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I am so sorry.

I am a Luddite.

I accidentally published a post of images.

I am sorry. I am so sorry.

I hope this Poem makes up for this…

Peace?   Jen

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First, I was amazed that: 1) he wasn’t sitting on that bench smoking a cigarette; and 2) that his head wasn’t buried in some kind of electronic device; and 3) that he wasn’t talking on a cell phone.

He was a college kid, sitting on a bench in front of the English building, reading a book. And it was a very odd siting.

Today was another incredibly beautiful day here. The daffodils are up now, and the red, red robins are bob, bob, bobbin’ along.

Kaddish definitely did not fit this day. It’s an intense book. Dark. A good January book.

Once, many years ago, I heard a guy on the radio say this: “There is one day in the calendar that you will not live through.”

His words chilled me. I had never thought of it (death) that way, i.e. as a date on a calendar that I would not see the completion of.

After I heard him say that, I remember walking outside. It was a day in early spring, much like today: the may apples were just pushing up, and the ground smelled fudgey. There were tender leaf shoots budding all over the forsythia, and in that moment I  remember thinking to myself: Please god, don’t let me die in the spring. Please don’t let that day I don’t live through be the day the lilacs bloom. I don’t want to die in the spring.

When I saw that kid reading Kaddish, I thought of that day, and also of my father-in-law: a kind man, an orthodox jew, sitter of too many shivas, and a part of way too many minyons.

I remembered hearing him recite Kaddish in Hebrew, by heart, as he had learned it as a young man in Hebrew school.  I remembered how hard it was to gather a minyon to say Kaddish for him because he had out-lived most of his peers.

And now, here I was, once again, on a beautiful day in spring, thinking of death, and praying again: Please don’t let that day in the calendar I don’t live through be a day in spring.

(probably not) cherry blossoms in scott circle; photo by salem pearce

Yesterday, Saturday, was a gorgeous day here in the nation’s capital. It was sunny and 70 degrees, and Shabbat was made sweeter by the fact that I had found out the day before that I was accepted at the third rabbinical school to which I applied. After morning services, I sat in Dupont Circle with my husband and felt like I could relax for the first time in at least six months. I read (Patti Smith’s Just Kids) and took a few photographs (right and below).

Yesterday felt like a new beginning in another way, as well: I led part of the Shabbat morning service for the first time! Sixth & I hosted a Learner’s Minyan in the morning, led by Rabbi Shira Stutman. The rabbi who is teaching my adult b’nai mitzvah class, Lauren Holtzblatt, arranged for the class to lead the parts of the service that we’re planning to in June during the official ceremony. I’ve volunteered for the second half of the Torah service (putting the scroll away) and for the mourner’s kaddish.

st. patrick's day green grass at dupont circle; photo by salem pearce

Unfortunately, the past month of travel hasn’t left me any time to practice, so I had to beg off of the Torah service part. I decided to go ahead with the mourner’s kaddish, which I realized while I was leading is actually a little unnerving. The only people who are standing and reciting most of the prayer with the leader are the few in mourning or observing a yahrzeit (although I did ask those whose custom it is to stand to do so). Even so, I could only hear myself in the large sanctuary that was hardly filled, and saying the mourner’s kaddish by (what feels like just) myself is quite different than saying the hatzi kaddish with the whole congregation, when it doesn’t matter if I stumble over a word or two. I’ve got some practicing to do.

Despite my nerves, though, I was able to say to the congregation yesterday that I was leading and saying the mourner’s kaddish for the family of Trayvon Martin. This clear abrogation of justice has troubled me all week: I am proud and privileged to be an American, but I sometimes loathe my country’s institutions.

But the long road is coming to an end: I’ve gotten into (in alphabetical order) Hebrew College (in Boston), HUC-JIR (in New York), and Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (in Philadelphia). I am tentatively leaning towards one school, and I am pretty sure it will be a choice between two of them. But I’m not ready to make that intention more explicit at this point.

I now move on to the decision-making part of the process, which I hope to wrap up in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

Listen to the show here.

Stay tuned to the show in coming weeks for side two and liner notes from the “Kaddish” record.

