Category: Prayer (Page 1 of 3)

#BlogElul 2 5775: Hineni – Here I am

August 16, 2015 / gurevitzr

At the opening of the High Holy Day prayer services there is a traditional prayer leader’s confession, Hineni which, in essence, is the prayer leader proclaiming their unworthiness to lead the congregation in prayer and asking God not to hold the community responsible for the leader’s shortcomings. I understand its original intent, but it has never been something that I have felt comfortable saying. I think it was meant as an ego check-in – certainly an important thing to do. But, over the years, it has become a moment that has sometimes been accompanied with great cantorial flourish – a performative moment that I have felt expresses the opposite.

I usually begin each of the holy days with an invitation to the congregation to travel through the prayer service in any way that enables them to make it a meaningful experience – to not feel obligated to read along with everything that I am doing; to choose readings to sit with longer, to close their eyes and meditate, to go for a walk and return. Even though my soloists and I have woven together liturgy and music with intention and the hope of creating a vessel for meaningful prayer, I have to create something that I believe will touch upon things that many different kinds of people appreciate and, therefore, is likely to lack something for everyone too. And so we all have to be responsible for our own prayer experience, and for our own shortcomings and sins.

Until now I have struggled with what to do with the Hineni prayer. Perhaps my feelings about it have been colored by the old joke:

During one service in a wealthy synagogue, the rabbi got carried away. Falling on hands and knees, forehead to floor, he said, “Oh God, before thee I am nothing.”The Cantor, not to be outdone, also got down, forehead to wood and said, “Oh God, before thee I am nothing.” Seeing this, Levy, a tailor in the fourth row, left his seat, fell to his knees, forehead to floor and he too, said “Oh God, before thee I am nothing.” With this, the Cantor elbowed the rabbi and sniffed: “Look who thinks he’s nothing!”
On the High Holy Days we are all meant to enter into this time of deep introspection and communal reflection as equals. There is no difference between one congregant and another, or between clergy and congregant. This year I have a Hineni that I feel able to read, and one that I will be able to invite each and every person in my congregation to read – each of us quietly to ourselves, as we prepare to enter into the ritual vessel that we are creating together with mindfulness:

Here I am,

one soul within this prayer community

Like those around me, I bring my own concerns and yearnings to this place,

hoping they will find expression in the time-hallowed words of my people and in the traditions cherished by generations before me.

May I bring the best of my energies to these Holy Days,

approaching this spiritual work with open heart and mind, sincerity, and sustained focus on the deep questions of this season:

Who am I? How shall I live? Where have I fallen short – or failed?

This night I take up the challenge of the Days of Awe:

cheshbon hanefesh – a searching examination of my life,

a moral inventory of my deeds, words, and thoughts.

During the next ten days,

let me face the truth about myself and listen to Your still, small voice.

Taking comfort in your promise that I am always free to change,

released from staleness and routine,

let me know the joy of beginning again.

May I gain strength as I share this task with those around me, united by our common purpose;

tikkun midot (improving our characters) and tikkun olam (repairing the world).

I now prepare myself to pray – one soul amidst this holy congregation.

(copyright CCAR, 2015; Rosh Hashanah Evening Service, p. 16)

It is another of those moments that the editors of Mishkan HaNefesh have provided alternative ways to encounter (the traditional Hineni is still there too). I am grateful for a text that better reflects how I would like to begin. And, of course, the core questions asked in the text above do not need to wait for the eve of Rosh Hashanah. This month of Elul is the time to begin to ask ourselves: Who am I? How shall I live? Where have I fallen short – or failed? Our inventories of deeds, words, and thoughts are likely to be long. We can take the time we need to review and begin the job of return.

Entering ‘The Ritual Lab’: the purpose of creative services

May 2, 2013 / gurevitzr

cross-posted from the Rabbis Without Borders Blog at myjewishlearning.com

During my first year with a new congregation, I’ve been offering a creative service slot once a month. Borrowing the term from Rabbi Hayyim Herring’s book, ‘Tomorrow’s Synagogues Today’, our ‘Ritual Lab’ Shabbat lets congregants know to come expecting the unexpected for that particular service. Over the course of the year, some services have been more experimental in format than others – more or less similar to the flow and musical styles of our regular Shabbat worship – but each have had a specific goal in mind.

My ‘training’, such as it was, for shaping these creative services came from the Jewish Renewal movement, having spent many years praying with these communities and creating prayer services in that context prior to my formal rabbinic studies. There, one of the terms coined is ‘interpretive davenning‘ – a way of entering the prayer experience in an interpretive mode so that there is a sense of narrative and conscious spiritual journeying that accompanies the flow from one prayer in our liturgy to the next. Different modes may be explored to accompany particular prayers in a way that helps to peel back the layers of history, poetry, and other aspects of meaning found in each prayer. Each of these modes helps to uncover something of the meaning of the prayer, or highlights an aspect of personal spiritual reflection that a prayer might help to highlight. Sometimes it is the mind that is engaged, and sometimes it is something more experiential that helps us see the words of prayer as vehicles for getting beyond words; in many ways this can be the deepest experience of prayer. Such modes can include meditation chanting, movement, dance, study/discussion of a prayer text in pairs, juxtaposing traditional prayers with other kinds of texts to create new readings and meanings, and more.

