When Words Fail

September 29, 2006 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General, Holidays 

Machzor open.jpg Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are the highlights in a year of Jewish holidays. The importance ascribed to what are known as “the High Holydays” is second to none on the Jewish calendar. When it comes to liturgy, though, they are also among the toughest days of the year. The prayer service, you see, is just, well…so long.

What would normally be a manageable two, maybe three hours in synagogue on a normal Sabbath service stretches out to four, five and sometimes even six hours on Rosh Hashana…and nearly all day on Yom Kippur.

But more than the time, it’s the words. There are so many of them. And to be perfectly honest, they aren’t the easiest to digest.

Here’s a sampling:

• And so all shall ascribe the crown to You…to the One who is too awesome for praise… Who suppresses His anger…Who forgives sins…

• God shall reign forever…from generation to generation…awesome, exalted and Holy…O King, rescue us from evil…

• He will judge the world righteously…he judges alone, who can dispute Him?

Powerful stuff. But what do you do if the words don’t speak to you? If you find it hard to relate to the text on the page? To my ear, the language sounds too authoritarian and patriarchal, designed to induce raw fear in the supplicant, which to my taste seems out of step with the rhythm and flow of contemporary life.

So every year when Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur come around, I have the same problem with all those old fashioned words. Now before you call me a heretic, hear me out. It’s not like I’m going to stop going to synagogue or remain part of the community on these festive days: my commitment to a Jewish lifestyle transcends any transitory difficulties I may have with the High Holyday liturgy. But it would be nice if the text wasn’t so unapproachable.

My annual struggle was made even more poignant this year when I noticed our thirteen-year-old daughter Merav sitting in shul, book closed, staring blankly and bored into a corner of the sanctuary.

“I just don’t get it,” she told me as we sat down following the holiday to discuss her 2006 Rosh Hashana synagogue experience. “I mean, we’re supposed to be praying to God, but does God actually listen? And how do we know there even is a God? The words say we do, but I can’t understand it at all.”

Then she added in a particularly barbed zinger aimed straight for my heart, “When I grow up, I’m for sure not going to be as religious as you.”

Hold on there, missee. Who do you think you’re talking to? Not as religious as me? I’m not your combatant here. I’m more of a partner, going through the same issues, struggling with the text, not getting it, feeling out of place. Maybe we can work this one out together. Lord knows I’ve already tried.

For example, a few years ago at Rosh Hashana time, I decided that if the words didn’t speak to me, I just wouldn’t say them. But rather than space out like my daughter, when it was time for the Amidah, the silent prayer, I closed my siddur, folded my arms over my chest, and tried to meditate.

I strived to empty my mind, to just be present, noticing all the sounds and sensations around me, appreciating life and the opportunity to be together with a community of seekers, many of whom may have secretly been doing the same thing as I was if I’d opened my eyes to take a peek.

Would this approach help me get closer to God and my fellow spiritual seekers, I wondered, or was it just a way to pass the time? Whatever the motivation, it worked pretty well. My friend Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller of Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco agrees.

In a sermon prior to Rosh Hashana services last week, she told her congregation: “If during these hours together, you find an image or metaphor that especially speaks for you, feel free to remain in that place for as long as you want. There is no commandment to be on the same page as the person next to you! If what you need is to be here in this community reflecting quietly on your life, please do so with all of our respect and blessings.”

The next year, I upped the ante a bit and, in addition to meditating, I tried to relate to the inherent musicality of the service. We attend Jerusalem’s fabled Leader Minyan for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur (see my posts here and here) where the singing is particularly joyful and the tunes lean more towards rock and roll than traditional Eastern European drinking songs (think Leonard Cohen instead of Dudu Fisher).

I once again closed my eyes but this time I tuned in to the symphony of sound surrounding me. I noticed it rise and fall, swelling to crescendos at times, at others becoming so quiet you could hear your neighbor sweat. Some congregants would quietly drum on their prayer books, others might pound on the walls at a particularly uplifting melody.

