Rabbi Kanefsky and “…shelo asani isha”

By Susan Esther Barnes

Earlier this month, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky published an article in which he explained why he doesn’t say the prayer that ends “shelo asani isha,” thereby initiating a flurry of discussion in the Jewish Orthodox blogging community. (I’d link to the post, but it appears to have been removed, and replaced with “A Calmer and Fuller Articulation.”)

This prayer may be unfamiliar to Reform Jewish people, since it has been omitted from the Reform prayer book. The prayer is/was part of the recitation of every day blessings, and in it the person praying thanks God for “not making me a woman.”

The bloggers who disagree with Rabbi Kanefsky include the usual arguments claiming that Orthodox practice has not changed for thousands of years (which is patently false), and that anyone who questions current practice must not really be Orthodox.

But others, including thoughtful people on Dov Bear’s blog, claim that we should continue to say this blessing because, regardless of what its intention was when it was first written, these days “almost everyone” interprets this prayer in a benign fashion.

So what do they mean by benign? First, there’s the argument that the men are required to do the time-bound mitzvot (commandments), and women are not, so what the men are doing when they say this prayer is thanking God that they get to do more commandments, and thus get a greater reward. This explanation, of course, furthers the idea that men are rewarded more than women are, which I don’t see as benign.

One reason given for why women aren’t required to do as many commandments as the men is that the women are somehow spiritually superior to the men. On the surface that’s a nice-sounding argument, but it doesn’t make any sense for a man to thank God for making him spiritually inferior.

Dov Bear himself said it makes sense to say this prayer because, “Being an Orthodox Jewish woman sucks.” As one commentor elaborated, “I'm damn thankful I'm not a woman. Who wants to get paid less for the same job? Who wants a bunch of men telling you how you're supposed to dress and how you're supposed to cover your hair? Who wants to have every intimate detail of your personal life on display and up for inspection by a man? The list goes on and on, but there's only so much time in the day.” This is benign?

Another reason given for not removing this prayer from Orthodox prayer books is that doing so won’t change the mind of misogynists anyway, so what’s the point? Well, the point is that by leaving it in, every day Orthodox Jews are reminded that the prayer book, and thus Judaism, apparently supports the idea that being a man is better than being woman. Thus, the prayer is an institutionalization of the idea that women are inferior to men. The removal of the prayer would be the removal of the endorsement of this idea by the establishment.

Although removing the prayer, by itself, will not solve the problem, the longer the institution of Judaism endorses prayers that promote the idea that women are inferior, the harder it will be to change the attitudes of Jewish misogynists. That is the point.

I Was Trying to Do the Right Thing

By Susan Esther Barnes

As I have written before, I am not the best at caring for plants. Far from it.

At one point last year, I had a plant infested with white flies, and despite my best efforts, I couldn't get rid of them. As a last resort, I put the plant outside on the back deck, thinking maybe the spiders would eat the flies. Although one enterprising spider moved in right away, it was no match for the flies, which eventually finished killing the plant.

I left the pot outside, and imagine my surpirse when, a number of weeks ago, I found the plant above had suddenly taken up residence in the pot. It seemed to spring up out of nowhere, and suddenly was a couple of feet high.

It wasn't the same kind of plant that had been in the pot previously, and I didn't know what it was. Because it had sprung up so vigorously, and had such a thick stem, I was concerned it would soon outgrow the pot.

When I saw my sister on Father's Day, I showed her a picture of the plant. Even though she is a Master Gardener, she didn't know what it was. So on Friday I took a photo of the plant to the local nursery, and asked their advice.

They didn't know what it was either, but they agreed that the pot it was in wasn't big enough for it. I asked whether I should by a large pot to replant it, but they agreed that the plant may well be a tree, and would outgrow any pot I was likely to purchase. When I said it was currently on my deck, they said, "If you try to keep it on your deck, you're just asking for trouble."

Which left me with a moral dilemma. If I just left it in the pot, it would become too large, possibly break the pot, and die. It is a living thing after all, and I didn't want to torture it.

Similarly, I didn't want to just throw it in the trash, where it would dry out and die another kind of slow death. I suppose I could have killed it more quickly by cutting it up into pieces before I threw it away, but then I would have felt a bit like an axe murderer.

Then I thought about where the plant came from. There is a small open space common area behind my home. Clearly, some seed or pod or something had fallen into the pot and taken root. Had my deck and the pot not been in the way, the plant would have taken root in the ground below.

So on Friday afternoon I took the plant out of the pot and put it on the ground in a nice shady area below and somewhat to the side of my deck. Then I threw a bunch of water on it to help it get started.

On Saturday evening I threw some more water on it. It has been hot here, and I felt somewhat responsible for helping the plant get settled in what I had been starting to think of as its rightful home.