When I die, my children will say
Kaddish for me and that, with a pinewood box
and linen shroud, will be enough

In time, I will say Kaddish
for my parents. It will not be enough.
They believe in Hell’s Yellow Emperor,
fret about food, shelter for their ghosts.
The magnification of an alien God’s name
would send them into the afterlife, barefoot
ghosts on hard dirt streets, banging
tin cups on red doors. They would drink
bitter tea, lie alongside ghosts with unopened wombs.

So I have promised my mother I will burn
a paper mansion with puppet servants, chests
of paper gold, paper shells of cars.
My brother will provide oolong
and chicken rice each feast day, the monthly
stipend of Hell money, shells of faith.
These we render to our mother who tied
red thread on our feet and fingers as we slid
from her womb to bind us to life.

We hold this end of the scarlet thread
our parents unravel as they near the Yellow Springs,
feel it tighten as the wind
blowing off the river, lodges dust in our eyes

by Hilary Tham

I’ve emailed T. twice since mom’s death (still hard to write that) to see how he was. I told him I wasn’t ready to talk yet [for fear of breaking down]. While returning to the office from lunch one day last week, I felt like I was in a good place and could handle a conversation with him. I was half-right.

T. was so happy to hear from me and it felt good and reassuring to hear his voice.. We naturally spoke of mom and how each of us was getting along. I told him M. was coming with to minyan with me to say kaddish and he was happy about that. We talked a little about D.’s upcoming wedding. My voice broke a little. And when the call was close to an end, T. let me know that I can call him anytime and I reciprocated the same.

And in that email T. continued: “One foot in front of the other, and we move along. There’s no other choice. Most important: Mom would want it that way. I love you, T.”

And I love you, too.

Last year, the President of my congregation came to me with a suggestion about how to make our services more personal at the point in the service when we recite the Mourner’s Kaddish.  I believe she had witnessed this at another congregation and found it meaningful.  Her suggestion was that before we read the Mourners’ Kaddish, we offer those who have a yahrzeit to observe the opportunity to share some brief reflections on the person or persons they are remembering.  So we gave it a try and I have to tell you, I found it to be quite a powerful and moving change in the routine of our worship.

As long as I can remember – as a child and as an adult – while attending Jewish worship services, the recitation of the Yahrzeit List before the reading of the Kaddish was this dry cataloging of names of people, most of whom I did not know.  Of course these names were meaningful to those who came to remember them and to those who actually knew them, and that indeed was important.  Needless to say, the older I got and the more time I spent in the community, the more names there were on the Yahrzeit List were those of people I actually knew; people of whom I had personal memories; people for whom the act of saying Kaddish was more meaningful for me.  Yet still, on any given Shabbat, many of the names, if not most of the name were for me, and I suspect for most of the rest of the worshipers, names of people unknown to us, and therefore impersonal.  And on those Shabbatot where all of the names where unknown, the Yahrzeit list and the Kaddish were little more than signals that the service was drawing to a close and that the Oneg would soon begin.

However, this all changed dramatically as soon as we began to invite mourners to share their memories of loved ones with us.  First of all, understand that not every mourner wishes to do so.  It is not their obligation.  It is their option.  There are many people who are uncomfortable speaking in public, and there are others who find the public sharing of such memories to be too personally painful.  But those who wish to share are invited to do so, and several do.  We ask that these remarks be brief and some are less brief than others, but none so far have been overly long.

But far more important than whether or not their remarks are short or long is what they have to say.  For it is in what these people say that we discover the power of the moment.  These mourners share both memories and feelings.  In so doing they transform these names into loving, caring human beings.  They share their virtues.  They share their faults.  They bring a tear.  They bring a smile.  In the end, everyone in the sanctuary finds themselves, to some degree or another, mourning individuals who they may never have known face-to-face.  We feel in our hearts the loss that our mourners feel.  We feel our own sense of loss in that we have been introduced to an individual who we probably would have enjoyed knowing, but never had the opportunity to get to know.