But at the end of the day, there were still the words. And as this year’s Rosh Hashana rolled around, it seemed to me a bit disingenuous to continue ignoring the words, especially given their sheer quantity. Rather than avoid the text, could I return to reading the words, I wondered, but relate to them differently, less authoritarian and more humanistically?

Why not? After all, although the words may be predominantly about our subservience to the one true God, the ultimate goal of prayer, I’ve always believed, is to positively influence our own sense of self so as to improve our interpersonal relationships and to make the planet a better place. Isn’t that the highest goal in Judaism tikkun olam – fixing the world?

I decided to try out this approach on the Avinu Malkenu section of the service, the heartfelt plea to God to intercede in earthly affairs. It’s particularly appropriate at this time of year: it’s said twice on Rosh Hashana and a full four times on Yom Kippur.

I started with what seemed to me the hardest verse: Our Father, Our King, forgive and pardon all our iniquities.

What does that mean, I pondered…to “forgive and pardon our iniquities?” Well, what if I flipped it on itself? Instead of going from the outside in, what if I thought about this from the inside out: an admonishment not from God to us, but that we should stop being so hard on ourselves.

Now that I could relate to – it’s long been one of my personal sins that, if I make a bad decision, I continue beating myself up long after it’s necessary, I just can’t let it go. Similarly if I say something to someone I shouldn’t have, even if I’ve long since apologized, I tend to hold onto the guilt and the blame.

What this verse in Avinu Malkenu seems to be saying is that we need to acknowledge that we’re only human and we’re not always going to be able to do the right thing all the time. Only by forgiving ourselves can we remove the “harsh decree” the prayer book speaks of next, and in that way move on, grow and be able to better ourselves and the world.

From there, it wasn’t hard to think of other personally meaningful ways to reinterpret the remaining verses of Avinu Malkenu:

• Our Father, our King, fill our storehouses with abundance – how can we work together to address hunger and famine throughout the world?

• Hear our voice and be compassionate to us – let us hear the cries of others and show them the same compassion we would want for ourselves.

• Seal the mouths of our adversaries and accusers – fight for truth and don’t shy away from standing up for what you know is right, wherever that may be.

• Exterminate pestilence, sword, famine, captivity, destruction, iniquity and eradication – do whatever we can to bring tikkun olam to this world – to make the world a safer, more peaceful place.

And it’s not just the words that can be made more meaningful. Rabbi Saxe-Taller stressed in her Rosh Hashana drash this year that if we listen to our own internal voice, we may be able to discover how a mezuzah can remind us “to love the people in our house” and how a blessing over wine can raise our “awareness of the preciousness of life.”

Have I found my answer? Maybe…for this year at least. But I don’t profess to have any secret formula for ultimate truth. If my approach for the High Holydays of 2006 speaks to you, go for it. If not, keep searching. But don’t give up. Don’t disengage from the tradition. This is the message I have for Merav, my confused yet very normal teenage daughter.

For as I learned this year, it’s never too late to start reclaiming your relationship with the words.

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lingua franca

September 29, 2006 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Immigrant Moments 

RR in Raanana has a new post that touches on, well, a somewhat touchy subject: When English-speakers move to Israel, how long can they keep up talking to their children in English, thereby passing down a useful language, when slowly the whole family is picking up more and more Hebrew?

My husband has a work colleague who was born and bred in the US and moved to Israel with her Israeli husband (kind of like what I did) several years ago.

Today she stopped by our house for a few minutes to leave something for my husband, and her children were with her. Imagine my surprise when I heard her speaking to them in Hebrew. Not English. Hebrew.

I didn’t say anything about it, but at one point she looked at me and said, “You must think I’m awful for speaking to them in Hebrew, huh?”

Before I could say anything she went on. “It’s just that my husband and I speak Hebrew to eachother (his English isn’t good) so I got in the habit of speaking to them in Hebrew, too.”

“Well, whatever works for you,” I answered.

I didn’t want to tell her that I think she’s making a big mistake. She’s passing up a chance to ensure that her kids will be fluent in a foreign language- and not some obscure little tongue spoken by only 500 people in the world. She’s blowing a fantastic opportunity to get them fluent in the language of the world, which can only be an advantage to them, in so many ways- school, career, etc.

