Siddur

Divre Harav – October, 2023

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A Hasidic teaching I studied recently suggested that God is represented by words. God is found in the words of the revelation at Sinai, the words of Torah. But it also suggested that when we live our faith fully, that we not only hear God’s words, we also actually hear God’s voice, a more powerful connection.

The difference between words and a voice is this: Words might be seen as an artifact of an ancient world, the dusty remnants of a previous generation. A voice, on the other hand, is an active presence, something alive and vibrant. Faith, commitment, spiritual energy, belief, is what transforms the words on the page into a living, contemporary, compelling, tradition.

I have been on a quest to learn how to transform words into a voice and to teach others how to take the words of Psalms or words of the Siddur and derive transcendent meaning from a single sentence, verse, or phrase. It began with a four year journey reading Psalms and writing reflections which appeared in columns in the Voice and in posts on our ahavasisraelgr.org website. In the past year, I have collected those reflections and published them as “Reflections on the Psalms,” a demonstration of the process of contemplative reading in order to see what word, phrase, or sentence draws the reader’s attention, and discerning a larger message by connecting that passage with Jewish wisdom.

Our prayer books contain many words. Our services are rivers of words, in which you dip your consciousness like a fishing line to see what comes out. I like to think that the words that stick with me after a service are a message from God. God’s voice is in those words. My job is to figure out what God’s voice is trying to say to me.

I want to help you find God’s Voice in the words of our tradition, in Torah, in the Bible, in the Siddur, in Rabbinic literature. I’d like you to join me for our many Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah services, for my Zoom Torah study, or for my Sunday morning survey of Mishnah classes. 

And if you’d like to purchase the book, you can find more information and a link to Amazon here, https://embodiedtorah.com/reflections-on-the-psalms/, or search for the title on Amazon.com. Discover how the Psalms can inspire you to engage significant contemporary issues. This is not a commentary on the meaning and message of the Psalms; rather, this book considers the Psalms as a collection of phrases and images that invite us into brief meditations using Jewish wisdom for spiritual development.

Hebrew Words of the Month:

  • Tehillim – Psalms
  • Hit’bon’nut – Contemplation (from the word bina, understanding)

“Special” needs?

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What is is that they say about the children in Lake Wobegon?  “… where all the children are above average.” Of course, when every child is special then no child is special, and that’s the way it is supposed to be.  At this past weekend’s CRUSY kinnus at Beth El in Pittsburgh, every child was warmly received and brought into the program.  There were no special needs.  There was only a conscious effort to provide everything that was needed to make the program fully inclusive and accessible.
This post is my periodic plea to congregations to consider what it takes to be accessible to a blind person who happens to walk through your door on Shabbat.  It doesn’t take much.  This year, Beth El’s inclusion committee decided to purchase a set of the Braille volumes of Sim Shalom and Torah.  They actually only needed to acquire five of the nine volumes of the siddur in order to satisfy the needs of a regular Kabbalat Shabbat, Shaharit, Minha, and weekday morning.  Knowing that they were hosting the kinnus, they also purchased the volume of Torah and the haftarah for that specific Shabbat. All of this is easily available from the Jewish Braille Institute.
When my son Solomon arrived at kinnus, he was not special.  He dovened just like everybody else, with his Braille siddur.  He went up to the Bima and led Torah service.  It was no big deal.  He just participated in leading a part of the service, something that a couple dozen USY’ers did over the course of the weekend.
However, it was a big deal to his father who was standing in the back of the sanctuary with tears running down his cheeks, because at that moment his son was not special. Like thousands of youth before him, he was given the honor and privilege of participating in a Shabbat with his USY friends.
One day, Solomon might show up at your synagogue.  When he does, are you going to make him feel ‘special’ by requiring him to bring his own very bulky set of books, or are you going to make him feel like a part of the congregation by giving him a book, just as you will undoubtedly do for every other person who walks in?
For more detailed information on how to order a standard Shabbat set of Braille volumes, contact me at Rabbi@AhavasIsraelGR.org.