Spiritual Reflection During Elul

We are now in the month of Elul, the Hebrew month that leads us into the Yamim Noraim, the High Holy Days.  Many Jews use this time period to think back on the year that has passed in anticipation of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. A few years ago my colleague, Rabbi Debra Orenstein, introduced me to a very meaningful spiritual tool to prepare for the Days of Awe.  The custom is to use the last 12 days of the month of Elul (this year from Sept. 5, 2012 onward) until Rosh Hashanah to review and meditate each day on one month from the last year. On the day of Erev Rosh Hashanah, you review Elul, the month just gone by.

Some people will begin each day in meditation or make a quiet space to reflect on the month they are focusing on each day.  If you are in the habit of praying the morning prayers, Rabbi Orenstein suggests that you might find this to be a particularly good time to reflect.  “The daily prayers in the Amidah, asking for wisdom, forgiveness, healing, justice, a good year, and peace, among other aspirations – create a beautiful vision against which to measure the past year.”  

This reflection can be done with a study partner, a friend or spouse, or written in a journal.   You might look in your calendar – paper or electronic, from the past year to remind yourself of where you were during each of the months of last year.
Spiritual reflection can lead to a deeper self-awareness of self, of community, of the world, because it helps us to do teshuvah – literally to return to who we really are.

We also do this kind of reflection together as a community during these Days of Awe. And when you are in synagogue for all of the services of Selichot, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, if you pay close attention to the themes that run throughout the liturgy of these days, you can see the threads of self-reflection, communal confession and prayers of selichot, asking for forgiveness. But it is really to our benefit to prepare for these 10 days before they begin and then by continuing to let the questions go through you as you go through the ten days of teshuvah – return. 

My family and I wish each of you a Shanah Tova U’Metukah, a year filled with health, joy and the sweetness of life.  May this new year of 5773 be a year of health, happiness, and growth for you and your family.

URJ Biennial 2011, Washington, DC

  

This December 14-18, 2011, I was among more than 5000 Jews who attended the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial in Washington DC. Delegates from over 500 congregations in North America, Israel, and the UK studied, prayed, debated resolutions, and celebrated Shabbat together in an atmosphere of learning, networking, and passion for the future of Reform Judaism.

A major highlight of the biennial was hearing from President Obama, who gave a stirring address to the assembly,  addressing issues of social justice and  Israel, and peppered with humor - referring to his daughter Malia's busy schedule attending friends' bat mitzvahs, and giving a shout out to NFTY, the North American Federation of Temple Youth. He began his remarks by wishing us an early Shabbat Shalom and then continued with a d'var Torah on the portion of the week, resonating with the word “Hineini”,  “Here I am”. It was an exciting and moving start to our Shabbat together. We were also privileged to hear from Ehud Barak, and Natan Sharansky, and had the opportunity to dialogue and discuss the challenges and opportunities for Reform Jews in Israel with representatives from Israeli Reform congregations.

This year's biennial marked a major leadership transition as Rabbi Rick Jacobs became the new President of the Union for Reform Judaism.  Rabbi Eric Yoffie, who is retiring after having led the movement for the last 16 years, was celebrated in prayer, speech, and song on Saturday evening at Havdalah. Rabbi Jacobs shared his passionate vision for the future of Reform Judaism at the closing plenary on Sunday morning.

This year's biennial also had the largest attendance of Jews in their 20s and 30s and inaugurated a new initiative for the URJ, the Campaign for Youth Engagement, or CYE.  This initiative is a strategic plan to develop greater youth involvement and reinvigorate our movement's strategies for retaining youth post b'nei mitzvah and through high school and making our congregations more welcoming and responsive to the needs of Jews in the post- college and young adult years through their 20s and 30s. The convention halls were full of people, ideas, and energy.  There was also a large exhibit hall of vendors for Judaica shopping, Jewish books and music, and programmatic resources.

Prayer Services at URJ Biennial 2011

I attended many different learning sessions from Yoga Shalom to the Changing Landscape of Jewish Life, Judaism and Technology in the Digital Age, What Jews Need to know about Genetic Diseases - (the importance of genetic testing and counseling for young Jews),  and New Trends in Jewish Religious Education,  and much more.  I reconnected with old friends,  colleagues,  and teachers,  and made new friends and connections.

