Davening the Lord's Prayer

My parents used to sing us to sleep every night.  One of the songs that took a regular turn in the repertory was The Lord's Prayer, the Perry Como version, I think. And this could have been strange. We were a Jewish household, holding onto our identity in a nearly all-Christian suburb of Pittsburgh. The song is based on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Yet it seemed perfectly natural and in tune with what we believed.

Ten pages of The Misunderstood Jew, by Amy-Jill Levine, explain my childhood experience to me. Those are the pages where she shows, phrase by phrase, that the "Lord's Prayer" is made up of concepts that are entirely Jewish. In fact, she suggests that Christians would understand the prayer better if they knew more about its historical context. Follow this with me.

"Our father in heaven": Jews in the first century used the term Abba ("father") regularly, and even today Avinu (our father) is a common term in the Jewish prayerbook. Back then, it was also a political statement: a rejection of the Roman Caesar's claim to be the father of all his subjects.

"Hallowed be your name": every Jewish prayer service includes repetition of the Kaddish prayer, which begins "Magnified and sanctified be [God's] great name." And name in Hebrew is not just a word or a sound but the expression of God's active energy in our lives.

"Your kingdom come": this expresses the Jewish wish for the olam ha-ba, the "world to come," which is not an afterlife but the kingdom of God during the Messianic period. Again, this is a bold rejection of Rome's claim to be the ultimate sovereign.

"Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven": because the kingdom of God will create a world of justice and peace, here, where we live, and not exclusively in a spiritual realm.

"Give us this day our daily bread": Levine argues persuasively that this translation, in its redundancy, is missing the point. She would translate it "Give us tomorrow's bread today." Tomorrow's bread, for which we hunger, is precisely the Messianic age.

"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors":  This is a Jewish idea as well. We help those who are in economic distress, which would have been the only reason to take on debt in an agricultural economy. We believe that God will help us in our distress and keep us from paying all that we owe for our actions, whether they are sins ("trespasses") or just falling short of the mark.

Levine says, "The Greek phrase usually translate as 'Lead us not into temptation' is better rendered 'Do not bring us to the test.'" If the Roman empire would persecute you for practicing your religion and give you a good job if you would renounce your people and your traditions, that is a test that no one should have to face. Jesus knew that, and ultimately had to face that inhuman trial himself.

"But deliver us from evil": better, "the evil one." Satan in the Jewish tradition was the prosecuting angel when we were put to the test, always arguing that we had failed. For first-century Jews facing the trials of the Roman empire, it must have felt like an evil enemy pursuing them at every turn.

So, what I learn from Levine is that we could understand the "Lord's Prayer" this way:

Avinu malkeinu, our father in heaven, the way that you use your power in our lives is holy. Bring about the world to come, the Messianic age, so that what you have commanded us will be our actual everyday lives. Let us taste that world now. Don't hold our wrongdoings against us. Be merciful as you have told us to be merciful. Especially, don't let worldly powers put us in a position where we have to pay a terrible price for doing the right thing. Release us from their justice which is no justice. You are our only God and ruler.

If Jesus were alive today and prayed this prayer, as a Jew I would respond, "Amen!"

"What's My Child Doing Up There?" ( an introduction to bar/bat mitzvah)

There’s a lot of mystery around becoming bar or bat mitzvah, and there shouldn’t be.  In essence, it’s very simple.  When a Jewish boy or girl reaches age thirteen, he or she is eligible to lead parts of the service at his or her family’s synagogue.  So, he or she celebrates the occasion by…actually leading some parts of the service. 

Sounds pretty straightforward, right?  Yet, I have been tutoring Jewish children for bar and bat mitzvah off and on since 1982.  I have seen the parents of my students approach the bar or bat mitzvah feeling confused, and sometimes even overwhelmed.  These parents are no dummies.  They are not being neurotic for no reason whatever.  In the U.S., the way we live now, there are good reasons why you might not immediately understand what your child is doing for his bar mitzvah, or her bat mitzvah.

 Why the mystery?

Let’s start with language.  Very few Americans are fluent in Hebrew.  Depending on your synagogue or temple, what your child does for bar or bat mitzvah might be partly, mostly, or nearly all in Hebrew.  So, let alone understanding what your child is saying: how do you track your child’s progress as he or she studies for bar or bat mitzvah?  You want to be a good parent.  You want to be supportive.  But how?

