Praying for a Successful Lift

The following article is ripped from the headlines of the Wall Street Journal - I am very curious as to why this is mainstream media news.  However I have to admit, whenever i do Hagbah, I do say a little prayer.

When Handling Precious Scrolls, Torah Lifters Pray for Successful Hoist

Updated April 26, 2012, 10:13 p.m. ET

Dropsies Have 'Dire' Consequences; After a Fall, a Long Fast for All

By LUCETTE LAGNADO

 

At the Manhattan Sephardic Congregation, Chalom Sibony gets a hand hoisting an elaborate scroll weighing about 60 pounds.

NORTH BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Rabbi Robert Wolkoff has a recurrent nightmare. A congregant is lifting a holy Torah scroll high up in the air when it starts to tilt toward the ground.

In the dream, the rabbi lunges forward to catch the scroll, screaming, "Watch out, watch out." Then he wakes up in a cold sweat.

Jewish congregations are struggling with the heavy weight of Torah scrolls as they look for more ways to include women and older men in the sacred act of lifting a Torah. That's prompting some to look to acquire lighter Torahs, WSJ's Lucette Lagnado reports.

It isn't all in his head.

Lifting the Torah scroll during Sabbath services—a ritual known as "Hagbah," which means to lift in Hebrew—is considered a tremendous honor. It can also be a perilous undertaking.

The average Torah scroll, which contains the Five Books of Moses, handwritten by a quill on parchment, can weigh about 25 or 30 pounds. Scrolls are mounted on long wooden poles; they are often hard to handle, and even harder to hoist. Some scrolls, encased in wood and silver, weigh 40 or 50 pounds or more.

Accidents happen, and when they do, custom calls for significant acts of contrition, including fasting. Lots of fasting.

"If you drop the Torah, the implications are dire—the shame is enormous—and traditionally one needed to fast for 40 days," says Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. The offender has plenty of company in hunger, as anyone who witnesses the Torah tumble must also refrain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset.

The Heft of the 'Hagbah'

Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

Philip Welsher lifts a scroll at the B'nai Tikvah Synagogue in New Brunswick, N.J.

Many of these scrolls are older, and were made in Europe before World War II. They have profound emotional value—but to replace them is expensive, as a new lighter-weight scroll can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

These days, not too many at Rabbi Wolkoff's synagogue, Congregation B'nai Tikvah, get to lift the Torah scrolls. Women, in particular, have felt excluded. While this is a proudly egalitarian synagogue where women take part in all rituals, virtually none raise the heavier scrolls since the effort requires both skill and muscle. Most women aren't up to it.

"Some of our Torahs are so heavy, only certain people are allowed to lift them," says B'nai Tikvah member Barry Safeer. "There are people with bad backs, there are those who make the congregation nervous."

That is especially the case when there is an overzealous or "show off" Torah lifter. "I call them testosterone Hagbahs," says Rabbi Gerald Skolnik of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens, N.Y. "It is someone having to prove how virile they are."

Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

A Rabbi at B'nai Tikvah, North Brunswick, N.J., shows the Ten Commandments.

Hilary Friedman, one of the few women who has "done Hagbah," twice, is a physical trainer who lifts weights and teaches Pilates. Yet when she picked up the scrolls, she says, "I was shaking. My own child told me, 'Please, I don't want to fast for 40 days!'" She says she watches older "deconditioned" men lift the scrolls high up over their heads and wonders how they do it. "I will tell you, it is their sheer faith which lets them get it up there," she says.

Rabbis tell horror stories about the time a Torah fell or tore under their watch.

Rabbi Daniel Sherbill of Temple Emanu-El in Miami Beach, is still haunted by that day in 1995 when a scroll tumbled to the ground after its ornate housing, or "ark," was opened.  It was the High Holidays, and he was leading a congregation near Chicago. Dozens of members fasted for 40 days, from sunrise to sunset, he says. Beth El-Atereth Israel, a modern Orthodox congregation in Newton, Mass., lived through its disaster in 2007 during Simchat Torah, a holiday when Jews dance with the scrolls. A congregant carrying a bulky Torah tripped and lost control.

Rabbi Gershon Segal opted for the more modest penance—one communal fast day along with prayer and charitable giving. Then he took precautionary measures. He installed a bench within easy reach so that scroll lifters overcome by the weight would have a ready refuge.

Rabbi Wolkoff has decided to take more dramatic steps. Besides being heavy and unwieldy, B'nai Tikvah's Torah scrolls are in disrepair. The synagogue concluded a new scroll was urgently needed. A committee has searched and debated for months on what to buy, from whom and for how much. 

