This idea is reflected in the special Aneinu (“Answer Us”) prayer that is added to the silent Amidah on fast days. The prayer asks God to comfort us in our distress, to draw close and to heed our cry.

Answer us, Lord, answer us on our Fast Day, for we are in great distress. Look not at our wickedness. Do not hide Your face from us and do not ignore our plea. Be near to our cry; please let Your loving-kindness comfort us. Even before we call to You, answer us, as is said, ‘Before they call, I will answer. While they are still speaking, I will hear.’ For You, Lord, are the One who answers in time of distress, redeems and rescues in all times of trouble and anguish. Blessed are You, Lord, who answers in time of distress. (Translation from The Koren Siddur)

While this kind of prayer makes sense on most fast days, it’s an odd choice for Tisha B’Av, the fast day that commemorates the destruction of both ancient temples, as well as a host of other calamities that befell the Jewish people. Tisha B’Av is a day when, according to our tradition, prayer ceased to be effective, when the gates of heaven were closed to supplication.

In the Book of Lamentations, the mournful text read in synagogues on Tisha B’Av, we read: “And when I cry and plead, He shuts out my prayer.” For this reason, many synagogues customarily omit the line from the Kaddish prayer that asks God to accept our prayers. Tisha B’Av is not a day when prayers are answered.

So why do we recite Aneinu on Tisha B’Av? In fact, why fast at all if fasts are intended to help speed our prayers heavenward?

The answer can be found in another prayer we recite on Tisha B’Av. Nachem (“Console Us”) is recited during the Amidah in the afternoon Mincha service of Tisha B’Av and it differs from Aneinu in that it seeks not an answer from God, but comfort.

The prayer reads:

Console, O Lord our God, the mourners of Zion and the mourners of Jerusalem, and the city that is in sorrow, laid waste, scorned and desolate; that grieves for the loss of its children, that is laid waste of its dwellings, robbed of its glory, desolate without inhabitants. She sits with her head covered like a barren childless woman. Legions have devoured her; idolaters have taken possession of her; they have put Your people Israel to the sword and delibrately killed the devoted followers of the Most High. Therefore Zion weeps bitterly, and Jerusalem raises her voice. My heart, my heart grieves for those they killed; I am in anguish, I am in anguish for those they killed. For You, O Lord, consumed it with fire and with fire You will rebuild it in the future, as is said, ‘And I myself will be a wall of fire around it, says the Lord, and I will be its glory within.’ Blessed are You, Lord, who consoles Zion and rebuilds Jerusalem. (Translation from The Koren Siddur)

Nachem is a prayer that admits defeat. It accepts the reality of failure and loss. The rest of the year, our prayers hold out the promise of God answering our requests. Yet on Tisha B’Av, we confront the stark reality that, at a moment of national catastrophe, our pleas went unheeded.

So what do we do? We continue to pray — not in the hope of being answered, but for the promise of comfort and consolation, to draw close to God even in our time of loss.

One is reminded on Tisha B’Av of the victims of the Holocaust who offered up prayers to God from the ghettos of Europe and the death camps, who organized prayer services on Jewish holidays in the face of imminent death. Facing the horrors of the Nazi genocide, many must have wondered if prayer held the power to redeem them. And indeed, for many it did not. But those prayers, and the faith that underlay them, outlived the Nazi horror.

In his book Rebbes Who Perished in the Holocaust, Menashe Unger relates the story of Rabbi Shalom Eliezer Halberstam (the Ratzfiter rebbe), who was whispering a prayer to God even as the Nazis led him to his death. A Nazi officer asked him: “Do you still believe that your God will help you? Don’t you realize in what situation the Jews find themselves? They are being led to die and no one helps them. Do you still believe in divine providence?” To which Halberstam replied: “With all my heart and all my soul I believe that there is a Creator and that there is a Supreme Providence.”

Eliezer Berkovits, who cites the story in his book With God in Hell, observed: “In the moment before his death, the eighty-two year old Ratzfiter rebbe was more sure of himself and of what he represented in the world than the Nazi officer, behind whom stood all the might of world-conquering Nazi Germany. Rabbi Halberstam was not only expressing the thoughts of one hasidic rabbi, but was formulating the conviction of untold numbers of Jews from all strata of the Jewish people.”

On Tisha B’Av we recall those times in Jewish history when the power of prayer was inadequate to the moment. In acknowledging the suffering of our people, both past and present, we accept that prayer does not always have the capacity to undo all the pain of the world. Yet we still affirm the importance of prayer as a reflection of our deepest held values. Jewish beliefs and rituals have outlasted many enemies who have threatened us. Even in the face of hopelessness, prayer still serves as an anchor of lasting faith.

The post When Prayer Fails Us appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

As children, we intone, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

As adults, we’re urged to “get it in writing.” A verbal contract or agreement is meaningless without having it appear in black and white, finalized with our signature.

But Kol Nidrei — the service recited at the outset of Yom Kippur and which is arguably the most recognizable piece of Jewish liturgy — teaches us that words alone carry an awesome power. This most sacred, powerful, and iconic service of the Jewish year revolves around nothing less than the sheer majesty of the spoken word.

Read the full text of Kol Nidrei here:

In front of the entire congregation, the cantor chants:

All vows we are likely to make, all oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our vows, pledges, and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths.

In fact, the Kol Nidrei prayer is not a prayer at all. Rather, it’s a somewhat dry legal formula. Two witnesses, holding Torah scrolls to insert an additional measure of gravitas, stand on either side of the cantor as he chants the text three times. The words of Kol Nidrei are not even Hebrew, but Aramaic, which was the vernacular in ancient times. Hebrew would be reserved only for holy texts and prayers, not a legal proceeding.

And because we would never engage in any business or legal dealings during a Jewish holiday, Kol Nidrei must be recited before Yom Kippur actually begins, in advance of sunset. This is why the Yom Kippur fast lasts closer to 25 hours or even longer. We’re already sitting in synagogue listening to Kol Nidrei before the holiday technically begins.

Why do we use this rather bland and uninspiring public declaration to usher in the most sacred day of the year? One might think that we should proclaim our collective commitment to engage in the act of teshuvah (repentance). Perhaps we should seek to have our past transgressions forgiven and ensure that our names be entered into the Book of Life.

The truth is seemingly more prosaic: We state in advance that we should not be held accountable for any vows we might take between now and next Yom Kippur. This probably doesn’t resonate with the modern mind so much, but vows used to be serious business. A vow was much more than simply a promise someone made to another person; it was a sacrosanct commitment that could not be broken.

The Torah outlines in great detail who could make and be held accountable for vows. Much like today’s rules regarding signing a contract, minors (and often women) could not enter into a vow.

In the Book of Jonah (traditionally read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur), after the non-Hebrew sailors throw Jonah overboard and witness the power of God, we read that they “feared God and made vows.”

Nazarites took vows to live a life of holiness, with added restrictions such as the prohibition against drinking any wine.

And even in recent history, it might be common for a person who finds himself in great peril to state, “God, if I survive this situation, I hereby vow to commit myself to a life of strict observance!”

But human nature being what it is, how many vows are actually kept?

The Kol Nidrei service provides a way to let us off the hook. At the precise time when we’re seeking to start anew and wipe the slate clean, we try to stack the deck in our favor for the coming year by annulling any careless promises in advance.

But the message of Kol Nidrei carries a deeper meaning: What we say can be just as consequential as what we do. If we’re truly seeking to change our behavior for the coming year, to become closer to God and to our community, we must begin with how we speak and relate to each other.

Do we engage in lashon hara, speaking of others in a derogatory way?

Do we needlessly intensify discussions with inflammatory comments?

Or do we take the opportunity to express our devotion and commitment to our family?

During the morning liturgy on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we read, “The great shofar is sounded, but a still, small voice is heard.”

Kol Nidrei teaches us that the mere spoken word — our own still, small voice — can be an enormous catalyst for how we choose to live.