 Even the terms the rabbi or tutor uses for the tasks your child will take on are usually in Hebrew.  “What’s an aliyah?  Is a parshah the same thing as a haftarah, or is it something different my child has to learn?  How come one set of relatives calls the skullcap worn in synagogue a yarmulke while the other set calls it a kipah?”  Whether you grew up Jewish, became Jewish later in life, or raised a Jewish child without any Jewish background of your own, chances are you need a guide to understand the vocabulary that surrounds bar or bat mitzvah studies.

Then, there’s the fact that preparing for bar or bat mitzvah is usually a multi-step process.  Again, depending on your Jewish community and its local customs, your child may be reading or singing some things from the prayer book, and chanting other things from the printed Bible or the Torah scroll.  Most likely, he or she will also be giving a short talk about the passage of the Bible read that day.   

To prepare for these tasks, you may be driving your child to meet with one tutor throughout the process--or a tutor and a rabbi--or a tutor, a cantor, a Hebrew school principal, and a rabbi.  You’ll need to find ways to talk with each of them, and make sure that they are all talking to one another.

 

The Saturday morning service itself, the usual time for celebrating bar or bat mitzvah, can be a challenge.  It’s going to be at least an hour long, maybe as much as three hours: again, partly, mostly, or nearly all in Hebrew, depending on local custom.  It will involve a set of rituals and protocols that are certainly not obvious.  “Should I invite my non-Jewish friends or relatives to the service?  How are they going to feel at home there?  How will I?”

Finally, there’s one huge distraction that makes it difficult for parents to look forward to the bar or bat mitzvah ceremony: planning the party.  Everybody likes a good party.  For some children, it’s the reason they started studying for bar or bat mitzvah in the first place!  But for unwary parents—especially parents going through it for the first time, with their eldest child—planning the party can take up all the time and attention you have. 

You might not be planning something as lavish as the party Peter Finch attends in the movie Sunday Bloody Sunday, or as obscenely ostentatious as the one Jeremy Piven plans in Keeping Up with the Steins.  In fact, I hope not!  Still, in the midst of scheduling a space, a caterer, and entertainment, designing and sending out invitations, and helping your child keep track of gifts, it might be hard for you, yourself, to keep tabs on the bar or bat mitzvah studies—and all too easy to arrive at shul that Saturday morning without a clue about what’s going on.  

“What’s my child doing up there?”  Wonder no more.  I am writing a book to give you the answers you need as you begin to think about your child’s bar or bat mitzvah.  There are other, excellent books that will help you think about the deeper meaning of this rite of passage.  I will mention some of them in the Appendices.  

 Writing this book, I have a different mission. You will soon hold in your hands a practical guide to bar and bat mitzvah for the perplexed parent.  With this book as your road map, you will be able to navigate the process from the first day of lessons to the last blessing of the Saturday morning service, with confidence.  It shouldn’t be a mystery—just a mitzvah!

My Prayers for Israel

 

Ever since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., Jews have prayed to be restored to the land of Israel.  But to do what?

The High Holy Day prayerbook, or machzor, that we use at Temple B'nai Brith  puts it one way.  Ve-sham naaseh l'fanecha et korbanot chovoteinu: "There we shall bring Thee our offerings...."  This is a vision of a rebuilt Temple, with priests, Levites, and sacrifices of animals and grains, all at their appointed times, the same way the Temple operated two thousand years ago.

The Sabbath prayerbook, or siddur, that we use puts it very differently.  She-sham asu avoteinu l'fanecha et korbanot chovoteichem: "There our ancestors sacrificed to you with their offerings...."  This is a vision of a renewed community in the territory of Israel, a community that remembers its history but does not repeat it.

I have great difficulties with the first version.  I purposefully attend an egalitarian synagogue: why would I pray for a hierarchical Temple?  Although I eat animals, I cannot see slaughtering them as any way to glorify God.  Then there is the difficulty that the Dome of the Rock, one of the most sacred sites in Islam, stands on the Temple mount.  Jews could only rebuild the Temple on its historic foundation by committing a horrific crime against our fellow children of Abraham.  God forbid!

