אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, our King!

חָטָֽאנוּ לְפָנֶֽיךָ

chah-tah-noo lih-fah-neh-chah

we have sinned before You.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father our King!

אֵין לָֽנוּ מֶֽלֶךְ אֶלָּא אָֽתָּה

ayn lah-noo meh-lech eh-lah ah-tah

we have no King except You.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, our King!

עֲשֵׂה עִמָּֽנוּ

ahh-say ee-mah-noo

deal with us [kindly]

לְמַֽעַן שְׁמֶֽךָ

lih-mah-ahn shih-meh-chah

for the sake of Your Name.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, our King!

בָּרֵךְ עָלֵֽינוּ שָׁנָה טוֹבָה

bah-raych ah-lay-noo shah-nah toe-vah

bless us with a good year.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, our King!

בַּטֵּל מֵעָלֵֽינוּ כָּל גְּזֵרוֹת קָשׁוֹת

bah-tail may-ahh-lay-noo kole geh-zay-rote kah-shote

annul all harsh decrees concerning us.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, our King!

בַּטֵּל מַחְשְׁ֒בוֹת שׂוֹנְ֒אֵֽינוּ

bah-tail mahch-shih-vote sone-ay-noo

annul the designs of those who hate us.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, our King!

הָפֵר עֲצַת אוֹיְ֒בֵֽינוּ

hah-fair ahh-tzaht oy-vay-noo

thwart the plans of our enemies.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

כַּלֵּה כָּל צַר וּמַשְׂטִין מֵעָלֵֽינוּ

kah-lay kole tzahr oo-mahsh-teen may-ah-lay-noo

rid us of every oppressor and adversary.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

סְתוֹם פִּיּוֹת מַשְׂטִינֵֽנוּ

s’tome pee-yote mahss-tee-nah-noo

seal the mouths of our adversaries

וּמְ֒קַטְרִיגֵֽנוּ

ooh-mih-kaht-ree-gay-noo

and accusers.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

כַּלֵּה דֶּֽבֶר וְחֶֽרֶב וְרָעָב וּשְׁ֒בִי

kah-lay deh-ver vih-cheh-rev vih-rah-ahv oosh-vee

remove pestilence, sword, famine, captivity,

וּמַשְׁחִית וְעָוֹן

ooh-mahsh-cheet vih-ah-vone

destruction, [the burden of] iniquity

וּשְׁ֒מַד

oosh-mahd

and religious persecution

מִבְּ֒נֵי בְרִיתֶֽךָ

mib-nay bih-ree-teh-chah

from the members of Your covenant.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

מְנַע מַגֵּפָה מִנַּחֲלָתֶֽךָ

mih-nah mah-gay-fah mee-nah-chah-lah-teh-chah

withhold the plague from Your inheritance.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

סְלַח וּמְ֒חַל לְכָל עֲוֹנוֹתֵֽינוּ

s’lach oo-m’chahl lih-chole ah-voh-no-tay-noo

forgive and pardon all our iniquities.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

מְחֵה וְהַעֲבֵר פְּשָׁעֵֽינוּ

mih-chay vih-ha-ah-vair pih-shah-ay-noo

blot out and remove our transgressions

וְחַטֹּאתֵֽינוּ מִנֶּֽגֶד עֵינֶֽיךָ

vih-chah-toe-tay-noo mee-neh-gehd ay-neh-chah

and sins from before Your eyes.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

מְחוֹק בְּרַחֲמֶֽיךָ הָרַבִּים

mih-choke bih-rah-chah-meh-chah hah-rah-beem

erase in Your abundant mercy

כָּל שִׁטְ֒רֵי חוֹבוֹתֵֽינוּ

kole shit-ray cho-voe-tay-noo

all records of our liabilities.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

הַחֲזִירֵֽנוּ

hah-chah-zee-ray-noo

bring us back

בִּתְ֒שׁוּבָה שְׁלֵמָה לְפָנֶֽיךָ:

bit-sho-vah shih-lay-mah lih-fah-neh-chah

in wholehearted repentance before You.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

שְׁלַח רְפוּאָה שְׁלֵמָה

shih-lach rih-fooh-ahh shih-lay-mah

send complete healing

לְחוֹלֵי עַמֶּֽךָ

lih-choh-lay ah-meh-chah

to the sick among Your people.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

קְרַע רֹֽעַ גְּזַר דִּינֵֽנוּ

k’rah roe-ahh gih-zahr dee-nay-noo

tear up the evil [parts] of our sentence.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

זָכְ֒רֵֽנוּ בְּזִכָּרוֹן טוֹב לְפָנֶֽיךָ

zahch-ray-noo bih-zee-kah-rone tove lih-fah-neh-chah

remember us favorably before You.

The following five prayers are said during the Ten Days of Penitence.
אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

כָּתְ֒בֵֽנוּ בְּסֵֽפֶר חַיִּים טוֹבִים

kaht-vay-noo bih-say-fair cha-yeem toe-veem

inscribe us in the Book of the Good Life.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

כָּתְ֒בֵֽנוּ

kaht-vay-noo

inscribe us

בְּסֵֽפֶר גְּאֻלָּה וִישׁוּעָה

bih-say-fair gih-ooh-lah vee-shoo-ahh

in the Book of Redemption and Deliverance.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

כָּתְ֒בֵֽנוּ

kaht-vay-noo

inscribe us

בְּסֵֽפֶר פַּרְנָסָה וְכַלְכָּלָה

bih-say-fair pahr-nah-sah vih-chahl-kah-lah

in the Book of Maintenance and Sustenance.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

כָּתְ֒בֵֽנוּ בְּסֵֽפֶר זְכֻיּוֹת

kaht-vay-noo bih-say-fair zih-choo-yote

inscribe us in the Book of Merits.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

כָּתְ֒בֵֽנוּ

kaht-vay-noo

inscribe us

בְּסֵֽפֶר סְלִיחָה וּמְ֒חִילָה

bih-say-fair sih-lee-chah ooh-mih-chee-lah

in the Book of Pardon and Forgiveness.