Then, on Sunday, I leaned over my deck to look at the plant, and saw this:



Apparently, there had either been a swarm of locusts that came by in the night, or, more likely, a neighborhood deer had come down out of the hills and snacked on the plant's nice, tender leaves.

The plant isn't dead yet, but I figure it's just a matter of time. I was trying to do the right thing, but really, just about any plant is doomed from the moment it comes under the influence of my tender care.

I wonder if there's a Hebrew prayer to ask for forgiveness for inadvertently killing (yet another one of) God's plants.

The First Week

By Susan Esther Barnes

I learned of my father's death early Saturday evening. An email went out from the synagogue to the congregation on Sunday morning. On Sunday evening, on less than 12 hours' notice, there were 30 people in my home for a minyan.

On the way over, Rabbi Stacy had stopped at the synagogue to pick up the prayer books we use at a mourning service, but neither she nor her husband could get the key to the office to work, so they arrived without them. We went through the entire service without the benefit of the prayer books, and nobody missed a word. Nobody missed a beat. There are those who think Reform Jews are ignorant and uneducated. I beg to differ.

When we rose and faced east for the Bar'chu, we looked out the windows over the small common area of trees and bushes behind my home. As we stood there, a man started to raise the blinds in a home across the way. Once they were up, he looked across at us. I am sure he wondered why there were a bunch of people here, standing at the window, looking out at him. After a moment, he closed the blinds again.

I know he had no way of knowing what was going on, but I couldn't help but think, "He is trying to close himself off from death. We are opening ourselves to death's reality. He would be better off if he would open the blinds and join us."

For the first couple of days, I couldn't sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. I was tired. Time seemed to stretch out in a way it never has before. No one thing seemed to take a long time; it was just the accumulated weight of it all.

Then the cards and the emails started to arrive. As a member of the synagogue board of directors, I've been writing sympathy notes to congregants for a couple of years now. I tried to put a lot of thought into what I said in those notes.

On the receiving end of such notes for the first time, I noticed that some people wrote a paragraph or two, and some just signed their name to a pre-printed sympathy card. That is when I learned that it doesn't really matter what you write. Sure, it's nice to get a card that has something personal written in it. But at the end of the day, what matters is that the person took the time to send one. Whether they write something in it or not is greatly outweighed by the simple fact that they were thoughtful enough to send one.

On Thursday night, someone from the synagogue delivered a meal to our house. When I agreed to receive the meal, I didn't think it was a big deal. After all, I had been eating. But when I opened the bag and smelled the chicken, I realized it was the first hot, decent meal I'd had since the night before my father died. I've never had much patience for cooking, and I have even less now, so I had basically been snacking. Knowing that the meal came from the synagogue and was made with love made it that much better.

On Friday evening, my husband and I went to the synagogue. Normally I get there early to greet people at the front door. This time, we arrived just before services started, and there were others there to greet us.

My friend Judi sat with us in the rabbi's office and held my hand as services started. The beginning of the service is a series of joyful songs. Mourners traditionally don't enter the sanctuary until after L'cha Dodi, the song welcoming the Sabbath Bride, because we are not capable in joining in the joy of the opening songs at this time.

Usually I open the synagogue doors at the end of L'cha Dodi to "enable" the Sabbath Bride to come in. This time Judi and Ken opened the doors, and after the song, John and I walked in to take our seats.

When the time came for the prayer for healing, I realized that, although I had been saying my father's name for the last few years, I would no longer be asking for healing for him. I skipped his name, and went on to the name of my friend Mark, and Frank, the significant other of a friend at work. Then I started to cry, both because I could no longer say the prayer of healing for my father, and because I heard other people asking for healing for me.

At the Saturday morning service, I wrapped myself in my tallit (prayer shawl), so it completely covered my upper body below the neck. I didn't know I was going to do that, but it felt right to wrap myself in it that way. I was so grateful that I was in the habit of wearing a large, full tallit. Many people, especially women, wear a much smaller tallit, more like a large scarf, completely incapable of enveloping a person the way mine did.

For much of the service on both Friday and Saturday, I didn't sing or join in the prayers. I closed my eyes and listened. The sound of the congregation was unbelievably beautiful. I don't think they have any idea how beautiful they sound; I certainly had no idea before this past weekend, when I had been singing rather than really listening.

The songs felt like warm, gentle waves lapping over me. I felt raw, like my body was an open wound, which the waves of sound could not touch or heal. Yet the waves washed over me, surrounding me, creating a barrier between me and the rest of the world, assuring me that although they could not heal the hurt I am now feeling, they will embrace me and protect me from other hurts, and allow my healing process the space to begin on its own in its own time.

