other characteristics of the liar. As a daughter, naturally, I got away with very little. To this day, I still believe that anyone who underestimates the ability of a New York City homicide detective to see through a lie is kidding themselves.

I've inherited some of his intolerance for injustice. Like my father, I do not suffer fools gladly. I do wish I had his way with people, but I am also too much my mother's stubborn and straightforward child to listen to lies and rationalizations with a smile, however insincere, on my face. I have very strong - perhaps too strong -- feelings about those whose deepest impulses drive them to hurt others, and then attempt to justify, rationalize and worst of all, cover up their actions.

To this end, the first Torah portion I ever learned how to chant, Shoftim, reflects this. Shoftim is the Hebrew word for judges, and the famous phrase above, Justice, justice you shall pursue, is at the heart of the parsha's text.

The double justice we see in the text isn't there by accident. The way my dad, I think, would interpret it is that every crime has two stories: the truth of what really happened and then recognizing that vigilance is required to ensure that those facts are not in any way altered to gain sympathy or to rationalize the hurt that was caused to the victim. In my dad's view, the phrase, "I didn't mean for it to happen" was irrelevant. It happened, and nothing could undo those actions. The honorable thing to do is to accept responsibility, remember your actions and learn from them. Making an effort to change the story, or cover it up, or erase it was as much of an injustice as the crime in the first place.

For my dad, the pursuit of justice was as much about preserving the factual, ethical memory of wrongdoing as it was about making the bad guys accountable for their crimes. In Judaism, memory is the cornerstone of justice: remembering what was done to us to that we can learn from it and become better people. "May this memory be erased" is about the worst thing you can ever do or say - every person, every thing deserves to be remembered, both for good and for bad. We can't erase our actions, but we can take what we need to learn from them and move on. Without justification, without rationalization -- but with the hard-won wisdom we needed to gain from the experience.

Silence is not a Jewish value, nor should it be a human ethic. Because when the voice of the victim is silenced, and the injustice of that silence is followed by the memory of a crime being altered or erased, the opportunity to learn and grow vanishes with it.

When my father passed away three years ago, a friend suggested to me that as a way of finding comfort, I should choose a Torah portion or prayer moment to remember him by. While Shoftim was certainly the obvious choice, there is also a liturgical stronghold that has become a way for me to pay tribute to my father every Shabbat. During the second prayer of the Amidah, as we recognize the Holy One as one who "keeps faith with those who sleep in the dust," I shift my prayer book in my arms so that I can touch my left hand - my dad was a lefty - to my heart.

My dad's life was about keeping faith with those whose lives were shattered into dust, those who met with their final sleep too soon. He may not have been the most observant or exemplary Jew who ever lived. But his legacy is justice and remembrance, and the knowledge that lives in the world as a result of the ongoing struggle that we continue to face: ensuring that the truth of injustice is ever brought to light. As in the words of St. Thomas More: "In the things of the soul, remembrance without knowledge profits little."

Amidah antics -OR- The way Reform Jews should think about prayer

2008-09-29T17:35:49Z

By David A.M. Wilensky (First published on The Reform Shuckle)
(A follow-up of sorts to William Berkson's post about commandedness)
A Shabat morning with Chavurat Lamdeinu, progressive non-denominational minyan extraordinaire, is always full of oddities, whether it's just the assortment of people or the comments made throughout the service. This week was no different, except that this week's major oddity was a fantastic education in obscure litrugical rules and a perfect example of what bothers me about the way we Reform Jews threat our prayers.

When I arrived to services this morning, Tanach study had just wrapped up so a few people had just left. Unfortunately, not enough showed up to replace them. I was the ninth person to arrive for services, making today's crowd a small one, even for us.

In accordance with standard rules about how to daven with no minyan, we skipped Kadishes and the Barchu. In the middle of our silent, minyan-less Amidah, two more people showed up, putting us over the top at eleven pray-ers. I did not know it, but apparently we were then faced with a dilemma.

Though we now had the requisite number for a minyan, we hadn't declared ourselves so, making a bit of backtracking necessary. As I learned this morning, one of the purposes of the Barchu is to declare that the community is complete and has at least the minimum number of people for a minyan. So we went back to the Barchu.