The following five prayers are said on public fast-days.
אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

זָכְ֒רֵֽנוּ לְחַיִּים טוֹבִים

zach-ray-noo lih-chah-yeem

remember us for a good life.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

זָכְ֒רֵֽנוּ לִגְ֒אֻלָּה וִישׁוּעָה

zach-ray-noo lih-g’ooh-lah vee-shoo-ah

remember us for redemption and deliverance.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

זָכְ֒רֵֽנוּ לְפַרְנָסָה וְכַלְכָּלָה

zach-ray-noo lih-pahr-nah-sah vih-kahl-kah-lah

remember us for maintenance and sustenance.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

זָכְ֒רֵֽנוּ לִזְ֒כֻיּוֹת

zach-ray-noo liz-choo-yote

remember us for merit.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

זָכְ֒רֵֽנוּ לִסְ֒לִיחָה וּמְ֒חִילָה

zach-ray-noo lis-lee-chah ooh-m’chee-lah

remember us for pardon and forgiveness.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

הַצְמַח לָֽנוּ יְשׁוּעָה בְּקָרוֹב

hahtz-mahch lah-noo yih-shoo-ah bih-kah-rove

cause deliverance to spring forth for us soon.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

הָרֵם קֶֽרֶן יִשְׂרָאֵל עַמֶּֽךָ

hah-raym keh-ren yis-rah-ell ah-meh-chah

raise up the might of Your people Israel.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

הָרֵם קֶֽרֶן מְשִׁיחֶֽךָ

hah-raym keh-ren mih-shee-cheh-chah

raise up the might of Your anointed.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

מַלֵּא יָדֵֽינוּ מִבִּרְ֒כוֹתֶֽיךָ

mah-lay yah-day-noo mee-beer-cho-teh-chah

fill our hands with Your blessings.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

מַלֵּא אֲסָמֵֽינוּ שָׂבָע

may-lay ah-sah-may-noo sah-vah

fill our storehouses with abundance.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

שְׁמַע קוֹלֵֽנוּ

shih-mah koe-lay-noo

hear our voice,

חוּס וְרַחֵם עָלֵֽינוּ

choos vih-rah-chaym ah-lay-noo

spare us and have compassion upon us.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

קַבֵּל

kah-bail

accept

בְּרַחֲמִים וּבְ֒רָצוֹן אֶת תְּפִלָּתֵֽנוּ

bih-rah-chah-meem ooh-vih-rah-tzone eht tih-fee-lah-tay-noo

our prayer with compassion and favor.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

פְּתַח שַׁעֲרֵי שָׁמַֽיִם לִתְ֒פִלָּתֵֽנוּ

pih-tahch shah-ah-ray shah-my-eem

open the gates of heaven to our prayer.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

זָכוֹר כִּי עָפָר אֲנָֽחְנוּ

zah-chor kee ah-fahr ah-nach-noo

remember, that we are dust.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

נָא אַל תְּשִׁיבֵֽנוּ

nah ahl tih-shee-vay-noo

Please do not turn us away

רֵיקָם מִלְּ֒פָנֶֽיךָ

ray-kahm meel-fah-neh-chah

empty-handed from You.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

תְּהֵא הַשָּׁעָה הַזֹּאת

tih-hay hah-shah-ahh hah-zote

let this hour be

שְׁעַת רַחֲמִים

shih-aht rah-chah-meem

an hour of compassion

וְעֵת רָצוֹן מִלְּ֒פָנֶֽיךָ

vih-ayt rah-tzone meel-fah-neh-chah

and a time of favor before You.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

חֲמוֹל עָלֵֽינוּ

chah-mole ah-lay-noo

have compassion upon us,

וְעַל עוֹלָלֵֽינוּ וְטַפֵּֽנוּ

vih-ahl ohh-lah-lay-noo vih-tah-pay-noo

and upon our children and infants.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

עֲשֵׂה לְמַֽעַן

ahh-say lih-mah-ahn

do it for the sake of those

הֲרוּגִים עַל שֵׁם קָדְשֶֽׁךָ

hah-roo-geem ahl shame kahd-sheh-chah

who were slain for Your holy Name.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

עֲשֵׂה לְמַֽעַן

ahh-say lih-mah-ahn

do it for the sake of those

טְבוּחִים

tih-voo-cheem

who were slaughtered

עַל יִחוּדֶֽךָ

ahl yee-choo-deh-chah

for [proclaiming] Your Unity.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

עֲשֵׂה לְמַֽעַן

ahh-say lih-mah-ahn

do it for the sake of those

בָּאֵי בָאֵשׁ וּבַמַּֽיִם

bah-ayy bah-aysh oo-bah-may-yeem

who went through fire and water

עַל קִדּוּשׁ שְׁמֶֽךָ

ahl kee-doosh shih-meh-chah

for the sanctification of Your Name.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

נְקוֹם לְעֵינֵֽינוּ

nih-kome lih-ay-nay-noo

avenge before our eyes

נִקְ֒מַת דַּם עֲבָדֶֽיךָ הַשָּׁפוּךְ

nik-maht dahm ahh-vah-deh-chah hah-shah-fooch

the spilled blood of Your servants.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

עֲשֵׂה לְמַעַנְ֒ךָ אִם לֺא לְמַעֲנֵֽנוּ

ahh-say lih-mah-ahn-chah eem loh lih-mah-ahh-nah-noo

do it for Your sake if not for ours.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

עֲשֵׂה לְמַעַנְ֒ךָ וְהוֹשִׁיעֵֽנוּ

ahh-say lih-mah-ahn-chah vih-hoe-shee-ayy-noo

do it for Your sake and deliver us.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

עֲשֵׂה לְמַֽעַן רַחֲמֶֽיךָ הָרַבִּים

ahh-say lih-mah-ahn rah-chah-meh-chah hah-rah-beem

do it for the sake of Your great mercy.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

עֲשֵׂה לְמַֽעַן

ahh-say lih-mah-ahn

do it for the sake

שִׁמְ֒ךָ הַגָּדוֹל הַגִּבּוֹר וְהַנּוֹרָא

shim-chah hah-gah-dole hah-gee-bore vih-hah-noh-rah

of Your great, mighty, and awesome Name

שֶׁנִּקְרָא עָלֵֽינוּ

sheh-nik-rah ahh-lay-noo

which is proclaimed upon us.

אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ

ah-vee-noo mahl-kay-noo

Our Father, Our King!

חָנֵּֽנוּ וַעֲנֵֽנוּ

chah-nay-noo vah-ahh-nay-noo

favor us and answer us

כִּי אֵין בָּֽנוּ מַעֲשִׂים

kee ayn bah-noo mah-ahh-seem

for we have no accomplishments;

עֲשֵׂה עִמָּֽנוּ צְדָקָה וָחֶֽסֶד

ahh-say eeh-mah-noo tzih-dah-kah vah-cheh-sed

deal with us charitably and kindly with us

וְהוֹשִׁיעֵֽנוּ

vih-hoe-shee-ay-noo

Hebrew and English text taken from The Metsudah Machzor, via Sefaria.

The post Text of Avinu Malkeinu appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

In the Hebrew numerological system known as Gematria, the numerical value of the words for prayer, tefillah, and song, shirah, are identical. From this we can see that music is a form of prayer, and prayer is a form of music. They are like two legs of the spiritual throne, mutually supporting each other. Indeed, the Talmud teaches us that music and prayer are virtually synonymous, declaring:

Where there is song, there is prayer Berakhot 6a

What is the source of this linkage? Is it possible that music can open our ears and our hearts so that we can better sense the nuance and subtleties of the world around us? If we open our mouths and sing our imperfect songs, can we connect with the divine songs of all creation? Can our prayer chants open the gates of heaven? Can our melodies unlock divine mysteries?