In this way, in our services, the Mourners’ Kaddish has become far more than a marker, indicating that the service is nearing its conclusion.  Its fundamental purpose – that of keeping alive the warm and loving memories of those now gone – has been reawakened in our hearts and in our lives.  We all become mourners.  We all come to realize that every single individual – living or dead – is far more than just a name; that every single individual brings into this world their own special brand of beauty.  When they pass away, and at least some of that beauty is lost, we are all diminished by their passing, even if we never knew them in life.

This has become a very meaningful congregational tradition for it has taken our worship services to a higher spiritual realm.

To me, the saddest aspect of contemporary American Jewish life is that in most synagogues, like my own synagogue, many of the seats of our sanctuaries remain empty Shabbat after Shabbat after Shabbat.  For the empty seats serve as a painful testimony to the fact that most of our people rarely or no longer feel the desire or need to connect with God.  They are Jewish.  They probably believe in God.  But they have little interest in pursuing an active relationship with God, particularly through prayer and worship.

But be that as it may, we cannot force people to want to connect with God; to want to engage God in their lives through prayer.  We can only try our best to provide them with the opportunities and the inspiration to do so.  The rest is up to them.  As the old adage says, “You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.”

However, as for the people who do choose to come to Shabbat worship, to stretch that analogy a little further, they are the horses who have chosen to drink; to drink from the wells of spiritual refreshment and Divine connection which Shabbat worship can offer.  It is precisely to these people that every synagogue has a responsibility; the responsibility to assist them – to work with them – in the search to find ways to make their prayers a more effective vehicle for connecting with God.

This past December, I traveled to Washington, D.C. in order to attend the biennial convention of the Union for Reform Judaism.  While at that convention, I had many wonderful and meaningful experiences.  Among them was a workshop entitled “Making Prayer Real.” It is upon that workshop which I wish to reflect.

First off, I have to tell you that I found the title of that workshop to be odd.  “Making Prayer Real” implies that our prayers are not real, and I do not believe that to be the case.  I believe that the prayers of any person who takes the effort to come to synagogue on Shabbat are real.  They may not be as effective as they could be, but they definitely are real.

That aside, I found the workshop  – particularly one aspect of the workshop – to be enlightening.  It was some­what meditative, but it was more than mere meditation.  I say “mere meditation” because I believe that while meditation techniques can assist us in prayer, they cannot replace prayer, especially in a Jewish setting.  For Jewish prayer is predominantly, though not exclusively, communal, while meditation is almost exclu­sively, if not exclusively, personal.  While there is a place for meditation in Jewish prayer, the greatest power of Jewish prayer is to be found in what we do together as a community of worshipers.

But back to the workshop.  At this workshop, one of the presenters – Cantor Ellen Dreskin, with whom I used to serve on faculty at the NFTY National Camp in Warwick, New York – conducted an exercise involving God’s name and breath.  As most, if not all of you know, we Jews are not permitted to pro­nounce the actual name of God.  It is a four-letter name composed of the letters Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, and when we see it in the texts, we say “Adonai” in its stead.

Yet there are many Hebrew words and names that incorporate elements of this name in order to include some sort of connection with God.  So, for example, the Hebrew name for Elijah is “Eliyahu.”  “Yahu” comes from that four-letter name of God, and the name “Eliyahu” means “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is my God.”  There is also a very well known Hebrew word which also includes an element of God’s four-letter name.  That word is “Halleluyah” with “Yah” being the God part.  The word means “Let us praise Yah; Let us praise Adonai.”

Yet when you consider “Yah” it is a sound that is made up of nothing but breath – “Yah.”  So Cantor Dreskin had us do an exercise.  She asked us to take a deep breath and hold it.  Hold it as long as we could.  And when we finally let it out, we were to let it out with a “Yah.”  Dear reader, try that now then do it again.  “Yah” – God – is breath, and without the eventual “Yah” – without God – we cannot continue to breathe.  When you think about it, God is present in our every breath.  Every time we exhale, God is there.  For as long as we breathe, God is an integral part of our every moment, both waking and sleeping.

Then she turned our attention to that word: “Halelu-yah – Let us praise Yah.”  So we took a deep breath and held it, and then let it out saying “Halelu-yah.”  Dear reader, try that then do it again: “Halelu-yah.”  With our breath, we are praising God.  Our every breath should praise God, for without God, we would have no breath.

