Prayer Reflections
Prayer is not a regular feature of the lives of most of my friends, family and community. But human beings all over the globe have been worshiping in one form or another since the beginning of time. Additionally, the poetry of the Jewish prayerbook has provided a common religious vocabulary for our people across time and space. I believe that my job as rabbi includes helping people gain access to the Jewish prayer tradition. These reflections contain some of my own thoughts and understandings emerging from over fifty years of living with these words.
page numbers refer to CBB’s Siddur Mashiv HaRuach
K’dushat HaYom
pp 42-43, 92-93
Over the course of a traditional Shabbat, kedushat hayom is recited four times. Each time, however, the Shabbat idea is conveyed with a different image of wholeness.
Modim
pp 46-47, 98-99
At times, gratitude surges spontaneously, a swelling tide of joyful receiving, expressed unmistakably in hundreds of tiny signals flashing across our face and body. Like the ocean rising in the gravitational pull of the moon, natural gratitude is soul responding to soul. Too often, though, our gratitude falls short, dashing hopes and expectations in the delicate hour of love.
Bringing forth Torah
p 104
The old scroll sits hidden within the Ark, waiting to be unrolled and spoken into life by a reader. Even then, however, the language remains darkly sealed until it is illumined by loving human inquiry.
Kaddish
pp122-123
The service closes with a rhythmic chant without melody, a rhyming, echoing drum-beat, the mourner’s kaddish. The only prayer in the siddur that is never sung, the mourner’s kaddish intends not to transport us to a different realm, but to ground us and plant us firmly in this difficult reality.