Rabbi Birdie Becker
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YOM KIPPUR UNATANA TOKEF 2016

10/15/2016

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I read an article by a woman who wanted to be warned before the chanting of the Unatana Tokef so that she could walk out and not have to suffer from the images it evoked. On the one hand I thought, “Wow, a congregant who takes prayer seriously and knows what she is praying. This is wonderful!” On the other hand I wondered, “Isn’t this what prayer is supposed to do? Are we not supposed to wrestle with ourselves and yes, with God, too?”
 
Yisrael, God wrestler. That is what the word means. We are God wrestlers. We aren’t meant to leave the room when things get tough. We aren’t meant to be silent victims, either.  We are meant to wrestle, turning this way and that until we return to the text with new understanding. We return - T’Shuvah to Tefillah -prayer and with the hope it leads to tzedakah – good, charitable deeds. That’s what we say, T’shuvah, tefillah and tzedakah can amend the decree.
 
 
I remember as a child, all the children were sent from the sanctuary before yizkor, the memorial prayers were recited so as not to tempt the evil eye. I have often wondered if it was really to not see a lot of adults crying. Today, we don’t worry about that as much. About either – tempting the evil eye or adults crying. And, I don’t have a problem with making people uncomfortable with a prayer or at least having them wrestle with it.
 
Should we eliminate all the prayers and readings that might offend any sensibilities? Shall we preface each prayer with “you might wish to step out before we read this”? I have the feeling there would be  no prayers left and no one remaining to say those that were.
 
I have a friend who was raised as a Reconstructionist Jew. She recently changed congregations but didn’t want to take an aliyah because of the word differences. In Reconstructionism the aliyah blessing is changed from Bachar Banu mee kol ha’amim,
‘who choses us from all people’ to Kervanu l’avodato ‘draws us near to serve’. Both then continue, VeNatan Lanu et Torahto, ‘and gave to us his Torah. We discussed the differences and the interpretations held therein and afterward she was able to view the words of ‘chose us’ as an inference to being chosen to serve to present Torah to the world. When she finally took an aliyah, she said the words came easily. She had done the hard work, wrestling with the written words and the meaning, the spiritual intention and how they could speak to her.
 
Unantana Tokef is one of our more difficult prayers. For anyone who has experienced a recent loss, it often seems like a slap at this time of year when we are seeking solice. It doesn’t matter that Unatana Tokef was actually a poem probably written in 6th century Palestine and had nothing to do with the story we now read about the French rabbi being dismembered and burned. It doesn’t matter because we are to wrestle with the words of our prayers… just as we wrestle with Torah. We recite the words of this prayer because every year there ARE floods and fires, there ARE earthquakes and epidemics, there ARE famines and droughts. War has not ceased nor has poverty ended. People are afflicted by bullying, and teasing and domestic violence and chance violence. Corruption, rebellions, insurgencies and revolution happen around the circumference of the globe.  Although it is interesting to note that the Western hemisphere, is for the first time, without technical war, armed conflict between nations, although the final negotiations are back at the table in Columbia but there’s hope.
 
WE have a rather lengthy list of names…family and friends…for healing. Nearly every week, we have some catastrophe around the globe to add to our Mi Sheberach prayers. The spiritual, physical, emotional and mental welfare of community, country and world are constantly in need of abundant good wishes. Who are we to opt out when it strikes near? Shouldn’t that be a time to opt in? To lend our voice, in fact our entire being in support?
 
I hope it goes without saying that I am not indifferent to someone who has suffered and may feel deeply pained by the words we pray. I feel them, too. “Who shall live and who shall die? Who by fire and who by water?
 
It is just that our words tell our stories and our stories are what keeps us united as a people. Why else would we continue to read Torah without end - and I mean that literally; for no sooner do we finish Torah with the final verses than we begin again with the first verses of the scroll. Yes, why else read these stories without end? These thirty five hundred year old stories that we interpret and reinterpret and revisit and re-imagine. It doesn’t matter if they are scientifically accurate. It doesn’t matter if they are historically accurate. It doesn’t matter if they are a mix of Israel and Judaen stories. It matters only that they are OUR stories. So, too, it is with our prayers, with the Unatana Tokef prayer.