I am still in the time called anunit, the period between death and burial. I still don't know when the burial will be. Time is still moving at a freakishly slow pace. It feels like it's been a month since my father died.

It is possible that the only people at the burial will be my father's widow, my sister, my husband, and me. My sister asked me to say a few prayers at the burial. Rabbi Michael loaned me a copy of the rabbi manual he uses at life cycle events so I will have something appropriate to say.

I don't know how this is all going to play out over the coming weeks and months. I know I could have struggled through this on my own, but the incalculable value of going through this in the midst of a loving community is clear.

As I told Judi on Friday night, ever since I was 17, it has been my husband who has carried me through all the hardest times of my life. I am so grateful he doesn't have to do it alone any more.

Leap of Faith

By Susan Esther Barnes

"Oh my goodness, what was I thinking? Nobody's going to come and anyone who does come is gonna think it sucks because I don't know what I'm doing and we probably won't even be able to get in the door the first day and will have to stand out in the rain without prayer books; I'm an idiot for ever considering it & I'm so NOT a morning person - arrrrgh!"

The above panic-attack stream of consciousness is a direct quote from an email I sent to a friend shortly after I officially committed to start holding a weekly Tuesday morning prayer service at my synagogue.

I am not a rabbi. I don’t have any formal training on how to lead a weekday morning service. But I do read a lot of Jewish stuff, and I’ve been attending Friday and Saturday services regularly for long enough that I have memorized most of the prayers. A rabbi is not actually required to hold a Jewish prayer service. There’s no reason why I can’t do it. Other than fear.

This whole thing started when the synagogue experimented with holding morning services twice a month on Wednesday for a while. Those of us who attended regularly loved it. It was a little tough, though, because it started at 8:15, so the only people who could attend were those who don’t work, or those who can arrive at work later than the traditional start time of 8 or 9. And twice a month meant it was hard to remember whether or not there would be a service on any particular Wednesday, without consulting a calendar.

As a result, not many people came, and we regularly had to drag office staff in whenever we wanted to get enough people for a minyan so we could say the Mourner’s Kaddish at the end. Then summer came, and people went on vacation, and the Wednesday morning services stopped. And I missed them. And some other people missed them, too.

Eventually I went to the rabbi, and said I wanted to start up a weekday morning service again, but earlier, so we could still get to work on time. Of course, I knew this wouldn’t work for him. He often works late into the evening, and has three small kids at home, and doesn’t get enough sleep as it is.

So when he started to say he’s sorry, but that just wouldn’t work for him, I was prepared with my oh-so-diplomatic response, “It’s not about you.” I then explained, “We don’t need a rabbi to lead the service. We can lead it. We just need to be able to get into the building.” And because he’s gracious and kind and not about hoarding power, he is all for it.

Which leads me to where I am today, with the custodial staff being notified to let us in early on Tuesday mornings starting on March 1, and the Communications Director agreeing to put an announcement in the synagogue’s weekly email and monthly newsletter, and the Sisterhood planning to put a notice in their newsletter.

I’m nervous; the neurotic part of me is certain the whole thing will turn out horribly and be a complete bust. Yet I’m still willing to take the leap of faith required to give it a try because I’m in a covenantal relationship with God, and the spiritual part of me is certain this is the right thing to do, no matter who does or doesn’t show up or what does or doesn’t happen. Seriously, how could spending another 30 to 45 minutes with God once a week possibly be a bad thing? Even if I’m the only one there, I know it will start my day in a holy way.

So close your eyes, tighten your seat belt, and make a wish. We’re living in the best of all possible worlds, and anything can happen. As long as I don’t panic.

The Trouble with Tefillin

By Susan Esther Barnes

I'm fortunate. I don't have a lot of "Jewish baggage," those bad feelings that stem from negative early experiences with synagogues or rabbis or Hebrew school or whatever. All the Jewish stuff I remember from my childhood (and, I admit, there wasn't much of it) are positive memories.

But when I think of tefillin, the first thing I think of are stern, old men with white beards who think I'm beneath their notice. When I remind myself that is an unfair sterotype, the next thing I think of is the young men in I saw Israel in public places trying to get other men to lay tefillin, and ignoring me.

When I try to push myself past that, the third thing I think of is the Women of the Wall wanting to wear tefillin at the Kotel and being told they can't. And they don't even count themselves as a minyan.

That's a lot of negativity to lay on two little ritual objects that have never done me any harm on their own.

So I was feeling some ambivalence on Friday as I swung by the Post Office to trade in the "we have a package for you" delivery slip for the box I knew contained the tefillin I had ordered.

It had come all the way from Ashdod, Israel, and apparently it was not an easy trip. I was a bit alarmed to see the box was smashed and even ripped open on one end. It was then wrapped in US Post Office tape and stamped with a disclaimer that it had been received damaged.