There is probably nowhere in Jewish texts in which this is better expressed than in Psalm 150, which is included in the Shabbat morning worship service.  For in verse 6 of that psalm it says, “Kol haneshama t’haleil Yah, halelu-Yah! – Every breath praises Yah, so let us praise Yah!”  Of course Cantor Dreskin had us sing this verse, but if you cannot sing it, then at least say it:  “Kol haneshama – t’haleil Yah, – halelu-Yah!”

This is not just a prayer nor is it just a meditative technique.  What it is, is a life perspective; an important spiritual life perspective.  For if we want to truly connect with God, we have to honestly come to the realization that God is just not present to us in the sanctuary, but is present to us every day, every hour, every minute of our lives, with every breath we take.  God is our constant companion, and every breath – every moment of life – is yet another gift from God; a gift for which we should be grateful.  It is only when we begin to view God in this way that we can begin to start to pry open those gates which seem to keep us from God and God from us.  The Hasidic master, the Kotzker Rebbe, once said, “Where is God?  Wherever you let God in!”  When we begin to recognize God’s presence in our every breath – that our every breath is a prayer – then we will have begun to let God into our lives.

So if our every breath is a prayer, why come to the synagogue?  Why come to services?  I once heard a dear friend and colleague of mine, Rabbi Stephen Pinsky, give a sermon about prayer.  It was back in my New York days.  In that sermon he said, “People ask me, ‘Why do I have to come to the synagogue to pray?  I can pray in the middle of Central Park.’  To this I respond, ‘If you find yourself in the middle of Central Park then you better pray!’” His point was telling.  People say that they can pray anywhere but the fact of the matter is that unless the situation is such that it evokes prayer, they rarely if ever pray.  The Shabbat worship service offers us the opportunity to set aside some time for the act of praying; for actively reaching out to God, and opening ourselves up to receive a God who is reaching out to us.

It is not unlike our love for our dear ones.  We know we love them.  We feel our love for them con­stantly, but we don’t always express it.  We don’t always marry word and deed to intention.  We don’t always say to them, “I love you,” nor do we always demonstrate through our deeds the love we hold for them.  Yet there are times like birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, which provide us with the opportunities to express in word and deed that which is always in our hearts.  So it is with Shabbat and worship.  It offers us the opportunity to open our hearts and express to God that which is always there, and perhaps even open our souls and receive God’s reciprocating touch.

Sensing God in our every breath – praising God with our every breath – and praying to God on Shabbat are by no means alternatives but rather they exist in a symbiotic relationship.  Our constant experiencing of God in our lives fuels and vitalizes our prayers.  It makes them meaningful.  It endows them with wings with which to fly to Heaven.  And as for our prayers, they give voice – a clear and beautiful voice – to the connection we feel to God with our every breath.  They enable us to announce to the world, and most importantly to God, those profound feelings we carry in our hearts.  For in the end, prayer is not just a matter of reading words out of a book but rather attaching those words to that which is in our hearts, so that together they can rise to Heaven and draw Heaven to us.

Whenever I read Kafka, I wonder: what sort of dejection is this, that leaves one the strength to write, and write, and write? If you can write about the wreckage the wreckage is not complete. You are intact. Here is a rule: the despairing writer is never the most despairing person in the world.

—Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

Exodus 13:17-17:16

Our Torah portion contains one of the most well-known moments in the Bible.  This week the Children of Israel walk between walls of water on dry land to escape Egypt and Pharaoh’s army.  Cinematic images of Charlton Heston as Moses are burned into our global psyches!

Moses raises his staff high as God commanded and the waters parted only to come crashing down on the chariots of Pharaoh as they chased the escaping Israelites.  Pharaoh regretted letting the slave class leave and were trying to bring them back to slavery in Egypt. But they met their watery end.

We all know that in this episode the Children of Israel celebrated their new found freedom in song and dance that their deliverance had been granted.  Miriam led the women and children in a victory celebration singing the poem, Shirat Hayam that is attributed to Moses.  It is then the real journey in the wilderness towards Mt. Sinai begins.  Their dramatic escape was just the first round.  But the real march toward the Revelation at Mt. Sinai will begin in this week’s Torah portion.