After the Barchu, a little bit of splitting up was required. The two new arrivals needed to do the stuff they'd missed, so they continued silently at breakneck pace with Yotzer Or, trying to catch up to those of us who'd shown up on time. The rest of us returned our attention to the Amidah.

In a more ritually conservative community, the Amidah is recited once by the congregation silently, followed by an out-loud repetition by the Chazan. Normally at Chavurat Lamdeinu we use a medieval invention called (I'm gonna get this wrong because I just learned about it this morning and have never seen it spelled out) a Heyga Kadisha (dear God, someone please comment and correct me). This little innovation involved saying just the first three parts of the Amidah (Avot v'Imahot, G'vurot, Kadisha) out loud, and then reading the rest silently.

Unforunately, we could not do that this week. Having already recited the Amidah silently when there were only nine of us, we were locked into the system of a silent Amidah followed by an out-loud chazan repetition. Luckily, amongst us was a single man who, although I don't know his full story, must have some amount of training in traditional Ashkenazi chavanut. He belted out a fantastically loud, operatic repetition of the Amidah.

All of this done, we could continue with a full Torah service.

Why do I say that this story exemplifies my issue with Reform treatment of liturgy? Because in Reform synagogues, people often go on with full service even if there's only nine people. Because in Reform synagogues, even if you lack a minyan and you're actually behaving that way, if a tenth person shows up in the middle of the Amidah, you would never go through any of this.

Now before anyone goes off thinking what I initially thought upon learning all of the above this morning, let me stop you right there. I thought that this Heyga Kadisha (or whatever it's called) was the norm in the Reform movment for a moment. Until someone stopped me and pointed out that although Reform Jews often do the first three aloud, followed by th rest silently, they also often sit down after the first three or go on to song Sim Shalom or Shalom Rav aloud, or go off on some cantorial solo for R'tzeih.

We seem dead set in this movement on toying with the words of the service, sprinkling our prayers with poetic readings and whatnot. On the contrary, I hold that the real poetry of the service comes from its structure and from the laws and the details that we often disregard as silly Orthodox stuff, throwing it out the window along with our tefilin and the 10% donation to the poor. It is attention to this stuff and educating ourselves and our peers about this stuff that will truly make people not just enjoy services as an aesthetic experience, which often seems to be our chief liturgical concern, but really understand the grand-scale meaning of the service.

Amen. Selah. Shabat Shalom

A Coney Island Shabbat

2008-08-25T13:40:49Z

By JanetheWriter
If Shabbat is all about taking a divinely commanded breather from the work-a-day routine to celebrate God's rest following creation, then surely this past Shabbat was nearly as good as it gets for me and a few of my friends.

We had longstanding plans for a visit to Coney Island (a first for all of us) and so, at the appointed hour, we assembled on a specific corner in midtown's Herald Square, descended into the subway and boarded a train bound for the southernmost tip of Brooklyn. At the end of the line, we emerged from the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station to late summer sunshine, perfect boardwalk-strolling temperatures, a gentle breeze and the salty sea air--a magnificent day that only God could create.

Hungry from our journey, our first stop was the original Nathan's for hot dogs and fries. So smothered in sautéed onions and sauerkraut that they were barely visible in the buns, our dogs were grilled to perfection, and worthy of a photo. Indeed, before we ate, we snapped pictures of our fare--a motzi and a Shehecheyanu all rolled up into one digital image of gratitude for both the mouth-watering food and the opportunity to enjoy it together in this famous place.

Our hunger satisfied, we continued with a leisurely jaunt through the Astroland Amusement Park, where only one of us was brave enough to ride the Cyclone, but all of us were more than willing to watch other visitors take on such attractions as the Break Dancer, the Tea Cups and the gravity-defying, stomach-churning Top Spin.

A stroll on the boardwalk led us to the pier, where, enveloped on all sides by churning green water, salty sea spray, brilliant sunshine and a refreshing breeze, we--individually and collectively--basked in the beauty of the day, savoring our surroundings and the many blessings in our lives.

As we headed back to the subway, a kosher hot dog vending machine caught our eye. Because it was Shabbat, though, the machine's electronic display pad indicated that it was "Temporarily out of service." Its service status mattered not at all to us, however; we continued to joyously celebrate Shabbat and, in our own way, to make it holy.

