Rabbi Birdie Becker
  • Home
    • Rabbi In The News
    • Blogs and Videos
  • Services and Fees
    • Tutoring Policies
    • REFERENCES
    • Contact Form
  • Prayer Practice
  • Jewish Calendar: Basics
    • High Holidays
    • Chanukah
    • Tu B'Shevat
    • Passover/Pesach
  • Conversations at the Well
    • Teaching Supplement: Conversations at the Well
  • Music
  • Israel
  • Non-clickable Page

YOM KIPPUR UNATANA TOKEF 2016

10/15/2016

0 Comments

 

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 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."
 

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    10.7.23 Attack
    9/11
    Abortion
    Acceptance
    ADL
    Akeida
    Anti Semitism
    Anti-Semitism
    Apartheid
    Bds
    Blessings
    B'nai Mitzvah Poem
    Broken Heart
    Cancer
    Caretaker Blog
    Carl Levin
    Chanukah
    Civil Discourse
    Civil Rights
    Community
    Congressional Funding
    December Dilemma
    Dominion Over The Earth
    Dor L' Dor
    Ehud Barack
    Environment
    Eulogy
    Forgiveness
    Gaza
    Gratitude
    Gun Control
    Hallel
    Hamas
    Hameitim (hamatim)
    Health Care
    High Holidays
    Holocaust
    Human Rights
    Human Rights Council
    Hunger
    Immigration
    Invocation
    Iron Dome
    Israel
    Isreal
    Jewish Council For Public Affairs
    Justice
    Kabbalat
    Kaddish
    LGBTQ
    Link In Chain
    Love
    Lulav And Etrog
    Memories
    Middot
    Miracles
    Mi Sheberach
    Mourning
    Mussar
    Occupation
    Palestinian Aid
    Palestinians
    Paris Climate Accords
    Passover
    Pay Equality
    PCUSA
    Pesach
    Politics
    Prayer
    President Obama
    Pres.Obama
    Purim
    Reb Zalman
    Reproductive Health
    Rocket Attacks
    Security Wall
    Seder
    Separation Of Church & State
    Service
    Shabbat
    Shema
    Shofar
    Steve Sheffey
    Stress
    Sukkot
    Terrorism
    Teshuva
    Tikun Olam
    Together Colorado
    Tu B'Av
    Tzedek
    Tzedek Terdof
    Uahc General Assembly
    United Nations
    U.S. And Israel
    U.S. Presidents And Israel
    V'Haya Im Sh'moa
    Violence
    Voting
    Women's Rights
    Women's Rights
    Women's Rights
    World Council Of Churches
    Wow Women Of The Wall
    Yahrzeit

    RSS Feed

    I'd love to hear from you. Please leave a comment. To subscribe to this blog leave your email at RSS FEED.

    Author

    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.

    Archives

    October 2024
    July 2024
    October 2023
    March 2022
    February 2022
    November 2021
    April 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    November 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012


    FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ISRAEL
    https://www.standwithus.com/
    http://www.standforisrael.org
    http://unitedwithisrael.org/

    WOMEN OF THE WALL http://www.nytimes.com/video/2012/12/22/world/middleeast/100000001969698/women-at-the-western-wall.html
Proudly powered by Weebly