On this journey however, Moses remembers to bring with them the bones of their ancestor Joseph.  Joseph who brought his brothers and father to Egypt to escape famine more than 400 years earlier will not remain in Egypt.  Though he became an Egyptian vizier he never forgot that he was a Hebrew.  And Moses though he too was raised in the Egyptian royal palace as an Egyptian prince, knew as well that he was a Hebrew.

Verse 13:19 states: Moses took Joseph’s bones with him, for he [Joseph] had adjured the sons of Israel, saying, God will surely remember you, and you shall bring up my bones from here with you.

This ancient promise was not forgotten.  And our ancestor was not forgotten but rather, Joseph accompanies the Israelites!

Which of your ancestors are with you on your journey?  Whose memory continues to inspire you each day?

Our custom of reciting Kaddish for our loved ones on their yarzeit is one of the ways we honor our family and friends whose memories are precious to us and who still accompany us on our journey.  The mitzvah of reciting the Kaddish prayer during a worship service  observing the yarzeit is how we can be like Moses and “carry the bones” with us to our own Promised Land.

All too often today many do not even make the effort to say the special and life affirming words of the Kaddish.  The challenge I take away from this week’s Torah portion is to reaffirm our commitment to honoring our ancestors who guided us, shaped us and still accompany us.

I invite you to honor them and come say Kaddish for them by making the extra effort.  The blessing of memory will uplift you and all of us.

One of the calls which we received during the day, asking whether or not we would be cancelling services was from the associate pastor of a local Presbyterian church whose Confirmation class had been scheduled to attend our worship that evening; a church which has been sending its Confirmation class to our synagogue for a “Jewish worship experience” for so many years I cannot begin to count them.  When I told her that services would be held as scheduled, she sounded quite pleased rather than disappointed.

That service was planned as a special one for our congregation.  Not only were we hosting these visitors and longtime friends of our congregation, but we also were hearing from those of our congregation who had the privilege and pleasure of attending the recent joint biennial convention of the Union for Reform Judaism and the Women of Reform Judaism, as they shared with us their insights and reflections on that gathering.  On top of that, we were observing the first Yahrzeit of beloved modern Jewish music composer, Debbie Friedman, by including in the music of the service many of her settings for our prayers.

No sooner had the Cantor and I pulled into the parking lot than the students from the Presbyterian church started arriving in car-after-car-after-car.  While some of our congregants arrived later, when the service began, the Presbyterians were in a significant majority.  Though the numbers gap shortened as the evening progressed and a few more of our people arrived, I strongly suspect that had it not been for the special reports and music, we would have remained far outnumbered.  At the beginning of the service, I made a quip about how it seemed as though the Presbyterians were made of far hardier stock than the Jews, but we all know that it is more than that.

Our congregation serves as host to many different church groups in the course of any given year.  One thing that most of these groups hold in common is that they are in awe of what they experience here.  They are captivated by the very sound of the Hebrew prayers.  They find our melodies enchanting.  The text of our services really touches them.  They are both fascinated and moved by our Yahrzeit boards, our obser­vance of Yahrzeits, and especially when mourners share some reflections on the people they are remembering that Shabbat.  And when the ark is open, and they see the Torah scrolls they are wide-eyed in mystical wonder, and especially so when they are fortunate enough to attend on a Shabbat eve when we actually take the scrolls out of the ark, carry them around the sanctuary, and read from them.  For so many of these church members, attending our services constitutes a spiritual, or even mys­tical, experience.

This is truly one of the great ironies of American Jewish life; that Christians have a far greater appreciation of Jewish worship than do Jews.  They find so much more meaning in our worship than do our own people.  Nor is this odd imbalance limited to the worship experience.  I find it so whenever I speak or teach about Judaism to a non-Jewish audience.  The non-Jews flock to study Judaism while the Jews seem to flee from the opportunities to do so.  In speaking with the folks at our own Federation, they, too, acknowledge that while their public programs have met with great success, it is not so much the Jews who attend them but rather the non-Jews.  Indeed, for as long as I have been in our community, that has been the greatest complaint that I have heard about the massive crowds who year in and year out attend our Interfaith Yom HaShoah observances; “Where are the Jews?”