Listen to Kol Nidrei here:

Cantor Matt Axelrod has served Congregation Beth Israel of Scotch Plains, New Jersey, since 1990. He is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and a national officer of the Cantors Assembly. Cantor Axelrod is the author of Surviving Your Bar/Bat Mitzvah: The Ultimate Insider’s Guide, and Your Guide to the Jewish Holidays: From Shofar to Seder. You can read his blog at mattaxelrod.com.

The post Kol Nidrei: The Power of Words appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Neshamah, one of the Hebrew words for breath, also means soul. The sages of the Talmud suggest that upon awakening in the morning, a person should say, Elohai neshamah shenatata bi tehorah. “My God, the soul that you have placed within me is pure.” Berakhot 60b

These simple yet potent words, now included in our traditional morning blessings, draw us back to the very dawn of our mythic creation. In Genesis 2:7 we read that God formed the human of dust from the earth and breathed into its nostrils the soul-breath of life.

Each morning, as I draw my first conscious of breaths of the day, I am transported back to that state of purity and wonder that our tradition ascribes to the first human, breathed into aliveness by the Infinite. Legend teaches that in the Garden of Eden, before eating from the Tree of Knowledge, the first human could see from one end of the universe to the other. Enjoying the gift of breath, I too glimpse the vastness, the wholeness of the world. I am ensouled anew.

Elohai – my God. This prayer-word teaches me that the great cosmic mystery that breathes life into me is also very personal. The unique breath-channel that I am can draw in the very manifestation of the Unnameable that knows me intimately.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi writes: “Our minds might insist that we go directly to the Infinite when we think of God, but the heart doesn’t want the Infinite; it wants a You it can confide in and take comfort in.” Amidst the jagged and often wrenching complexities of daily life, what a balm it can be to feel the Presence as close as my breath.

Tehorah hi – it is pure. The mystics speak of five levels of soul, neshamah being the level that corresponds to the mind and heart, the wise, universal intellect. Reminding myself that each soul-breath I inhale from Source is tehorah, pure, becomes a touchstone for my day. Whatever challenges greet me, whatever missteps I take, I can return again and again to the gift of pure breath, soul, that remains unsullied, unshaken by the vicissitudes of the moment—refreshed, awakened, fully alive.

Rabbi Diane Elliot is a spiritual leader and somatic therapist who inspires her students to embody and deepen their Jewish spiritual lives through awareness and movement practices, chant and expressive arts, and nuanced interpretations of Jewish sacred text. She leads retreats, teaches nationally, and works with individuals in spiritual direction. Her recently published “This Is the Day, Poems,” inspired by the practice of counting the Omer, is available on Amazon. You can learn more about her work at  www.whollypresent.org.

The post Elohai Neshama: Breathing the Soul Alive appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe who has sanctified us with divine commandments, and commanded us concerning the washing of the hands.

Water is life. Everything that exists on this fragile planet depends on its nurturing power. Organisms are born from it. Creatures find sustenance in it. The birth and rebirth of the soul is found within spiritual baths. And each day, through mechanisms metaphysical and mundane, we sanctify our lives through water.

Jewish thought understands both the earthly usage of water and its renewing effects on the soul. Each morning, we are commanded to wash our hands and recite the blessing Netilat Yadayim. The simple reason for this is that sleep is akin to death and being awake is akin to life. Water stimulates the synapses in our brains to break between these realms. Washing our hands is the precise moment where we express our gratitude for our earthly physical existence, for the return of our soul to our body, and prepare ourselves to take responsibility for the gifts bestowed upon us.

But why is it the hands that we wash? We could have been commanded to wash the head housing our brain, the chest housing our heart, or the feet we use to walk.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov taught that the 28 joints in our two hands match the gematria of the term koach, the Hebrew word for means energy or strength. When we engage our hands for holy means, we bring divine energy to that moment.

Our hands are our primary moral instrument. With hands, we hit or we heal. With hands, we push away or pull close. With hands, we are idle or engaged in honest labor. We close our hands selfishly or open them charitably. We wash our hands to prepare ourselves for authentic, holy engagement with others.

Rabbi Nachman also taught that at the moment of clapping with joy, the land below us becomes as holy as Israel. Through the nerves and sinews in our hands that interact with the world so profoundly, we transform temporal space and time into holy space and time.

Washing our hands is a brief oasis in time. By this practice, we prepare to use our hands to share love, to pray, to work honestly and to clap with joy. In washing our hands each day, we prepare ourselves for compassionate service and the authentic experience of existence.

(Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the president and dean of Valley Beit Midrash in Phoenix, Arizona. He is also a noted author and social justice activist who has been routinely named to listings of the most influential rabbis in America.)

The post Netilat Yadayim: Sanctifying Our Primary Moral Instrument appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ רוח חַי וְקַיָּם שֶהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ
Modeh ah-nee lifanecha, Ru-ach chai v’kayam, she-hechezarta bee nishma-tee b’chemlah rabbah emunatecha. 

ָAs human beings, we have inherited a brain from our stone-age ancestors that is particularly alert to the possibilities of danger. Neuroscientists call this negativity bias. We are programmed to first notice what’s wrong. My prayer life is designed to overcome this negative bias and open my heart to the blessing and miracle that God is giving me today.

Every spiritual tradition acknowledges that how we begin our day matters. Each day I wake up with an intention that when I open my eyes I will see and recognize God’s face in the details of the day I am about to encounter. If my very first expression is gratefulness (rather than seeing what’s wrong today or obsessing over how much I need to get done) then I step on to a path of blessing. I prepare myself for wonder.

With the first phrase of the prayer (Modah ah-nee lifanecha), I open to the miracle embedded in the day that is being given to me. For the second phrase (Ru-ach chai v’kayam), I substitute Ru-ach (Spirit) for the traditional Melech (King). I acknowledge that although my whole world is in flux, there is a Great Spirit — eternal and enduring, moving through all of it.

With the third phrase (she-hechezarta bee nishma-tee b’chemlah), I become receptive to the gift of consciousness from the Compassionate One and I open to the sense of being seen, known, loved and fully accepted by the Great Mystery that embraces me this very day.

The last phrase of the prayer (rabbah emunatecha) is taken from Eicha, the Book of Lamentations 3:23. When I experience God’s faith in me, I receive a glimpse of the widest, longest perspective. In that glimpse, I am calmed. I relax my frantic grip. I stop trying to figure it out. I begin to trust the flow of inexorable change.

As God sees me, I surrender to that faithful gaze. This Divine faith in me is what grows my own fragile faith. When I am known, seen and loved completely through this Divine faith, I can dare to rise to the challenge of loving this world with all that I am and everything I’ve got.

The fact that this final phrase comes from the saddest text of our tradition bears a profound teaching. It seems to be saying that our gratefulness and faith don’t come from denying our suffering, but rather by moving through that suffering and getting to the other side.

Meister Eckart said that if the only prayer you ever say is, “Thank You,” that would be enough.

Gratefulness connects us up to the great flow of receptivity and generosity. When we begin the day in gratefulness, we step on to the path of love.

Rabbi Shefa Gold leads workshops and retreats on the theory and art of chanting, devotional healing, spiritual community building and meditation. She has also created an app, Flavors of Gratefulness, that includes 49 separate melodies for Modeh Ani.

The post Modeh Ani: Beginning the Day with Gratitude appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

There’s one iconic prayer, recited on each of the days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, that expresses in a clear and dramatic way our need to perform teshuvah. The text of Unetaneh Tokef lays it all out for us and utilizes vivid imagery: Before God lies a giant book — the Book of Life — in which we hope all of our names will be inscribed for the coming year. The Unetaneh Tokef goes on to tell us that on Rosh Hashanah, those deserving names are entered — ensuring they will live through the year, and on Yom Kippur, the Book is sealed — their fates no longer alterable. We have until the very end of Yom Kippur, during the concluding Neilah service when the liturgy tells us that the gates are closing, to sway God’s decision in our favor.