Keva, Kavanah, and Back to Keva

2008-08-25T12:17:02Z

By Larry Kaufman
As part of introducing Mishkan T'filah at Beth Emet several months ago, Rabbi Peter Knobel gave us "permission" to wander away from whatever the congregation was reading or singing, and to go anywhere else on the two-page spread that felt more comfortable, or for that matter, wherever our individual thoughts and prayers might lead us. In doing so, he reminded us that in a world where multi-tasking has become commonplace, we might very well be able to join our voices with the community, while our minds were somewhere else.

I thought about this at Shabbat services, less than a year into our use of the new, yet by now taken-for-granted, siddur. We know when and how to follow the liturgy on the printed page; and we know (since we are a worship group of regulars) when we will deviate from the text and follow from memory the lashon (language) and minhag (custom) of our former home-made prayer book.

But my own thoughts yesterday went even further afield - guided in part by our discussion here at RJ.org of the progress in Reform worship, and especially by BZ's reminder that the service doesn't happen only on the bimah. The shlichey tzibur, the messengers of the community, are charged with guiding the keva, leading us through the fixed liturgy. In a departure unparalleled by predecessor siddurim, Mishkan T'filah facilitates the kavanah, the inner meaning and personal understanding the worshipper is expected to bring to the prayer experience, by suggesting alternate interpretations or different understandings, or even by stimulating new pathways to conversation with the Divine.

My own reveries, when my mind drifts away from the printed text, tend to be inchoate and transitory, and I rarely find myself in prayerful mode when I am not in a prayer group setting. (I purposely use the term prayer group rather than minyan, because I am insufficiently halachic to invoke quorum requirements - and I do not consider myself in "prayerful mode" just because the occasion calls for motzi or shehechayanu.) While I cheerfully and somewhat casually compose blog posts, and more carefully but less frequently prepare divrei Torah, the creation of liturgy would not be my thing.

This does not lessen my admiration for folks whose kavanah leads to keva - who write down to preserve and share the meditations of their hearts. I'm not talking here about clergy, where the composition of liturgy may be considered part of the job description, but of laymen, or more accurately, laywomen, since the three practitioners of the art whose names come to mind are female.

As it happens, two of those women are from my congregation. (The third is Ruth Brin, whose work can be found on Page 126 of Mishkan T'filah.) Might it be something in the Beth Emet water? Or the influence of a liturgically-focused rabbi?

Debbie Perlman z"l, whom I did not have the privilege of knowing, was called our Resident Psalmist. Betsy Fuchs, who sits in front of me at services each Shabbat, is the eloquent author of Betsy's Prayers. I differentiate their work from that of people whose writings found their way into siddurim (like poets Katya Molodowsky and Adrienne Rich in MT) but who, when they wrote, were thinking poetry, not liturgy.

I have only once or twice since we began using Mishkan T'filah read the left-hand pages during the silent section of the T'filah. It's not that I don't like what's there; it's that I miss the resonance of the Hebrew prayers on the right-hand pages if I leave them by the wayside. (Side note for bringing kavanah into the keva: lose the sight-reading, and sound out the Hebrew words. It really makes a difference; and I am eternally grateful to Jerry Kaye for this teaching. And yes, I am well aware that this is precisely the kind of disgraceful indecorum that precipitated the birth of German Reform.)

I can hardly wait to read the comments on this blog post from our resident liturgy wonk, David A.M. Wilensky. Without having his scholarship or analytic skills at my disposal, I can only share that I am left-handed, and politically left-wing, but when it comes to Mishkan T'filah, and in fact to liturgy in general, I veer to the right.