But the second version has its problems too.  For two thousand years, Jews have offered prayers instead of sacrifices.  This is the hallmark of the kind of Judaism all of us know, rabbinic Judaism.  Without the substitution of prayers for sacrifices, there might be no Judaism today.  But prayer is portable.  Wherever ten adult Jews come together, we can pray and study, mourn and celebrate. 

We simply do not need a Temple in Jerusalem any more.  So, the reference to the Temple in our prayerbook seems like an empty piety, a reference to a past that we both respect and repudiate. 

I am not happy with "There we shall bring thee our offerings."  I am not satisfied with "There our ancestors sacrificed to you."  It gets me thinking: in an age when a State of Israel exists, what would it mean to be restored to our homeland?  To do what?

Two thousand years is a long time, and Jews have planted roots all over the world.  I am still going to live where I have made my life, in Somerville, Massachusetts.  But with family who live in Israel, and a Jewish identity that originates there, perhaps I could pray:

• There we shall finally recognize women as equally empowered with men in all branches of Judaism.
• There we shall unite Jews who have been separated first by history and then by ethnocentrism and racism.
• There we shall create a just, inclusive, and democratic society where Arabs, Jews, and others can live in peace, whether or not they are religious, and whether or not they are heterosexual.

Can I get an "Amen"?

It Is Not Too Hard for Us: A High Holy Day Message

It was the Sabbath before Rosh Hashanah, but at Temple B'nai Brith, my friend Rick Silberman was already looking toward Yom Kippur--and in particular, the Kol Nidre prayer that forms the heart of the service on Yom Kippur eve.

All vows. bonds, promises, obligations, and oaths [to God] wherewith we have vowed, sworn, and bound ourselves from this Day of Atonement unto the next Day of Atonement, may it come to us for good; lo, of all of these, we repent us in them.  They shall be absolved, released, annulled, made void, and of none effect. they shall not be binding nor shall they have any power.  Our vows [to God} shall not be vows; our bonds shall not be bonds; and our oaths shall not be oaths.

According to Rick, it seems as if the rationalists of the Jewish tradition have always had a problem with Kol Nidre.  We are encouraged not to make vows at all--wouldn't that be better than annulling them in advance?  Some, like Mordechai Kaplan, wanted to remove Kol Nidre altogether, and only agreed to leave it in with the proviso that the vows we were breaking were harmful ones, like "I swear I'll never talk to that mamzer again!"  Others, like Rick's father Charles Silberman, recommended keeping it because the emotional meaning of the prayer was more important than the words themselves.  Rick did a fine job of explaining that even the words have meaning.  We are finite beings who strive toward transcendence, he said, and inevitably, we fall short.  We need to recognize our limits and forgive ourselves in order to keep on striving.

Please forgive me, Rick and other rationalist philosophers, but I think the anxiety about the language of Kol Nidre is completely unnecessary.  Of course, we are not using the prayer to let ourselves off the hook easily.  We're Jews, famously ridden with guilt about the ways that we fall short!    And we are not concerned with our metaphysical finitude.  Our personal shortcomings are very real to us.  We are tempted to despair, to give up on ourselves as agents of change in this sadly imperfect world.  We need to know that just as we are, we are still important, and our actions still matter. 

In today's Torah portion, Nitzavim, one of my favorites in the Five Books, there is a beautiful passage (Deuteronomy 30:11-14) that gives me heart.

For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off.  It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?' But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

This passage has many meanings, all of them important.  At this time, I would point out just one: that we do not have to be perfect--we do not even have to live up to all of our own aspirations--to be God's partners in perfecting the world.  It is not too hard for us.  We just have to do it...and fail, and fail, and keep on doing it.  That is how we succeed.

As for the sins?  The same Kol Nidre service quotes God:  "I have forgiven according to thy word."  Or, as I would translate the same passage, "You had me at 'Please forgive me.'"

Let's all celebrate our human strengths and imperfections and bring them to bear on doing good work in the new year.

A Questioning Tradition

On the walls of his classroom, one of my high school teachers displayed the following saying, which he attributed to the Koran: “Questions asked only to cause confusion do not need to be answered.” 