Find the full text of the Unetanah Tokef in Hebrew and English here!

To drive home the serious consequences of our actions, Unetaneh Tokef then lists all the dire ways we can meet our fate. We read the classic words “Who shall live and who shall die?” — but then the rest of the paragraph is devoted to all the ways the latter outcome could take place:

Who by fire and who by water?

Who by plague and who by famine?

Who by sword and who by wild beast?

Who by hunger and who by thirst?

At last, we’re given a shred of hope, the theological carrot to these long passages of stick. We read:

Uteshuvah utefilah utzedakah ma’avirin et roa hag’zeirah

But repentance, prayer, and deeds of charity can annul the severity of the decree.

This prayer is undoubtedly the climax of the High Holiday morning service. As the hazzan of my synagogue, I see my entire congregation present for this prayer (although people start to trickle out of the sanctuary soon after). Backed up by the choir, I chant it in some of the most ornate and dramatic musical selections of the year.

Yet, at the same time, I find this prayer to be the most disturbing, confusing, and theologically questionable of the entire mahzor. A close look at the wording seems to contradict everything we’re supposed to believe and do on these High Holidays. It says that on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, our names are written and then sealed for the coming year. That is, the decision is made. It’s a done deal. Therefore, it is already predetermined whether we will live or die during the next year. What good then are our acts of teshuvah? How can we annul the severity of the decree through deeds of tzedakah (charity) if that decree is not only recorded but in fact sealed in a book? Should we leave the sanctuary at the end of Yom Kippur and simply hope for the best, realizing that nothing we do from that moment on has any effect on whether we will survive the year ahead?

We need a better way to relate to this prayer that is so central to our High Holiday liturgy. I have come to understand this disturbing and powerful text less as a promise of childlike reward and punishment and more as a statement of the fragility of life and our own mortality. I have literally been moved to tears (no small challenge while trying to sing with a full voice along with the choir) looking out at a full sanctuary, everyone’s voices joined in the familiar refrain:

B’rosh hashanah yikateivun uv’yom tzom kippur yeichateimun

On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed

At that moment, I realize that not all of us will be here next year. These people — congregants, friends, family — it is a sad but inescapable fact that some will die over the course of the coming year. Our lives are a gift. We perform teshuvah not to appease a distant and invisible Deity, but rather to remind us of our value to one another and strengthen our relationships with each other. We give tzedakah to better the lives of those around us. And we engage in prayer to further develop the bonds of our connection to Judaism and our community.

Our job is not to temporarily put on our best behavior in order to convince God to let us live for another year. Instead, we acknowledge that our time here on earth is limited and our lives tenuous. The true and vital message of Unetaneh Tokef requires us to ask ourselves not who shall live, but how shall we live?

The post Unetaneh Tokef: Do We Control our Fate? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

And then, a few paragraphs later in the liturgy, in a moment when we are feeling truly vulnerable, we encounter another piyyut, with a shockingly different tone. V’chol Ma’aminim literally means “We All Believe.” Here is a bit of it:

We all believe that God is faithful…knows our deepest feelings…is the steadfast redeemer…

Read the full text of V’chol Ma’aminim in Hebrew on Sefaria.

The theme of this part of the service pivots abruptly from uncertainty (who shall live and who shall die?) to complete faith. Now, rather than wondering out loud our fates for the coming year, knowing that perhaps not all of us will come together again a year hence, we proclaim as a whole (usually in call-and-response with a cantor) statements of utter certainty and faith. God is in charge, there is order in the universe.

The change in message is a jolt, but a welcome one. From the depths of uncertainty we call out the steadfast faith we wish we felt. We together take a deep breath and speak into being the order we crave in our chaotic, uncertain lives.

Even the form of the poem, attributed to the paytan (poet) Yannai (perhaps between the 5^th and 7^th centuries), conveys a message of order and certainty. It’s an acrostic, with a theological statement for each letter of the 21 letters of the alphabet. Sometimes it is laid out in a series of seven stanzas, a perfect number (evocative of the wholeness of God’s creation — brought into being by six days of work and one of rest). Repetitive patterns, rhythmic phrasing, and alliteration — all emphasize the predictability of the natural order. One by one, the verses pronounce God truthful, eternal, singular, a just judge.

At a fragile time like the High Holidays, which are an opportunity for each individual to rehearse his or her own death (a morbid but also deeply meaningful exercise), there is a strong need to confess certainty and belief. The poem seems designed to convey these in every way, but in light of our own experience of a world that is often chaotic and cruel, how can we affirm we “believe” each statement?

The answer is that “belief” might not mean what we think it means. In Hebrew, the root of the word ma’aminim, “we believe,” is more connected to faith than proof of fact. When we are feeling vulnerable we take a leap of faith, resting our minds on God who protects us, upholds justice, and makes sure that we will be cared for.

This period in the Jewish calendar is about more than powerful poetic prayer; it calls each of us to become better versions of ourselves. In parallel, we can imagine how each of our personal efforts can begin to bring the world itself toward wholeness. We can read these verses as a profession of belief not in the existence of a perfectly controlled, ordered universe — but in the possibility of that version of our world, ourselves, and our God. For example, we might fear that we have done something unforgivable, so we remind ourselves that Judaism teaches of a God who is patient, even overlooking the sins of those who are rebellious. Or, we might be filled with self-doubt after a challenging year of disappointments, so we seek comfort in the sturdy reminder that God is the One before whom all are equal.

It is challenging to read this poetic prayer as a literal declaration of belief. It might even be painful to say those words out loud, as we gaze around our broken, messy world. But V’chol Ma’aminim can be read instead as an aspirational proclamation of hope — a commitment to discover light in the darkness, and perhaps to manufacture it for ourselves.

When congregations gather together on the High Holidays to reflect on the passage of time, the services are punctuated with poetic moments such as this, when individuals can call out their deepest yearnings. We follow the guidance that Yannai left for us 1500 years ago, and speak out loud of the justice and order and we crave. In doing so together, we are invited to hear the way in which all of our hopes and wishes reverberate in unison, and together we are invited to bring the order and stability of our dreams into reality.

The post V’chol Ma’amimim: Speaking Order into Chaos appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Psalm 137 is recited on the eve of Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of both Temples. It opens the liturgy, and sets the tone for the day. The liturgy of Tisha B’Av includes a wide array of kinot, poems of sorrow and mourning, giving voice to themes of exile and longing. But this ancient psalm, older than the kinot, captures the pain of exile from the Land of Israel perhaps most eloquently of all. The psalm is short — only nine verses — and can be divided into three parts, each with its own themes and challenges for today’s spiritual yearners. The first four verses read as follows:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars we hung up our lyres,

for our captors asked us there for songs, our tormentors, for amusement:

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

How can we sing a song of the LORD on alien soil?

In these opening lines, we can hear the sadism of the locals as they mock the newly-arrived Israelites: “Sing us one of those spirituals from the Old Country…” Some scholars remark that the Israelite response, “How can we sing… on alien soil?” reflects another aspect of loss: the poet, like many of the exiles, is wondering whether the God of Israel can hear or act when the people are no longer in their homeland. Perhaps prophecy and prayers only “work” when the People of Israel are located in the Land of Israel? This is more than a rhetorical question: the exile commemorated on Tisha B’Av is not only about distance from a physical place, but also from God. That distance is the cause of pain and loneliness that is reflected in the psalm.

If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither;

let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you,

if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour.

Here, the pain of loss melts into resolve. The poet doesn’t know if God has forgotten, but the poet has not forgotten! The Temple in Jerusalem was the place where God and the people found great intimacy. The memory of this closeness is what Tisha B’Av is ultimately about: not a longing for sacrifices, but for the intimacy with God that worship evoked.