COMMENTS PRIOR TO TECH ISSUES

David A.M. Wilensky said:
I wasn't familiar with the word "wonk" until last week. Since learning the word, it has been applied to me multiple times on this very blog!
I'm afraid that I'll have to give a little thought to any sort of interesting response before I post. Hm.
Okay. I've got it.
I, like you, Larry, am right-handed when it comes to Mishkan. In all honesty, while I've been at home in Austin this summer where the congregation I grew up at is using M"T, I haven't been using it at all. I've been playing with a new sidur I just got, Seder haT'filot, the UK Reform sidur. Their liturgy tends to be somewhat more conervative than that M"T, but they do still have a variety of readings.
The readings, however, are in an index in the back of the sidur. In the sidur, next to most prayers, there's a little number printed in blue ink. The number refers to a page in the index where a reading appropriate to the prayer it hand can be found.
I'm quite enjoying Seder haT'filot, or Forms of Prayer as they translate it, and I would recommend it to any liturgically-right wing Reform Jew.
August 25, 2008 4:49 PM

M. B. said:
David:
In the United Kingdom, the more Reform denomination is called Liberal Judaism. Reform congregations there have been more Conservative in many ways which is reflected in the prayer books.
August 25, 2008 10:46 PM

BZ said:
And the Israeli Reform prayerbook is entirely in Hebrew, so by your logic, it's not Reform at all!
August 26, 2008 8:55 PM

Larry Kaufman said:
When we attended our nephew's bar mitzvah at HUC in Jerusalem some 25 years ago, Rabbi Shaul Feinberg pointed out to us that we had just attended the most Reform service anywhere -- because the whole thing was in the vernacular!
Lost in the prattle about about those wonderful Reform services in nineteenth century America, before all that corrupt Hebrew snuck in, is that many of those services were not in English but in German.
August 26, 2008 10:29 PM

David A.M. Wilensky said:
@ M.B.: Thanks. I'm well aware of that fact. Both, however, are under the umbrella of the WUPJ and both represent a level of variance that we tolerate under our singular Reform umbrella here in North America.
@ Larry and BZ: Actually, Haavodah Shebalev is totally up M.B.'s alley, being entirely in the vernacular. Or is it? Much of it is in a very archaic form of Hebrew that is hard for a secualr Israeli to pick up and get immediately. Or maybe, M.B. is all for archaic language. You know, like the Union Prayer Book.
August 27, 2008 3:49 PM

BZ said:
Actually, Haavodah Shebalev is totally up M.B.'s alley, being entirely in the vernacular.
Except the parts in Aramaic (the original vernacular)... for which there is a translation!
August 27, 2008 4:30 PM

M. B. said:
BZ said:
"And the Israeli Reform prayerbook is entirely in Hebrew, so by your logic, it's not Reform at all!"
Just the opposite, BZ. Understanding the prayer is the test. Progressive Reform uses the language of the congregation for prayer, whatever it may be. That means Spanish in Buenos Aires, Portuguese in Rio, French in Paris, and Hebrew in Tel Aviv. Montreal may be either French or English depending on whether the particular congregation is Francophone or Anglophone. When there was a flood of immigrants into the U.S. who couldn't speak good English, they used prayers in the language they understood which is why there were Dutch services, German services, etc. In Germany today, most of the Jews are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union who may speak Russian or some German, but there is a terrible shortage of rabbis who can minister to them due to the language problem. Israel had early Reform congregations which spoke English and so used an English based prayer book.
My understanding is that during the Reformation, even the traditionalists were unable to find anything in the Bible which prohibited prayer in the vernacular of the congregation. Maybe not even in the Talmud.
The Classical Reform theology presumes an extremely intelligent and knowledgeable God who can understand the prayers of each Jew in their own language. So each person is able to pray directly to the Lord in his or her own language.

August 27, 2008 7:43 PM

David A.M. Wilensky said:
@M.B.: An influx of immigrants to America is not to be blamed for the existence of German language Reform t'filah. The reason for that is that the Reform movement began in pre-WWI Germany where the vernacular was, you guessed it, German.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say Reformation? Are you referring to Martin Luther!?
Okay, obviously I know that you're referring to the creation of the Reform movement, but given that there was no monolithic organization to break away from as there was with the Protestant Reformation, we do not refer to the formation of the Reform movement as the Reformation. There was no single event. Rather, our genesis was a more organic series of different events and small changes over decades across several different synagogues.
August 28, 2008 8:33 PM

An iTunes Shabbat

2008-08-14T20:15:38Z

By JanetheWriter
This past Shabbat, I spent more than four hours aboard an Adirondack Trailways bus from New York City's Port Authority to Albany and then, after a quick change, on to Saratoga Springs to surprise a friend for her birthday.