 If you read Parshat Korach the way my friend Larry Lennhoff does, then Korach’s questioning of authority was just that kind of confusion-sowing.  Larry wrote in response to my blog post of June 25:

Do you think Korach was sincere? I don't, and neither do most traditional rabbis. I think Korach and the others wanted to keep the idea of [hierarchy], but just place themselves at the top in the place of Moses, Aaron, and their close relatives.

I am willing to believe Korach was sincere.  Partly, I have seen too many sincere challenges to authority dismissed—and partly, I think taking Korach at his word lets us explore more interesting questions.  How and when should Jews challenge authority, including the authority of our own tradition?  How can the tradition adapt and learn from rebels and innovators?  Because that kind of adaptation and innovation is the only thing that keeps a tradition alive.

The Jewish tradition has adapted and changed a great deal over the centuries.   Rabbinic Judaism greatly modified the religious civilization described in Torah.  It had to.  With the Temple destroyed, a religion based on sacrifices conducted by a centralized caste-based priesthood could not have survived.  Prayer and Torah study replaced sacrifice, and in place of the Temple in Jerusalem, the rabbis gave us way of seeking holiness that we could carry out at home, from resting on Shabbat to keeping kosher throughout the year (and in different ways on Passover).

As I have studied it, rabbinic Judaism is a paradox: a bold and respectful tradition of hecklers.  

·         It’s bold because of the authority it claims for its adherents.  “All that a serious student will yet expound before his teacher has already been told to Moses at Sinai” (and has the force of revelation), says the Jerusalem Talmud, Peah 17:1. 

·         It’s respectful because to say something new, you have to study the old and come up with a connection to it, be that connection logical or highly creative, or both. 

·         It’s full of hecklers.  You can find one rabbi saying in the Talmud, “Any dayan (judge, interpreter) who judges that way is no judge!”, and find another responding, “Any dayan who judges that way is no judge!”

And yet it remains a tradition, not a set of schisms.  The 1^st-century teachers Hillel and Shammai disagreed on every major ruling, down to whether you should light more candles as Chanukah goes on or fewer.  Both were highly influential teachers with many followers.  The followers could have grown apart, as Catholics and Protestants did in Christianity and Sunnis and Shi’ites did in Islam.  Instead, the next generation of rabbis found a way to keep them together.  “These AND these are the words of the living God,” they said.  In practice, we light candles the way Hillel told us to do.  To become wiser, we study Shammai as well as Hillel, seeing what we can learn from each.

This is one of the reasons the uncompromising attitude the text of Parshat Korach takes with the rebels poses such a problem for us today.  I will return to Korach soon, asking the question a different way:  when and how should we challenge authority, and how should authority respond?

This Little Light of Mine

My friend Rabbi Arnie Fertig is especially fond of the priestly blessing. As each student I tutor for bar or bat mitzvah goes up to the Torah on his or her special day, Arnie gives them that three-part blessing, and again at the end of the service, he gives it to the whole congregation:

May God bless you and keep you.

May God make God's face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

May God turn God's face toward you and grant you peace.

You could really examine each detail of this blessing and find it full of meaning. Today, at Nate Serisky's bar mitzvah, it was the beginning of the second line that struck me: "May God make God's face shine upon you." Sometimes when we look at an inspiring leader, we think they glow with an inner light. We make the mistake of thinking that they are uniquely brilliant. We could never be like them, we imagine, and we let ourselves be overshadowed. In dark times, we wait for someone else to show us the light.

When we think like that about leaders, we are making the same mistake people make when they think the moon is shining upon them. As we now know, contrary to centuries of folklore, the moon only reflects the light given to it by the sun. The few people who have stood on the moon and looked at the earth found that it, too, shone in the sky.

In the right circumstances, anyone can catch the divine spark and be a leader, illuminating the way for the rest of us. Any other idea of leadership is the merest moonshine. But so often, I know, I stumble along in the dark. When it happens to be me who lights the path, it does feel like a moment of grace, and a blessing. That's the blessing I wish for Nate, Tia, Brandon, Olivia, and my other students past and future: that for a moment, they bring clarity to us all.

Justice and Lovingkindness

One of the most haunting melodies of the High Holy Day season is the one that wafts the prayer Avinu Malkeinu up to the rafters at my synagogue, Temple B'nai Brith, every year. The words are equally poignant. Taken literally, they ask God to answer our prayers and show us a grace we don't deserve, because our good deeds are nothing close to what they should be.