In this global world, we should all be suffering and this prayer should make every one of us ask, why anyone by hunger or thirst? Why are people in this country unable to drink the water that pours out of their own faucets? Not just Flint, MI. “The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) tested municipal water in 42 states and detected … 141 unregulated chemicals for which public health officials have no safety standards, much less methods for removing them.” [1] And if you think that you can avoid the problem because you can afford to purchase bottle water, a Colorado proclivity, it is not a reasonable alternative since the source for many companies is “municipal” water, meaning you’re paying extra to drink bottled tap water.

Who by age and who not?” The tragedy of losing someone because they are an elder hurts no less but the even though the expectation rises for its eventuality. When illnesses and tragedies strike, we are all struck by the injustice held within the experience. When it occurs in violence, through bullying, hate mongering and categorizing the other, objectifying and enslaving a gender, we need to speak up and out. Half the world’s population is women, how many are lost through child marriage, sex trafficking or another form of emotional, mental or physical domination.

Why, let us ask, are so many still being driven out? Most by war but already many by environmental impact and that will only continue to escalate. And, I wrote this prior to Hurricane Matthew which has left beach erosion and coastal flooding in its wake taking with it things such as the eggs of this year’s Turtle Nests along with so many lives.

One of our incredible poetesses, Emma Lazarus, is memorialized on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your Tired, Your Poor, Your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse or your teeming shores. Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the Golden Shore.”  Remember, it was not so long ago that we were the tempest tossed asking that quotas be lifted.

So let the awesome, sacred power of the day be proclaimed. Let it make us uncomfortable. If we remember our deeds, and we challenge ourselves, we can wrestle with prayers and …with God.


[1] How Safe Is Tap Water?, http://environment.about.com/od/healthenvironment/a/tap_water_safe.htm, Updated January 22, 2016.  This heartwarming yet chilling story was told by Rabbi Baruch Rabinovitch of Munkacs, father of the present Munkacser Rebbe, about his late father-in-law, Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira (1871-1937), known as the "Minchat Elazar."

 

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The Akeida and Hameitim

9/30/2012

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ROSH HASHANAH 2012

While in rabbinical school, I had a teacher, a rabbi, whose contention was that the greatest force was fear. We were fearful of being hungry so we became slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and were hungry anyway. We were fearful that Moses had died on the mountain, so we built a golden calf. When Moses returned, those who had built it died. We were fearful of entering the land of Canaan. It was inhabited by giants reported the scouts. Thus, we wandered for another 38 years in the desert before being allowed to enter the land. Running from something out of fear has not enhanced our opportunities.

The Hebrew word for fear, also frequently translated as awe, yirah, is also the word for see. The question is: do we fear what we see or do we see what we fear?

In the story of the Akeida, the binding of Isaac, Avraham addresses his fear of lost promise. He is told to sacrifice his son, Isaac. This is an act through which his entire life’s work, the adherence to a single God, the introduction to the world of ethical monotheism, will be destroyed. Abraham, known for his kindness, is ready to perform the most unkind act of all, the taking of a human life for seemingly no purpose. The fact that he slinks away to do it, must surely exacerbate his abhorrence to this act.

Yet, Avraham shows that he has faith, bitachon. He knows in his heart that a just God will not provide him with an heir through which the relationship with God can continue, only to needlessly kill him.  Indeed, we have a natural revulsion at the thought of human sacrifice. So, Rabbi Ari Kahn reminds us, “Even enlightened, modern Democratic societies are prepared to sacrifice their children for their ideals -- for example, to protect the country or ideology. Indeed, were this not so, there would be no war. As difficult as sacrificing one's child is, it would seem that most societies today deem it justifiable when done for the sake of one's beliefs.”

According to Rabbi Weisz, quote “The withdrawal of God's command to sacrifice Isaac was not understood by Abraham as the timely revocation of a horrendous edict.” End of quote. Rather, this test, this tenth test, is not to show faith, nor love of God, but according to Nachmanides, to bring forth in Abraham a hidden spiritual potential.  Abraham understood through the Akeida, that kindness must be balanced by judgment. If a parent allows a child to eat only the sweet foods the child likes, it may seem kind at the moment, but eventually, that child will be ill. It is the parent’s responsibility to temper kindness with good sense.  So too, God is making Abraham aware, that kindness by itself is insufficient. All things in life must find their balance. 

