Guest Post: The Power to Bless

The following is an article by Jen Maidenberg originally published in the Times of Israel on January 18th.  I think it captures a modern sense of blessing and prayers.

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They may butt in front of you in line without a thought.

They may scream epithets at you as they zoom past your car on the one-lane highway.

They may be brisk and brash and too aggressive for your liking, but…

Israelis sure know how to bless you.

Not just when you sneeze.

But for every birthday, milestone, and reason for celebration.

Israelis, religious and non-religious alike, are really good at giving you one heck of a good blessing.

I’ve learned, the hard way, that I’m not so good at it.

The first time I was asked to give a public bracha (blessing), I was caught off-guard.

It was my son’s 5th birthday at his preschool. I had been in Israel 9 months already, but never to a child’s birthday in the classroom. This was my first.

There I was, sitting in the place of honor at the front of my room with my son, in front of 30 smiling expectant children, and the teacher asked me for a bracha for my son.

What?     Here?     Now?     In front of everyone?     In Hebrew?!?

My heart raced.      Bless my son?      Bless him?

What were they looking for? What were they expecting?

Baruch atah adonai …something or other?

A Fiddler style duet?

How do you bless your kid on his birthday?

I fumbled through the bracha with broken Hebrew and a nervous smile. Said something about how I hope his year is filled with fun and laughter.

Not bad for a first-timer, but I realized soon after how common this practice is…and how there are certain expected phrases.

Much health.

Much happiness.

Much health and happiness.

Kids are actually trained in brachot.

Not  formal training, really, but from a very early age children are asked to prepare brachot for their friends’ birthdays. It’s part of the birthday experience at school.

You don’t just color a beautiful card for your friend.

You write them a blessing.

And, I imagine at first, the teacher helps them with common nice phrases to say or write.

By first grade, the phrases become a little more sophisticated, but nonetheless still practiced and recognizable.

May you get many presents.

May you continue to be exactly as you are.

After years and years, and decades and decades of blessing your friends and classmates and neighbors, eventually it must be something you get really good at.

So that when it comes time to say something nice at a bris, or a baby naming, coworker goodbye party, or a wedding, Israelis are pros.

I envy their blessing ability.

Even when I am in a position to bless someone I really like and want to bless, I fumble.

And it’s not just the Hebrew.

Even in English, I fumble.

Growing up in America — despite our reputation in Israel for excessive, unnecessary niceness — we had a lot less practice in how to offer our blessings.

It’s something I really had to learn on my own.

And it’s something I am still learning,

How to meaningfully, and sincerely offer my true, authentic blessings to someone else.

And even more challenging — how to accept blessings and good wishes offered to me.

With a smile.

And a gracious thank you.

Not a shy, “Oh stop it…it was nothing.”

Or a sarcastic, “Oh, do go on…”

Just a true, authentic acceptance of a someone else’s blessing.

It might sound weird, but perhaps “formal training” in blessing is a good training to get.

Israelis don’t realize it, probably, and would be shocked to hear it — but when it comes to giving and receiving blessings, they’re actually nicer than Americans.

They've perfected a lesson in niceness worth exporting.

Prayers for the President

Yesterday, Rabbi Sharon Brous delivered a blessing at the 57th Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service in Washington, DC.  A rabbis' presence at a multicultural (interfaith) service does not always go without controversy, especially when its held in a church. (It could be considered a similar situation to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks attendance to the Royal Wedding in 2011).  But one thing is for sure, such an event does call for prayer and blessings - as it is truly an amazing part of living in a democratically free country.

Here is the text she shared (and a video):

Elohei ha-ahavah, God of Love. Help us widen the boundaries of our hearts. You know us better than we know ourselves: the distinctions we make, the biases we hold, the ways in which we fail to manifest our greatest potential as we diminish ourselves and others with our impatience, lack of compassion and vision, lack of hope. Give depth to our faith; let our actions bear witness to the expansiveness of your mercy. Grant us the grace to love our neighbors and to love ourselves. We pray that you bring your presence among us, as light, as life and as holy inspiration.