Much to my own surprise and delight, the bus, together with my iPod, provided me with a most unique and enjoyable Shabbat. For starters, it was a glorious day, and from the minute we pulled out of the bus garage, brilliant sunshine flooded the coach from a bright cornflower blue sky filled with fluffy cotton candy clouds. As the city grew faint in the rearview mirror, we entered God's country--first the Ramapo and then the Adirondack Mountains, each covered with an abundance of lush, green foliage; summer at its peak.

With my iPod set on "shuffle," I tuned out the drone of the bus and the chatter of my fellow passengers and tuned into my "Jewish" playlist, which includes more than 360 different songs. And, although the order wasn't quite right, the Shabbat "service" was, nonetheless, all there. Thanks to the iPod's white ear buds, I heard and tapped along to Danny Maseng's Ma Tovu, Kol B'seder's La'asok B'divrei Torah, Elohai N'shamah from the Union's 2005 Biennial CD and more. Barchu, Sh'ma, Mi-chamocha, S'fatai Tiftach and Mi Shebeirach, too, all piped into my head. Oseh Shalom, Aleinu, Kaddish and one of my new favorite songs, Ein Keloheinu/Non Como Musetor Dyo, rounded out my iTunes Shabbat, leaving me spiritually refreshed and ready to enjoy the weekend.

* * *

If summer travel was good enough for Glikl bas Judah, Henrietta Szold, Joanna Eckstein and Ruth Gruber, it's certainly good enough for me.

Following in the footsteps of these (and countless other) Jewish women, I'll be doing some additional summer travel of my own in the next few weeks. I look forward to catching up on RJ.org--both reading and writing posts--when I return.

I'm outta here. See you in a few.

Shabbat shalom.

Foreign prophets, foreign songs

2008-07-14T17:29:56Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
Two summers ago, here at Kutz, a girls' cabin led services one day. As we all entered the tron, they were standing at the front singing and clapping their hands. The song goes like this:

Lord, prepare me
To be a sanctuary
Pure and holy
Tried and true
With thanksgiving
I'll be a living
Sanctuary for you

It's a nice song. The message is fairly basic and unobjectionable. The tune is catchy and sounds slightly gospel. I like it. Since then, I've also heard a variation that incoporates a quote from Torah, "V'asu li Mikdash, v'shachanti b'tocham" ("Build me a sanctuary and I will dwell amongst you"). I like that version even better. When people found out that this verse of song is actually part of a larger song from the wonderful world on contemporary Christian music, they went nuts.

The rest of the song is not explicitly Jesus-centric or anything like that, though it does sound very Christian, talking about being led away from temptation. (Of course one could argue that that's our topic also, but that we've left by the wayside because Christians speak so much about it.)

All week, we were hearing about how upset people were about the use of this songs in a Jewish service. This week also happened to be the week of Parashat Balak. Balak, aside from being one of my absolute favorite Torah portions, details the story of Bilam, a foreign prophet of God hired by a Moabite king, Balak, to ride out to the Israelite encampment and curse them. When he goes to curse them, God changes the words in his mouth into a blessing and out comes a poem of blessing. The first line is familiar to us because it now appears in every morning service: "Mah tovu ohalecha, Ya'akov mishk'notecha, Yisra'el!" ("How good are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel!")

This coincidence gets even better. Not only did we have an uproar on camp about the use of a non-Jewish song in services coincide with a Torah portion including a foreign prophet's song that we now use in services, not only did I notice this wonderful coincidence, but I was scheduled to deliver the d'var Torah that week. You can imagine what I spoke about that Shabbat morning.

My point was that if we can take a poem uttered with the intent to curse us and make it into a regular part of a service, we can handle one verse of totally unobjectionable Christian song.

In retrospect, I'm not sure that I was right. I was given the chance to revisit this story this week. Friday evening services were led this week, beautifully, by the songleading major taught by Caryn Roman and Jesse Paikin. They began with "Lord prepare me." If you're paying attention, you know that this last Shabbat was Shabbat Balak once again. You can imagine what was on my mind during services that evening.

