1Beit T'shuvah Siddur

Acknowledgements Except for the few pages and a blessing that are my own creation, I must thank the many rabbis and teachers who have written wise and spiritual material that I was able to draw upon to create this prayer book. First and foremost, from the old came the new. Rabbi Mark Borovitz and I decided to preserve much material from the previous Friday night siddur, which he had compiled. The many contributors to this prayer book are: Rabbi Edward Feinstein and Rabbi Harold Schulweiss, admired local rabbis; a modern authoress of psalms, Debbie Perlman (z”l); the writings of modern philosophers, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (z”l) and Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (z”l). Other authors included in the prayer book are Rabbi Richard Levy, Rabbi Arthur Green, and Dr. Barry Holtz, Lillian Smith, Rev. Hugh Prather, Albert Einstein, Rabbi Naomi Levy, Rabbi Karyn Kedar, Yitzhak Buxbaum, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Rabbi Ruth Sohn, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, and David Forbes Pardes. We have added prayers written by Beit T’Shuvah residents, for which we are grateful: they speak so clearly. There were a few words of wisdom whose authors were unknown to us, and we thank those authors as well. For translations and Hebrew we relied on Or Chadash, A Commentary on Siddur Sim Shalom , by Rabbi Reuven Hammer, and Siddur Chadash, for all Sabbath and Festival Services , compiled by Rabbi Sidney Greenberg and Rabbi Jonathon D. Levine. We have added some new and contemporary music which we hope will be integrated into the Friday evening service. In the spirit of the freedom and the genius of Debbie Friedman, Craig Taubman, and Julie Silver, whose music has influenced the tone and flavor of our song service, we invite creative and muscial residents to continue to expand upon our musical repertoire as the years go by. B’Shalom, Rabbi Nina Bieber Feinstein Friday Evening - ,CJ c rg 111 Introduction This prayer book was compiled specifically to be used in a house of healing and recovery from addiction. We chose readings and transliterations to reflect the values that we teach here at Beit T’Shuvah. The transliterations were done by Rabbi Nina Bieber Feinstein. They represent the exact, to the best of her ability, phonetic pronunciation of the Hebrew. The sound “a” is represented by the letters “ay” as in “hay.” The sound “ah” is represented by the letter “a” as in “saw.” The sound “e” is represented by the letters “ee” as in “seen.” The sound “eh” is represented by the letter “e” as in “bed.” The sound “u” is represented by the letters “oo” as in “moon.” The sound “o” is represented by an “o” as in “so.” The sound “ih” is represented by the letter “i” as in “sit.” Hyphens are used in words to break up a series of long syllables and to aid in the pronunciation of the word. They do not indicate where hyphens appear in the Hebrew between the words. We hope that these additions will aid in the use of this text and make the prayers more accessible to all who wish to enter the world of spirituality through Jewish prayer. 2 Readings OOnene who reads the words of prayer with great devotion may see the lights within the letters, even though he does not understand the meaning of the words he speaks. Such prayer has great power; his mistakes in reading are of no importance. A father has a young child whom he greatly loves. Even though the child has hardly learned to speak, his father takes pleasure in listening to his words. The purpose of all prayer is to uplift the words, to return them to their source above. The world was created by the downward flow of letters: The task of man is to form those letters into words and take them back to God. If you come to know this dual process, your prayer may be joined to the constant flow of Creation - word to word, voice to voice, breath to breath, thought to thought. The words fly upward and come before God. As God turns to look at the ascending word, life flows through all the worlds and prayer receives its answer. All this happens in an instant and all this happens continually; Time has no meaning in the sight of God. The divine spring is ever-flowing; one who is ready can make himself into a channel to receive the waters from above. A person at prayer is like a bed of coals, As long as a single spark remains, a great fire can again be rekindled. But without that spark there can be no fire. Always remain attached to God, even in those times when you feel unable to ascend to God. You must preserve that single spark - lest the fire in your soul be extinguished. AAdapteddapted from Arthur Green & Barry W. Holtz, Your Word is Fire On Prayer To Be Related to Something Bigger PPrayerrayer is our attachment to the utmost. With- TToo pray is so necessary and so hard. out God in sight, we are like the scattered Hard not because it requires intellect rungs of a broken ladder. To pray is to be- or knowledge of a big vocabulary, come a ladder on which thoughts mount to but because it requires humanity. God to join the movement towards Adonai. And that comes, I think, from a profound We do not step out of the world when we sense of one’s brokenness, and one’s need. pray; we merely see the world in a different Not the need that causes us to cry, setting. The self is not the hub, but the spoke “Get me out of this trouble, quick!” of the revolving wheel. In prayer we shift the but the need that one feels every day of center of living from self-consciousness to one’s life - though one does not acknowledge self-surrender. God is the center toward it - to be related to something bigger than which all forces tendtend... Prayer clarifies our one’s self, something more alive than one’s hopes and intentions. It helps us discover our self, something older and something not yet true aspirations, the pangs we ignore, the born, that will endure through time. longings we forget. It is an act of ~ Lillian Smith self-purification. Adapted from Abraham Joshua Heschel Man’sMan’s Quest for God 3 Kavannah Kavannah The Yiddish writer Shalom Asch tells a story about The seduction of work has drained us of our poetry, an elderly Jewish couple in Russia forced by the romance, softness and intimacy. And if one follows government to billet a soldier. They move out of the psychological literature, it has for tens of their bedroom, and the young man, all gruffness and thousands of people produced an anhedonia, an glares, moves in with his pack and rifle and bedroll. inability to rejoice with the joys of intimacy. The It’s Friday night and the couple prepares to sit down obsessiveness of work, of career, of success in a for Shabbat dinner. Only now is it apparent just how material sense is outrageous. It has been bought at young he is. He sits and stares with wide eyes as the the expense of the family. old woman kindles the Shabbat candles. And he listens as the old man chants the kiddush and motzee. The Sabbath is a cry for family. The modern table is He quickly devours the hunk of challah placed before filled with food and drink but is bare of laughter, of him, and speaking for the first time, he asks for more. song, and conversation. The contemporary family eats together around the same table less and less, His face is a picture of bewilderment. Something sings together, prays together, talks together less and about this scene - the candles, the chant, the taste of less. the challah - it touches him in some mysterious way. He rises from his seat at the table, and beckons the The Sabbath is a call for balance in our lives. We are old man to follow him, back into the bedroom. He lopsided; we are out of kilter. One day out of seven. pulls his heavy pack from the floor onto the bed, and One day out of seven create a fence, a wall, a barrier begins to pull things out. Uniforms, equipment, to keep out the culture of business, its toughness, its ammunition. Until finally, at the very bottom, he hardness, its obsessiveness, its competition. pulls out a small velvet bag, tied with a drawstring. “Can you tell me, perhaps, what this is?” he asks the The word Shabbat means stop: old man, with eyes suddenly gentle and imploring. One day out of seven shut your pocketbook. One day out of seven liberate “In God we Trust” The old man takes the bag in trembling fingers and from the dollar bill and put it in your life. opens the string. Inside is a tiny talis, a set of tefillin, One day in seven put aside your wallet. and small book of prayers. “Where did you get this?” One day in seven halt the motor. he asks the soldier. “I have always had it. I don’t One day in seven leave commerce outside of remember when...” The old man opens the prayer your life. Do not shop. book and reads, his eyes filling with tears: “To our One day out of seven disconnect your fax, your son, Yossel, taken from us as a boy, should you ever email, your computers, your internet.

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