I am always amazed at the creative abilities of those who compose prayers as I am a davener that is much more comfortable in a well worn siddur.  Also, I feel that spiritual meaning is naturally in Hebrew and thus personally feel disconnected by the English liturgy in prayers (I recognize that this is my personal stance).

One final comment - I think that the blessing shared above, although targeted to the Creator, captures the sentiment of the blessing codified by the Shulchan Orach to be recited upon seeing a non-Jewish king which may be appropriate to say upon seeing the newly inaugurated President:

ברוך אתה ה' אלוקינו מלך העולם שחלק מכבודו לבשר ודם 

Blessed are You, Lord our God, who has given from His glory to (humans of) flesh and blood.

Guest Post: The Vietnam of Day School Ed

You read the title correctly!  This post is authored by Michael Feuer, who is on the faculty of Sulam Yaakov and whom I recently met teaching a course titled Prayer: the inner journey that leads outward.  I welcome your reactions.  

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The Vietnam of Day School Education

When I heard a respected educator apply these words to prayer, my jaw dropped. But after the shock faded, the precision of the phrase started to play on my imagination. Given that I share the sorrow and fear over the “field situation” which provoked the comment, but not its hopelessness, I figure some reflection is in order,  so – why Vietnam?!

Educators and community members rule the day, unengaged students rule the night. Our children are not absent from prayer; we can make a minyan and the shuls are full on Shabbat. But we grade prayer as attendance, and praise the appearance of focus. It’s true, sitting quietly is a praiseworthy habit in today’s culture. But we are not teaching them to cultivate silence, but to pretend to say words.

What are we fighting for anyway? Only a real soul-search after Gd and a lot of prayer can answer this question. How many teachers and parents have a mature, living relationship with Gd and an active engagement with our soul? How many of us find strength in prayer and have tasted its pleasure? If these are absent from us, or not deemed relevant,  then what are we asking from our students? Teacher’s prayer groups are the weapon of the next generation.

In context of the liturgy, this conversation becomes a minefield. Tracing a path through questions of doctrine, obligation, authority and tradition without losing your company seems hopeless. And yet, these very issues form the backbone of the Eighteen Blessings. Perhaps prayer is the primary context created for this struggle and we should encourage our students to take the fight there. If they don’t feel safe struggling with Gd, Torah and Am Yisrael then what kind of relationship can they build?

In asymmetrical warfare, victory is not achieved through force. Prayer is not an act to be imposed, it is a lifestyle to be cultivated. Teaching it is a battle of hearts and minds. We must invest in the context of prayer as well as its content. This means devoting more time for praying and more resources for learning. It means developing a model of mutual awareness and spiritual mentorship between all members of a school – staff, faculty and students. At its core prayer is the pursuit of relationship, and as such is the ultimate communal effort.

Awakening the emotions in service of prayer is essential. Are our classrooms vessels where students feel safe to share their hearts? To we encourage journaling, spiritual chevruta, giving and receiving of blessing?

The siddur is a complex and powerful tool for awakening the soul, connecting to Am Yisrael and turning to Gd. It must be engaged as an instrument to be mastered, and not as a book to be read. Repetition becomes practice when the students sense they are picking up a relationship where it left off each time they pray, and just not doing it all again. 

The attempt to reduce prayer to a deliverable educational product is bankrupt. It must be replaced by a critical dialogue meant to cultivate consciousness over the question of prayer. In order to accomplish this we have to be prepared to take risks, and even lose battles. But that’s what you do when you’re committed to winning the war. 

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Michael Feuer has rabbinic ordination from the Sulam Yaakov Yeshiva, under the guidance of Rav Dov Channan and has spent much of the past two years thinking intensively about the topic of tefilla. Since making aliyah in 2001, he has been Program Director of a post-high school yeshiva, taught history, Jewish thought and Bible in several Jerusalem yeshivot and midrashot and halacha at the Pardes Institute.