I not only had to sign for the package, I also had to sign something to acknowledge that the US Postal Service said they had received the package already damaged. The nice Post Office lady told me shipments within the US are insured, but she has no idea how I'd make a claim about a smashed international package if the contents were damaged. Oh, joy.



Fortunately, (sort of - I'm still feeling ambivalent), when I got the box home and opened it, everything appeared to be in good shape. Like I'm a tefillin inspection expert, but the boxes with the prayers in them don't look broken, the leather straps are still attached, and the Certificate saying they're Kosher isn't wrinkled or torn.

The unfortunate part is, now that they're here, I need to face all that baggage I've been carrying around. I was going to say "...carrying around about them," but some helpful part of my mind is insisting that my baggage is not about these tefillin, it's about those tefillin I've seen on men who thought I had no business wearing them.

So, one day soon, maybe tonight, I'm going to take a deep breath, unwrap these tefillin, and try them on. And pray a little. And see how it feels.

Then next week I'll make an appointment with my rabbi and bring them in, so he can confirm I'm putting them on correctly. And we'll talk about them, and how I'm planning to use them.

I hope that, slowly, over time, these tefillin will help me to set aside my baggage and to make peace with those tefillin. I hope I'll learn not to feel silly praying with a box on my head and on my arm. I hope I can get comfortable with them.

Because until then, they feel a little bit like invaders from the world of "These aren't for you. You aren't good enough." I can't even begin to discover whether they have the potential to become a meaningful part of my ritual practice until I can make peace with them and welcome them into my home as friends. And that is so not where I am right now.

Tefillin Barbie

By Susan Esther Barnes

Tefillin Barbie. I must say, those are two words I never would have expected to put together. Which demonstrates how behind the times I am, since Tefillin Barbie has been around since 2006.

Tefillin are leather straps with boxes at the end of them. In the boxes are verses from the Torah. They are worn during prayer. One is strapped to the head so the box is on the forehead, and the other is strapped to the arm, with the box on the hand and the leather straps wound up the arm. There’s more to it than that, such as how many times around you wrap the straps, but you get the picture.

My gut reaction when I see tefillin is “Ugh.” I don’t like them. Nobody wears them during services at the synagogue I attend. So imagine my surprise and dismay when I emailed a link for Tefillin Barbie to my rabbi, and he hinted that maybe we should start encouraging congregants to lay tefillin.

The whole idea of tefillin comes from Deuteronomy 6:8. Deuteronomy Chapter 6 starts by talking about the laws, the one-ness of God, and our love for God. Verse 8 says, “And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.”

One of the things I like about Judaism is we often don’t take the words of Torah literally. We look beyond the literal to discover possible meanings on other levels. I was once told the reason we chant Torah rather than just read it is to make it sound like a song, to remind us that it, like a song, should not be taken it too literally.

On a figurative level, I like this verse. It can be a useful guide to our actions if we go around thinking that the commandments and our love of God are always on our hands and in front of our eyes, so no matter what we do or see, we shape our words and deeds accordingly.

The idea of people taking this verse literally and actually tying these words onto their foreheads and hands strikes me as a bit silly.

The main reason for my gut reaction against tefillin, however, is what I associate with them. Jewish law requires men to wear them for prayer; it does not require women to wear them. I have only seen them on Orthodox men, and in books that are clearly written only for men. As a result, the message I get when I see them is, “This is for us; this is not for you,” a message which plays into my issues with rejection.

When I was in Israel last summer, on the airplane and in every city we visited, there were men trying to get male tourists to try on tefillin, as part of their outreach effort to draw men into becoming more religious. These men had no interest in offering to lay tefillin with me, because I am female, and beneath their notice.

As a person who believes in egalitarianism, I have always seen tefillin as an outdated remnant of the old, sexist ways some Jews still cling to while I try to be a religious Jew in the 21st century. I have never viewed tefillin as religious objects. To me, they have always been a symbol of sexist exclusion.

Why would a woman want to wear a symbol of sexist exclusion anyway? We don’t want to adopt their outdated ways. We want to express our Judaism in ways that make sense in a modern, egalitarian world, a world which, I would venture to say, is a step closer to the World to Come than one in which one segment of society is excluded by another.

Just this past week, however, I began to read a book by and about the Women of the Wall, a group of women in Israel who have been fighting, since 1988, for the right to pray out loud, wearing tefillin and a tallit and with a Torah, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. I had never heard anything before about women wanting to wear tefillin.

In their book, the women explain that it is not against Jewish law for women to wear tefillin. It just upsets some religious men because they’re not used to seeing it, and many therefore are ignorant of the law regarding it, so they assume it is forbidden.