I so often hear congregants say that the words of our traditional liturgy get in the way of being able to find spirituality in the Jewish communal prayer experience.This is partially because we lack the tools in our spiritual toolbox to unpack the layers of meaning and possibility found in those prayers. But it is also because the sheer amount of words can be overwhelming so that we cannot possibly derive significant meaning from all of them in every service. Of course, not everyone enters into prayer with this expectation – for those who pray in a more traditional mode, it is the overall ritual and rhythm of the familiar prayers that provide the vessel for taking time out to enter into a different mode that is the primary experience. But for many Jews, and certainly in what has been, historically, the more rationally-focused Reform movement’s approach to prayer, the perceived lack of meaning gets in the way for many individuals seeking a spiritual practice that truly touches and transforms them.

In our ‘Ritual Lab’ services, typically two things happen simultaneously; the prayer service becomes a vehicle through which we can attach a learning experience on an infinite number of topics and, at the same time, the materials or experiences we weave into the service brings a new sense of meaning to the individual prayers that have always been there. The next time we pray our way through our traditional liturgy, we bring the insights from these interpretive experiences with us, and they forever change our understanding of and relationship to these traditional prayers.

So, for example, the Shabbat of Thanksgiving weekend, we held a drumming worship service, juxtaposing insights from Native American spiritual traditions with Jewish ideas and writings that resonated with similar insights. During Pesach we held a ‘Song of Songs Shabbat’ that raised awareness of the Song of Songs being read at Pesach, introduced Jewish mantra chanting into the worship experience, explored the mystical roots of Kabbalat Shabbat and the connections to Song of Songs, and highlighted the nature imagery in our traditional prayers and our own spiritual experiences in nature. Sometimes I’ve been intentionally provocative. For example, there is great ambivalence in the Jewish world about acknowledging Halloween in any way in our Jewish community. I personally don’t feel that this is a useful battle to pursue, given the place of this day in American popular culture and the families and children who delight in the modern expressions of dressing up and going trick-or-treating. Instead, the Friday night closest to Halloween became a time to weave teachings about Ghosts, ghouls and demons found in Jewish folk and mystical tradition into the fabric of our service, demonstrating how some specific prayer and ritual traditions that we still have today may have their roots in these stories and beliefs.

For some of our more regularly attending worshipers, these services have become a highlight. They tell me that the format offers a way for them to be exposed to different kinds of spiritual practice and ways to pray that are accessible and can be internalized, while also providing a forum for learning in a setting other than an adult learning class. The feedback tells me that these creative services are fulfilling their purpose. I look forward to another year of experimentation in our Ritual Lab.

Reaching for holiness after death: Torah wisdom after Boston and Texas

April 21, 2013 / gurevitzr

D’var Torah given at Congregation B’nai Shalom, Westborough, MA, this past Shabbat.

After the death… you will be holy. That is the meaning of the opening phrases of the two parshiot allocated to this Shabbat. The timing is somewhat uncanny given the unfolding of events in Boston these past 24 hours. Two of Aaron’s sons commit an act that is displeasing to God – in their case it is a ritual act and nothing as horrific as the act of terror committed by two brothers at the Boston Marathon. In the Torah story, both brothers die in the explosion that is a result of their behavior.

At the beginning of the next parsha, Kedoshim, God tells Moses to speak to the people and tell them, ‘You shall be holy, because I the Eternal your God am holy.’ What follows are a set of laws that begin with our relationship with our parents, moves on to reminders to keep far from idolatry, but then primarily focus on providing the kind of social structures that will enable us to preserve relationships with others in our community, built on lovingkindness and mutual respect. And, even as we are told to do justice, we are reminded, ‘do not hate your brother in your heart.’ Yes to justice, yes to rebuking someone when they do wrong, but we must not take vengeance. We must love our neighbor as ourselves.

Earlier this week I posted a blog on myjewishlearning.com in which I shared my sense of anger. It was partly in response to a slew of prayers that other colleagues had written and were sharing on line. Loving, gentle words; words that expressed sorrow and loss, yet hope and inspiration too. Thoroughly appropriate prayers. Prayers like the one we will hear tonight when we pray for healing. Some of our local town churches called mid-week prayer circles together. I’ll be honest. I didn’t much feel like praying. Perhaps it was partly because I, personally, don’t pray to a God that does or does not do something that brings about or fails to prevent these kinds of human-driven evils. I didn’t want to bring God into this picture of terrorism or, for that matter, the terrible images from Texas in the wake of the explosion at a fertilizer factory.

But our ancestors responsible for compiling the text of our Torah were inspired by a sense that we human beings, made in God’s image, could emulate God’s holiness by living according to a code of values and practices. In that sense, whether we believe in a God who literally speaks the commandments to Moses as portrayed or not, we can understand that our people spoke words that were understood as a response to God’s revelation. A deep sense that God’s presence can be revealed at any time and place when we tune in to our highest, holiest selves and choose to act inspired by that sense, rather than react based on fear, anger or despair.

It is very easy to respond from that lower place; all we need do is unleash the energy of our raw emotions. Rev Paul Raushenbush, writing in the Huffington Post Religion pages earlier this week, articulates the difference between Holy Anger and demonic anger; not literally demons, but those raw emotions that can unleash vengeful and destructive acts. Holy Anger, however, is that sense of outrage that human beings commit these acts and take away the lives and futures of others with such randomness and disregard for the value of another human life. But instead of lashing out, as a group of men in the Bronx did this week to the first Muslim they came across, we channel our anger into energy that we intentionally direct to countering hate with love. We counter those who would disregard the value of another human life by acting in ways that honors those lives, treats others with respect, and fosters more love and understanding between us.