I got to thinking not just about this particular issue, but about one of the the popular tunes for Psalm 150, which is actually a Sufi melody (Alah hu, Alah hu, Alah hu, etc.) I thought about the Phish song "Wading in the Velvet Sea" and the Bob Marley song "Redemption Song." In my four summers at Kutz, I've heard both used as tunes for Mi Chamocha. I thought about a half-dozen other secular and non-Jewish melodies used in services. And I wonder if it's okay.

There's no doubt in my mind that the melody itself is not the issue. It's the text. We have the entire Tanach, two Talmuds, and about eight million other Jewish texts out there to choose from. I wonder if we need to go to other traditions to find what we want to say. I wonder if we can't find it somewhere in one of our own texts.

Originally Posted on the Reform Shuckle

Tyler Benjamin on Reform Judaism

2008-07-11T19:42:04Z

By David A.M. Wilensky
As readers of Reform Judaism magazine will recall, the RJ Magazine's summer 2008 issue included a series of important questions regarding the Reform Movement and their answers as given by 30 adult members of the Reform Movement.

I'm currently at the URJ Kutz Camp with a group of people who will be the future lay and professional leadership of the Reform movement in North America. I'll be featuring many of them as well as many of the younger Kutz staff members this summer in a series of posts here on the RJ.org blog, in which I will be asking Reform high school and college students (and perhaps a few 20-somethings) for their take on Reform Judaism via questions similar to those used in the Magazine.

Tyler Benjamin is a 16-year-old rower/ultimate Frisbee player from Tampa, Florida. He is in love with the opportunities that are afforded him via NFTY, especially as the President of the Southern Tropical Region, and overall his life as a Reform Jew in America.

What has belonging to a congregation (or a Temple Youth Group or a Kesher group or going to a URJ camp etc.) that is part of the larger Reform Movement meant to you?
For a long time, my only memorable Jewish experiences were in NFTY and at URJ Camp Coleman. The few times during the year my family and I went to Temple were not exciting; not captivating. Camp and youth group completely revolutionized Judaism for me. I began to toy with the idea of Am Yisrael and the importance of community in my Jewish life. If it weren't for the Jewish undertones in almost all camp activities during my pre-teen years, I am certain I would never have taken the steps that have led me to where I am today.

What has been your most meaningful (or least meaningful) Jewish holiday experience?
Yom Kippur in 2007 (5767) was different than any Jewish experience I have ever participated in, including Yom Kippurim of the past. My experience at the URJ Kutz Camp the summer prior to the holiday most directly caused the difference in my experience. For the first time in my life, I chose to go to services on my own, and elected to stay the entire day for each service. Having learned about the Jewish prayer service at Kutz, I had a new appreciation for observance. The knowledge I gained at camp helped me choose to more fully participate in my Judaism.

What has been your most meaningful (or least meaningful) lifecycle experience?
I cannot recall a most or least meaningful lifecycle experience (especially since I have a few to choose from. I must say, however that my grandfather's death has been one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. He passed away just before I traveled to Israel and participated in my first summer at Kutz.

I always knew he was heavily involved in American Reform Jewry and had only begun to truly understand how much he loved it. At his memorial service, I was faced with the inspiring depth and breadth of his work. A few hundred people, all from different periods of his life, gathered to retell stories of a wonderfully dedicated Jewish man. From that point on, I have only been sad about one thing regarding his death: that I never had the chance to show him my newfound passion for Reform Judaism. He was one of my biggest supporters when I first went to camp and through the time I was getting ready to run for President of my NFTY region. I wish he could know the person I am today.

How do you observe/enjoy Shabbat these days?
These days, I say Kiddush and Motzi with my family or friends when I can and I sing songs of Kabbalat Shabbat. Other than that, I try to take a few moments throughout to recognize the fact that it is Shabbat. I drink soda only on Shabbat because it helps to differentiate the week (during which I drink only water) from Shabbat (during which I drink my beloved carbonated drink).

Looking to the future, what are the most significant challenges we face, as a Movement and as North American Jews?
As a movement, Reform Judaism faces cycles of revolution in its future. Established as a revolution to protect the future of its members, the movement has now become a haven for those eager to explore the very things its origins despised. As North American Jews, we have the responsibility to continue to support worldwide Jewry in the effort to continue the existence of Jews everywhere.

