Amen and Amen

Most of us know the Reform movement’s HaMotzi which begins “we give thanks to God for bread” and concludes with the traditional b’rachah in Hebrew and the word “amen.” I rarely sing the b’rachah itself and prefer to listen to it and then respond with an “amen.” In this way, others have said the blessing on my behalf and I can eat bread without repeating the blessing if I so choose or else I have confirmed their blessing and then can make my own, but without saying “amen.”

This is what I was taught growing up: one doesn’t say “amen” to one’s own b’rachah. Even more, saying amen to your own b’rachah is a sign of ignorance.

Also as a child, I had learned to recite the long form of the Ashkenazi Birkat haMazon / Grace after meals by heart before I could read, since we sang it every Friday evening and Shabbat lunch in my home. In the middle of the Birkat haMazon, I knew that the blessing for rebuilding Jerusalem concluded with: “Blessed is God who rebuilds Jerusalem; Amen.” Naturally, when I was old enough to be in school, I wanted to know why it was permissible to answer one’s own blessing with amen in this case. I was told that originally this was end of the Birkat haMazon and so, in this case, it was permissible.

Kaddish•Public and Private

Dear Friends,

In the fall of 2004, I had the great joy of learning together with eight rabbinical and rabbinic pastor students. We studied comparative nuscha’ot, the different ways in which the same prayers were formulated in the liturgical traditions of various Jewish communities. In the course of that study, we came upon a kaddish in the siddur of Rav Amram Ga’on meant for recitation by individuals. This caught us all by pleasant surprise, since we had all been taught that kaddish, being a call and response, could only be recited in a minyan and that there were no equivalents for private prayer.

The custom of having mourners recite the kaddish had not yet been established when Rav Amram lived, much less the idea of setting aside or creating opportunities for a kaddish identified as specifically for mourners. At the same time, today we are all aware that people who, for various reasons, cannot be part of a minyan but still want to honour the relative or friend who passed away by reciting a kaddish even when alone. So this kaddish of Rav Amram’s, available in all the places where a regular kaddish appears, offered a wonderful opportunity to create what so many needed while still respecting the tradition of leaving a call and response for when there is a minyan.

(Each unit of the kaddish ends with the recitor saying, “And say ye: Amen” to which we respond with “Amen.”)

My Heart Opened

I’ve been a shul goer most of my life. Before I could read, when my father was the executive director of Temple Anshe Chesed in New York and I went to their kindergarden, he would take me into the sanctuary on Friday afternoons when everyone had gone home and I would go through the entire Torah service in front of the ark. And every Shabbat, we sang the full Ashkenazic version of Birkat haMazon / Grace After Meals, which I also memorized before I could read. What made this easier than perhaps it looks to adults was that both the shuls I went to and my family used the same melodies for the same prayers all the time. While this makes them familiar and easier to memorize, it also flattens out their affect and narrows the emotional range which the words can communicate. Birkat haMazon, no matter the day or the meal, always began with the familiar table thumping melody, useful as a social connector perhaps but less so as a conveyor of gratitude to the Source of Blessing.

I was also a troubled child. My mother died when I was nine and, with the exception of two helpful talks I had with Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan when I was twelve, there had been no one to help me process my loss and connect it in a meaningful way with God. Though I was a yeshivah student through high school, I wasn’t able to see a relationship between the Judaism I was being taught and the Divine. I have come to see how the still immediate impact of the Shoah intensified this difficulty, since my teachers also were wrestling with the same questions on a much larger level, but their silence wasn’t something I could understand at the time.

May This Year Be a Blessing

Dear Chevre,

A few years ago, I was sitting next to R. Lori Klein at the Shabbat evening service at OHALAH. I don’t remember whether I noticed her siddur or whether she showed it to me first, but I took an immediate liking to this Nusach S’faradi Tahor, as it was called. At some point, I just asked her to take mine for the rest of the service so I could look through it as we davvened. When I got home, I asked our son Noah, who was then part of the US embassy staff in Tel Aviv, if he would find me a copy, which he did. There are several important things I’ve learned from using this siddur now for at least two years which I hope to share with you all, and here is the first.

Actually, let me back up before I start. Most of us have grown up using different variations of the same nusach ha-t’fillah / mode of prayer, and that is Nusach Ashkenaz, literally the German mode but really the European. All the siddurim we most commonly use, including those of the major movements as well as many of the creative siddurim that are around, are essentially Nusach Ashkenaz. Hassidim use their own version of Nusach Ashkenaz, often called Nusach S’fard or, in the case of Chabad, Nusach Ari. This nusachborrows much from Nusach S’faradi and from what is known as Nusach Eretz Yisrael and yet retains the basic feel of Nusach Ashkenaz. (The Italians also have their own nusach which in many places is uniquely theirs.) Finally, there is Nusach S’faradi, the form of the liturgy used by Jews who come from Muslim countries and particularly North Africa. While I have davvened from both Nusach Ashkenaz and S’fard for decades, I realized I had never really used Nusach S’faradi before.

Teachings of the S’fat Emet on Hanukkah

5 December 2012 / 21 Kislev 5773

Dearest Chevre,

This week, I’m passing on to you all a Hanukkah gift I’ve been thinking about for at least a decade. I suppose the idea began to take shape when I was looking for a Hassidic teaching on Hanukkah to share with B’nai Or of Boston (or so my notes indicate). I found that teaching in the S’fat Emet, the collection of the teachings of the Gerer Rebbe R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib. The S’fat Emet is, I believe, a uniquely organized Hassidic text because not only do the teachings follow the annual Torah reading cycle, but they are subdivided by the years in which they were given. And what I noticed is that the Gerer Rebbe gave nineteen teachings between the years 1870 and 1903, eighteen of which begin with the same citation from the same midrash and the first, while not citing that particular text, sets the themes for those that follow.

Triennial Cycle of Weekday Torah Readings

Dear Friends,

In the summer of 2011, I taught a course called Synagogue Customs and Practices. At one point, we were learning the three basic principles for dividing a Torah reading into aliyot. I realized that, while most liberal congregations in North America were reading Torah on a triennial cycle, weekday readings were still organized only on the annual cycle. I suggested that as a practical application of what we were learning, we divide up the year’s readings and design a triennial cycle of weekday readings to match the Shabbat cycle.

I am pleased to offer you the product of that joint effort. Much of the good work you will see here was done by the students. Any errors or places you might disagree are my own doing, since I made the final decisions.

I would like to thank the following people for participating in this project: David Abramowitz, Binah Block, Kellie Scheer, Beth Cohen, Jessica Shimberg, Elana Jagoda, Annie Gilbert, Heena Reiter, Dara Lithwick, Michael Rosenblum, Eva Sax-Bolder, Shifrah Tobacman.

To view and download this triennial cycle for free, please visit the ALEPH ReSources Catalogue elsewhere on this site.

 

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