And that, I believe, is the message of Kedoshim. We channel our energy in ways that lifts us up as a community and as individuals, to our highest image of ourselves. We respond to death and darkness with lovingkindess and light. I’ve heard the media tell us this week that we are ‘resilient’. I worry, sometimes, that this word might be interchangeable with ‘desensitized.’ But if we are choosing to respond to the negative and evil that would seek to poison our society in a way that makes us truly worthy of the label ‘holy’ then, indeed, we are resilient in the true sense of the word. And, understood through the lens of our ancestor’s response to the call of Revelation, we draw a little closer to the purity of the powerful life-giving energy that I choose to call God.

Hareini m’kabel alai et mitzvat haBoreh v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha, l’reicha kamocha

Here I am, ready to take upon myself the commandment of the Creator, to love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18; lyric from Sheva).

How to Make a Shiva Visit

November 8, 2012 / gurevitzr

Earlier this week I led a workshop at Congregation B’nai Shalom, Westborough, to offer guidance on how to make a shiva visit to a mourner. The workshop covered many practical and pragmatic aspects of shiva, particularly helping more congregants feel comfortable making a shiva visit to someone in their community that they don’t know personally. Much of what I offered was geared to the contemporary culture of a Reform Jewish community, with pragmatic advice on how to decide how many nights of shiva to have, how a shiva service may be run, etc.

The workshop was recorded and can be accessed via the link below. If you are listening in from somewhere beyond Congregation B’nai Shalom I hope you also find the material helpful. Please do feel free to add additional guidance or responses via the comments, either here on the blog or in the comments box on the sound cloud page where the workshop is hosted.

The article referenced during the workshop from myjewishlearning.com can be accessed here.

How do communities of faith respond to gun violence?

August 14, 2012 / gurevitzr

Images from Oak Creek, Wisconsin

This sermon was delivered at Congregation B’nai Shalom, Westborough, MA on Friday August 10th.

What happens when the 24 hour news cycle brings our attention to two mass murders involving guns in the space of two weeks?

And what role does a synagogue community have in responding to these horrific events?

Depending on what Cable channels you are in the habit of tuning into, you may find yourself witness to a response that goes on the offensive – either for or against gun control. ‘Why is it legal for ordinary citizens to own guns that can fire off multiple rounds in a matter of seconds?’ sums up one side of the argument. ‘If someone else in the room had been carrying a gun, the crazy guy could have been taken out before he killed more people,’ sums up the other side of the argument. And there we find ourselves; choose one side or the other, and then shout down whichever perspective isn’t yours.

As to the second question, communities of faith can respond in many ways:

– We can first reaffirm our commitment to deeply care about the welfare of others. We can pray for all those who are hurting and mourning. If something happens close to home, we can show up because that’s how we express love for our neighbor. If we hear of other concrete requests that enable to reach out to communities suffering from these traumas, we can respond. To that end, during the oneg you will find a card on a table in the Oneg room tonight. I invite you to write a message on the card, or on the sheets of paper next to the card that will be included inside, which we will mail to the Oak Creek Sikh community in Wisconsin to express our condolences, prayers, and support.

– We can join together as a community for a moment of reflection and prayer – jointly expressing our emotions when we hear of these terrible acts. This we will do in a few minutes, with a prayer written by Rabbi Naomi Levy in response to the terror shooting at the Sikh Temple.

– Events like this always give us pause for thought as a minority faith community. We remember too well a time when synagogues were the targets for these hate crimes. We remain alert because we know that these times are not completely behind us. Additionally, Jewish organizations with expertise around issues of security and awareness have been offering their assistance to Muslim and Sikh communities.

– We can rededicate ourselves to building bridges with our brothers and sisters of faith. We will look for and create opportunities in this coming year and beyond to bring together our community with Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and others because, when we overcome ignorance, indifference, and unfamiliarity, we build understanding, respect, and strengthen all of our faith communities in the process. Our 7th and 8th graders will be invited later in the year to participate in the STOP program – an incredible opportunity that has been running for a few years now to visit many different places of worship and meet other young people of faith. If you have a child in those grades I hope you will encourage them to take this opportunity when it comes. Our Brotherhood received a small community grant to create a collaborative interfaith program, and I look forward to working with them to make it a reality. And our Social Action team are dedicated to finding interfaith opportunities to work together in the local community. If you are already involved in an activity that might fit the bill, please tell me or our Social Action chair, Jeff Govendo, about it so that we can help spread the word and find others in the congregation who may wish to join you in your efforts. For my part, I look forward to attending and meeting the clergy in the local Interfaith clergy association when they re-gather in the Fall.

– And what about the public debate? Is it possible to talk with each other in the context of a faith-based approach to the principles and values at stake in a way that doesn’t simply echo the narratives heard on MSNBC or Fox news? I’d like to think there is. One of things that I believe strongly is that, while we can always find Jewish ethical values to inform our conversation, it’s much harder to translate some of those values into specific policy in contemporary America. It is possible, but we have to recognize and admit that it is seldom black and white.

So, for example, one of the absolute highest values in Judaism is the value of ‘to save a life is to save a world.’ Any action we can take that may lead to the preservation of life trumps almost any other action. And so, for example, an observant Jew can break the laws of Shabbat to rush someone to the hospital. Organ transplants are now halachically permitted by most authorities because they save lives. But, there are exceptions. If you are held at gunpoint and told that you can save 6 people by picking up a gun and killing 1 person randomly from the group, you may not do so. You may not murder. This may defy your sense of what you might think was the better choice, but you are not permitted to make one life less valuable than any other. So even the value of ‘to save a life is to save the world’ isn’t entirely black and white.