I have to tell you that our community is not alone in this Jewish malaise.  According to a study done by the Pew Forum, which is an organization devoted to studying all aspects of religious life in America, we Amer­ican Jews have a pretty pathetic showing when it comes to the appreciation of our religious oppor­tunities.  So, for example, while the national average for those who attend worship services weekly or more than weekly is 39%, out of 14 different faith groups, with Jehovah’s Witnesses ranking 1^st at 82%, American Jews are tied with “Other Faiths” for 12^th and 13^th place – just above the “Unaffiliated,” with 16%.  According to that same survey, when it comes to how important people feel religion is in their lives, with the national average for those who feel that it is very or somewhat important being 84%, and with Historical Black Churches ranking number 1 with 98%, we Jews rank number 12, with 71%, just above “Other Faiths” and the “Unaffiliated.”

One cannot help but feel sad in the face of these statistics, and in the face of the reality that not only our synagogue but almost all American syna­gogues face on an ongoing basis.  Why is it that so many of those who are not Jewish have such a great appreciation for the rich and wonderful heritage which is our own, while we Jews look at it and yawn?  Perhaps it is the fault of the synagogues.  Perhaps it is the fault of the rabbis and the cantors.  Perhaps it is the fault of our religious schools.  Perhaps it is the fault of our obsessive desire to “fit it” with the rest of our society and not to be viewed as “different” or “alien” by our non-Jewish neighbors; to be with them, wherever they are, whenever they are there, doing whatever they are doing, and not to let our Judaism get in the way of that.  But more likely, it is all of these reasons, and even more.

There are those who say that competitiveness is a Jewish trait.  Maybe it is.  But if it is, then we as Jews cannot be satisfied being near the bottom of the list when it comes to religion; just one or two steps above those who openly profess that they do not care at all about religion.  So what are we going to do about it?  Whatever it is, we have to start doing it together.

From 1957 until his retirement in 1996, McBeth taught at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas.  He had an early start to his musical training, studying piano with his mother and taking up the trumpet in the second grade. He attended Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. While an undergraduate at H-SU, McBeth played in the university band. From December 1952 to January 1953, the band traveled with U.S. Camp Shows to Europe. He also played string bass in a jazz combo, which was unusual for the time period due to widespread segregation throughout the South.   He was initiated into the University of Texas Alpha Iota Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia in 1957.  In 1962, McBeth conducted the Arkansas All-State Band, with future president Bill Clinton playing in the tenor saxophone section. He served as the third conductor of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra from 1970 until 1973. He died aged 78 in Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

McBeth’s most outstanding awards have been the Presley Award at Hardin-Simmons University, the Howard Hanson Prize at the Eastman School of Music for his Third Symphony in 1963, recipient of an ASCAP Special Award each consecutive year from 1965 to present, the American School Band Directors Association’s Edwin Franko Goldman Award in 1983, elected Fellow of the American Wind and Percussion Artists by the National Band Association in 1984, National Citation from Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity in 1985, in 1988 Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia’s Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award for his achievement and continued contribution to American music, Kappa Kappa Psi’s National Service to Music Award in 1989, Mid-West International Band and Orchestra Clinic’s Medal of Honor in 1993 and Past President of the American Bandmasters Association. In 1975 McBeth was appointed Composer Laureate of the State of Arkansas by the Governor, the first Composer Laureate named in the United States.

For the past month, this has been how I start my day. I go to the synagogue and pray through the shacharit service. Towards the end, I stand, along with the other mourners, and say the Mourner’s Kaddish. For the first month, I could barely get through it.

Today, as I am eating my bagel, I am thinking about the next ten months. For the next ten months, this is where I will be. Every day. A month ago, I walked in to this synagogue for the first time, shell-shocked. My mother was not an easy person. She had no easy relationships. For her, being human was particularly hard and she didn’t make it any easier for people around her. I don’t think any of my brothers or sisters would say anything different.