These lines are reflected in some well-known Jewish customs. In many times and places, Jews would leave a wall of their home unfinished or unpainted. This was a reminder that wherever the householder lived, it was still a place of exile until Jerusalem and its people would once again be whole. This practice is first described in the Talmud, Bava Batra 60b.

Another famous Jewish ritual reflects these verses: breaking a glass at a wedding. After all, surely the moment a couple is married must be their “happiest hour.” Shattering a glass at this moment reminds onlookers of the work still to be done, although perhaps this couple’s love is a step in bringing unity back to a fragmented world.

The final verses of the Psalm throw the reader a moral curveball:

Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall;

how they cried, “Strip her, strip her to her very foundations!”
Fair Babylon, you predator,

a blessing on him who repays you in kind

what you have inflicted on us;

a blessing on him who seizes your babies

and dashes them against the rocks!

The violent revenge fantasy of these lines is painful to read (smashing our enemies’ babies on the rocks!); many of us wish it wasn’t there at all! In fact, many liturgies don’t print them, closing the poem after verse 6, about keeping alive the memory of Jerusalem. What might we do with these harsh words?

It is not our task to validate these violent revenge fantasies, but we can seek to understand them. The poem doesn’t claim that anyone ever did these awful things. Instead, these words reflect the anger of the victim. Imagine the victim in a concentration camp — or consider your own feelings walking through Yad Vashem or the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Is anger not a valid emotional response? Can these feelings help us empathize with other oppressed peoples, and understand that suffering and oppression easily translate into rage? The imaginary deeds we would never justify, but the seething hurt behind these sentiments make the passage extremely, and uncomfortably, powerful.

All this reflects the deep spiritual power of Tisha B’Av. We remember that, no matter where we may be, we live religiously in a state of Exile. We long for a reconciliation with God and with one another. And, through our fasting, our mourning, our kinot, and this psalm we become more compassionate with those who suffer. Because we’ve been there, too, in our Jewish history.

The post By the Rivers of Babylon We Remember Zion appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

But something about word “happiness” strikes Jews in the wrong way. There’s the old joke about the Jewish telegram: “Start worrying…details to follow.” Our default is often guilt rather than happiness. It is as if we have been programmed to see anxiety around every corner, to be more comfortable in the familiar “oy” over the risky “joy.”

Happiness is also an odd English word. It comes from the Middle English hap, as in happenstance and haphazard. This origin suggests that a happy life is a result of randomness and luck. Prayer has nothing to do with it.

In our consumerist culture, happiness is also frequently confused with pleasure, and praying for pleasure can feel self-indulgent. But happiness and pleasure are different.

Pleasure is short-term, like getting a massage or eating a sumptuous meal. Happiness is long-lasting. It is flourishing, which is a word preferred by the founder of the scientific study of happiness, Professor Martin Seligman. According to Seligman, flourishing contains five key components: positive emotion, engagement, relationship, meaning, and accomplishment. An easy way to remember them is the acronym PERMA.

The Jewish happiness prayer, as we will see below, promotes flourishing. It is the happiness experienced through a life of meaning and purpose.

What is the happiness prayer? It is a series of verses from the Mishnah we recite as part of the morning worship service. It is found in many prayer books as part of the traditional series of morning blessings.

The prayer begins with the words Eilu Devarim (“These are the Words”). The Hebrew word devarim also means actions or deeds. So the happiness prayer is a series of words describing actions that promote happiness.

Read the text of the prayer in Hebrew here.

The prayer contains ten actions in total, which I have translated as follows:

These are the deeds with infinite benefits.

A person enjoys their fruit in this world,

and in the world to come. Guide me in embracing these sacred practices:

Honor those who gave me life

Practice kindness

Learn Constantly

Invite others into my home

Be there when others need me

Celebrate life’s sacred moments

Support others during times of loss

Pray with intention

Forgive those who hurt me and seek forgiveness where I have others

Commit to constant growth.

This translation is not literal. For a few of the practices, I chose to convey the value expressed in the specific practice itself. For example, the Hebrew phrase that literally means “provide for a bride” I have rendered as “celebrating life’s sacred moments.” Providing for a bride reflects the importance of marking sacred moments with ritual, and these moments are not limited to weddings. Today they include anniversaries, baby namings, even graduations. Finding ways to participate in and create communal celebrations around those life events makes us happier.

The academic discipline of positive psychology has reinforced the message of the happiness prayer. Indeed, even though the rabbis who wrote this prayer were not familiar with positive psychology, their teachings intuit it. The actions this prayer calls upon us to take fit squarely within the PERMA framework noted earlier.

For example, celebrating life’s sacred moments incorporates positive emotions, relationships, and meaning. Praying with intention is a act of engagement, and prayer itself encompasses a worldview that life has meaning. Knowing how to pray — the words, the rhythm, the melodies — gives us a feeling of accomplishment. When we look at the Eilu Devarim prayer as a guide to happiness, we can see each of its practices as an expression of some aspect of PERMA.

Saying the prayer also promotes happiness in other ways. First, it pushes us outside of ourselves. Almost all of the ten practices involve other people. Inviting others into our lives, practicing kindness, and comforting mourners, are just the most direct examples. The rabbis understood the seeming paradox that focusing on others more than ourselves makes us happier. As Victor Frankl put, “the door to happiness opens outward.”

Frankl’s observation helps us see a second source of happiness in this prayer. It roots us in a religious worldview. Its opening verses remind us that we are reading more than a list of good deeds. They are a series of practices that echo through eternity. We feel their effects in this world and in the world to come.

Put differently, embracing a religious worldview makes us happier. We can speculate on why this is true. But I suspect part of the reason is that faith is a mindset that pushes us — in some cases, even obliges us — to do things that may not feel great in the short term, but that enhance our lives in the long term. These are the things we do that we can look back on a year later and feel happy to have done.

Every year, I fast on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. To do so is a commandment found in the Torah and has been a Jewish tradition for more than 4,000 years. Since I am working all day — delivering sermons and leading my congregation in eight hours of prayer — fasting is the last thing I want to do. Yet it enhances my experience of the day and my connection to others. It does not feel pleasurable in the moment. But when I look back, I know I experienced the power of the day.

This is the kind of commitment faith has always nurtured, and ignoring the role of faith in the search for happiness is like going to search for a treasure and throwing away an old map leading directly to it. The Eilu Devarim prayer is such a map. May it guide us on our journey.

Rabbi Evan Moffic is the spiritual leader of Congregation Solel in Highland Park, IL. He is the author of the “The Happiness Prayer: Ancient Jewish Wisdom for the Best Way to Live Today.”

The post How to Pray for Happiness appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The full text of the blessing is as follows:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה, אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁהֶחֱיָֽינוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמָן הַזֶּה

Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Haolam, shehechiyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higianu lazman hazeh.

Blessed are You Eternal Spirit who has given us life, sustained us and allowed us to arrive in this moment.

In truth, however, each day is a momentous arrival. Our whole existence has led us to every single moment — the culmination of our lives so far, which we are privileged to experience in the fullness of now. God, that miraculous force of grace unfolding, has brought us home. In encountering and honoring that force of homecoming, we turn and receive the gift of life.

If we are truly present, we could say the Shehechiyanu in every moment, because every moment is new and truly unprecedented. Unfortunately, we often get distracted or complacent, and we habitually miss the miracle that is right in front of us. This blessing is an opportunity to do teshuvah, to return, and in returning, to bring attention back to the miracle of this moment, to the realization of the blessing of being alive, conscious and receptive.

The traditional formulation of the blessing thanks God for three things: shehechiyanu (given us life), v’kiyimanu (sustained us), vihigiyanu laxman hazeh (allowed us to arrive at this moment). Implied in this blessing is a commitment to vitality, to sustained presence and awareness.