Jewish tradition suggests that it can. The prophets of ancient Israel surrounded themselves with music, using its power to help them enter an ecstatic mindset. In one story, the prophet Elisha wanted to hear the word of God, so he requested that a musician start to play. As soon as the musician played, Elisha’s prophetic abilities commenced: “And when the musician played, the hand of God was upon him.” II Kings 3:15

In another story, Saul, who had not yet become king, joined a roving band of prophets and musicians who were playing a harp, drum, and flute to help the prophets enter a state of expanded consciousness. I Samuel 10:5-6 These three instruments — harp, drum, and flute — represent the three paradigmatic elements of music: harmony, rhythm, and melody. Joining the parade of musicians, Saul found that this musical-prophetic experience allowed the spirit of God to rest upon him and allowed him to transform into an ish acher, a different person, to find an alternate reality of himself in which he became capable not only of prophesying, but ascending the throne of Israel.

Music, we might assume, must have opened up the prophets’ ears, enabling them to hear the divine voice speaking through them. Music, in this sense, worked like an elite reconnaissance unit sneaking through the prophets’ defensive bulwarks and barriers, or like a sweet-talking lover wooing his beloved. Music paved the way for the bestowal of the great gift of divine love, of the prophecies which we have at least partly retained in the words of the Torah and later poetry and writing.

Is it possible that music also can help us enter different realms and discover alternate realities in which we might pursue better versions of ourselves? Can music open us up to our own inspiration and prayers as it opened up the pathways of the prophets?

The 18th-century Hasidic master Nachman of Breslov offers that there might be something left that we can access from this source of prophecy. A sacred musician, he explains, is called a chazzan — a Hebrew word with the same root as the word hazon, meaning “vision,” and which is also the common modern term for a prayer leader. The chazzan, Rebbe Nachman tells us, “snatches the song from the place where prophets suckle.”

Melodies form a divine ladder that connects the earth with the heavens. In Hebrew, the word sulam means both “ladder” and “musical scale.” Perhaps the most famous story of a path to the heavens is the story of Jacob’s ladder, in which the patriarch dreams of a ladder on which angels are going up and down. Angels, according to the medieval authority Maimonides, had one essential function: singing.

Jacob’s ladder must then have been a kind of musical scale, with melodic angels rising and descending along with the prayers of mankind. When we sing, we hope to allow ourselves to experience a state of elevation, a taste of the heavens, a glimpse of the best versions of ourselves.

To be a musician then is to be an activist of the spirit. But the music doesn’t do this on its own. It requires us to react to the music, to open up, to change along with it. We must allow the sound of our singing to awaken us, to bring us to positive action, to let song help us to do our work in the world with sensitivity and grace.

Ultimately, melodies are just a bunch of notes—whether they’re fundamentally meaningless or transcendent depends entirely upon how we choose to listen, how we choose to direct our intentions, and whether we let ourselves join the song. Singing signals not an escape from life but an imaginative attempt to remind us what is yet possible. Music offers us rung after rung to climb to the heavens, where we hope to discover our best selves, so that we can then emulate that holiness in our regular lives. Let us find our melodies, and let us find our prayers, and let us bring the world to life.

This essay is adapted from “The Torah of Music: Reflections on a Tradition of Singing and Song” by Joey Weisenberg with translations by Joshua Schwartz. Click here to learn more.

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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.

The problem has been resolved primarily in the domain of kavanah, the Hebrew term for a desired focus or directed attention. This heightened state of mental concentration ranges from a basic practice of mindfulness—simply attending to the words that one utters in prayer—to elaborate schemes of connecting spiritual realms, and even ascending through them.

In perhaps the first prescriptive statement in Jewish literature regarding kavanah in prayer, the Mishnah (Berachot 5:1) states:

[One] should not stand up to pray unless he is in a reverent frame of mind. The original pious ones used to wait a while and then pray, in order to direct their hearts towards the Omnipresent. [While one is reciting Shemoneh Esrei,] even if the king greets him, he should not respond to him, and even if a snake is coiled around his heel, he should not cease.

The Jerusalem Talmud relates a series of colorful methods used by different rabbis to prepare their minds for prayer. Rabbi Hiyya meditated on the Persian political hierarchy to help him concentrate. Rabbi Samuel counted birds. And Rabbi Bun bar Hiyya counted rows of bricks. These latter approaches are strikingly similar to the simple act of counting one’s breaths as a means to calm the mind, a method used in mindfulness meditation as practiced today. In the Babylonian Talmud, we read about diverse kinds of legal matters that one should contemplate in order to put oneself in a reverent frame of mind for prayer.

By the medieval period, Jewish thinkers were beginning to offer more detailed prescriptions for how to attain proper kavanah. Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), the most famous medieval philosopher, wrote that any prayer that lacks proper concentration does not constitute prayer. But how to achieve that concentration?

In his legal code, the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides recommends clearing one’s thoughts, and sitting for a time before beginning prayer. But in his philosophical work, the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides proposes an even more rigorous program for mystical contemplation during the recital of the Shema and the beginning of the daily Amidah prayer:

The first thing that you should cause your soul to hold fast onto is that while reciting the Shema you should empty your mind of everything and pray thus. You should not content yourself with being intent while reciting the first verse of Shema and saying the first blessing [of the Amidah]. When this has been carried out correctly and has been practiced consistently for years, cause your soul, whenever you read or listen to the Torah or listening to it, to be constantly directed—the whole of you and your thought—toward reflection on what you are listening to or reading… (Guide of the Perplexed 3:51).

In this remarkable passage, Maimonides reveals the depth of commitment required to develop the ideal form of kavanah. This is not for the faint of heart. Maimonides prescribes a practice that tilts decidedly toward non-verbal contemplation as the highest form of worship. In this treatment, inner religious awareness, self-effacement, and a pervasive focus upon divinity constitute the aim, rather than observance with a patina of spirituality.

In Maimonides’ wake—and partially in response to his unmatched influence — came the flourishing of a new and distinctive form of Jewish mysticism, known as Kabbalah. Jewish mysticism was not a new phenomenon, but the kabbalistic literature of the 12th century and onward provided novel forms of Jewish spirituality.

The kabbalists described divinity as comprising ten aspects or rungs called sefirot. Since the Torah is conceived as a revelation of God’s own being, every word or phrase, even its unwritten vowels and cantillation notes, signifies one of the sefirot. This approach makes space for the interpretation of a verse from the Torah as a complex string of sefirot.