Guest Post: The Amidah Project

This post is originally from Chicago Carless, a blog by Michael Doyle, address many important issues for tefilla educators.

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For the past few months, my Reform synagogue has done something most Reform synagogues don’t: we’ve stood and recited a partially silent Amidah, Judaism’s sizeable central prayer. You find the Amidah–which means “standing” in Hebrew, because you stand when you say it–in every Jewish service, whether shacharit (the morning service), mincha (afternoon), or maariv (evening.) Tradition suggests most if not all of the Amidah is recited silently, and most Orthodox and Conservative congregations follow suit.

Yet even with the traditionalizing trend of the past three decades, many Reform congregations pray an abbreviated form of the Amidah, always out loud, and often seated for the prayer’s latter parts. Meaningful passages in Hebrew are often skipped in favor of English intepretations or, simply, left out entirely.

Aside from a few seconds for “silent prayer,” there isn’t often the same opportunity our Orthodox and Conservative brethren have to really be alone with your heartfelt intention.  In fact, a typical Reform Amidah can be far from heartfelt. It’s hard to really go deep with your tradition’s central prayer when your denomination seems afraid of it’s deepest parts.

When we decided to test out a partially silent Amidah (we still chant the first three, long blessings out loud), several people pushed back. Some were afraid they wouldn’t understand the “new” parts in Hebrew. (We use Mishkan T’Filah, Reform’s latest, fully translated and transliterated prayerbook.) Some were afraid they wouldn't know how long to stand or when to sit down. (We sit when we’re individually done.) Some said they’d miss formerly chanted or sung parts. Overall those who pushed back were afraid that they’d miss, essentially, meaning.

What we’ve found is instructive. Some people still want the “old way” back. And, frankly, I would prefer our newly silent Amidah to be one arrow in an overall quiver of ways to approach the Amidah–including our “old way.” Especially in Reform, there’s no reason to leave anybody out. (And I happen to feel quite touched when our cantor sings R’tzei.)

But overall, people seem to like our newly silent Amidah. Why? Because in those long, pungently silent minutes of silent prayer, we are finally (and in Reform, for once) rendered alone–with our thoughts, with our prayer, with our tradition. The experience has knocked many of us out, initially rendering some of us to tears. And that outcome was totally unexpected. Wonderful. Incredible. A blessing. But unexpected.

Maybe that’s how far as Reform Jews we’ve let ourselves become removed from the meaning behind the words we pray–no matter what language we choose to pray in. But the meaning is there if we just listen for it. For some in my congregation, taking ourselves off of our liturgical autopilot for a little while was enough to start to sense why we say the Amidah in the first place. The prayer is truly an emotional journey if you let it be.

I don’t blame any Reform Jew for feeling disconnected from an Amidah recited silently in Hebrew. It just hasn’t been our practice, and not a lot of us talk about our prayer experience publicly. So I will. Over the next few weeks I intend to post a series of blog entries that lay out the Reform versions of core Jewish prayers, beginning with the Amidah (both the Shabbat and weekday versions), in Hebrew transliteration and English translation, accompanied by my thoughts on my emotional experience during each specific blessing or rubric of the liturgy. (Perhaps with video, as well.) After all, I definitely feel an almost exhausting emotional journey during the Amidah. It’s a feeling worth sharing–and most of all, describing. As you may have guessed from the title of this post, I’m calling my new series “The Amidah Project.”

We can’t all be Debbie Friedman, z”l, able to find the most miraculous meanings in seemingly hidden Hebrew corners of the liturgy and set them to catchy modern music. But we can all pause, and read, and listen, and then write and talk about our experience. I invite all of my Jewish readers to do just that. Open your nearest siddur–on Shabbat, the one covered in dust in your closet, or online. Find a part where you always tune out. This time, though, tune in. Read it slowly. Sit with it. Consider what those words might really mean–from Deity, to you. You might come up with nothing. But you might come up hearing that still, small voice.