How might this value be applied to the conversation about gun control? One could argue that if more people carried guns, they would be able to potentially save many lives by killing someone who opens fire on a crowded room. That is the argument that proponents of gun rights make. I see it a little differently. I am concerned that a whole load of people carrying guns, with varying levels of skill and training, may inadvertently cause a lot more physical harm, including deaths, in such a scenario. It would also seem to me that if we applied ‘to save a life is to save a world’ to the current debate at hand, we should be investigating some restrictions on guns that were designed to fire off a large number of rounds between reloads. It would seem to me that keeping these kinds of guns out of the hands of ordinary civilians would be in keeping with this highest of Jewish values. We can have the debate about how that conforms with American constitutional rights, but that is not the same thing as looking at the Jewish ethical perspective.

This has been how the Reform movement has historically understood this value to apply to the contemporary scene, and its one of the main reasons that the Religious Action Center has advocated strongly for stricter controls over the most dangerous kinds of guns.

There may be some in the room who draw different conclusions. It is not my job as your Rabbi to tell you what US laws are right or wrong, good or bad. But it is my job to raise up and present Jewish values that have informed our faith tradition as I understand them. And this is how I understand the rabbinic statement, ‘to save a life is to save the world.’

But let me conclude by returning to the reaching out we can and must do to those who have lost and suffered. I end with this prayer:

This prayer was written to recite for the victims and survivors of the Aug. 5 shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Rabbi Naomi Levy, spiritual leader of Nashuva, wrote the prayer on behalf of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, which distributed it to congregations around the world.

Let Us Stand Up Together (נעמדה יחד)
–From our Haftarah this Shabbat, the second Haftarah of comfort (Isaiah 50:8), by Rabbi Naomi Levy

We stand together in grief
For the innocent victims
Of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin
Who perished in their house of prayer.
May their memories be a blessing,
May their lights shine brightly on us.

We stand together in mourning
For broken hearts,
The senseless loss, the shock, the emptiness.

We stand together in outrage,
Weary of this war-torn hate-filled world.
And together we pray:

Send comfort, God, to grieving families,
Hear their cries.
Fill them with the courage
To carry on in the face of this tragic loss.
Send healing to the wounded,
Lift them up, ease their pain,
Restore them to strength, to hope, to life.
Gather the sacred souls of the slaughtered
Into Your eternal shelter,
Let them find peace in Your presence, God.

Work through us, God,
Show us how to help.
Open our hearts so we can comfort the mourning,
Open our arms so we can extend our hands,
Transform our helplessness into action,
Turn the prayers of our souls into acts of kindness and compassion.

Let us stand up together
Our young and our old,
All races and faiths,
All people and nations.
Rise up above hatred
And cruelty and indifference.
Let us live up to our goodness
Let us learn from this tragedy
Let us walk together
Filled with hope
On a path of peace, Amen.

Snapshots of Congregation B’nai Israel

June 3, 2012 / gurevitzr

This sermon was delivered on Shabbat, June 1st, as a reflection on serving Congregation B’nai Israel for the past six years. I will be moving on to Congregation B’nai Shalom in Westborough, MA, beginning July 1st. I will continue to blog at this address.

Rabbi Prosnit often jokes, upon returning to lead services the first Shabbat after taking a vacation that ‘this will be the ‘what the Rabbi saw on his vacation’ sermon.’ But, while we get the joke, the sermons are always insightful and I always see the world in a new light or learn something new from listening to those reflections. Because Rabbi Prosnit, who I have learned so much from these past six years, knows that a good friend does not make you endure a sitting of the 875 photos that they took on their holiday; rather, they pre-select a handful of the most unique and memorable moments worthy of sharing.

When I’ve been on a journey and return with my collection of snap-shots, I tend not to be the kind of traveler who has images like ‘there’s me in city X’, or ‘there’s me next to statue Y’. I like to take in the scene, and learn from the unfolding of the human or natural scene before me. I want you to see what I saw through my eyes when I was there. And that’s what I want to do this evening. This isn’t the ‘What I’ve learned about being a Rabbi’ sermon. This is the ‘This is what Jewish community looks and feels like’ sermon. I’ve sifted through thousands of days, scenes and moments from the past 6 years here at B’nai Israel. Too many to count and too many to do justice to all of you, what you have created together, and how you have inspired me. All I can do is select a few snapshots. This is my mini photo-montage of my journey with Congregation B’nai Israel – the memories that I take with me, created by each and every one of you.

Shabbat morning minyan

The first picture is a little out-of-focus. That’s because I’m still rather bleary-eyed at 8am. As many of you know, I’m not a morning person. But, such an incredibly unique and blessed community is our Shabbat morning 8am minyan that I believe that I’d be a regular attendee even if I didn’t have to get up to the lead the service. Cantor Blum knows that when I lean over to her just before we start the service and say, ‘let’s sing ‘Open up our eyes’ before the Shema this morning,’ that I need a little extra help fully awakening to the day that week.

In this slightly blurred snap-shot, you’ll see a teenager reading Torah on the anniversary of their bar or bat mitzvah. Or perhaps one of the many adult Torah leyners we have up at the reading desk. If you notice that the shot looks a little more blurred where their hand holds the yad – the Torah pointer – its because sometimes they get nervous. But they do it anyway, and they inspire others, from time to time, to step up and say that they are ready to have a go.