Kabbalistic thinking extended the esoteric significance of the words of the Torah to the liturgy. Each word or prayer unit symbolizes a specific sefirah. Kavanah is the technique for uniting aspects of one’s heart, mind and soul with these higher cosmic meanings of the prayer text.

In one passage, the Zohar, the central work of Jewish mysticism, explains that through the mental act of concentration one causes one’s entire being to be constituted as a human tabernacle, prepared to receive divine overflow. Another passage explains that the 248 words of the Shema not only correspond to the 248 limbs of the human body (as per rabbinic teaching), but with the proper intent, reciting them joins together the 248 limbs of the divine body. Further, one is instructed to avoid any interruption between the blessings for the Shema and the recital of the whispered Amidah prayer in order to conjoin the masculine and feminine potencies of divinity.

In the hands of 16th-century kabbalists, and elaborated by many more subsequently, the approaches to kavanah became increasingly technically complex. At the same time, the popularization of kabbalistic attention to kavanah led to the appearance of various formulas to be recited before the recitation of particular prayers. Many of these were variations of the following: “For the sake of the unification of the blessed Holy One and His Shechinah, in fear and in love, in love and in fear, through unification of the name yod he with vav he [the letters of the tetragrammaton, YHVH] in the name of all of Israel.”

With the rise of the Hasidic movement in Eastern Europe in the 18th century, with its emphases on joy and communion with the divine, the desire for simpler metaphors and symbols led to the marginalizing of more technical kavanot. Yet, with the advent of cheaper printing, the simple kabbalistic kavanah quoted above became widespread, particularly in Hasidic prayerbooks. Indeed, this popularizing movement made kavanah—whether as rudimentary formulas or as emotive expression—the preeminent focus of religious life.

A letter from Israel Baal Shem Tov, traditionally thought of as the founder of Hasidic Judaism, instructed his brother-in-law to sustain a particular technique of intention during prayer and Torah study. He explained that “in every single letter there are worlds and souls and divinity. These ascend and bond and unite with each other. Then, the letters bond and unite with each other, becoming a word, and they unite in true unity with divinity. Include your soul with them in each and every aspect.”

One of the most basic Hasidic teachings is that the entire material world, and even more so the letters of Torah and of prayer, pulsate with divine energy and godly luminosity. Through envisioning the spirituality within each letter of one’s prayer, every Hasid could unite with holiness and participate in bringing unity to the fractured reality they experienced. Ecstasy was within reach!

The story of kavanah’s trajectory continues to our day. The 1960s witnessed a proliferation of Eastern and New-Age spirituality, in tandem with a popularization of the study of kabbalah. To the extent that these efforts are invested in sincere spiritual searching, they often involve the use of kavanot in prayer and contemplation. Of late, there has been great creativity in developing new kavanot adapted for new forms of prayer and spiritual practice. At the same time, a small but significant number of Jews who are trying to deepen their literacy have also turned to traditional formulas, infused with a new spirit. Indeed, kavanah may today be the subject of the greatest amount of spiritual attention in the English-speaking Jewish world.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The songs and blessings before the Friday night meal include: blessing for lighting the candles, blessing for the children, Shalom Aleichem (welcoming the Sabbath angels), Eshet Hayil (Woman of Valor), Kiddush, Netilat Yadayim (a blessing for washing hands), Hamotzi (blessing for the bread). After the meal, many recite Birkat Hamazon (Grace After Meals) and sing special Sabbath songs called Zemirot.

Read on for the text of these blessings and fuller explanation.

Blessing over the Candles

The lighting of candles as sunset approaches on Friday is the traditional sign of the arrival of Shabbat. After lighting the candles, it is customary to cover one’s eyes and recite the following:

בָּרוּך אַתָּה ה׳ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶך הָעוֹלָם אַשֶׁר קִדְשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָנוּ לְהַדְלִיק נֵר שֶל שַבָּת

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.

Blessed are You, God, Ruler of the universe, who sanctified us with the commandment of lighting Shabbat candles.

Blessing for the Children

In households with children, it is traditional to offer a special blessing on Friday night after candle-lighting. There are two versions, one for boys and one for girls.

For boys, the introductory line is:

יְשִׂימְךָ אֱלֹהיִם כְּאֶפְרַיְם וְכִמְנַשֶּׁה

Yismech Elohim k’Ephraim v’chi-Menashe.

May you be like Ephraim and Menashe.

For girls, the introductory line is:

יְשִׂימֵךְ אֱלֹהיִם כְּשָׂרָה רִבְקָה רָחֵל וְלֵאָה

Yesimech Elohim k’Sarah Rivka Rachel v’Leah

May you be like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.

For both boys and girls, the rest of the blessing is:

יְבָרֶכְךָ ה׳ וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ

יָאֵר ה׳ פָּנָיו  אֵלֶיךָ וִיחֻנֶּךָּ

יִשָּׂא ה׳ פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם

Yivarechecha Adonai v’yishmerecha

Ya’er Adonai panav eilecha vichuneka

Yisa Adonai panav eilecha v’yasem lecha shalom

May God bless you and protect you.

May God show you favor and be gracious to you.

May God show you kindness and grant you peace.

Shalom Aleichem

Upon approaching the table, it is traditional to welcome the Sabbath angels with this song whose name in fact means “welcome.”

שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם מַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁרֵת‏‏ מַלְאֲכֵי עֶלְיוֹן מִמֶּלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

 בּוֹאֲכֶם לְשָׁלוֹם מַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁלוֹם מַלְאֲכֵי עֶלְיוֹן מִמֶּלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

בָּרְכוּנִי לְשָׁלוֹם מַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁלוֹם מַלְאָכֵי עֶלְיוֹן מִמֶּלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

צֵאתְכֶם לְשָׁלוֹם מַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁלוֹם מַלְאָכֵי עֶלְיוֹן מִמֶּלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא

Shalom aleichem mal’achei hashareit mal’achei elyon mimelech malchei ham’lachim, ha-kadosh baruch hu

Bo’achem l’shalom mal’achei hashalom mal’achei elyon mimelech malchei ham’lachim, ha-kadosh baruch hu

Barechuni l’shalom mal’achei hashalom mal’achei elyon mimelech malchei ham’lachim, ha-kadosh baruch hu

Tzeitchem l’shalom mal’achei hashalom mal’achei elyon mimelech malchei ham’lachim, ha-kadosh baruch hu

Peace be with you, ministering angels, messengers of the Most High, messengers of the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He.

Come in peace, messengers of peace, messengers of the Most High, messengers of the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He.

Bless me with peace, messengers of peace, messengers of the Most High, messengers of the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He.

Go in peace, messengers of peace, messengers of the Most High, messengers of the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He.