This year, I read the prayer against the grain. I know that aseh imanu tzdakah va-chesed means that we ask God to show justice and lovingkindness in God's dealings with us. I choose to read "with us" as meaning "through us." As John Kennedy once said, "Here on earth God's work must truly be our own." When we chanted Avinu Malkeinu, I prayed that we in this community become the agents of justice, and of kind and loving deeds, that we would normally think are too much for us to achieve. This poor world needs so much from us. It is so daunting sometimes. Let us find the strength to go on working for a better world.

A Yom Kippur Story

Yom Kippur begins on Sunday night. This story happened, not on Yom Kippur Eve, but instead it happened late one Yom Kippur afternoon in the synagogue of Berdichev. The famous Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, who was known for his great love and compassion, fell asleep on the pulpit just as he was about beginning the day's concluding service.

Actually, he didn't really fall asleep. Those who knew, well realized that this great Rabbi would never really go to sleep in the synagogue on Yom Kippur. Rather, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak did what every wonder-working Rabbi does on Yom Kippur. He ascended to the highest heaven to stand before the throne of judgment in order to find out what the destiny of his beloved community would be for the coming year.

Levi Yitzhak stood in the presence of the great judge sitting on a grand throne -- with the scales of judgment before the Creator of All. The Rabbi eagerly searched the scales of his little town of Berdichev. When he finally did find it, he was shaken. He was terrified. The side of the scale with good deeds was high up in the air with a few pitiful items on it, while the side of the scale with the sins was so full, so heavily weighted that it was as low as it could go, strained to the breaking point.

In desperation, Levi Yitzhak turned to the good Lord and with panic and fear welling up inside he said to God, Master of the Universe, I know that the record of my people in Berdichev is dismal, but what do you expect,dear Lord? If you would have put us into a Garden of Eden, you could expect us to act like angels, but, dear Lord, You placed us into a harsh and difficult setting. What alternative do my poor downtrodden, miserable people have? Sometimes, we must take extreme measures, just to survive.

Levi Yitzhak was overjoyed to find the good Lord in a very receptive mood. With a benign, parental smile, God said to him, "Levi Yitzhak, you have a point. I haven't been fair. I promise that the Jews of Berdichev are going to have a fine year." As a matter of fact, Levi Yitzhak found God in such good humor that he suspected that this might be the moment to convince God to save not only the Jews of Berdichev, but to save all of humankind -- to send the messiah, the redeemer, to save the world.

And so, Levi Yitzhak turned to the good Lord and said: "Master of the Universe, Merciful Parent, how long? Haven Your poor children suffered long enough? They're drowning dear God. They're on the very edge of desperation. Before it is too late, show us Your grace and mercy and send us Your redeemer."

Slowly and behold, God was willing to discuss the matter with Levi Yitzhak. He said to him: "Levi Yitzhak, you put forth a very cogent argument. There is much meritin it. Please sit down. Convince me."

And so Levi Yitzhak was about to sit down to convince the Lord to save the world. When, out of the corner of his eye, he glanced down at his little town of Berdichev, and he noticed that Hayyim, the laundry man, (Hayyim) who was as old as time and as ugly as sin, to whom no one paid any attention -- neglected, isolated, lonely Hayyim -- [Hayyim] had fainted.

Hayyim had been fasting from the previous day; it was getting very late; he could not hold out any long and so he fainted. Levi Yitzhak knew well that he had to rush down to his synagogue and conclude the service so that Hayyim would eat -- otherwise Hayyim would die.

So, here was his dilemma: Whom shall he save? Shall he convince the good Lord to save the world, or shall he save the life of Hayyim, the laundry man?

Actually, the choice was an easy one... Levi Yitzhak turned to God and said, "I would love to sit here dear Merciful Father and convince You to save the world, -- but where is it written that the price of saving the world is the life of Hayyim the laundry man?" And with that, he turned to rush down and conclude the service.

(And) as he was descending from the heights, rushing to save the life of Hayyim, the story concluded, he heard a chorus of angels calling after him: "Levi Yitzhak, you are saving the world!"