The knowledge that there are some women fighting for the right to lay tefillin puts the idea into a new light for me. Why should men claim the right to do this, and try to deny it to women? Especially Orthodox men, who claim to be bound by Jewish law? Suddenly, the idea of a woman wearing tefillin feels less like women taking on a symbol of exclusion, and more like a way to reclaim something which wrongfully has been denied to us.

Coincidentally (or not), while I was reading the book on the Women of the Wall, I came across a blog post that mentioned Tefillin Barbie.

It is particularly fitting that Tefillin Barbie was created by Jen Taylor Friedman, who, according to her website, is the first woman in modern times to have written a sefer Torah (Torah scroll, which are written out painstakingly by hand and, the Orthodox would say, only by men).

When I finally had a chance to think it all through, the rabbi’s suggestion that we lay tefillin transformed in my mind from something offensive to something that, like Tefillin Barbie, may be yet another step in the struggle of women to claim our rightful place in prayer and religious practice alongside Jewish men.

The Purpose of Prayer

By Susan Esther Barnes

Ever since blogger Dov Bear posted about faith healing, I’ve been thinking about the purpose of prayer. I find it interesting that he chose to focus on the power, or lack thereof, of petitionary prayer, since asking God for things isn’t the main purpose of Jewish prayer.

I’m no linguist, but it is my understanding that words for prayer in several languages, such as Latin and English, have the same root as words for asking for things. For example, “pray,” “ask,” and “beg” in English can be used more or less interchangeably, albeit with different connotations.

According to the website Judaism 101, the Hebrew word for prayer, t’filah, comes from the same root as the word meaning “to judge oneself.” This root implies the purpose of Jewish prayer is not petitionary - to ask God for stuff - but to look at ourselves. The idea is to think about what we’re grateful for, what we wish we could change, how we’re presenting ourselves to the world around us.

As anyone who studies Judaism will discover, we Jews have a lot of prayers already written for us. This includes not only what we read in the prayer books during services, but prayers for all sorts of other occasions as well. There are specific prayers we’re supposed to say when we wake up in the morning, when we leave on a long trip, when we see a rainbow, when we see someone we haven’t seen in a long time, when we learn of a person’s death. There’s even a prayer for when we use the restroom (It’s called “Asher Yatzar” if you want to look it up).

Most of these prayers do not ask God for anything. Instead, they focus our attention on things like our gratitude, our covenant with God, and the complexities of our body.

Certainly, there are times when we do ask God for things. Every week at services I say the names of my father and my friend Mark when the time comes for the prayer for healing.

Even then, there are certain rules we follow. We are not allowed to ask God to change what already is. A common example is if a man is returning to his village and he sees smoke rising from it, he is not to pray, “Please don’t let it be my house that is on fire.” This is because whatever is causing the smoke is already on fire. It is futile to pray to God to suddenly move the fire from one house to another.

When I say the healing prayer I don’t pray for my father to not have diabetes or for my friend to not have cancer. I don’t even pray for God to cure them, since I don’t think such prayers would be realistic. Instead, I pray for the symptoms to be more bearable, for God to give them strength and comfort while they cope with their condition, for them to be given the opportunity to enjoy their lives, for them to know others love them.

Sometimes my prayers change based on what’s going on in my life. Until recently, every time we sang “Hashkivenu” and asked God to spread a shelter of peace over us, I pictured a shelter of peace spreading from me and others in the congregation to cover those among us who were in mourning or otherwise in pain or in need of support. In the days after Rose died, I changed the direction to picture the shelter of peace coming from others nearby to cover me. One could argue this makes the prayer less about asking for something than it is about assessing my state of mind.

We are now approaching the High Holy Days, the time when we are asked to look over the past year, to judge our actions, and to apologize for our sins. It is only appropriate for us to spend some time now to remind ourselves that our word for prayer is not about asking for things, but is about judging ourselves. What better time than now to pray?

Women and the Wall

By Susan Esther Barnes

There has been a lot of rhetoric flying around since Nofrat Frenkel was arrested at the Western Wall, or Kotel, in Jerusalem. Many reports suggest she was arrested for wearing a tallit, or prayer shawl, at the Wall, even though halachah, Jewish law, does not forbid a woman from wearing one. An article by Rabbi Avi Shafran, originally written for Am Echad Resources and published in the January 21 edition of J Weekly, says her offence was actually to “publicly read from the Torah opposite the stones of the Kotel.” He goes on to cite a passage in the Mishnah Torah which prohibits women from reading publicly from the Torah.

In splitting hairs about what, exactly, was Ms. Frenkel’s offense, Rabbi Shafran seems to ignore the point that all she wanted to do was to be allowed to pray at the wall in the same manner that men are allowed to pray there.