Kumsitz with friends

I danced and sang at biennial Shabbat and daily worship, studied text with wonderful and insightful scholars, and was thrilled to hear many Jewish musicians perform - Josh Nelson, Dan Nichols, Julie Silver, Jeff Klepper,  Beth Schafer, Joe Black, Rick Recht,  Michelle Citrin,  Noah Aronson, Ellen Allard, Shira Kline, Peri Smilow, and many more.  We were all profoundly missing Debbie Friedman at this biennial. The conference included a beautifully moving and heartfelt tribute to Debbie and her music. As Josh Nelson said, “She was there at the beginning and she is still with us now through her songs.” Theodore Bikel received a special award from the URJ and Saturday evening we were privileged to hear the incomparable guitarist and Israeli singer David Broza.  Services were enhanced with beautiful music from a special biennial choir and a choir of the American Conference of Cantors.  After the evening programming and concerts ended there was an informal late night kumsitz with old and new friends. The one thing I did not do much of at the biennial was sleep!

Kol B'seder - Rabbi Dan Freelander and Cantor Jeff Klepper - URJBiennial 2011

David Broza at URJ Biennial 2011

You can view videos from this year's biennial of speakers, teachers, and Shabbat services and music at the URJ Biennial 2011 link and be inspired!  And then plan to attend the URJ Biennial 2013 Dec. 11-15 in San Diego!

How Much of The Prayers Have Gone Through You

(This post is excerpted from my Rosh Hashanah 5772 morning sermon)

Prayers can be comforting, prayers can be uplifting, and prayers can be challenging; the words of our liturgy can be disturbing.  Some of the liturgy we may know well and some not so well. Some prayers some have become so interconnected within our tradition that it is virtually impossible to take them out.

We have prayers that span the vast centuries of Jewish history and tradition, all the way back to when the great Temple stood in Jerusalem.  How awesome and incredible it is to think that we stand today and pray the same prayers as Jews across the world, and that we pray the same words our ancestors have prayed in many different places and in vastly different times, and these words have sustained them. So it is that we are all together now, on the pages of our prayerbooks, praying these words with Jews of the time of the Golden Age of Spain, of the Crusades, of our Reform ancestors in the early 1800s.  And yet, knowing this, we realize that some of our prayers are hard to understand and were composed long before our modern understandings.  Their authors could not have predicted how we would think today - they didn’t know that they were medieval any more than we know how our words will sound to Jews a thousand years in the future.  Many of these words were uplifting and meaningful to them. Maybe some of these words bothered them too. We do not know how literally they prayed these same words and phrases. 

Many of the words were chosen for reasons other than their literal meaning - as poetry, allusions to the words of the Bible and Talmud, or because the sounds and syllables lend themselves more easily to chanting and meditation.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner reminds us of this: “If I tell you to read the Amidah silently, you’ll read it like Evelyn Wood speed-reading dynamics at two thousand words a minute with 90 percent comprehension. What you will discover after a page or two is that you’re reading to get information and there’s no new information in the Siddur. So the first thing you have to (remember) is that reading prayers is not reading to get information.” (Lawrence Kushner, in Making Prayer Real, Mike Comins (ed). p. 175).

In other words, it’s not how much of the prayerbook you have gone through, it’s how much the prayers have gone through you. About 300 years ago there was a very famous teacher, Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezrich. Students came from all over to study with him.  Of all the many lessons he taught his students was the insight of how to know and understand Torah.  They thought that if they could repeat everything he taught them, they would truly know Torah. Not so, the Maggid taught, don’t just say words of Torah, BE Torah. 

Prayer is also challenging because it reminds us of our obligations, our moral responsibilities and our fragility.  The words hold us accountable. If you pray the words of the siddur daily, your world view will change and you will be focused more on how you walk in the world through the lens of Jewish history, tradition, and values.  You will see the world through Jewish eyes. That, above all, keeps us connected to the words of the Siddur.  The language of the prayerbook connects us to Jews throughout the ages who had similar concerns to ours - the amazement at the gift of being alive, the fragility and preciousness of life, the connections between the generations,  how to find joy, and comfort and connection despite the challenges of living, our desire to become better than we are, to return to God.

Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, the 11th Century poet and author of the Kuzari, wrote that prayer is to the soul as food is to the body. If we do not feed our bodies, or eat nourishing food, our bodies suffer; if we don’t pray, or take the time to focus on the spiritual aspects of our lives, our inner being, our souls will not be the same; we will be different people. A person can live without music, art, laughter, love...but her life will not be as full.  In Hebrew the word for prayer is l’hitpaleil.  It is a reflexive verb that means to judge oneself, to examine yourself to understand what it is that you believe, what you need, where you are strong and where you need to grow and strive.  In some languages, we might understand the word “pray” as meaning “to ask’, but in Hebrew praying is really about how the tefillah, the prayer and the praying, changes you, and your relationship with God and with the world around you. 

At the beginning of this New Year, may the words of our prayers help us grow upwards and inward to find God. May they lead us to a place of transformation,  that will make us better people and Jews who will go out into the world and act on our values and make the world a better place.