• Vitality (shehechiyanu): Tune in to the life force that has brought us here. We have all been through so much, struggled and been blessed and guided. There is a treasure in this moment waiting to be discovered and mined. There is a force that animates us — a soul-spark that kindles enthusiasm for the journey. This realization that life has a unique purpose is energizing. Remain loyal to the inner essence, the tzelem elohim (Divine image), that manifests as vitality — the animating life force.
• Sustained Presence (v’kiyamanu): We have survived in order to thrive in the world that is emerging right now. Sense the potential in this moment and make a commitment to explore and unfold that potential in ways that will sustain and inspire others.
• Awareness (v’higiyanu lazman hazeh): Make a commitment to fully inhabit life. That means accepting particular predicaments and challenges, while opening to the gifts that allow us to rise to those challenges. Open up an awareness to the big picture and to our small yet essential place in that vastness.

When we say this blessing, we expand to receive the gift of life. We are reminded to take nothing for granted and to allow ourselves to be surprised.

The following recording of the Shehechiyanu prayer is on Rabbi Shefa Gold’s CD Chantsformations:

Rabbi Shefa Gold leads workshops and retreats on the theory and art of chanting, devotional healing, spiritual community building and meditation. She is also a leader in ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and is the director of C-DEEP: Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. Her website is http://rabbishefagold.com.

The post Shehechiyanu: A Meditation on this Moment appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

These words, commonly known as the Shema, are traditionally recited by Jews as we begin and conclude each day. Bookending not just our days but our lives, the Shema is also commonly the first prayer we are taught as children and is the final prayer we utter on our deathbed as we pass from this world. The Shema is the mantra of Judaism, its message foundational to what it means to live as a Jew of faith in this world.

The Shema begins with an imperative: Listen! Just that word alone is a powerful call. Listening is not an easy thing to do. More than the simple act of hearing, true listening requires us to open ourselves up to another’s experience so that heart touches heart and we are changed. It is — in philosopher Martin Buber’s framework — what allows us to develop an I-thou, rather than an I-it, relationship. Buber describes listening as “something we do with our full selves by sensing and feeling what another is trying to convey so that together we can remove the barrier between us.”

In Judaism, the act of listening is the key to unlocking bounty and blessing. In Deuteronomy, as the Israelites wind down their wandering in the wilderness and prepare to enter the land of Israel, Moses instructs them emphatically using this same word — shema. “If you listen, truly listen,” Moses says, all will be good. If not, curses will follow.

On this verse, the Hasidic commentator the Sefat Emet references a line from the Midrash: “Happy is the one whose listen­ings are to Me.” Adding his own commentary, he writes: “‘Listenings’ means that one should always be prepared to receive and listen closely to the words of God. The voice of God’s word is in everything, since all were created by God’s utterance.”

Each of us, no matter how seemingly different we are from one another, are created by God. The Shema calls on us not merely to listen, but to remember that despite our differences, there is one force of connection and transformation in the universe that animates and unites us all. “The Lord, our God, the Lord is One,” the Shema continues.

The force that we call Adonai, others call by other names. Each of us has our own particular path, but ultimately they lead to the same place. Beginning with listening and ending with oneness, the Shema invites us to deepen our capacity to listen — to ourselves, to the Divine, and to those around us, to develop an I-thou relationship with the rest of humanity. Its daily recitation reminds us to build bridges rather than barriers so that we may touch upon — even if only for brief moments at a time — that place in which we all are one.

(Rabbi Adina Allen is co-founder and creative director of the Jewish Studio Project, a Bay Area start-up that utilizes the creative arts as a tool for self-discovery, social change and inspiring a Judaism that is vibrant, connective and hopeful.)

Watch Rabbi Darby Jared Leigh teach the Shema in American Sign Language and explain how deaf people can understand a prayer about hearing.

The post The Shema: How Listening Leads to Oneness appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

But on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, all that changes. The Musaf service, usually more of an afterthought throughout the year, completely dominates the High Holiday liturgy. It is long, complex, and serves as the service’s centerpiece. It is here that we find the most iconic prayers: the cantor’s Hineni where he or she pleads to be worthy to lead the congregation in prayer; Unetaneh Tokef, the prayer which includes the well-known and haunting passage “Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die” and the “Great Aleinu” during which the cantor lies prostrate in front of the ark in utter supplication. These are moments of incredible drama and emotion.

But that’s not all. A bit later on in the Rosh Hashanah Musaf service —perhaps after some congregants have already left for home — we come to its heart. The most significant part of Musaf is divided into three distinct sections: Malchuyot (God as Sovereign), Zichronot (God remembers), and Shofarot (God and Revelation). These comprise the great themes of the holiday.

Each of these sections —Malchuyot, Zichronot and Shofarot — has an identical structure, beginning with an introductory text followed by exactly ten Biblical verses that help to illustrate the particular theme. These ten verses all follow the same pattern. There are three from the Torah, three from the Writings, three from the Prophets, and then one more from the Torah—all of which incorporate the same Hebrew roots which define that section. For instance, in the Malchuyot which describes God as a sovereign, we read:

Adonai yimloch l’olam va’ed.

God will reign throughout all time. (Exodus 15:18)

Later, during Zichronot, one of the verses emotionally elicits the imagery of God as the parent of a beloved child:

Haven yakir li Ephraim im yeled sha-a-shuim ki midei dab-ri bo zachor ez-k’renu od…

Ephraim [a metaphor for the People Israel] is a dear child to me. Even when I reproach him, I remember him with tenderness… (Jeremiah 31:20)

Then in Shofarot, we recite the powerful verse:

V’hayah bayom ha-hu yi-takah b’shofar gadol…

And on that day the great shofar will be sounded… (Isaiah 27:13)

Finally, all three sections conclude with their own shofar blowing, punctuating each passage and drawing attention to its significance.

The order of the three sections is not random — it astutely captures our modern relationship with God. One could summarize Malchuyot (Sovereignty), Zichronot (Remembrance), and Shofarot (Revelation) as representing our collective past, present, and future.

First, in Malchuyot (Sovereignty) we look to our origins as the first monotheistic religion. Rather than entreating multiple deities to provide for all of our needs — food, weather, fertility — we declared that there was one true God who reigned over all aspects of life. That was an absolutely radical notion at the time, and of course it still defines the essence of Judaism.

Then, in the Zichronot (Remembrance) verses of Musaf, we acknowledge the role that God plays in our current lives. Certainly we view God from a greater distance than some of our ancestors — there’s no longer direct divine prophecy such as we read about in the Bible. However, we trust that even though we are far removed from that time, God remembers us today, and even more importantly, that we too remember God. While God may be literally out of sight, God should never be out of mind.

Finally, we come to the most provocative section, Shofarot (Revelation), which looks to our future as a people. In Judaism, we recognize that while God was revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, that event did not represent the end of our relationship. In fact, God’s revelation continues each day. It attests to the brilliance and durability of our tradition that each successive generation has not only the ability but in fact the responsibility to interpret and internalize what it means to be Jewish. The Torah famously tells us in Deuteronomy 30:12: lo bashamayim hee, our law is not in heaven, but rather here on earth where the sacred words of our ancient texts may continually be interpreted and shaped.

What time of year could be more appropriate than the High Holidays to look anew at our connection to God and to Judaism? Yes, the sound of the shofar calls for us to pray and reflect, but even more vital is the message to grow and change. Judaism is the path upon which we stand. It’s up to each generation to decide where that path leads.

The post Rosh Hashanah Musaf: A Call to Change Your Life appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

This prayer can be chanted at the onset of a journey by foot, car, bus, boat, train or plane. It can take us to a place of calm and spacious awareness. It reminds us that God is with us and to pay attention to the gifts that might otherwise be missed along the way.

Click here for the full text of the prayer

The foundational story of Judaism — which is remembered, celebrated and relived every single day — is the story of a journey. In the beginning, we journey into existence. Then we journey with Abraham into the unknown and then into the entanglements of family dramas. We journey from there down into Egypt and into the suffering and constriction of slavery (the Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, literally “the narrow place.”). Our journey from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to the Promised Land, represents the journey of awakening.