Marvin Schick, in the January 1 edition of The Jewish Week, says the women who want to be able to pray at the Kotel are sincere, but “This sincerity is embedded in egotism, in the attitude that what I/we want trumps long-standing religious practices, the sensibilities of others notwithstanding.”

Schick goes on to say, “I wonder whether it is all that difficult to understand that what has been labeled for far too long as out of touch or fundamentalist has proven to be essential to our survival as a people.” Further, he says, “Now that we have returned to Jerusalem and can pray at the Kotel, let us be respectful of the religious faith and teachings that indeed were the catalysts for our return to Jerusalem.”

I find it hard to imagine that others fail to see the lack of logic in the twisted reasoning of these men. They speak as if Judaism has always been static, that the laws were written down at the very beginning, and have never been re-examined or changed since. This is simply not true.

The most obvious example springs from the site of the debate itself, the Kotel, thought to be a remnant of the Temple where the Jewish people used to conduct our ritual sacrifices. When the Temple was destroyed for the second time, there was no place in which to conduct these sacrifices. Therefore, all of the laws regarding ritual sacrifice had to be set aside. The result was a tremendous change in how Jews practice our religion. Any who insisted Judaism could not exist if these changes were made were swept aside, and Judaism survived because of our ability to adapt and change to what was, at the time, the modern world.

It was only because Judaism recognized the realities of the world around it, and adapted, that it was it able to survive in the diaspora and thus have any chance of maintaining a people who would one day be able to return to Jerusalem. Thus, in contradiction to what Mr. Schick says, a refusal to re-examine the laws and to make changes where necessary was not a catalyst for our return, but could very well have been a course that would have prevented our continuation as a people.

Similarly, his statement that “We have returned to Jerusalem and can pray at the Kotel” is nonsensical when seen in the light that, although we have returned to Jerusalem, roughly only half of us can pray at the Kotel, because women may not do so.

Mr. Schick thinks it is wrong for the women to upset the sensibilities of the ultra-Orthodox, who are a minority, but he does not seem to consider the egotism of the ultra-Orthodox who upset the sensibilities of the Conservative, Reform, and other denominations of Jews who constitute the majority in Israel and elsewhere in the world.

It is time for the Orthodox to take a sincere look at the strength of the Jewish people and to recognize that our survival has depended in large part on our ability to adapt to the changing world around us. It is time for us to recognize that laws and rituals have changed over time to meet our changing understanding of the world and the realities in which we find ourselves. We have in the past, and must continue, to make changes where they make sense while retaining the core of our Jewish beliefs and practices. This is how we will survive as a people.

It is time to recognize we are all b’tzelim Elohim, made in the image of God. Let all Jews who want to come and pray at the Kotel do so, in full voice. Does this mean the Orthodox should lose their ability to pray as they see fit? No. Rabbi Eric Yoffie proposes a solution in which the Kotel is divided into thirds. One third would be set aside for Orthodox men to pray, one third would be set aside for Orthodox women to pray, and the remaining third would be open to secular Jews and those of other denominations. Thus, every Jew would be able to pray at our holiest site in the way we see fit.

It is time to stop worshipping what we imagine to be immutable laws, written by mere mortals long after we received the Torah at Sinai. It is time to return to our root values, in which we respect all human beings and recognize the fallibility of our sages. It is time to recognize the need to correct our course and to realize we have been following the wrong path. It is time to allow all of our people to return to Jerusalem to pray.

Judaism Creating Connections

By Susan Esther Barnes

On Friday night during services Rabbi Lezak told two stories about how living in Israel means living in an inter-connected community. The first one, here, talks about how the plight of Gilad Shalit, the Israel soldier who has been in captivity for three years, feels personal to all Israelis, since all of them have family members who were or are in the military.

The second story, here, is an amazing true story about the woman who is the mother of the first soldier killed in Cast Lead, who goes to a concert and by chance (or perhaps an act of God) meets a couple who named their baby after her fallen son.

To some extent these stories are possible because Israel is such a tiny country, where everyone (with some exceptions) sends their children to military or other national service. These stories, combined with something else that happened at services Friday night, got me thinking about how the practice of Judaism itself helps to create these connections.

One of the situations Judaism is particularly sensitive about is the death of a loved one. There are many customs and rituals that surround this event, and many of them create and rely on community connections. When a mourner returns home from the graveyard, he or she is not allowed to eat his or her own food. Rather, the community is expected to, and in fact bears the responsibility of, bringing food to the mourner. This not only relieves the mourner of having to think about mundane acts like grocery shopping and cooking when just walking across the room may feel like a monumental act, but it also makes sure the mourner is not alone during this critical time.