Summertime in the Mishkan

2008-07-03T17:35:15Z

By Andi Rosenthal
Since 1948, when my congregation was founded, we've had a tradition of layperson-led Friday night Shabbat services. While some people say that it is a lovely break for our clergy, it's a tradition that means a whole lot more than just a way to give our deserving rabbis and cantor the chance to rest and celebrate Shabbat in the company of family and friends.

Summer services train new leaders, help congregants to strengthen and deepen their connection to liturgy, and in my case, just last Friday night, gave me the opportunity to understand and appreciate the breadth and depth of the new Reform prayer book, Mishkan T'filah.

At Larchmont Temple, where I am a trustee, a member of the Ritual Committee and our congregation's Schindler Outreach Fellow (shout-out to classes of '03 and '04), I also had the great privilege of being on the committee that helped "premiere" our new siddur in a special Service of Dedication this past January.

Having gathered together Reform siddurim from generations past, members of our congregation, ranging from elderly founding members to that Shabbat's b'nei mitzvah, read passages from each book. From a translation from High German in a Reform book from 1907, to the beloved, uniquely American voice of the Union Prayer Book, from the historic echoes Gates of Blue to the evolved, egalitarian Gates of Gray...we followed a path of poetry and prayer that led us directly into our new liturgical home: the Mishkan.

It was a transformative experience and one that resonated with pray-ers of all ages and backgrounds. Our goal as leaders was to demonstrate that Reform prayer has its own unique traditions and qualities, history and evolution: we did not come from nowhere.

Throughout the weeks that followed, our congregants - some grudgingly, some excitedly - began to get used to life in the Mishkan. Though - as befits Bnei Yisrael - there was certainly some kvetching involved ("What page are we on?" "Why is this book is so heavy?") with the help of our wonderful rabbis and cantor, Mishkan T'filah's beautiful language, its thoughtful and thought-provoking meditations, and heartfelt music helped many who attend our Shabbat services to connect to prayer on a deeper level - not only reaching out, but as Rabbi Nachman of Bratislav said, also reaching up, and reaching within.

Leading a Shabbat service with a new siddur as a layperson, however is a very different experience than observing experienced, wise and sensitive clergy navigate the congregation through transition and text.

As a board of trustees and as a ritual committee, we made the difficult decision to enforce the use of Mishkan T'filah as our summer Shabbat service text (rather than get our old copies of Gates of Prayer out of storage!) Some veteran service leaders decided to opt out, intimidated by the new format. My friend Lee and I were up for the challenge as co-leaders, but confused about how best to proceed.

"Was the linear service option the best way to go?" we wondered. Then we thought about incorporating festival worship prayers and meditations to create a more informal, creative service that highlighted the beauty and depth and range of the siddur.

I've been a summer service leader since 2002. During that first service, which took place two weeks before my ceremony of conversion, I couldn't have been more scared or inexperienced. And as I kept reminding myself, I wasn't even Jewish! To make matters even more uncomfortable, my then co-leader, a physician, had to take an emergency call in the middle of the Amidah. I stood by, unable to approach the Torah or continue services without him, until he had responded to his patient.

So for me, switching to a new prayer book was not nearly as frightening as it might have been for some people.

The key to creating a successful service was much like the same qualities that make our new siddur so interesting. Once Lee and I invested the time in looking at many different readings, attuning our ears to the different voices we heard in our new liturgy, and considering the mixed desire for familiarity and creativity among the members of our congregation, we found that by incorporating a mix of traditional prayers, Hebrew, modern poetry and song, we had created a service that spoke to this unique moment - one that reflected both the constancy of Shabbat and the fragility of transition - from clergy to lay-leadership, from the old siddur to the new, and from spring into summer.

As summer continues on, my co-leader and I hope that we inspired others in our congregation to embrace their journey into the Mishkan. Whether it is connecting through text or through song, there is much in our new siddur to be read and recited, savored and shared. Like summer itself, it is full of warmth and light and new tastes to be enjoyed.

Ultimately, we felt that our intent as lay leaders was captured in this meditation - by poet Delmore Schwartz - which can be found on page 559:

As I looked, the poplar rose in the shining air
Like a slender throat,
And there was an exaltation of flowers,
The surf of apple tree delicately foaming.