But I also want you to take in the scene at the back of the chapel. There’s a couple of rows of women – they are some of our senior members. They are there every week. They’ve been through a lot; losses and challenges in life. But they are there for each other, and they help each other get through. And they didn’t stop praying. In fact, its after some of those losses and challenges that they began. Seeing them there, praying together, helps me to pray.

Our teenagers

In the next snap-shot its hard to pick out what to focus on. Actually, unless you were there, its hard to tell from the image what exactly is going on – it’s a group of teenagers and the scene looks a bit chaotic. Its hard to tell what they are doing, but you can see from the laughs on their faces that everyone is having fun. This is a Monday night during my class with our Eighth Graders. You know, its not an accident that I’ve spent 6 years running the 8^th grade program. It wasn’t intended as Rabbi Prosnit’s version of hazing the new Assistant Rabbi. Its actually the gift that I received from our Educator, Ira Wise. We value our teens, and bar and bat mitzvah is not a destination, its just one stop on the journey. And when one of your Rabbis is responsible for teaching the 8^th grade its because we really care and we want you to be a part of it.

In my photo, on this particular night, things look a bit different because it’s the night when members of BIFTY, our Youth Group, come storming in and ‘kidnap’ my students for night to give them a taste of our High School youth group community that they will be invited to become a part of that night. I’ll tell you what I see in this picture, and what awes me every time. A group of teenagers – 14, 15, 16 year olds maybe. And some of those kids were my 8^thgrade middle class students just last year. And tonight they are leaders. They are team-building, and they are instructing and guiding, and they are helping and including. And I get a glimpse of something that is so much more powerful than just fun and games. I get a glimpse of the remarkable young people in our congregation; not only may they be the leaders of our community in the future – they are our leaders today.

I see them in BIFTY, I see them at Merkaz. And they inspire me and give me hope.

Nursery and young children

The next picture is one of the few places in the synagogue building where I feel tall. There are some adults in the room – a couple of teachers and our Pre-School Director, Alexa Cohen. But I’m feeling tall because I’m in a pre-school classroom with a class of 4 year old children. We’ve got our hands and legs stretched out in all different directions (demonstrate). We’re being trees. Because its almost Tu Bishvat – the festival of trees. Tu Bishvat often falls in February and so, when I come in and ask them what special holiday is coming up soon, I’ve learned not to be surprised when they tell me ‘Valentine’s Day’.

In fact, its very helpful when they remind me that 3 and 4 years take in everything from the world around us. It reminds me that being a Rabbi today means that we always have to respond to the times and the culture that our community is living in. We can’t stand still, and we have to make the ancient Jewish rituals, holidays and wisdom relevant in today’s world. That’s what Rabbi Nicole Wilson-Spiro has done in providing a weekly Shabbat morning Young Families Chavurah which combines a totally contemporary take on parenting Jewish children with the gift of family time on Shabbat. And that’s what Elaine Chetrit does with our elementary-aged children on Friday evening at Mishpacha Shabbat. Celebrating with these groups gives me joy.

Adult learners

If the next shot looks a little unfamiliar and a little… Christian… that’s because we’re at a Retreat Center on the CT shoreline. 30 women have gathered for a one day retreat. Its probably the most intensive kind of adult learning experience that I’ve taken a snap-shot of, but I could have chosen so many others, with men and women, experienced learners and complete beginners, figuring out their relationship with Jewish community, traditions, ethics, and taking a look at what they believe, what inspires them, and what feeds their spirit and their soul. Some are engaging in the hardest kind of learning of all – being complete beginners at Hebrew with Elaine, or the festivals and other basics in the Parent Learning Circle.

Its not easy being a beginner at something when we’re adults and so accomplished in other areas of life. But the snap-shot of the retreat will always stay with me. Its partly that the setting is so beautiful. Its also a place where I’ve worked and led services with my soul partner and master teacher of creativity – Suri. But more than that, it’s the deep sharing and connecting that is so beautiful; its what’s possible when we dispense with the ‘small talk’ and engage in ‘big talk’ with each other. This snap-shot is full of spiritual awakenings. Learning with these adults nourishes my spirit.

Board/committees/lay leadership

I wasn’t actually present for this next snap-shot. But it’s a group of people with charts and to-do lists in front of them. The photo may not look very exciting – a group of people sat around a table, talking and planning. Everyone has something to contribute and everyone is pitching in with their particular skill set and passion. Some of these people knew each other before this photo was taken. But some are meeting for the first time, or getting to know each other better. They are planning a big party, and by all accounts, they did an amazing job! But while I have and continue to thank everyone who had a hand in an incredible gala this year, this kind of scene at our Temple is just a touch-stone for all of the lay leadership that makes things happen around here each and every day.

Committees who are doing our caring work, visioning the future of our Religious school education, helping with our family-focused celebrations and mitzvah day, making sure that we can pay our bills, and helping our amazing facilities manager, Abby Rohinsky, with all the juggling of activities, tasks and maintenance involved in running a place like this. And then, our course, there is our Board and Executive.

I’ve worked here under three Presidencies – Richard Krantz, Amy Rich, and Mark Kirsch. And now Mindy Siegel prepares to take up the reigns. Each so different in their styles, and each so delightful to partner with in our work here. Countless people who, even if its just to do one thing one time, step up to offer of themselves to make this holy community happen. We couldn’t do it without members and their financial support. But that isn’t enough. We couldn’t do it without a quality professional staff. But that isn’t enough.