Almost everyone agrees the congregation's new Torah must be super-light, just 10 to 15 pounds. Yet when it comes to Torah scrolls, less is often more.

 Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

Torahs at the Manhattan Sephardic Congregation

"When you are buying a Torah, on the one hand, you are buying this commodity, like a house or a car. But it is also a sacred act," says Rabbi Wolkoff.

B'nai Tikvah's committee has been quoted a dizzying array of prices—$35,000, $40,000, $60,000, all the way up to $120,000. The lighter or smaller the Torah, the heftier the price tag, especially if a fine parchment is used. Rabbi Wolkoff says lighter scrolls can cost $10,000 more than a conventional, heavy scroll.

The reason: Torahs aren't printed like ordinary books or Bibles. Often made in Israel, they are created by scribes who toil, feather quill in hand, for up to a year to produce a single scroll. Torah "brokers" typically arrange a match between congregations and scribes. They set the price, pay the scribe—and pocket the difference.

Rabbi Shmuel Miller, a Los Angeles scribe, says he charges $40,000 to make a normal-size, 22-inch scroll. But a pint-size scroll about 12 inches tall, with elaborately styled Hebrew text, "can take a few more months of work," he says, explaining how the smaller characters require a slower, more careful hand.

Rabbi Zerach Greenfield, a broker and scribe who shuttles between New York and Israel, counters that it is no big deal to produce a light, readable scroll. Rabbi Greenfield has provided scrolls weighing five pounds to U.S. military chaplains. Nowadays, he says, some parchment can be much lighter. He is confident he can deliver a quality 12½ pound scroll for approximately $30,000.

Others think the weight issue is a bit of a tempest in a Kiddush cup.

"The issues with the weight of our Torahs have become mythic," remarks Philip Welsher, a synagogue member who is an adept Torah lifter and seems to carry even the heaviest scrolls with ease. He believes more women at B'nai Tikvah could lift them if they only tried.

"I am not a wimp," says member Bobbi Binder, who has done Hagbah once or twice with a smaller scroll, but has been loath to try again with the larger Torahs. "It is not fair" that women can't enjoy the honor of Torah-lifting, she says.

Other congregations aren't sweating the issue.

Manhattan Sephardic Congregation, a Moroccan-Jewish synagogue, has acquired some supersize Torah scrolls, encased in the tradition of some Middle Eastern Jewish communities in wooden frames. One majestic 4-foot scroll swathed in wood, blue velvet and silver weighs a staggering 58 pounds. Rabbi Raphael Benchimol isn't fazed.

"We are a young congregation," he says. "We have a bunch of guys who came out of the Israeli army."

Write to Lucette Lagnado at lucette.lagnado@wsj.com

Caring to Care (and to Daven)

I am reading and rereading Seth Godin's manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams on transforming education.  I have previously commented on this but on a more meta level.  Now, with tefilla education on my mind, I wanted to share the following two excerpts:

41. Judgment, skill, and attitude

Those are the new replacements for obedience.

We sometimes (rarely) teach skill, but when it comes to judgment and attitude, we say to kids and their parents: you’re on your own.

Here’s what I want to explore: Can we teach people to care?

I know that we can teach them not to care; that’s pretty easy. But given the massive technological and economic changes we’re living through, do we have the opportunity to teach productive and effective caring? Can we teach kids to care enough about their dreams that they’ll care enough to develop the judgment, skill, and attitude to make them come true?

42. Can you teach Indian food?

It’s not easy to find young Anglo kids in Cleveland or Topeka who crave Tandoori chicken or Shrimp Vindaloo. And yet kids with almost the same DNA in Mumbai eat the stuff every day. It’s clearly not about genetics.

Perhaps households there approach the issue of food the way school teaches a new topic. First, kids are taught the history of Indian food, then they are instructed to memorize a number of recipes, and then there are tests. At some point, the pedagogy leads to a love of the food.

Of course not.

People around the world eat what they eat because of community standards and the way culture is inculcated into what they do. Expectations matter a great deal. When you have no real choice but to grow up doing something or eating something or singing something, then you do it.

If culture is sufficient to establish what we eat and how we speak and ten thousand other societal norms, why isn’t it able to teach us goal setting and passion and curiosity and the ability to persuade?

It can.

__________________________________

I think this is a powerful confrontation for every educator to consider and specifically for those preaching/modeling a moral and religious practice. The point in 41 is of paramount importance - are we really teaching kids to care or to model/mimic that they care?  While teaching the skills and history of a performative act, we must also channel energy into how to own the act out of school and without grades, or parents, or peers.