Eshet Hayil (Woman of Valor)

Introduced by the Jewish mystics in the 17th century, this melody is sung as a tribute to the woman of the house, normally right after Shalom Aleichem. This excerpt from the 31st chapter of the book of Proverbs, and it describes a “woman of valor.”

You can read the full text of Eshet Hayil here.

Listen to Eshet Chayil (courtesy of Mechon Hadar)

Blessing over Wine or Grape Juice (Kiddush)

The kiddush marks Shabbat as sacred time. Recite the blessing before sipping the wine or grape juice. The Shabbat evening Kiddush is often preceded by a paragraph called Vayechulu, taken straight from the Hebrew Bible, which recounts the moment God completed creation and decided to rest. Here is the complete Kiddush, including Vayechulu:

וַיְהִי עֶרֶב וַיְהִי בֹקֶר
יוֹם הַשִּׁשִּׁי. וַיְכֻלּוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ וְכָל צְבָאָם
וַיְכַל אֱלֹהִים בַּיּום הַשְּׁבִיעִי מְלַאכְתּו אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה. וַיִּשְׁבֹּת בַּיּום הַשְּׁבִיעִי מִכָּל מְלַאכְתּו אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה
וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹהִים אֶת יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ. כִּי בוֹ שָׁבַת מִכָּל מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים לַעֲשׂוֹת

סַבְרִי מָרָנָן וְרַבָּנָן וְרַבּותַי

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הַגָּפֶן
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְרָצָה בָנוּ. וְשַׁבַּת קָדְשׁוֹ בְּאַהֲבָה וּבְרָצוֹן הִנְחִילָנוּ זִכָּרוֹן לְמַעֲשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁית. כִּי הוּא יוֹם תְּחִלָּה לְמִקְרָאֵי קדֶשׁ זֵכֶר לִיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם. כִּי בָנוּ בָחַרְתָּ וְאוֹתָנוּ קִדַּשְׁתָּ מִכָּל הָעַמִּים וְשַׁבַּת קָדְשְׁךָ בְּאַהֲבָה וּבְרָצוֹן הִנְחַלְתָּנוּ
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳ מְקַדֵּשׁ הַשַּׁבָּת

(Quietly: Va-y’hee erev, va-y’hee boker.)
Yom ha-shishi. Vay’chulu hashamayim v’ha-aretz v’chol tz’va’am. Vay’chal Elohim bayom hash’vi’i milachto asher asa. Vayishbot bayom hash’vi’i mikol milachto asher asa. Vay’varech Elohim et yom hash’vi’i vay’kadesh oto. Kee vo shabbat mi-kol m’lachto asher bara Elohim la’asot.

Savri maranan v’rabanan v’rabotai. Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, borei p’ri hagafen.

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’ratza vanu, v’shabbat kod’sho b’ahava uv’ratzon hinchilanu, zikaron l’ma’aseh b’reishit. Ki hu yom t’chila l’mikra-ay kodesh, zaycher l’tziat mitzrayim. Ki vanu vacharta v’otanu kidashta mikol ha’amim. V’shabbat kod-shi-cha b’ahava uv’ratzon hinchal tanu. Baruch ata Adonai, mi’kadesh ha Shabbat.

(Quietly: There was an evening, there was a morning.)

The sixth day: And the Heavens and the Earth and all they contained were completed, and on the seventh day God desisted from all the work that he had done. And God rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, for on that day he rested from all the work which he had done in creating the world.

[Leader:] By your leave, rabbis, masters, teachers!

[Diners:] To Life!

Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.

Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, how has sanctified us with his commandments and favored us, and given us in love and favor his holy Shabbat as an inheritance, as a remembrance of the act of creation. For this day is the beginning of all holy days, a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt. For you have chosen us and you have blessed us from among all the nations. And you have bequeathed us your holy Shabbat in love and favor. Blessed are you, Lord, who sanctifies Shabbat.

Listen to the Kiddush for Shabbat Evening (courtesy of Mechon Hadar)

Blessing over Hand Washing (Netilat Yadayim)

Following Kiddush, it is customary to wash one’s hands prior to continuing the meal. After washing the hands with water from a cup — often twice on the right hand and twice on the left, though precise practices vary — the following blessing is recited:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ עַל נְטִילַת יָדַיִם

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu al n’tilat yadayim.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with Your commandments, and command us concerning the washing of the hands.

Blessing over the Bread (Hamotzi)

After the washing of hands, some people have the custom of remaining silent until bread is eaten. Prior to eating the bread, the following blessing is recited.

בָּרוּך אַתָּה ה׳ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶך הָעוֹלָם הָמוֹצִיא לֶחֶם מִן הַאָרֶץ

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has brought forth bread from the earth.

Blessing after the Meal (Birkat Hamazon, or Benching)

After the meal, some families have the tradition of reciting Birkat Hamazon (sometimes called benching). This lengthy blessing, whose recitation is required after any meal that includes bread, includes multiple expressions of gratitude to God for providing food and sustenance to the Jewish people. On Shabbat, it is preceded by an additional Psalm and, if three adults (in some traditions, three adult males) have eaten together, by a short invitation to prayer known as a zimmun.

The full text can be found in most bentchers, small booklets containing the blessing after the meal and other festive songs. You can purchase a bentcher here  or at your local Judaica store. They also are frequently distributed at weddings and bar/bat mitzvah celebrations.

Read the full text of Birkat Hamazon in Hebrew and English here.

Listen to the Birkat Hamazon (courtesy of Mechon Hadar)

Zemirot

Singing festive hymns is a common practice at the Shabbat table. There are a number of traditional ones, many of them composed by the ancient Jewish mystics. You can listen to some traditional ones here.

A searchable database of Shabbat song recordings and lyrics can be found here.

Sign up for My Jewish Learning’s RECHARGE, a weekly email with a collection of Shabbat readings and more to enhance your day of rest experience.

The post Shabbat Blessings for Friday Night 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.

There are two main phrases that are key to understanding the Kaddish. By looking at them closely, we can transform our understanding of the prayer — from a testimony to faith in a God whose actions cause us to suffer for reasons we don’t understand to a prompt that reminds God of the brokenness of the world.

The first key phrase is the opening line: Yitgadal Ve-Yitkadash Shemei Rabbah. This is often translated into English as “Magnified and sanctified be His great name.” It is understandable how this could be seen as a prayer praising God. But the prayer is not a praise; it is a request. The worshiper is asking for God to be magnified and to be sanctified, implying — correctly — that God is not magnified and sanctified right now.

How could it be that God is not magnified and sanctified now? It is clear from the biblical context of this line in Ezekiel 38:23 that God will only be made great and holy at the end of days, when all nations recognize God as the supreme moral force in the world. Shockingly, the Kaddish also claims that God is not king, by stating: “let God’s kingdom rule.” (God is not fully king until everyone recognizes God.)