Just as in the Torah Moses asks for contributions to build the Mishkan – the place where God will dwell among them – from those whose hearts move them, so those who volunteer of themselves are giving from their hearts to create this place where God dwells among us. When I look at this snap-shot I am inspired to work harder and offer more too.

Tonight

The final snap-shot hasn’t been taken yet. I’d like to break with sanctuary protocol just this once and take it now. Its all of you.

When I arrived, I sang a short blessing at my installation. So taken was I by the warm welcome I received when I arrived 6 years ago, and by my sense of genuine caring and community that I felt here, I adapted a blessing that is traditionally said when you see beautiful and amazing things in nature. The blessing says, ‘Blessed are You Eternal our God Ruler of the Universe, who has such as these in Your world.’ This is a beautiful snap-shot that I see before me, and you have been my blessing. Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-olam, Shecacha lo b’olama, shecacha lo b’olamo. Amen, Selah. Thank you.

Engaging our Teens

December 13, 2011 / gurevitzr

cross-posted from the Rabbis Without Borders Blog at myjewishlearning.com

At Congregation B’nai Israel, Bridgeport, CT, I’m blessed with a class of almost 30 eighth graders and we meet weekly on Monday evenings.

Last week, we began a conversation with them that emerged from a desire to highlight the upcoming Reform movement biennial conference. I haven’t attended a Biennial for several years, but they are always exciting opportunities for me to hear how visions are being articulated and what kinds of new ideas are being incubated. Some of that comes from the official program but, as is so often the case with these large conferences, its the one-to-one conversations that we get to have with old friends, and new people that we chance upon that provide some of the great food-for-thought. And praying on Shabbat with approximately 5,000 people (the estimated turnout this year) is a unique experience.

This year, Teen Engagement is one of the key areas of focus, with a special track of the conference dedicated to this work. The old models of top-down movement-led design of a program to be launched and rolled out across the country is gone. Instead, a vision of a much more fluid and dynamic project that involves teens in conversations to co-create new opportunities is the direction we are heading.

I wanted my teens in my eighth-grade class to know about this, and gain a sense of being part of something bigger. We began with an initial trigger video, playing this:

While the context for this video is Israel, and the miracle of returning to the land, we extended the conversation to ask our teens how they respond to an idea of carrying a heritage and being part of ‘the hope’ for what might still be to come. The core of our conversation turned to the challenges they identified to their being engaged in Jewish life and activity and, finally, to some of the creative ideas they might have to respond to those challenges.

I don’t think I can truly do justice to what emerged during the conversation, but it was indeed very hopeful and helpful. We only had limited time, and I’m sure the conversations will continue, but the two areas they focused on was the communal worship experience, and ways of engaging in Jewish culture and ideas that tapped into some of the cultural forms and technologies that they are utilizing in the rest of their lives.

On the worship front, they sought more diverse expressions and experiences, and a musical style that had the energy of the music that some of them knew from Jewish summer camp. While this music has been a major influence on the evolving music of prayer in the Reform movement from the mid-1970s, there is no question that the newest sounds still emerge from camp, and a multi-generational service is not going to be the same experience as an age-specific experience. But the generation-specific sounds are not the only reason why young adult independent minyanim and 20s-30s services in large city-based congregations are proving to be increasingly popular.

My teens also pointed to the way that they are engaged in creating the prayer experience when they are at camp, weaving contemporary themes and readings into the core prayers. This is very much in tune with what we are seeing among our engaged younger generations – a desire for more of a ‘do-it-yourself’ kind of Jewish community, where a Rabbi may offer guidance and support, but is not expected or even wanted to be crafting and leading the whole experience. This kind of inclusive engagement in creating communal prayer experiences is working for teens and young adults beyond the Jewish community too. Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran minister in Boulder, CO, leads an emergent Christian community that uses this approach to shape the worship experience. She says that it is important that the worshipers are producing and not consuming. ”Sometimes things are a little ‘clunky’ but its completely worth it because the people are really owning it,” she says.

Beyond the world of synagogue and Jewish worship, my teens had expressed the ‘otherness’ that they sometimes feel in their public school context, where they could name countless examples of ignorance of Judaism or ways in which their sense of Jewish identity was so different to outsider perceptions. But their pride in their identity was strong, and they sought more opportunities to be with teens who ‘get it’. Not necessarily through more face-to-face opportunities – these kids already have heavily scheduled lives – but they brainstormed things like a Jewish Facebook for under-18 Jewish teens who wanted to talk about ‘Jew-stuff’ or a Jewish kind of Second Life where they could experiment with different kinds of virtual Jewish experiences and explore more of Judaism for themselves (these kids haven’t discovered ‘Second Life’ yet, otherwise they might know that there is already quite an extensive area of Israel, synagogues and more already there.

They also loved getting ‘Jewish answers’ to the everyday things … how about a ‘Jewish Siri’?

So much of what I heard in this brief conversation and brainstorm reinforced what we with Rabbis Without Borders at CLAL (the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership) have been discussing for some time now as we seek to better understand the contemporary cultural contexts in which we passionately share paths to Jewish life. There are start-up organizations, online communities, and worship communities already responding to the next generation, but ‘mainstream’ Jewish institutions and congregations have a ways to go. I’m encouraged by a Biennial conference that is opening to new conversations and forms of engagement. As we respond and co-create an evolutionary Judaism together, within and beyond Jewish movements, we need only ask the questions and we’ll find that our youth have plenty to say.