Godin's point in section 42 is a clever framing of a cultural inheritance and the challenge of choice.  Following the argument, perhaps educators need just to sharpen their goal setting and passion involved in teaching tefilla. Sounds almost easy.

Saying Thank You

 "It is good thank Hashem" so goes the saying - טוב להודות להשם

Today is Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's 64th birthday and for many people, a huge answer to our collective tefillot.   I am of the generation that was born into a world that knew a Jewish State as 'normal' and with free access to Jewish holy sites.  So I wanted just to share a thank you - to the soldiers that stand in defense of the state, to her resilient residents, and to the Jewish people around the world that share their support.

I, for one, will not stop davening for the State to get better and for good counsel to fall upon her leaders' ears - but it is good to take stock and appreciate just how very far we have come.

חג שמח

What is Lacking in You?

A friend relayed to me the following story about author Rabbi Harold Kushner.

When studying at Columbia University Kushner took a course in the the Great Greek Classics. On the final exam, he recalls the following two questions:

• Which of the works that we read this semester did you least appreciate?
• What is lacking in your character that made it so that you couldn't appreciate the work cited in #1?

He mentions that he has applied this question to parts of Judaism that he has struggled with (and if you have read his bio, you see that he has had some struggles).  

I humbly pose the same question to you and your students - dare we ask that something is amiss in our personal state of mind or ability to daven?  How can you improve your understanding of the siddur?  Why do I struggle with tefilla? Let's not always blame the teacher, the "rabbis", the school, or even Hashem - let's look inward.  

Counting & Counting Cycles

The Jewish year is distinctively divided into two parts: The spring summer and fall is flush full of holidays (from Passover until Sukkot) and the other half has only three .  One interesting aspect of these periods of time has to do with the agrarian cycle of nature and the harvest habits of residents in ancient Israel.  The winter, or rainy season as it is better known, is more low key as residents hunker down from the cold, wet weather whereas the spring and summer dry season makes outings and holiday celebrations more natural and easy.

Another fascinating element of the seasonal divides in the Jewish calendar has to do with counting.  From the second night of Passover, Jews begin counting the omer. This ritual counting connects 49 days between Pesach and Shavout and stuffed in between are the holidays of Yom Ha'atzmut, Lag B'Omer and Yom Yerushalyim.  The counting doesn't stop with the receiving of the Torah on Shavout.  After 5 weeks, the next significant day on the calendar is the fast of the 17th of Tammuz, which starts the "3 weeks" period culminating with the 9 days and Tisha B'Av. From the end of the fast, synagogues read the 7 Haftorah readings of comfort.  This brings us to Hodesh Elul, the final month of the year and signals the beginning of the High Holy Days.  Starting with the blowing of the shofar at the start of the month and Sephardi Jews say Selichot prayers and gets us to the ten days of repentance and Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.  The season really concludes with Sukkot which incidentally falls exactly six months to the day after Pesach.  (One more point of historical clarification is that this entire period parallels the Exodus from Egypt through the sin of the Golden Calf and the receiving of the second tablets on the first ever Yom Kippur - a propitious trend to relive each year).

Meanwhile from Sukkot to Pesach, you only have Chanukah, Tu B'Shevat, and Purim (all non biblical holidays).

All of this preface really leads to this educational message: counting time is cherished.  When you are looking forward to something happening, it often it makes it seem more tangible and present to countdown to the event.  There is an involvement and activity in the process of counting that shows commitment and passion. Time can be fluidly subjective at times, in that it will move fast sometimes and very slowly at others.  Think of your students and what periods of the day they watch the clock or pack up early.  How about in Tefilla time?  Are your students in the moment or counting down to exit?

Quiet Time in the 21st Century

A colleague recommend this article from Rabbi Efrem Goldberg in the OU's Jewish Action Magazine.  The March issue featured a Symposium on the "Orthodox Family in the 21st Century".  I would be interested in reading other denominational symposiums on this topic if any reader happens to come across and writings.  


I recently wrote about technology and tefilla and asked with the great competition for attention with information and technology students today have a hard time reflecting.  Rabbi Goldberg makes several tremendous points that should reverberate for all those who teach tefilla and what is now called "experiencing the absence of presence".  I think this vignette poignantly captures the advantages and challenges before us:

The proliferation of technology in every aspect of our lives brings with it incredible blessings, opportunities and advantages, but at the same time poses new challenges and difficulties. Many of the challenges are obvious and have been addressed somewhat broadly, such as the easy access and addictive nature of inappropriate and graphic material and images on the Web. Responses and strategies have been offered to combat this particular malady, including installing filters and only allowing Internet access in public spaces within the home. 