Major Jewish holidays celebrate important points on that journey. On Passover, we commemorate the leave-taking. On Shavuot, we celebrate the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai along the way. Sukkot reminds us of both our fragility and abundance as we journey forth.

In fact, everything that is important to our spiritual development as a people happens along the way.

There is a yearly cycle of readings from Torah that all Jews follow, which leads us from the very beginning of creation to the moment when we are about to arrive in the Promised Land. And then we never really get there. After all that anticipation, all that promise, we start over again. We’re right back at the beginning.

If the destination was the point of it all, then this might become very frustrating. But it is the journey that matters.

We read this story again and again — discussing, analyzing, and extrapolating about it endlessly — because it is meant to be a mirror of our own soul’s journey. By reflecting on our journey, we are meant to wake up to both the wonder and magnitude of each and every step, and the amazing miracle of the whole journey in all its glory, absurdity and sweetness.

There is a way that these two awakenings—to the miracle of the journey and to this step right here beneath our foot — are symbiotic. The moment when we can step back and marvel at the twists and turns, the synchronicities and blessings that have brought us to the here and now — that is the moment of realization that every step matters. Walking with that kind of awareness, deliberately opening to the grace of each step, enables a vision of the wide perspective of our whole amazing life’s journey.

Each of us walks the path of a valiant hero on a remarkable journey, filled with the human adventures of birth, illness, romance, divorce, loss, triumph, heartbreak, healing and aging into wisdom. And yet we often just accept it all as boringly normal and tedious.

Traveling is a reminder that all of life is an extraordinary adventure. Traveling awakens curiosity and wonder and brings those qualities to every step of life. Being awake in this way is a paradox. With each step, we arrive in the Promised Land and all there is to do is celebrate. Yet we are also always forever on our way there, stumbling, dancing, opening to all it means to be human, remembering that it is the journey that matters.

Chanting the words of the Traveler’s Prayer blesses this journey, connecting to Holy One who sends us and opening to the possibility that wherever we think we’re going, the destination is in fact the fullness of life, joy, wholeness and peace.

Listen to Rabbi Shefa Gold’s musical version of the Traveler’s Prayer:

Rabbi Shefa Gold is a Leader in Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and director of CDEEP Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice. Her latest book is “Are We There Yet? Travel as a Spiritual Practice“, published by Ben Yehuda Press

The post The Traveler’s Prayer: What You Say Along the Way appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The prayer expresses our gratitude to God “for the miracles and for the redemption and for the mighty deeds and for the victories and for the battles that You performed for our fathers in those days at this time.” We then proceed to retell the miracles of Purim and Hanukkah.

Which miracles? The Hanukkah passage is strange. It recounts the Maccabean victory over the Syrian-Greek superpower — “You delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous and the arrogant into the hands of those engaged with Your Torah” — and nothing else.

The omission is staggering. There was a second miracle on Hanukkah, when one jar of oil, enough for one day, burned for eight. That’s why we light the menorah. Why does the holiday’s primary prayer omit any mention of this miracle? It’s like writing a prayer for Passover without the Ten Plagues. A cynic might even say that the military victory wasn’t a miracle at all. Maybe the Jews were just better strategists or more passionate on the battlefield.

When we celebrate a holiday, we look for the exciting and the unusual. It is the supernatural which captures our attention, not the mundane. The commonplace does not deserve a holiday. And so we celebrate Hanukkah as the anniversary of a supernatural miracle by lighting the menorah.

But the act of prayer is fundamentally different. It is a celebration of the routine, of the usual, of God’s gifts which surround us daily. In prayer we don’t look for the once-in-a-lifetime miraculous event to praise and thank God. We look to thousands of small things with which He has blessed us: breathing air, going to the bathroom, eating food, the ability to hear and see and speak, to love and maintain friendships, to think and to read.

All these are mundane activities, yet according to Jewish tradition, they demand the utmost gratitude to God. To thank God only for the supernatural is an insult to the millions of everyday kindnesses he performs.

Winning a war against those bent on destroying one’s way of life demands gratitude, but it is not a celebration. War is always unpleasant, even if one wins. It involves the loss of life and inflicting suffering on others. It is a moment to soberly reflect on the tremendous blessings surrounding us — including the painful and difficult victory over our enemies.

The authors of Al Hanisim exclude the oil miracle as if to say, “Now we are praying, thanking God for His goodness and the blessing He bestows on us.” This decision suggests a larger truth about the act of prayer. When we pray, we are thanking God for those things that, while not as flashy as the miracle of the oil, are nevertheless crucial to our freedom and wellbeing.

Read Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt’s take on Al Hanisim as a call for us to partner with God in making miracles happen.

The post Al Hanisim: A Holiday Prayer of Thanks for Everyday Miracles appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The first stanza can be controversial, but it doesn’t have to be. One of the problematic lines thanks God she-lo assanu k’goyei ha’aratzot — “who has not made us like the nations of the world.” This is a declaration that we stand for the mission of Judaism, which is essentially to be a “God wrestler” (one possible translation of the word Israel).

As Jews, we struggle to understand what God is and what God desires for our world. This struggle is what gives meaning to our lives. This is not to say that other religions or groups are not also God wrestlers, but Jews wrestle in a unique way. We wrestle in Hebrew, on Shabbat, on our holidays. We wrestle through Torah and our rabbis. We wrestle in a different way with the State of Israel. And we are grateful for this, because it gives us a unique place in the world and a unique worldview, not to the detriment of others.

A second controversial line reads: She-lo sam chel’keinu ka-hem — “who has not placed our portion like theirs.” Each and every one of us has a set of talents, experiences and blessings that are uniquely ours. Our task is to figure out how we use the tools that we are given. Aleinu allows us to connect our unique being back to the very nature of creation, as it says in the prayer’s opening line, Aleinu le-shabei-ach la-adon ha-kol, la-tet gedulah l’yotzer bereshit — “It is our obligation to praise the Master of it all, to ascribe greatness to the author of creation.” For all of these skills and talents that we possess, we are obligated to praise. But how?

The second stanza answers that question. All that we have to do is le-taken olam b’malchut shaddai — to repair the world (tikkun olam) through malchut shaddai (we’ll translate this later). Many people believe that tikkun olam is simply about fixing the world and doing good. But it is tied to a kabbalistic view of creation that imagines the creator pouring itself into the world. Along the way, the earthly vessels were unable to contain the all-ness of the divine and they shattered and spread throughout our world.

These shards can be found in all places, even places that appear at first glance to be dank and devoid of holiness. In these places, we are called on to search out those shards of the original divine vessel which held the all-ness of the One and lift up the sparks, the residue of holiness left from that original break.

So when we consider what most breaks our hearts in the world, we can think about the places where the sparks are most hidden. When we use our unique talents and blessings to effect change where we see a great need, we are truly praising God. Aleinu reminds us of our abilities, empowers us to step into difficult places and to find God there. The prayer tells us that by acting with godly purpose in those places, we are doing tikkun olam, strengthening the world to hold more divinity.

What about malchut shaddai? Most simply, it is translated as the kingdom of God. But the essence of malchut shaddai is the interconnectedness of all life. It’s the flow that exists between all things, where each element in creation both provides for and takes from the whole. So we are charged with doing tikkun olam through our unique gifts because we are given these gifts for no other reason than to do tikkun olam. We have what someone else lacks. We need what someone else can give us. We are all connected, so we owe it to the author of creation to reinvest in the system, to manifest the plan.

Aleinu concludes with a vision of sacred unity, taken from Zecharia 14:9: Bayom ha-hu yih-yeh Adonai echad u’shemo echad — “On that day, God will be one and His name will be one.” This vision sees a world where we all come to prioritize the connections between us, to serve in a way that benefits the greater good and others even if it does not appear to immediately benefit us.

On that day, God’s name will be one. The service of all religions, all who wrestle with God, will then be complete and all will come to know that we’ve truly been serving the same purpose. We will then all be able to call God by the true name, which we will discover on that day. But to bring us to that day, we must first each discover where we are being called into service.