In a world of death and mourning, it is clear that God is not fully holy, great or even king. This prayer — put in the mouth of the mourner — begs God to speed the day when God is, in fact, great and holy. But it acknowledges that we aren’t there yet.

The other line in Kaddish that is critical is the congregational response: Y’hei Sh’mei Raba M’varach L’alam Ul’almei Almaya. The translation: “May His great Name be blessed forever and for all eternity.” A very strange feature of the Kaddish is the lack of God’s name. Almost all other prayers mention God’s name — so why is it missing from this particular prayer? Why is God absent, but God’s name (“his name”) is mentioned multiple times?

The answer has everything to do with the radical theology of the Kaddish. This is a prayer that is acting out the reality we live in: a world in which God’s name is diminished. And while we want God’s name to be great and blessed, and ask for that in this prayer, we still live in a world where that hasn’t happened fully. Exhibit A? The death we are mourning, the death that brought us to this prayer.

This is illustrated in one of the oldest stories about the Kaddish, in the Babylonian Talmud, which is the source of this line:

Rabbi Yose said: One time I was walking on the path, and I entered a ruin from one of the ruins of Jerusalem in order to pray. Elijah of blessed memory came and watched the doorway until I finished my prayer …. he said to me … :

“Whenever the Israelites go into the synagogues and schoolhouses and respond: ‘May His great name be blessed,’ God shakes His head and says: “Happy is the king who is thus praised in His house! Woe to the father who had to banish his children, and woe to the children who had to be banished from the table of their father!” (Brachot 3a)

This source offers another perspective on the context of the congregational response. On the one hand, when the phrase is recited by Israel in the synagogues and study houses, God is filled with happiness. But immediately following this statement of joy, God goes on to say: Woe is Me and woe is Israel. In other words, the source reflects the complex emotions that are embedded in the recitation of the line. This is a line that was associated with the presence of God; reciting it meant that God’s name — the embodiment of God’s immanence — was at hand. Yet it is recited not in the world of the Temple and the High Priest, but rather in a world in which Jerusalem is in ruins.

In other words, the line has morphed from a reaction to God’s presence to a painful reminder of God’s absence. God is no longer available in this world in the way God once was.

Significantly, the sufferer in this text is not limited to the “children” — that is, Israel. The suffering parties include also God. Both experience woe. By reciting this line, then, the mourner invites God into the emotional experience of remembering better times and of grief for the state of the world.

The Kaddish is not a stoic praise of an unfeeling God who for reasons we can’t know let our loved ones die without remorse. Rather, it is a plea for a better world in which God is more fully holy, and the presence of God more completely experienced.

We are not living in that world, and the Kaddish knows it; but it offers us a path to imagine a world beyond our current one. And critically, God is in league with us in begging for that world to come soon.

This essay was adapted for My Jewish Learning from an essay in the book “Kaddish” (New Paradigm Matrix, 2017)

Sign up for a Journey Through Grief & Mourning: Whether you have lost a loved one recently or just want to learn the basics of Jewish mourning rituals, this 8-part email series will guide you through everything you need to know and help you feel supported and comforted at a difficult time.

Looking for a way to say Mourner’s Kaddish in a minyan? My Jewish Learning’s daily online minyan gives mourners and others an opportunity to say Kaddish in community and learn from leading rabbis.

The post The Mourner’s Kaddish Is Misunderstood appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Our rabbis teach that one must treat the sickness of the soul just as we treat the sickness of the body.

We cannot ignore the infection that appears beneath the skin, but rather investigate it, assess it, rout it out.

What remains will be scarred forever, but it will be stronger than before, and with treatment can begin to grow toward health and healing.

Just this morning, the New York Times released a recording of NFL owners and players arguing what to do in light of the president’s attack on players kneeling in protest of racial injustice at games. One owner (a moniker I find increasingly unconscionable, especially after my time at the museum this week), particularly worried that the battle would hurt business and distract from the game, said, in anguish: “All of us now, we need to put a Band-Aid on what’s going on in the country.”

But he is wrong. We don’t need a Band-Aid. America doesn’t need a Band-Aid.

Our nation is profoundly unwell. We suffer from a sickness of the soul; we are plagued by an illness that has metastasized over centuries.

For too many years, the illness has gone misdiagnosed. And the prescription has been insufficient or non-existent.

We don’t need a Band-Aid. We need major, aggressive, life-saving surgery.

Today we stand on holy ground. A site on which soul doctors have named the illness, investigated the source and begun to rout out the infection, before it takes over and destroys the whole body.

On another hill in Montgomery, not too far from here, stands a statue, tall and proud, of the president of the Confederacy, the leader of the insurgency against the United States. He is honored as a “Soldier, Scholar, Statesman.”

Nearby stands another statue, celebrating the “Father of Modern Gynecology,” a doctor who performed experimental surgeries on enslaved women with neither their consent nor any anesthesia.

Inside the building, at the top of that hill, are painted portraits of generations of men who presided over and fought to perpetuate the dehumanization of black people.

This is not that kind of hill.

This is not that kind of remembering: white-washed. Marble-ized. Sanitized.

This remembering is a reclaiming of painful, hidden truths:

Like the truth that the toxic narrative of white supremacy long outlived the institutions of slavery and Jim Crow.

And the truth that there is a direct line from those indignities, upon which rests the foundation of this country, to the pervasive demonization and criminalization of black people in America today.

And the truth that the young boy in Tennessee in 1956 holding a sign that says “WE WON’T GO TO SCHOOL WITH NEGROES,” is as damaged by this history as the boys and girls he was taught to hate.

And the truth that the failure to speak honestly about this reality not only perpetuates gross injustices, but also endangers the whole American enterprise.

“Why do you push us around?” Rosa Parks asked.

“I do not know,” the officer answered. “But the law is the law, and you’re under arrest.”

That officer may not have known. But we know. The Legacy Museum uncovers the truth, connects the dots, and helps us remember.

We remember that pushing black folks around, controlling, containing, hurting and humiliating, terrorizing and traumatizing was and is a deliberate strategy. State strategy.

And only when we acknowledge that truth and remember that reality we will be able to loosen the chokehold of white supremacy over our nation.

God, thank You. Thank You for planting the seed of possibility that has grown into this holy, life-affirming, memory-holding, courage-generating, truth-telling site.

Thank You, God, for protecting and strengthening Bryan Stevenson, and all those who have worked to transform blood drenched soil into holy ground, inscribing names and dates. Counties and states. Boldly telling whispered stories out loud.

Thank You for giving us eyes willing to see the open wounds, so that we can begin to treat the illness.

Thank You, for reminding us that both the diagnosis, and the treatment, are in service of justice, in the interest of dignity, and in the spirit of love.