We would be severely remiss, however, if we didn’t acknowledge some of the other challenges posed by technological progress, many of which are subtle and go unnoticed. 

Research shows that smartphones, with their abundance of apps, access to social networking sites and text messaging, are as addictive as drugs and alcohol. The unrelenting urge to check the incoming message or notification has yielded a new phenomenon called “absent presence.” When people are physically in proximity to one another but their minds and attention are elsewhere, in reality they are absent. Couples sharing a meal together but responding to text messages, men checking their e-mail while donned in tallis and tefillin, parents pushing their children on the swings while talking on their cell phones, are all experiencing absent presence. 

When Moshe Rabbeinu ascends Har Sinai to receive the Torah, Hashem tells him “alei eili ha’harah, v’heyei sham,” “Ascend toward me on the mountain and be there.” If Moshe is told to go to the top of the mountain, why does he need to be instructed to also be there? If you read between the lines, you can almost hear Hashem saying to Moshe, “I know you are responsible for hundreds of thousands. I am aware that they need your attention and that you are currently occupied with countless responsibilities, but when you come on top of that mountain, put it all aside and be there. Be with Me and Me alone.” 

If we are going to experience quality, meaningful time in our relationships, be it with our spouses, our children or with Hashem, we must learn to disconnect. We must rediscover the capacity to be fully present in all that we are doing at any given moment. 

There is one relationship in particular in which the pervasive interruption of technology is most destructive and damaging, and that is the relationship we have with ourselves. Real personal growth and progress occur when we have the time and space to think, contemplate and consider. With the explosion of technology, people are less comfortable being alone and experiencing quiet. The constant pings, beeps and alerts create a running background noise in our lives that precludes and prevents silence. 

“Vayivaseir Ya’akov levado,” Ya’akov wrestled when he was levado, alone, by himself and without noise or interruption. Our lives are being lived at warp speed, driven by an obsession with technology and leaving us with no time, energy or mental space to wrestle with ourselves, thereby stifling growth and advancement. 

The addiction to multimedia gadgets has left an additional casualty in its wake, one that afflicts the younger generation in particular. The ability to daven meaningfully requires the effective use of the imagination and focused vision of the mind’s eye. When we reach out to our Creator praising Him, listing our needs and thanking Him, there is no accompanying music, Youtube video or great app for that. Effective and uplifting davening relies solely on our ability to connect without the help of electronic stimuli and tools. If we and our children are to find meaning in our prayers, we must protect our ability to generate inspiration internally, without the help of gadgets or gimmicks. 

Technology has made the world smaller and opened up avenues of communication and connection that were never dreamt possible. And yet, while communication is easier, the quality of our communication is diminishing. Many teens cannot articulate a thought that is longer than 140 characters, the length of a text message. They speak in acronyms such as lol and ttyl. The cell phone bills reveal only a few minutes used but thousands of text messages sent. 

Even adults are celebrating major milestones such as semachot, birthdays or anniversaries with a text message greeting rather than a warm phone call. An e-mail or text wishing comfort to a friend who is sitting shivah can never replace the even silent companionship of a personal visit. I heard recently that in dating it has become more popular to break up via text messaging rather than in a dignified person-to-person meeting. Facebook has replaced real face time with real friends and Twitter has supplanted the verbal exchange of ideas. 

Technology has given us access to unprecedented amounts of information, but rather than digest it fully, slowly and methodically, we can only read it if it comes in a digest. The trend of reading in snippets, summaries and blogs has infiltrated our Torah learning style as well. Rather than pore over primary sources in all their breadth and depth and subtlety, absorbing their full content, we lean toward seforim and compilations that summarize, condense and present Torah in a manner requiring little thought or exertion on our part. 

We must be deeply grateful for the blessing of technological progress. But at the same time we must be vigilant in setting boundaries, creating protocols and being discerning in the technology we embrace and how we relate to it. 

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg is rabbi of Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida.

I Pray That These Things Never End

Wednesday night marks the beginning of Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day and I thought it appropriate to share a tefilla thought for this day of reflection.

My son came home today from first grade and shared that he had learned about Hannah Szenes and the words to her classic poem, "Eli, Eli" "My God, My God":

אלי, אלי, שלא יגמר לעולם החול והים רשרוש של המים ברק השמים תפילת האדם

My God, My God, I pray that these things never end, The sand and the sea, The rustle of the waters, Lightning of the Heavens, The prayer of Man.

What do you think it is about prayer that makes it so powerful and eternal, even in the face of the Shoah?  For me, looking at my son as we sang this poem, I was almost speechless to explain to him the context and power of Hannah Szenes's words.