Throughout the story, the name for God is Elohim. Each name of God is associated with a quality. Elohim is used as the name to represent the quality of judgment and justice, whereas the yud-heh-vav-heh name - Adonai, is the quality of compassion and kindness. Justice and kindness walk together balancing all of life. Just as Abraham’s attribute is kindness, Isaac’s attribute is justice. Thus do we read in the story several times, Va-yel-chu she-nay-chem yach-dahv,  and they walked, the two, together.

What does the story tell us of Isaac? Isaac is not a child at this point in the story. He is a man in his 30s and though he stops to question his father saying, “Here is the fire and the wood, where is the lamb for sacrifice?” stiil, he continues on with his father to the mountain top. Moreover, he allows himself to be bound. There is a midrash that says, he requested the binding, for being a man of judgment, he understood that though his spirit was willing, the flesh was weak and he may have a last minute regret and resist being killed.  So, Avraham binds his beloved son and places him on the wood.

Rabbi Yehuda says: "When the knife touched Isaac's neck, his soul flew out of his body. When the Voice emerged from between the cherubim, the angels, and commanded, "Do not send your hand to hurt the youth..." his soul returned to his body, and Isaac stood up on his feet, and realized that just so would the dead be eventually resuscitated, and he declared, "Blessed are you God, who resuscitates the dead." (Pirkei D'Rabbi Eliezer, 30)

In traditional prayer, this blessing continues to be recited. It appears as the concluding words of the gevurot, the second blessing of the Amidah. Baruch atah Adonai, mi-cha-yay ha-may-teem. Blessed are You, Adonai, the One who revives the dead. Reform Judaism, in objecting to the concept of resurrection, altered these words to read, mi-cha-yay ha-kol, the One who revives all. Further, it becomes translated in our machzor, the prayer books we use on these holy days, as Source of all life.

Happily, the Mishkan Tefiliah, our new siddur, has given us the choice between the two, translating mi-cha-yay ha-may-teem as ‘reviving that which is dead’.  By using Isaac's words, we are allowed to partake in the experience Isaac had when he pronounced those words for the first time, mesmerized by the experience of his freshly returned life.

A footnote says, The Talmud recommends saying M’Chayeih Hameitim for greeting a friend after a lapse of twelve months and after awakening from sleep (Bruchot 58b, Y. Bruchot 4:2)”, for the Talmud also teaches that sleep is 1/60 of death in that the soul is temporarily and partially separated from the body.

It is easy, particularly at this fall season, to look around and see that much of nature appears to be dying. Leaves are turning and falling. Our fruits and vegetables have ceased sending forth new flowers. Flowerbeds have dried and our grass has begun to brown and whither.  We recognize this and yet we know that new produce, fauna and flora will appear next spring. This dying is real though we perceive it as temporary, for it is not the same flowers and fruits that return. It is new ones. Yet, we view the winter as a transitional condition. For many, our routines now change as our summer activities end and we return to the school year cycle. This, too, is a type of death. When we pick up those summer activities next year, they will not be the same, because we are not the same person. We grow, and change and evolve and when we encounter next summer, we do so as different people.

Spiritual growth takes place within, inside any individual. It cannot be seen except by the outer expression of that growth through actions. By the same token, spiritual growth occurs as a reaction to those events which are seen and experienced. Abraham was brought to new realizations of balancing life. Isaac was awed by his new chance at life.

May we take this opportunity to judge others through the lens through which we wish to be judged; to open our eyes to the many occasions we encounter to see the wonder, the awe, in relating to the Divine, through action as well as feeling. And may God - Elohim, and God - Adonai, the One who set the cycle of life and death into motion, and views that cycle with both justice and compassion, help us to find that balance, the balance of justice and compassion in our lives.

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    Community educator, choreographer, composer, performer, Becker, M.S.W., M.Ed., M.R.S., Ph.D., serves as rabbi for Temple Emanuel-Pueblo, cellist for Apples and Honey and is a Storahtelling Maven.

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