Back when I worked for the English edition of an Israeli paper, I had a copy editor who had been raised in Israel, but her American parents had been so insistent on speaking only English in the house that even words pertaining to the Jewish religion had to be said in their English versions (eg “The Sabbath” instead of “Shabbat”). She said that it was often frustrating for her, but hey, now she works as a top copy editor at an English newspaper.

But it’s tough. I have friends with small children, and when the oldest first started going to nursery, I caught my friend asking the daughter “Would you like a prussah?” because it was just so much easier to use a word the child understood already, from school, than to offer a sandwich. You can’t blame her . . . but now the child isn’t learning the English word. It’s a tough call.

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Art Export of the Day!

September 29, 2006 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Business 

Dan in Tel Aviv, aka “Nominally Challenged,” was commissioned to do a painting! It’s hanging on a wall in Europe! (And I am completely confused as to which city it is in, and in which building. Go on over to his blog and see if you can guess . . . )

commissioned painting

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Oy, the sacrifices

September 28, 2006 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Holidays, Immigrant Moments 

One of the quirky wonders of Orthodox Judaism is that we don’t use electrical appliances on the Sabbath or holidays. Technically, one could, one supposes, leave a television on the whole day (that is, turn it on before sundown on Friday, watch all day, then turn it off after the sabbath is over), but this is very much in violation of the spirit of the day.

lightning

Poor dotcodotil. It’s soooo hard to be a Jew.

Yom Kippur is a great day of the year. We enter it with fear and trepidation and exit it with rejuvenation and a renewed spirit & vigour with which to take on the next 12 months. Frankly I have no idea how people who don’t have Yom Kippur function.
It’s a special day and I hope you all have a good and meaningful fast.

Interesting dilemma for me this Shabbas. My Australian Football team, the Sydney Swans is playing in the Grand Final this Saturday and there is the chance of watching them live courtesy of a TV which is left on over the whole of Shabbat.

But I’m a big believer in karma and what if me watching will cause them to lose? Not only would they have lost but I’m not interesting in watching if they are going to do so – not that they will. Last year had plans to watch the game and went over to the person’s place to watch it but Hurricane Katrina knocked out the satellite and we didn’t get to see it. They then went on to win.

Them winning is the main priority. Think I might have to take one for the team. At least there is no chance of finding out the score beforehand.

My heart is bleeding.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, we are beginning our descent.

September 28, 2006 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Immigrant Moments 

I’m lucky in that, in the three years I’ve been here, none of my friends have “made yeridah,” that is, “descended” from Israel to foreign shores (to “make aliyah” — that is, to immigrate to Israel, literally means “to ascend”). I have one acqaintance who moved here from New York, and returned to the Big Apple after 6 years for social reasons (the English-speakers’ dating scene had not included a husband for her), but no close friends. No one who made me say “things here can get so bad that maybe someday I’ll go back to the States.” On the contrary, I’m extremely happy, and so are all my close friends (knock on wood!). Life is hard, but mostly in ways that it’s hard anywhere. And regarding the security situation . . . well, Israel has many redeeming qualities.

Unfortunately, Eliesheva has been having a different experience:

It always lingers in the air; it’s the black hole of the aliyah process:

Yeridah.

Returning to the motherland from where we came; financial reasons, social reasons, relationship reasons… It lingers over all of us. Lately, it seems the lingering has become more of a hovering, which seems to be really weighing in on quite a few friends of mine.

You start out the aliyah process ideological, passionate, confident, even cocky. Even if you’re not cocky, you are, because everyone around you makes a big deal out of it. There is so much pride involved. So to return – that must be so hard.

Whereas before I got to Israel and at the beginning of my aliyah, I might have tsked at those ‘making yeridah,’ I just can’t do that now, after almost two years of living here. I don’t believe that just anyone can make aliyah, either.

Even the word aliyah (ascent, to go up) evokes so much pride and ego; with the state of the Israeli state these days, maybe we should all just say we are ‘moving to Israel’; it hasn’t felt like so much of an ascent, lately.

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