Elul Reflections 8: The Islamic Cultural Center in My Jewish New Year’s Prayers

September 2, 2010 / gurevitzr

This is a re-posting from ‘Torah Around the World’ – a weekly Torah commentary produced by the World Union for Progressive Judaism in their e-newsletter. To subscribe to the e-newsletter, simply send an email with no subject and no message to wupjnews-subscribe@wupj.org.il

“The Islamic Cultural Center in My Jewish New Year’s Prayers” – on Akedat Yitzchak (Genesis 22:1-24)

By Rabbi Mark L. Winer, Senior Rabbi, West London Synagogue

At the season of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hoshana, a time for taking stock has been established. God commands us as Jews to confront the world in which we are God’s partners, and do something about making it a better place. That is our mission, God’s purpose for Jewish existence,L’taken Olam B’Malchut Shaddai, “to repair the world under the rule of God.”

In this season of self-reflection and prayer, my heart reaches out to You, O Lord. We need Your help. This year when the Book of Life is opened and You judge us, we seek a pathway to reconciliation with You and our community. We wish to act so that we may both honor our dead and preserve our values. Please Lord Hear Our Prayers.

Give courage and strength to those who have lost loved ones.
Comfort them in their grief and suffering.
Give understanding and compassion to those of all traditions
who would build centers for cultural understanding.
Guard us from confusing those who would help us
with those who would harm us.
Bring us together in goodwill and peace, and not in pain, fear, and outrage.
Grant us the vision to build bridges between our differences so that
we may honor our dead, preserve our values,
and create a more secure community.
May the bonds forged in our endeavors to bring peace and understanding to
Your world be an ever-lasting testament to Your grace and love.

Do not allow anyone to destroy what we would build with Your help and guidance.
Silence those who would exploit this conflict, pander to our weaknesses,
or use our pain to gain power for themselves.

When the Book of Life is closed at the conclusion of Yom Kippur,
may we know that we have done everything that we can to bring about
peace and reconciliation with You and our community.

Blessed are You O Lord our God who grants the greatest gift of peace to our hearts and our world.

Though these words have broad implications, they are, of course, about the building of an Islamic Cultural Center near ground zero. I consider the Islamic Cultural Center as one who has spent my life’s work in Tikkun Olam – repairing the world through interfaith dialogue and action, trying to reconcile the members of God’s dysfunctional family of humanity. For thirteen years I have lived and worked in the heart of Arab London. Together with my Muslim neighbors and imam colleagues I have on a daily basis studied the ancient wisdom of the Talmudic dictum “one who makes peace within his neighborhood is viewed as having made peace within the entire world.” I have read about the development of the controversy in New York, and I have been deeply saddened by it. This is especially true because we share so much with Islam as this time of year so vividly reminds me.

The Torah portion Jews read in synagogue on Rosh Hoshana morning,Akedat Yitzchak, “the binding of Isaac,” has a parallel in the Koran. In the Jewish version, God tests Abraham’s faith by commanding his willingness to sacrifice his only son by Sarah, Isaac. In the Koran, God commands Ibrahim to sacrifice his only son by Hagar, Ismail. In its essence, both versions are the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son. For both religions, this story plays a central role in its traditions. For Judaism, the story is told every Rosh Hoshana. For Islam, the story is central to the celebration of Id Al-Adha that comes at the end of the Hajj on the 10th day of the last month of the Islamic calendar. In both cases, the sons of Abraham live, and there are indications in the Hebrew Bible that they come together afterwards. The lesson for all of us is that human sacrifice is forbidden.

We seem to need this reminder. We seem too ready to hate, and too slow to listen. We take pride in our intolerance, and despise anyone who disagrees with us. I fear more the kind of world we would create with such responses than I fear the world that terrorists would impose upon us, because it is easier to fight terrorism than the worst in ourselves.

Our ancestors fought for the freedoms with which we have been blessed. The people who died on 9/11 died for the way of life these freedoms gave us. These freedoms are the basis of our strength and have encouraged our great diversity. They have made us among the most inventive people in the world, and have given us a depth and breadth that is a source of ever-renewable wealth. In our pain, please do not allow us to compromise these freedoms, and thereby weaken ourselves. With hope, I will end my New Year’s prayers by tapping into the very diversity of our resources.

I pray that we allow the values of equality, charity, and hospitality
which are so much a part of the Muslim culture and tradition be extended to all.

I pray that we allow the respect for diverse understandings
that is so much a part of Jewish tradition be extended to all.

I pray that the love and grace that is integral to
Christian tradition be extended to all.

And finally I pray that all of our religious traditions teach us to seek
understanding because only a world filled
with understanding can be filled with Your presence, O Lord,
and Your great gift of peace.
We need Your Help; we cannot do it alone. Please God Hear Our Prayers.

_______________________________________________________________
Mark L Winer is the President of FAITH: the Foundation to Advance Interfaith Trust and Harmony and has been the Senior Rabbi of the West London Synagogue of British Jews since 1998

Elul Reflections 2: Another of those difficult words… sin

August 12, 2010 / gurevitzr

There is no doubt that the High Holydays, and this month of preparation leading to them, places before us some challenging stuff. And that, in many ways, is how it should be. But just as, in the first of this seasons’ reflections, I offered a way into the idea of prayer for those who find prayer challenging, it is important to grapple with a number of the challenging aspects of the spiritual work of this season because sometimes we let preconceived ideas about what they mean get in the way of making this work spiritually meaningful and transformative for ourselves.