But, for the next ten months, this is where I will be. Likely with at least some of these people around the table. Most of them were there that day when I walked in. That first day no one said much to me, but they looked at me and smiled. They looked at the torn ribbon I wore as a sign that I was within the first seven days of mourning someone and they got it. They didn’t know me. They didn’t know my mom. But they got it, and they smiled. Sad smiles that showed me that they’d been there.

So, for the next ten months this is where I will be. With these people. And with new people, who will walk in shell-shocked. And I will smile at them. A sad smile, because I’m doing this, and I get it now.

The public part of each morning prayer service begins with a series of Brachot (Blessings) that reflect our first thoughts and actions of the day. As I have often said, the purpose of a blessing is to connect an action, event, state of being or feeling with God. Thus, just as saying the Motzi prayer connects the act of eating bread with God, the Birchot Ha Shachar enable us to begin each day with an affirmation of the deep connection every aspect of our existence has with the Creator. The additional benefit of reciting this series of Brachot is that it helps the worshipper avoid taking that with which we are blessed for granted.  Joni Mitchell, the popular ’70′s recording artist sang a perfect song to illustrate the danger of this feeling of entitlement or ingratitude, ” don’t it always seem to go they never no what they’ve got ’till it’s gone..” Just as someone who temporarily loses his vision appreciates the gift of slight, any one who has suffered an injury will confirm that the ability to stand and move around freely is certainly something for which to be thankful each day.

Ben Keil author and freelance journalist points out that these Brachot come for two Talmudic  sources; fifteen, mainly expressing gratitude, coming from Tractate Brachot (60b) and three being listed in Tractate Menachot (43b.) At their inception, each of these blessings was intended to be recited by the individual in order of relevance early in the morning. Thus, for example, the blessing for restoring vision to the blind was recited when first opening one’s eyes, while the blessing for clothing the naked was recited prior to getting dressed. Even though some debate ensued, the sages who framed our formal liturgy decided to include these blessings communally in the synagogue service so that people of all comfort levels with the prayers would have an opportunity to express their gratitude together.

Not surprisingly, there is a marked difference in the way in which Conservative and Orthodox Siddurim articulate some of these Brachot. So, while the Orthodox version of the blessing thanking the Lord for not creating the worshipper as a woman, the Conservative version of the prayer thanks God for creating us in God’s image. Similar differences can be found in the Blessings thanking God for not making one a Gentile or a slave. According to some Orthodox commentators, the reason for the negative connotation of the above blessings is that Gentiles, woman and slaves do not have the same opportunities to fulfill Mitzvot (biblical commandments) as Jewish men have.  Rabbi Reuven Hammer , celebrated  scholar in the field of Jewish Liturgy and author of Or Hadash the authoritative commentary on the Sim Shalom Siddur explains that the process by which the changes in the Brachot were derived by the Conservative Rabbis involved consultation of classic Rabbinic texts as well as historic documents found in the Cairo Genizah, an ancient repository of sacred texts. Rabbi Hammer describes the approach of the Conservative Prayer Book in the following manner:

 Siddurim of the Conservative movement, taking their cue from the Tosefta and from the Genizah, use a positive formulation in order to express our feelings of gratitude, while showing sensitivity to others and demonstrating an appreciation of the status of women. We are indeed proud to be Jews, to be free and, above all, to be human beings made in the divine image.

As with almost all blessings, the Birchot Ha Shachar are each introduced by an  ancient formula which has roots dating back to the biblical Book of Chronicles; “Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha Olam – Praised are You Adonai our God, who rules the universe.” This formula serves to underscore the personal nature of our relationship with God as we begin our morning and throughout each day.  Rabbi Meir, one of our greatest sages, taught that we should endeavor to recite 100 blessings every day. Reciting Brachot  enables us to connect every moment of our existence – from the mundane to the miraculous, to the Holy Presence of our Creator.

I hope you enjoy this brief look at our prayers. If you have a suggestion, question or request, email me at hazzan@e-hazzan.com.

 Here is a link to the text in Hebrew and English

Hazzan Michael Krausman

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