In addition, the mourner is to say the Mourner's Kaddish on a regular basis throughout the first eleven months after their loved on has died. And this prayer may only be said when there are at least ten Jews present. Again, this serves to ensure the mourner is surrounded by members of his or her community during the first year of mourning.

After the first year has passed, we say the Mourner's Kaddish for the anniversary of the loved one's death, called the Yarzheit. When worshippers come to services on Friday night they are handed a program that contains various bits of information, and on the back is a list of those in the congregation who have died recently as well as the names of those who are having their Yarzeheit.

On Friday night, I was sitting beside a couple, when another couple sat behind us. The woman next to me was looking at the Yarzheit list, and she turned to the couple behind us. She pointed at the list and said, "I see this person on the list with the same last name as you. Is this your father?"

"No," they replied, "That is our son."

"How old was he?" asked the woman.

"22."

"Oh, I didn't know."

And thus another connection was created, because when you know a couple has lost a son, an incredible tragedy in itself, and further learn the son died so young, it cannot help but create an understanding, a bond, from the acknowledgement that these people have walked through the fire and have the bravery to carry on.

And it strikes me this is one of the ways Judaism seeks to connect us. Yarzheit not only serves to comfort the mourner, but its public nature gives us the opportunity to ask the questions that bind us together, like "Who was she?" "What is your favorite memory about him?" and to make the statements that bind us together, like, "I remember him" and "I miss her too."

Articulation and Flinging

By Susan Esther Barnes

In her book A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey, Merle Feld writes, “What is a prayer? A prayer is the articulatiion of something very particular at the core of one's being, flung out into the universe. Perhaps it finds a mark, perhaps not. The essential thing is the articulation and the flinging.”

I agree about the importance of articulation and flinging. Although one may or may not call what I write prayers, what I do when I write is exactly what is described above. I do it because I feel compelled to do it, not because I expect to get anything back. However, I do also spend time pondering what happens to my words after the flinging.

After I write something, which for me is the culmination of the articulation part, I then need to decide what method or methods I will use to fling it. There are a couple of people to whom I email a good number of the things I write. The main reason they remain on my tiny email list is they often respond with words of encouragement and/or enthusiasm. This gives me the idea they don’t consider my emails to be a complete waste of their time.

Sometimes I send something to someone because what I wrote was inspired by them or mentions them in some way. These are generally one-time-only flings and I don’t add these folks to my email list unless they specifically request it.

There are a number of people to whom I have sent my writing but from whom I have received no response at all. This leaves me with a bit of an awkward feeling. I don’t know what it means, and I suppose in each case it probably means something different. It is unlikely I will send any of these people more of my writing, however, unless I happen to write something else that mentions them.

On the other hand, on at least one occasion, something I wrote was forwarded by others to a number of different email lists – a sort of turbo-flinging which was quite interesting to watch.

Another method of flinging involves my efforts to publish things I have written. Without much effort on my part, I have managed to have things published in my synagogue’s newsletter, a local newspaper, and a literary journal. To a certain extent, these venues provide some validation to the value of my flinging, since if the editors didn’t think my writing would be interesting to their readers, they wouldn’t be willing to participate in my flinging by publishing it. Unfortunately, with this type of flinging most people who read what I publish have no easy way of telling me what they think about it.

My newest venue for flinging is this blog. The idea of a blog appealed to me because it has the potential for a wide audience and also provides a method for easy feedback. After three months of blogging, the statistics tell me I have a small but steady stream of people viewing the blog, and they’re staying long enough on an average visit to read one or more of my posts. However, even after I started to allow anonymous comments, almost none of my blog visitors posts a comment. I suppose that’s normal, but it does leave me wondering what my visitors like or dislike about the blog, whether they’re passing on to others anything I’ve written, or what other effect, if any, my articulation and flinging has had on them.

Like prayers in general, it’s a matter of faith, this articulation and flinging without knowing what, if anything, happens after the fling.

Visit from the Shekhinah

Yesterday I felt like I was coming down with a cold, and I spent the whole day in bed napping with the cats and watching the "Deadliest Catch" marathon on TV. However, it was Friday, I missed Shabbat last week because I was in Hawaii, and I'm going to miss Shabbat next week due to our company retreat. Three weeks without Shabbat is three weeks too many as far as I'm concerned, so I hauled myself out of bed and went to the synagogue.

When services started the sanctuary doors were closed, so during the song/prayer "Lecha Dodi" I walked around the back of the sanctuary to the outside of the main sanctuary doors. "Lecha Dodi" is about welcoming Shabbat. Traditionally, during the last verse, everyone bows toward the doors of the sanctuary, thereby bowing to Shabbat as she enters. I'd say Shabbat can make it through the doors whether or not they're open, but it's more dramatic if the doors are open when the last verse starts, and it certainly seems more welcoming to Shabbat to open the doors for her.