The basis for our entire tradition.

This post is part of my Amidah Project series–an attempt to examine my personal experience of the core prayers of the normative Reform Jewish liturgy. For more, please browse my Amidah Project archive.

Back from a Short Respite with Some Good Life Advice

I have been on the road the past week+ and I apologize for the lack of new posts and relatively few tweets (for those that follow the twitter feed).  In my July return I thought I'd share a recent post (23 June 2012) of the soon to be unemployed Dr. Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and his article Looking Closely at the Road Less Traveled.  Fascinating that he emphasizes a 'go against the grain' mentality and I humbly agree and believe that prayer is one of the best methodologies to "seek and celebrate the spirit".

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The wisest rule in investment is: when others are selling, buy. When others are buying, sell. Usually, of course, we do the opposite. When everyone else is buying, we assume they know something we don’t, so we buy. Then people start selling, panic sets in, and we sell too. That is how booms and crashes happen. Charles Mackay called it “the madness of crowds,” William Trotter “the herd instinct,” and psychologist Solomon Asch showed how vulnerable we are to the urge to conform.

So when everyone is going in one direction, it’s worth taking the opposite route, the contrarian option, the “road less travelled.” Here is my recommendation for the next few years. While everyone else is thinking about economics and politics, executive salaries and the future of the Euro, do the opposite, even if it’s hard. Invest in the spirit. Focus on the mind and the soul. Read. Study. Enrol in a course of lectures. Pray. Become a member of a religious congregation. Study the Bible or other ancient works of wisdom. Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.

For the next few years European economies are unlikely to grow. Government spending will continue to be tight. Standards of living for most of us will either fall or at least not rise by much. National governments will discover that their power of action is ever more circumscribed by the mobility of capital and people and the interdependence of Europe’s economies and banks. Try setting out on a new economic policy of your own when you are linked by heavy chains to twenty or more other nations each trying to go somewhere else, and you will end up angry and frustrated.

That is when we need to switch to another dimension. When one road is blocked, it’s time to take another. When material conditions are tough, the best investment we can make is spiritual: in the happiness we don’t buy but make. Join a religious congregation and you will find people who care about ideals and are willing to make sacrifices for them. You will make friends on whom you can rely and become part of a community on which you can depend. Study sacred texts and you will find yourself transported to a palace of the mind, the ancient but still compelling wisdom of the past. These are powerful sources of inner strength.

Stop worrying about wealth and success, and think instead of the blessings that surround you and you will find your life flooded with meaning. You will sleep easier at night and wake full of hope the next morning. You will look out on the world and see God’s glory. You will smile at strangers and they will smile back. You will worry less and find your fears subside as you entrust yourself to God’s everlasting arms.

You will realise that your life is filled with blessings you had until now taken for granted. You will discover – or perhaps you secretly knew it all along – that happiness has little to do with what we get and everything to do with what we give. You will rush less and savour more. You will stop wasting time doing the things you should never have done in the first place.

Eat only when you are hungry, and stop as soon as you are sated, and you will lose weight. Buy only what you need, and travel light through life, and you will save much of what you now spend. See the good in people and you will, without intending to, make them a little better than they were. Praise others and do not seek their praise, give to others and do not seek their thanks, and you will grow in spiritual health. At least once every day take time to thank God for the privilege of life itself. Don’t judge people by what they wear or drive or earn. In fact, don’t judge people at all. Leave that to God. He is better at it than we are, and more forgiving too.

Your return on investment – not in monetary terms perhaps, but in terms of happiness, fulfilment, flourishing, joie de vivre, and a sense of blessedness – will, I promise you, be better than any alternative on offer today. While others are pursuing material happiness, do the opposite: seek and celebrate the spirit. The price is low. The value could not be higher.