Amen.

(Sharon Brous is the founder and senior rabbi of IKAR, a spiritual community in Los Angeles. In 2013, she was named the most influential rabbi in America by The Daily Beast.)

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Jews traditionally pray three times a day. The morning prayer service, Shacharit, is recited after sunrise and before midday. These prayers are found in any siddur, or prayer book. There are alternate liturgies for weekday, Shabbat and holidays.

For morning prayers, it is traditional to cover one’s head with a kippah and wear a tallit, or Jewish prayer shawl. When it is not Shabbat or a holiday, it is also customary to wrap tefillin around one’s head and arm.

Learn more about Jewish prayer garments.

What follows is an overview of the major highlights of the Shacharit service, though the particulars can vary community and with the day of the week and time of year.

Blessings for putting on tzitzit and tefillin

Before praying, one prepares by putting on the garments of prayer, each of which has its own blessing. Some Jews also wash their hands before prayer, and recite the Netilat Yadayim blessing.

Click here to learn the blessing for putting on a tallit.

Click here to learn how to put on tefillin.

Birkot Hashachar: Blessings of the dawn

Birkot Hashachar is a series of blessings that thank God for the basic good things in life. Originally, they were meant to be recited as soon as one awakens, however they have been bundled and made part of the morning prayer service. 

Learn more about Birkot Hashachar.

Pesukei D’Zimra: Verses of praise

Pesukei D’Zimra is a collection of verses from the Hebrew Bible that praise God. Most of them are psalms, though the Song of the Sea, which is found in the Book of Exodus, is also included. Pesukei D’Zimra is considered a prayer “warm-up” designed to develop the kavnnah, or mindset, for the core prayers of Shacharit.

Learn more about Pesukei D’Zimra.

Barekhu: The call to prayer

When Jews pray as part of a quorum of ten adults (a minyan), the Barekhu is recited, signaling the end of preliminary prayers and the start of the core prayer service.

Learn more about Barekhu.

Shema: The Jewish declaration of faith

The Shema, one of Judaism’s best-known prayers, declares that God is one. The Shema is recited twice daily, accompanied by three blessings that meditate on the themes of God’s creation of the world (Yotzer Or), the revelation of Torah at Sinai (Ahava Rabbah), and the ultimate redemption in messianic times (Emet V’Yatziv). 

Learn how to say the Shema.

Amidah: Judaism’s central prayer

The weekday Amidah is a sequence of 19 blessings that begin with words of praise, move on to various petitions and close with words of gratitude. The words of the Amidah are fixed, but it is common for Jews to add their own private petitions. Ideally, the Amidah is recited in a minyan, with a quorum of ten other Jews. However, if that is not possible, it is permitted to recite the Amidah individually. On Shabbat, the Amidah is shortened as the petitionary prayers are omitted.

Learn more about the Amidah.

Tahanun

Tachanun is a set of prayers that includes the confession of sins and a request for God’s forgiveness. It is recited on weekdays and omitted on Shabbat.

Learn more about Tahanun.

Torah Reading

The Torah is read as part of a Shacharit service on Shabbat. Shorter sections of the Torah are also read on Mondays and Thursdays. The Torah is only read in the presence of a minyan.

Learn more about the Torah service.

Concluding Prayers

Like other Jewish prayer services, Shacharit wraps up with a collection of oft-recited prayers including Aleinu and Mourner’s Kaddish. 

The post Shacharit: The Jewish Morning Prayer Service appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

I have been taught that over the long-term, we are practicing for everyday life. That is to say, we learn certain techniques on the mat in order to learn particular modes of being that can be lived both in and out of the dojo. The techniques involve attacking and receiving attacks, throwing people and falling through the air, all while transforming the energy of conflict into harmony. But our everyday modes of being do not involve throwing people or doing somersaults. The ultimate objective in Aikido is the acquisition of mental, spiritual and psychological skills, learned through the body, that have the potential to change the way you live.

It can be helpful to think of prayer in a similar manner. Prayer involves certain forms to be learned — the prayer book, for example, is a form one can learn, practice, and get better at applying. But the true measure of its success is not how well you master the form, but how it affects your life outside the synagogue. After engaging in prayer, I ask myself: What have I learned? How have I grown? And how is this growth reflected in the way I live?

We tend to be more comfortable talking about the forms of prayer. Ask a Jew about their prayer life and they will often tell you how the chairs are arranged in the synagogue and whether the men and women are seated separately or together. They will tell you which prayer book they use and whether the service is participatory and musical. But when asked about long-term goals of prayer, they often lack even the vocabulary to venture an answer.

My understanding is that a spiritual practice must have a goal, an aspirational result that follows the ongoing practice of particular forms. At the core of any practice is the question: What is my goal and how are the methodologies that I apply serving that goal? Calling something a practice means it has an orientation, it’s going toward something. And there has to be a connection between the particular methodology — the things we do — and the goal we’re trying to achieve.

There can, of course, be many different goals for prayer. Goals for prayer can be communal, oriented towards creating or strengthening community, or achieving certain objectives in the world. There can also be purely individual goals, like having a mystical experience of God or fulfilling a religious obligation to pray. But for prayer to be a practice, it has to have a goal.

To help clarify the notion of having a goal and the relation between the daily methodologies and the long term goal, I will describe some of my own prayer practice. For me, the long term goal of prayer is to live with an awareness of the presence of God. As the psalmist wrote, “One thing I ask of God, only that do I seek: to live in the house of God all the days of my life.” With a god that is all-that-is and beyond, the request to live in God’s presence is really a request for a shift in consciousness.

I have come to understand that this longing for God’s presence is the most fundamental religious experience — even more so than the experience of God itself. To put that notion in the language of the Torah, God tells Moses that no person can see God’s face and live. Some things, like complete wholeness, are simply beyond the bounds of this world. And as long as we live in a world of boundaries, the deepest core of our being is one of longing. Living with the constant awareness of God’s hiding in the world (the Hebrew word for world, olam, is related to the word for hiding) translates for me into the emotional medium of cultivating and clarifying the longing for God through prayer.

Longing for God’s presence is realized by gradually learning to see more and deeper connection where I previously saw separation and fragmentation. The biggest obstacles to that kind of consciousness expansion are, of course, my habits of mind, the way I unconsciously set up boundaries for what is possible and what is impossible, what is connected and what is other. Set forms of practice give us a stable point against which to measure the shifts in our own experience. Just as a set sequence of physical movements give the practitioner a set point against which to judge, and eventually shift, her habits of movement, so too in the practice of prayer, a fixed liturgy offers us a form against which to judge, and eventually shift, our spiritual and mental habits.