All winter, the trees had been
Silent soldiers, a vigil of woods,
Their hidden feelings
Scrawled and became
Scores of black vines,
Barbed wire sharp against the ice-white sky.
Who could believe then
In the green, glittering vividness of full-leafed summer?
Who will be able to believe, when winter again begins
After the autumn burns down again, and the day is ashen,
And all returns to winter and winter's ashes,
Wet, white, ice, wooden, dulled and dead, brittle and frozen,
Who will believe or feel in mind and heart
The reality of the spring and of birth,
In the green warm opulence of summer, and the inexhaustible vitality
and immortality of the earth?

Keep the simcha simple

2008-06-27T01:04:24Z

By Mary Hofmann
While I enjoyed reading the many perspectives of the contributors to Reform Judaism this month, I was truly saddened by the plight of Elise Silverfield May and those in her situation (which includes a whole lot of us, on a lot of levels!)--the perceived high price tag of being Jewish (page 61 or online here).

Her particular alarm rang concerning the temple members' expectations around her son's upcoming bar mitzvah, which were terrifyingly grandiose. This concern connects well with Rabbi Yoffie's comments at the Biennial regarding congregants reclaiming Shabbat morning services from the grip of private "parties." If we don't want Reform Judaism to become increasingly about status and wealth, I believe this problem needs to be addressed both in terms of reclaiming both the sanctuary and the sanctity of the event. I guess it has to do with the values established at each congregation--and all of our opportunities (and obligations?) to revision those values regularly.

Sometimes I feel lucky to live in a remote community where Jews with visions of grandeur wouldn't settle. In Merced, California, our first bar mitzvah (my son's, in 1980) was pulled off on a wing and a prayer and a lot of scrambling with the entire community involved in every aspect--from Rob's training and preparation to building the service to putting on a sort of planned potluck luncheon. It was a triumph for all of us--and set a pattern that has continued for nearly 30 years. We've had a few catered, but the norm is homemade from the get-go, the celebration is for everybody, the child not only does the regular mitzvah training, but helps with everything else, the family (and friends) create the service booklet, the child is invited to participate in adult (including board activities), and the party--lunch and something geared for kids--wraps it all up in another hour or so.

Our kids aren't missing anything. I'd guess our kids are as, or more, prepared than most. I find it sad that anybody has to feel such a warm and wonderful family and community event has to be a burden on anybody. I bet you'd all love our celebrations--and wouldn't feel like anybody had to be the envy of anyone to feel warm and fuzzy and accomplished.

The Universe sent me a Shabbat message

2008-06-16T17:29:13Z

By Wendy Nelson

My daughter graduated from high school Saturday. The weather changed from cold and rainy to a sunny 80 degree day. The plague of cicadas awaited for 17 years and due to arrive by now were yet to emerge from the ground. I arrived early and got a front row seat knowing that I could not miss seeing my beloved child on this special day. It was Shabbat and all was right.

The ceremony began with a chorus of beautiful voices of young men and women and by the second song all eyes turned to the heavens. From a very high set of lights that illuminate the field at night there was a nest with two small heads peeking over. Fledgling Osprey, unnoticed before peered down at the choir from their distant perch... and one began to sing.

Ospreys are not known for their beautiful songs; they have more of a call. But today one inspired baby Osprey sang along canary style with the teenage chorus for two songs and then stopped when they did and both babies disappeared from sight. I cried.

Some speeches followed and the chorus returned for another song. All faces turned up immediately to look for the baby birds and within a few notes two faces peered over the edge of the nest. This time, the inspired Osprey began to sing and then fully spread its small wings and began moving rhythmically appearing to dance.

At the song's finish, the speaker at the podium announced that it was time to read the graduates names and wish them goodbye for the final time. And the baby took flight both literally and symbolically while we parents watched all of our babies take flight. As the names were read it soared back and forth far above our heads eventually landing back in the nest. I was mesmerized by the metaphor, by the connection, by the coincidence?

I don't believe in God...never have. I also am an observant, practicing and diligent Reform Jew who can appreciate Godlike moments. If the universe is sending me a message it certainly has my attention. In moments when it feels like God suspend belief and just feel the beauty and the joy and, if you are me, cry.