Leaving the Page

May 2009 • Sivan, 5769 www.kolotchayeinu.org congregation kolot chayeinu • • voices of our lives Leaving the Page EDDY EHRLICH I’ve got my siddur. check. lift, blow, choke, I’ve turned to the announced or sigh page. check. they do sharpen If I read the page, they can move I’m reciting. they might rise When I examine the text, I’m and maybe maybe even fly from studying. my mouth, my bowstring, my If I listen to the cantor lead, I heart. am audience. and I will have become pray-er. When I join in with the congregation, I am an arch-er who with will I am singing. and with spirit But praying? loads an arrow What to do?….What to do? and aims for myself, for pray-er. I am an arch-er and my bow floats BARUCH blah blah blah la la before me. la UNIVERSE oy la la blah oy This prayerbook is a quiver but blah SHALOM la blah blah its pages are dull arrows. They AMEN are not yet mine. Elijah the Prophet being fed by ravens from "Descriptive catalogue of a collection of objects of Jewish ceremonial Objects" I must taste a word touch a note borrowed from my neighbor in this issue and rip that page with my teeth to own them and their succulent Leaving the Page ............................. 1 Why I Stopped Praying and marrow From the Rabbi ................................ 2 Started Again ................................. 10 And when with them, Tachlit ............................................... 3 Blackbirds ...................................... 11 I lick, stir, pinch, Sincerity ........................................... 4 Traveling Man ................................. 12 twist, stroke, suck, ‘We Shall Do and We Shall Hear’ Why I Don’t Pray ............................. 13 or hum, Movement and Prayer ...................... 5 Lost and Found .............................. 14 snort, drag Good Vibrations ................................ 6 Fruit Flies – A Prayer for Birkat flick, chew, gnash, nudge Siddur 2.0 ......................................... 7 HaChamah ..................................... 14 swallow, shove, sway, spew, breathe, heave, hiss, hug Prayer in Margins and The Predicament of Prayer ............ 15 and the Pathways to Prayer ..........8-9 On Being Called for an Aliyah ........ 15 FROM THE RABBI Dear Friends, And though the smaller gathering is still a joy at Kabbalat Shabbat, Shabbat morning services have grown too large to fit in a circle. How can any siddur – any written prayerbook – encompass all This larger and more diverse congregation expresses many needs: that we want prayer to do? Any prayer or song or ritual moment different God language, clear introductions for newcomers to Jew- or word of Torah or outstretched hand may be deeply moving to ish prayer, enough tradition and Hebrew for those with background any person sitting in the sanctuary at any time during any Shabbat and skill and notes for everyone to enrich our understanding. service. I smile to look out at the congregation and see the faces – A few years ago, Kolot graduated from cut-and-paste siddurim many kinds of people, some deep in thought, some worn with care, when we were invited to be one of many draft-using sites for the some alive in love or friendship, some seeking comfort or wisdom Reform movement’s Siddur-in-development, Mishkan Tefila. A or connection or a new thought, some bored, some sleepy, some group of us met to give feedback to those who created what is now knowing what our next word will be and some the finished siddur. It was a good step up for our awash in confusion. congregation, but two things made it clear that When Kolot began, we did not have we needed to evolve yet again: The books began any formal prayer. We had monthly meet- to fall apart! And they too began to seem a bit ings that included Torah study and planning skimpy: Why didn’t it have songs? Some ver- for what we would eventually do. When we sions included the full Sh’ma and others did not; began to meet as a fledgling community, we ditto for the full haftarah blessings. It was time started with Shabbat dinner, which included to explore our next step. the Shabbat blessings, songs and music and And so we find ourselves in the spring of stories. In September of that year (1993), we 2009 (5769). After analyzing five siddurim that opened a tiny Children’s Learning Program. had potential to meet Kolot’s many needs, the I was frankly more enamored of Torah study Siddur Selection Committee chose three Photo courtesy of Ellen Lippmann than of prayer, believing with Dr. Louis siddurim to explore in more depth. Each Finkelstein that “when you pray, you Shabbatot, for two months each, whenever speak to God. When you study, God speaks