This is how I understand the structure of the daily morning prayer service beginning with Pesukei d’Zimrah – literally, “verses of song.” The great Israeli poet Hayim Nachman Bialik wrote that words serve as a kind of armor, protecting us against the great existential abyss of death and of darkness. But music is born of this abyss, and as such enables us to undermine the structures of defense we set up in our regular lives. We start prayer with music to signal that we are stepping for a moment outside our habitual modes. To invest in song is to let some of our intellectual boundaries fall away, to undermine the structures that our words create, so that something new can grow.

But it’s also important to acknowledge that there are often good reasons why these structures were set up in the first place. We make some of our worst mistakes and cause the most pain when we forget about boundaries. Within us are some dark places that we are justifiably afraid of, so knocking down our boundaries does not guarantee the discovery of a shining light on the other side. At their sweet root, as kabbalists call it, separation and otherness are not evil. They are what allow us to love.

So after softening our boundaries in song, the liturgy turns to the blessings before Shema, which re-establish the sense that we are not alone. Our individual song is but one one voice in the choir of all being. Reinforcing this experience, we arrive at the Shema, with its core statement of commitment to living towards a God that is one — not in the sense that there is one God as opposed to many gods, but that at the deepest level all of existence is one. In the biblical paragraphs that follow we commit to making that central to our lives, keeping it in our hearts at all times, on the road and at home, whether sleeping or awake, and teaching it to our children. We then voice our recognition that commitment to this unity is necessary for fulfilling our role in the functioning of the natural cycles. And finally, we commit to the ritual practices that will forever remind us that this is what we are doing.

It is only after deeply committing to these structures that we allow ourselves to enter the great silence of the Amidah. Note that I am speaking of the silence of the Amidah — not the words. It is in the silence that comes before the words that I practice a consciousness of no boundaries, no words creating intellectual structures, just the quiet of being. The words of the Amidah, when we get there, are a gradual journey out of that silence. It moves from the abstract — wonder at God’s greatness and power, our connection to our ancestors — to blessings for knowledge, repentance, healing, social justice. Each blessing of the Amidah invites us to reflect on what it would mean to bring the quiet experience of God, or a clarified moment of longing for God, into a particular aspect of our lives.

It should be clear: Some days this works and other days I’m just banging my head against the wall. But my hope is that I am slowly getting a little better at it, and I pray that is reflected in some ways in my life. That is what I go back to prayer for every day — to practice.

This is, of course, not the only way to practice prayer. I offer my own experience mainly to help clarify the questions I think are useful for any person who wants to engage in prayer as a spiritual practice: What do you hope to achieve by engaging regularly in Jewish prayer? How do you imagine your life will look different if you successfully practice prayer for a decade or two or three? What capacities of yourself will be developed? How do the forms of prayer serve your goals? Do they help you develop self-awareness of where you are on your journey?

I offer these questions in the hope that they will help make prayer meaningful in diverse ways, and that sharing a set of questions helps us all remember, in the words of the prayer book: “they are all beloved, all clearly on their way, all powerful, and all doing their Creator’s will with love, fear and awe.”

The post Prayer as Spiritual Practice appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Or infertility might begin, as all life begins, with a little something, when wombs and dreams and hope begin to grow. And then suddenly they stop. This too happens before others (besides the parents) even know there was a something. To say “I had a miscarriage” is to jumble together the celebration of life and the tragedy of death in one word, one breath.

Jewish tradition is no stranger to infertility. All our matriarchs except Rebecca suffered from an inability to conceive, and Rebecca seems to have struggled through her pregnancy. Yet despite the frequency of this physical and spiritual pain, it is only recently that we have begun to craft liturgical responses to this sad commonplace of life.

And since infertility is not a single moment but experienced over days and weeks and months and perhaps even years, we need a whole litany of prayers to respond to the various stages and cycles of hope, waiting, anxiety, loss, hope, procedures, waiting, anxiety.

Below is a selection of contemporary prayers for seeking a child, mourning the loss of a pregnancy, and a prayer of hope to be said prior to undergoing a procedure (based on the traditional blessing celebrating the intricacies of a fully-functioning body). They may be recited as is, adapted or used as inspiration to create personal prayers.

A prayer for pregnancy

Dear God, and God of our ancestors, You have blessed untold loving couples across time, providing each with children in a tumble of generations. May it be your will that we join their lot tonight. Make tonight a night of joy and tenderness, a night in which my beloved and I conceive a child. Hold us close in your embrace, God, just as we hold each other tightly. Remember us as you remembered Sarah. Care for us as you cared for Rebecca. Tend to us as you tended to our mothers, Leah and Rachel.

You alone hold the key to the womb. Open our chambers of life. Choose from your sacred treasury of souls, and send us a child who is wise and caring, healthy and whole. With your help, may our family grow through the years, and through your kindness may we be a blessing to all who know us.

May the words of our mouths and the desires of our hearts please You, our Strength and our Deliverer.

Prayer for a couple on first trimester loss

Light a fragrant candle and recite:

Here we are, the two of us together. The two of us alone. We counted the days and measured the weeks that our child grew within. But we count no more. Our eyes longed to see the birth of our child, our arms yearned to cradle our new little one. Our mouths longed to sing soft lullabies of love. But now our child, our dreams, are no more. Sing us a lullaby, God, to fill our silence. Sing us a lullaby to soothe our fears, comfort our sadness and make the darkness go away. Source of healing and light, sing us a lullaby and help us to find healing in your embrace and among those who love and care for us. And when the time is right, help us dare to choose life again. Blessed are you God, whose compassion continually renews us.

Prayer for hope after suffering loss

Dear God, you made the world overflow with water, with streams and rivers that nourish the earth, pools and ponds that teem with life. But not me. I am like a wadi; I fill up and empty to no purpose. Nothing is held by me, nothing nourished. That is not the way it should be. It is you God who causes the day to break, assigning dawn its place in the east. It is you, God, who sets the world on its course, guiding its paths as it glides through the heavens. It is you, God, who closed the sea behind doors when it burst forth from its womb, swaddling the new waters in dense clouds (Job 38). You know the joy of birth. Share a bit of that joy with me, God. Hear my prayers and heal my broken heart. Send me a child so I may rejoice in them as mothers have rejoiced throughout the generations.

Prayer to be said prior to a procedure to aid fertility

God, creator of all, you wisely formed the human body. You created it with openings upon openings and vessels upon vessels. You know well that should even one of these open when it should remain closed, or close when it should remain open, we could not long survive. God of life with the key to the womb, guide the ways of my openings and closings so that they receive and hold and then safely release a child. Blessed are you God, healer of all flesh, who guides the wonders of creation.

Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the founding associate director of the National Center for Jewish Healing. These prayers are adapted from the 2007 edition of her book “Tears of Sorrow, Seeds of Hope,” published by Jewish Lights.

The post How to Pray Through Infertility 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.

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