Rabbi Tiferet Berenbaum received rabbinic ordination and a master’s degree in Jewish education from Hebrew College in Boston. She is the spiritual leader of Temple Har Zion in Mt. Holly, New Jersey.

The post Aleinu: A Call to Divine Service appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

In the prayer book, the Shema is followed by three distinct and sometimes mystifying paragraphs. While many worshippers may be familiar with most of the words, they probably give little thought as to why these specific words are linked with the Shema.

The first paragraph is in fact the most familiar and also the most logical in its inclusion: Veahavta et Adonai Elohecha — You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

Just as these words follow the opening line of the Shema in the prayer book, they are also the very next verses in the Torah. The connection between the oneness of God and our obligation to devote our lives to follow Him are forever juxtaposed in our recitation.

The next paragraph seems to go in a completely different, and even troubling, direction. On the surface, the words represent typical biblical expressions of obedience. Love God. Heed the commandments. Serve God with all your heart. If we do these things, we read, then God will provide all that we need. We’ll have rain in the proper season and an ample harvest of grain. There will be an abundance in the field for our cattle and we will eat to contentment.

Then the text takes a dark turn. Don’t stray, we are told, and don’t worship false gods. For then God’s powerful wrath will be directed against you. There won’t be any rain. The earth will not yield its produce. You will soon disappear from the land.

Why couldn’t we have been left with positive words of hope and benevolence? What was the value in this overt threat of punishment for disobedience? God is effectively communicating to us that our motivation for performing the commandments and expressing our devotion is the threat of annihilation. Do what I say, God tells us, and no one gets hurt.

This primitive message of reward and punishment does not resonate so well with modern ears. In fact, in some recent editions of the prayer book — most often used in Reform and other progressive congregations — omit this paragraph in its entirety. But this misses a prime opportunity to delve into human nature and explore why people act justly or resist the urge to follow a more destructive path.

Ask any child why they do homework each evening and they will not explain the value of reinforcing what they learned that day. More likely, they’ll say something akin to, “Because if I don’t, I’ll get in trouble.”

Ask any adult why they pay taxes each year, don’t expect to hear a lesson on civic responsibility and the need for all of us to equally bear the burden of supporting the government. Instead, like the young student, they’ll likely answer, “Because if I don’t, I’ll get in trouble.”

The words of the Shema are not simply an anachronistic call for blind obedience. Rather, they are an accurate reflection of the fact that good and moral behavior must sometimes be motivated by the possibility of negative consequences. Humanity cannot live solely on the honor system. We aim for the day when doing the right thing is its own reward. But in the meantime, we work for a paycheck and we obey laws that carry a penalty for disobedience.

The Shema concludes with a third paragraph, a seeming non-sequitur which strangely instructs us to attach tzitzit fringes to the four corners of our garments. Seeing these fringes serves as a reminder of all of God’s commandments. Just as we surround ourselves with these tzitzit, so too do we symbolically live within the bounds of God’s mitzvot.

These three paragraphs — love God with all your heart; obey God’s commandments or perish; see the tzitzit and remember God’s commandments — seem at first glance to be three unrelated texts. But really, they work together to brilliantly represent humankind’s moral development. Each paragraph of the Shema leads us to the next step of a spiritual journey.

First, we proclaim that we recognize just one true God and that He should be the object of our devotion. Next, we strive to obey God’s teachings, but realize that we will stray from the path and incur negative consequences, both individually and collectively. Finally, we structure our lives so that we are surrounded by God and His commandments every minute of the day, ultimately living a life a life of mitzvot because God is — in the Shema’s final words — Adonai Eloheichem Emet, the God of truth.

We want the prayers that we recite to reflect our thoughts and experiences and the Shema links the words to emotions that all of us can relate to. We seek to do the right thing for its own sake, but realize that it’s easy to fall short. We are always searching for reminders of God’s presence around us, and the Shema tells us that this can be as simple as looking down at what we’re wearing.

Cantor Matt Axelrod has served Congregation Beth Israel of Scotch Plains, New Jersey, since 1990. He is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and a national officer of the Cantors Assembly. Cantor Axelrod is the author of Surviving Your Bar/Bat Mitzvah: The Ultimate Insider’s Guide, and Your Guide to the Jewish Holidays: From Shofar to Seder. You can read his blog at mattaxelrod.com.

The post The Shema: A Model of Moral Development appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Traditionally, Psalm 118 is chanted as part of Hallel, a series of psalms recited on Jewish celebratory holy days. It is typically joyous, chanted from a place of freedom, from the headspace of having passed through the tough times. It suggests that we were enslaved and now we are free.

But it’s not uncommon for this verse to also find its way into prayer when we are still in crisis — the moments that cry out for answers, for finding our way out to the other side. This verse is a vision of how we long to feel and how we long to be seen.

Ha-meitzar literally means the constricted space, a narrow blind spot, our own personal Mitzrayim (the Hebrew word for Egypt). Mitzrayim is enslavement, darkness, hopelessness. When you are down and out, you aren’t just in the meitzar, you become it.

Notice what happens in your body when you are stressed: tightness in the chest, tense shoulders, altered breath, temperature change, the toxic loop of negative thoughts. The meitzar becomes an all encompassing grip on our sanity.

No one wants to be in the meitzar. And God doesn’t want us there either. As the psalmist suggests, God has already heard our cries. And his answer, the antidote to our constriction, is space.

God is known by many names: Rock, Redeemer, Protector, Judge, Parent, the Ineffable One. In this prayer, God is called by the name Yah. Yah is different than the Tetragramaton or Eloheem. Yah is not Protector nor Redeemer. Yah is neither Judge, Father, nor Rock. Yah goes right to the source — our deep soul connection.

Take a deep breath, exhale, and say it: Yaaaah. That’s how you really say it. Yah is the breath of life. It is an answer to our prayers. Maybe not “the” answer, but a key to navigating whatever personal crisis presents itself.

Yah directs us to get quiet. Conscious, mindful breath creates the opening for us to step into our soul-expanse. When we begin to focus on the breath, to slow it down, to welcome the discomfort instead of pushing it away, the grip on our body loosens and our thoughts become clearer.

From a place of calm, we are invited to take a step into a wide open space — merchav Yah. We are invited to pause and take it in. From the merchav, we can make a conscious choice from the full range of possibilities that lay ahead. We can see for miles.

The open space doesn’t profess to solve our problems. It doesn’t erase the root cause of our trouble. But it does provide us with the foundation to master our next step. It creates a safe-haven moment in which to reflect and prepare our way forward.

In times of crisis, the psalmist reminds us that we can and should cry out to God. There is a place for wailing and gathering with others. But we must also allow ourselves to get quiet to hear an answer.

Rabbi Danielle Upbin teaches widely on Jewish spirituality, meditation and yoga. She is also the associate rabbi and prayer leader at Congregation Beth Shalom in Clearwater, Florida. Her musical release, “Reveal the Light,” is available on Amazon, iTunes, and Spotify or through her website, danielleupbin.com.

The post Min Ha-meitzar: Calling to God From the Depths appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The prayer opens with this line: “For the miracles and for the redemption and for the mighty deeds and for the victories and for the battles that You performed for our fathers in those days at this time.”

Reciting these words, we remember miracles from days of old — whether at Purim (when a plot to massacre the Jewish people was overturned) or at Hanukkah (when we remember the oil that lasted against all odds, keeping the eternal flame burning.)

But it’s also an invitation to remember our own human participation in those miracles. In the days of Ahashverosh, Esther bravely took her life in her hands to approach the king without being summoned. Her act of bravery was the first step toward saving her people.

In the days of Mattathias, those who rededicated the Temple made a leap of faith when they relit the ner tamid, and their act of faith and hope enabled the miracle of the oil to unfold.