there is not a B’nai Mitzvah, we are using each to you.” I was also hoping to develop a com- C “candidate” Siddur. We have recruited a large munity of non-formal Jewish learning and feedback team that has volunteered to pay strong community connections, based in a Communal prayer special attention and fill out feedback forms. Kolot-owned and operated café. We spoke After their feedback and more mulling by the of prayer services happening informally in is a complex dance congregation as a whole, we hope to arrive at that dreamed-of café, but did not place much consensus about which book to select. emphasis on them. This is a major step for Kolot Chayeinu. But soon we began holding Shabbat morn- ...involving many For the first time we will be purchasing a new, ing Torah study, and it felt wrong to do that hardcover siddur for our community. We hope without some prayers surrounding our learn- participants...and in it will enhance and enrich our prayer and ing. The prayer grew as people wanted bless- last for many years. But none of us have any ings that addressed their lives, joys and fears illusion that a prayerbook creates prayer on its and then as the mourners’ kaddish seemed the background the own, especially not the deeply felt prayer and necessary. Then it began to seem odd not to song we strive to create. begin with some morning prayers after our unfolding story of Communal prayer is a complex dance or customary blessing for food. (We always began play or opera, involving many participants, with food and still do, and I remain convinced many words, a lot of music, strong and subtle that there are few better ways to make a tran- the congregation. symbols, and in the background the unfolding sition from the workaday world to the world story of the congregation. The siddur – any of intentional community, prayer and study.) siddur – can only be what its name implies: So it was that the first of several Kolot an order, the structure that holds us all in the cut-and-paste siddurim were born, along with c dance that is our prayer. It helps to know what holiday celebration booklets and song sheets. prayer may come next, but no book can say Some long-time members are still nostalgic for those booklets, how I will feel saying that prayer on that Shabbat, or how it will be remembering, I think, the joy of a small circle of prayer in which sung or whether we will stand or sit or dance or stamp our feet or there were no strangers for long and prayers and blessings really hold a hand as we do it. The siddur is not a script, it is an outline were directed at each individual. and “aleinu” – it is up to us – each of us - to fill that outline in every Those booklets seem overly sparse to me now – in need of great- er choice, more tradition, prayers for many occasions, and songs. continued on page 12 2 VOICES stayed with me. My praying was polished, were mine. Some, I could totally get be- sincerity but insincere. I was a Bad Jew. hind, like Yotzer, Ma’ariv Aravim, and the Ten years later I moved to New York to Nisim b’Chol Yom, because I already gener- BY MIRIAM ATTIA attend Drisha’s Beit Midrash program, in- ally felt grateful for many aspects of my life, tending to land myself in rabbinical school and I was comfortable thinking of God as “ uring the reception after I the following year. Good rabbinical school the power that keeps the laws of physics became a Bat Mitzvah, I candidates pray regularly, I figured, so once working the way they do. There were other received several versions of there I did my best to learn to pray with prayers, however, that remained inaccessible the following compliment: the Jews of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. to me. The Kaddishes left me cold, as did D“You’re so sincere when you pray!” I didn’t I followed my classmates to Ramath Orah, the Kedusha and several other parts of the know how to respond. B’nai Jeshurun, and Hadar. But “Gates of Amida. I just didn’t know what to do with The first thing that almost flew out of Prayer”, the only siddur I had ever used, all that remote talk about God’s greatness my mouth was, “Aren’t you?” If I had inad- was nowhere to be found. Everyone here when it wasn’t illustrated with some specific vertently shown myself to be more sincere experience that I had had or could at least than other people who’d presumably been imagine having. developing their praying skills far longer When we prayed aloud, I could say to than I, did that mean I’d hit the ceiling myself that I was doing it for the sake of early? That whatever prayer-sincerity I’d C bonding with the community.

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