So there I was, in the foyer, listening to the singing through the closed doors, waiting for the last verse, and I started thinking, "Hmmm, if I'm standing out here waiting to let Shabbat in through the doors at the last verse, then Shabbat must be out here in the foyer with me now." So, I looked up over my shoulder, and felt the Shekhinah, God's presence, hovering over me.

When the congregation reached the last verse and sang, "Come in, bride," I opened the doors, and the Shekhinah swept past me into the sanctuary.

I know God is with us all the time. I know I can feel God wherever I am. But there is something special about the Shekhinah on Shabbat that I truly miss whenever I'm away.

Last Night's Silent Prayer

By Susan Esther Barnes

Last night was the evening of Rosh Hashanah. As I stood on the steps greeting my fellow congregants, I marveled at the number of faces I knew.

Once I was seated inside, I looked around the room. I remembered how, three years ago on this day, I sat in a room full of complete strangers, and felt so alone. I remembered how, two years ago on this day, I stood at the microphone in front of about 1,500 people and told them how alone I had felt, what I had done to change that, and how good it felt to no longer be alone. I thought about how good it felt this year to be among so many friendly faces, to be part of a community where I feel safe, where I feel loved, where I feel I belong.

In every service, there is a time for silent prayer. Sometimes I use the time to talk with God in words. Sometimes I use the time to talk with God in images or feelings. Sometimes I use the time just to listen. Last night, something completely new happened.

Last night, during the time for silent prayer, the only words I was capable of conjuring in my mind were, "Thank you." The words repeated in my head, over and over, as if of their own volition. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you." And each time the words repeated, a new image from the past year formed in my head. "Thank you," and I pictured a time when a woman held my hand. "Thank you," and I saw people bussing tables after a Sulchan Shabbat dinner. "Thank you," and I saw us gathered in a congregant's home one Friday night, singing together.

The words repeated and the images came, one after the other, all these experiences and all these people I did not have in my life three years ago, but who are now an integral part of my life. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," the words and the images came, one after the other, effortlessly and seemingly without end, until Fred began to sing "Osey shalom" and the moment passed.

Repentance

I'm not a poet, but here's something I wrote last year, less than two weeks after my husband was hospitalized for a couple of days with an infection in the sack surrounding his heart. It was a scary time, and about a month before Rosh Hashanah, so I was feeling a bit dramatic.

Repentance
By Susan Esther Barnes

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed
Who shall live and who shall die

Each year I fear death will come
Before Rosh Hashanah
When I sit down to ask you
Is there anything I have said or done
In the past year
That has hurt you
I say the words and hang over an abyss
I fear the valley of the shadow of death
How could I have hurt you
So much worse
To have hurt you and not even notice
But how can I breathe if I have hurt you
And not only have I not noticed
But have committed a far greater sin
By not providing a safe place
For you earlier
To tell me what I have done
And instead allowed it to root in your soul
To fester there

If somehow I live through it
It is for this I shall repent

How Does God Know We're Praying?

By Susan Esther Barnes

On the home page of our synagogue website is something that has caused a small amount of controversy. Over the word “prayer” is a picture of a young man, head slightly bowed, his chin gently resting on one hand curled around the other. What is this? Jews don’t traditionally clasp our hands when we pray, nor do we necessarily bow our heads. Is this a true representation of how we pray? On the other hand, this is a person, authentically immersed in a conversation with God, not bothering to think about decorum or tradition or what praying is “supposed” to look like. This is a prayer on a personal, fundamental level.

It got me to thinking: If we’re not generally bowing, kneeling, or holding our hands together in a particular way, how does God know when we’re praying? Many of our prayers start, “Baruch ata Adonai” (Blessed are you Adonai), but they don’t all start that way, especially the spontaneous ones. I suppose some of us may start our prayers by getting God’s attention: “God, could you help me out a minute here?”

There is a tradition that for certain prayers, we must have 10 Jews, called a minyan. There is also a tradition that even for private prayers, we say them out loud, with just enough volume so we can hear what we are saying. Does this mean God only hears the prayers we say out loud?

That doesn’t feel right to me. Certainly, whenever I address God directly, I get a response. For instance, if I just think, “Hey, God,” I get the feeling of at least a “Hey” back. Sometimes, I’m not even thinking about God; I’m thinking about something (or someone) else. Suddenly, a great idea will pop into my head, or I’ll suddenly remember something important that I’d forgotten. Where did that thought come from? Was it God helping me out? But I wasn’t even praying! Or maybe I was.

If God can hear our thoughts, then maybe everything we think is a prayer. Maybe that is how God knows when we’re praying.