Even as we thank God for doing miracles for our ancestors, we remember that we too played a role in bringing about those miracles. We are partners with God in making space for the miraculous. We must not expect God to perform miracles to redeem us while we sit back and wait.

Like our spiritual ancestors, we’re called to work toward redemption — our own, and that of all creation — in hope and trust that what we do here “below” will arouse the flow from “on high.”

When we speak truth to power, may we, like Esther, be blessed with a turning of the political tide. When we cultivate faith that we will be enough to bring light to darkness, may we, like the Hasmoneans, be blessed with the miracle of our own sufficiency, and the miracle of the light of justice banishing the darkness of bigotry, destruction, and hate.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, a founding builder at Bayit: Your Jewish Home, is the author of several volumes of poetry, among them 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011), Open My Lips (Ben Yehuda, 2016), and Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda, 2018). Named by the Forward in 2016 as one of America’s most inspiring rabbis, she serves Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, Massachusetts. Find her online at velveteenrabbi.com.

The post Al Hanisim: Remembering Our Partnership in God’s Miracles appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The kiddush liturgy invokes the themes of creation and the exodus, but Jewish mysticism, or kabbalah, represents this ritual as one of personal spirituality, in which we both invoke and manifest divinity.

The Zohar, the central and canonical text of Jewish mysticism, overlays the kiddush cup of wine with an abundance of symbolic associations. In the very first teaching of the introduction, the Zohar suggests that this cup is symbolized by a rose: specifically the Rosa gallica versicolor, a striped rose whose flowers are crimson splashed on a white background, bearing thirteen petals and supported by five leaves that protect the vulnerable bloom

The rose represents Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God. She is imbued with thirteen divine attributes of compassion, symbolized by the whiteness of the petals. The crimson splashes refer to the aspects of judgment that reside within Shechinah, in harmony and balance with compassion. Five strong leaves protect the flower just as Shechinah is protected from those forces that seek to denigrate divine power in the world.

The Zohar’s next move is to enfold biblical verse and the human body within its textual fabric. The “five sturdy leaves … are called Salvation; they are five gates. Concerning this mystery it is written: I raise the cup of salvation (Psalms 116:13). This is the cup of blessing, which should rest on five fingers, no more, like the rose, sitting on five sturdy leaves, paradigm of five fingers. This rose is the cup of blessing.”

Elsewhere, the Zohar indicates that there are 70 words in kiddush, signifying the 70 crowns with which we adorn Shechinah. In rabbinic literature, the number 70 connotes completion or universality. Thus, decorating Shechinah with 70 words suggests that we have the capacity to make Her replete with all dimensions of holiness, making Her supreme.

This kabbalistic description — densely layering natural, liturgical, biblical and human images — invites us to participate in taking responsibility for how divinity is manifest in the world. As we initiate the Sabbath day, the onus is placed on us to model for our families and friends the qualities of Shechinah, a holy mixture of lovingkindness and rigor, and to remind those gathered around our Shabbat table that we have the power to invoke divinity in this world.

When you hold the kiddush cup in your hands, take a moment to contemplate that you are cradling Shechinah Herself, bringing divine aspects of love and discipline to your performance of the ritual. Kabbalists will often take one further step, holding the cup in one’s right hand, symbolizing compassion, and lightly supporting the right hand with the left, as yet another demonstration of how we want our Shabbat to be filled with love, yet accompanied by consistency and commitment, as represented by the left hand.

For the kabbalists, these symbolic associations are not mere ideas. Rather they are portals to a transformed reality, in our hearts and in the world. Bringing a transformed consciousness to the ritual brings us into intimate connection with these different aspects of God — and as a result, with those aspects in each other.

Joel Hecker is a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

The post Kiddush: Holding the Divine Presence in Our Hands appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

There’s something profoundly comforting about the basic human terms in which this prayer speaks. Some prayers focus on lofty themes that can feel removed from our daily lives, but Hashkiveinu gives voice to our deepest fears. We ask for God to watch over us and guard us as we sleep, enabling us to rest peacefully and wake up again in the morning restored to life. It doesn’t get much more primal than that.

When my father was lying in a hospital bed in a medically induced coma, my sister and I sat next to him and sang. We sang his favorite songs from the 1970s: Simon and Garfunkel, Carole King, and Carly Simon duets from childhood road trips. But as he hovered between life and death, we also sang Hashkiveinu.

In doing so, we were participating in the Jewish tradition of including Hashkiveinu not only as part of the communal evening prayers, but also as part of the personal bedtime Sh’ma. Like parents saying the prayer for a child too young to recite it alone, we prayed in our father’s stead. We asked God to watch over him and to spread a canopy of peace over him like a warm blanket. We asked that he be restored to healthy wakefulness and that he be granted a tomorrow. And though we were loathe to say so aloud, we knew that we were also asking that, should he not awaken, for God to guard over him as he passed out of this world and into eternal life.

Hashkiveinu has presented the editors of Reform prayerbooks with challenges since the movement’s beginning. The first Reform prayerbook eliminated it entirely, likely because it was seen as best-suited for personal home practice. It reappeared in later versions, but continued to pose a theological challenge because of a line that requests protection against Satan, an idea that — while arguably metaphorical — was deemed antithetical to Reform’s rationalist, modern worldview. Mishkan T’filah, the latest Reform prayerbook, takes a middle path, omitting the troublesome phrase while preserving the profound themes and imagery of the prayer.

All the prayers in our siddur are imbued with interwoven strands of theology and history.
But they also are a form of poetry, a creative blend of language and meter that speaks to our innermost longings and doubts, the most intimate worries of our souls.

During that liminal time in which my sister and I watched our father’s every breath and hoped for the gift of one more day, the words of Hashkiveinu enfolded and comforted us. The prayer allowed us to express the fear that our father would be left unprotected. And that for him, tomorrow might never come.

Text of the Hashkiveinu prayer (from Mishkan T’filah)

הַשְׁכִּיבֵֽנוּ, יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽנוּ, לְשָׁלוֹם, וְהַעֲמִידֵנוּ שׁוֹמְרֵֽנוּ לְחַיִּים, וּפְרֹשׂ עָלֵֽנוּ סֻכַּת שְׁלוֹמֶֽךָ, וְתַקְּנֵֽנוּ בְּעֵצָה טוֹבָה מִלְּפָנֶֽךָ, וְהוֹשִׁיעֵֽנוּ לְמַֽעַן שְׁמֶךָ. וְהָגֵן בַּעֲדֵֽנוּ, וְהָסֵר מֵעָלֵֽינוּ אוֹיֵב, דֶּֽבֶר, וְחֶֽרֶב, וְרָעָב, וְיָגוֹן, וְהָרְחֵק מִמֶּֽנּוּ עָוֹן וָפֶֽשַׁע. וּבְצֵל כְּנָפֶֽיךָ תַּסְתִּירֵֽנוּ, כִּי אֵל שׁוֹמְרֵֽנוּ וּמַצִּילֵֽנוּ אָֽתָּה, כִּי אֵל חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם אָֽתָּה. וּשְׁמֹר צֵאתֵֽנוּ וּבוֹאֵֽנוּ לְחַיִּים וּלְשָׁלֹם מֵעַתָּה וְעַד עוֹלָם. בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, שׁוֹמֵר עַמּוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל לָעַד.

Grant, O God, that we lie down in peace, and raise us up, our Guardian, to life renewed. Spread over us the shelter of Your peace. Guide us with Your good counsel; for Your Name’s sake, be our help. Shield and shelter us beneath the shadow of Your wings. Defend us against enemies, illness, war, famine and sorrow. Distance us from wrongdoing. For You, God, watch over us and deliver us. For You, God, are gracious and merciful. Guard our going and coming, to life and to peace evermore.

Rabbi Hara Person is the chief strategy officer of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the publisher of CCAR Press.

The post Hashkiveinu: Seeking Comfort and Protection Through the Night appeared first on My Jewish Learning.