And one of the biggest words that challenge us at this season is SIN. Just as with prayer, there is more to be said on this than can be encapsulated here, and so it is a theme I’ll return to during the month, offering different ways to get past some of the commonly held misconceptions of this word that can get in the way of our willingness to examine ourselves and re-center ourselves as we prepare to enter into a New Year. But here, in a nutshell, is one of the ways that I understand sin. Sin is where we misidentify what we need to fill the hole we feel inside; our behavior, our reactions to someone, our craving or desiring of certain material things, are attempts to respond to a yearning that is, at its core, a spiritual one, but which we have misidentified as something else. We know that we have misidentified our need because, however much we try to address our dis-ease, our sense of anxiety, or anger and frustration, our sadness, our pain…, with the wrong things, the feelings don’t go away.

In future Elul Reflections I’ll return to this theme with more specific examples. But when you pause today for a period of meditation or reflection, consider this definition of sin, and allow some of the uncomfortable feelings that all of us, at times encounter, to arise. Over time, if you allow yourself to sit with them for a while and watch where they come from – what encounters are you replaying over and over again, what story do you weave to ‘explain’ the feelings that you have… give yourself permission to examine these more closely and more lovingly. If we get lost in the narrative we are more likely to continue to perpetuate the same stories. If we get angry or frustrated with ourselves at our shortcomings or weaknesses, it is harder to heal. But noticing the feelings and learning, over time, where they come from, can create the space we need to ask for guidance on how to heal so that we don’t continue to repeat the cycle of behavior over and over. And that is where we can draw on prayer to help us. May I feel healed; May I remain calm and centered; May I be at ease…

Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Elul Reflections 1: Beginning the Conversation

August 10, 2010 / gurevitzr

The four Hebrew letters that spell the month, ‘Elul’ are encoded, our tradition teaches us, with multiple meanings, each an acronym using these four letters. The one that is best known is shown above – ‘Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li’ – I am my beloved and my beloved is mine.

As we enter this month, with an invitation to reflect and prepare for Rosh Hashanah – The Jewish New Year – and Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement, Elul comes to bring us an important message. The essence of love is also the essence of prayer – it is all about relationship. But many of us find the idea of a relationship with God difficult. We may not feel it; we may not know how to create it; we do not know what to say, or we feel foolish ‘saying’ anything to the Divine Presence which we cannot define or grasp. We may have some clarity about what we don’t believe, but far less about what we do.

Beginning is the hardest part. The questions and the doubts get in the way. But what if, today, on the 1st of Elul, we responded to the invitation by committing ourselves to a month of spiritual practice? Something each day that we read and reflect upon, a time set aside for meditation or prayer.

Prayer can be a loaded word. It conjures up images of subjects addressing kings on thrones – that is the ancient language in which many of our Jewish prayers were cast, and it takes time and practice to break through the allegorical barriers of the words and see the human desires, hopes, and yearnings that they point toward. But we can start with something simple. This month of Elul is a time to return to matters of the spirit; to brush away some of the distractions of the material world, at least for a short time, to remind ourselves of who we truly are, who we wish to be, and to ask ourselves whether our daily actions and deeds are truly reflective of the call of our soul. We come to realize that we’ve been feeding some of the emptiness we feel with the wrong things, and we know they are wrong because the emptiness or the unease, the fears and anxieties aren’t going away. Before we can spend some time trying to understand what lies behind these feelings and how we might address them, it is good to first spend some time affirming what we seek. These can be different things for different people, but I suspect most of us would seek to affirm the following:

May I feel protected and safe

May I feel contented and pleased

May my physical body support me with strength

These affirmations are from Sylvia Boorstein, a Jew who is a practitioner and master teacher of Buddhist meditation, and they are her rendition of some of Buddhism’s ‘Metta’ affirmations – a practice of lovingkindness. The practice can help to calm our own minds and bring clarity to the spiritual desires of our own hearts. The next step is to bring to mind loved ones and friends and ask these things for them too. Eventually, over time, the practice invites you to bring to mind those you have difficulties with; those you find it less easy to love or even to like. I offer these affirmations here because I find that they resonate with the deepest yearnings of the soul and are quite universal. For those of us who get a little stuck with ‘Blessed are You, O God, Ruler of the Universe…’ they offer another way in to reach toward the Divine.

In Dani Shapiro’s spiritual memoir, ‘Devotion’, which I will be referring to on several occasions during this High Holyday season, she describes her first experience of being introduced to this practice with Sylvia Boorstein. Unsure of the metaphysical question – whom are we addressing – Sylvia explains that we don’t need to have worked that out; perhaps we are simply expressing a wish. As Dani reflects upon this answer, she writes:

But really, what did it mean to fervently, wholeheartedly name a desire? May you feel protected and safe. To speak out of a deep yearning – to set that yearning loose in the world? May you feel contented and pleased. Could a wish be a less fraught word for a prayer?… Maybe faith had to do with holding up one end of the dialog.

This is how we begin. A daily practice, whether using the affirmations above, or simply sitting quietly and finding a way to express the deepest yearnings of your heart. Let us begin the conversation and see where, during this month of Elul, it may take us.

During this month I will continue to post some of these reflective pieces, and they will be interspersed by postings from other clergy and educators at Congregation B’nai Israel, and postings from congregants who will offer their own reflections and experiences of the High Holyday season. Please do use the comments to reflect on any of the postings, or email me at rgurevitz@congregationbnaiisrael.org if you have a longer piece that you would like to share.

Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz