R. Elie Kaunfer's "Empowered Judaism," on 1 foot
Here are the notes that I wrote in my "List of Books Read" file:
3/2/10 Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities Rabbi Elie Kaunfer
· Insist on high standards—and figure out how to educate people to bring them up to those standards. (For example, make sure that leiners [those who chant the biblical readings from a Torah scroll] and baalei t’fillah [prayer leaders] get training and/or feedback.)
· To end on time, start on time, and limit divrei Torah ["words of Torah"/Torah teaching sessions] to 5 minutes.
· Kill two birds with one stone by giving volunteers personal encouragement and thanks (via e-mail, for example) rather than lengthening the service by having umpteen announcements at the end.
· Don’t bite off more than you can chew—if your minyan isn’t good at parties, send people elsewhere for Purim parties, and if you don’t have enough skilled people, and can’t train enough of them, to run a Shabbat [Sabbath] morning service, have services on Friday nights only.
· Find creative ways to maintain standards—one minyan that’s committed to environmentally-sound practices gives out leis announcing to all that the wearer has volunteered to wash dishes for 10 minutes, thereby avoiding having those women who were socialized to perform traditional roles become the default dish-washers.
· And don’t settle for “continuity” for the sake of continuity—Jews want their Judaism to mean far more than just peoplehood maintenance.
My favorite chapter was actually the "Appendix: An Empowered Judaism Approach to Prayer," in which Rabbi Kaunfer discusses the Biblical origin and context of the words of the first blessing of the Amidah [the "standing" prayer, recited while standing], the Avot (Ancestors) blessing. For example, “Kel elyon” [G-d on high/Supreme G-d] was actually swiped by Avraham Avinu [Abraham Our Father] from Malki-Tzedek, a pagan priest. Says Rabbi Kaunfer, “Although the simple reading of the Amidah seems to exclude everyone but the three patriachs, the blblical intertexts bring in missing characters, including Malki-Zedek, someone who is a clergy member of another religion! The biblical intertexts can open us up to any number of surprising conclusions, including one in which a non-Jew is quoted in the middle of classic Jewish prayer." (Page 174) "The experience of prayer is greatly enhanced if the siddur [prayer book] is treated like so many other texts in Jewish heritage, as a starting point for interpretation rather than a surface statement of dogma.” The siddur can by “seen as a book of poetry, with myriad allusions waiting to be unlocked . . . “ (Pages 175-176)
[New paragraph ¶ ]
Here are some more quotes from the book (pages 30-31) that I found particularly interesting:
[ ¶ ]
PRAYER: BALANCING TRADITION AND CREATIVITY
One of the clear dividing lines between egalitarian and non-egalitarian synagogues is the limits of liturgical flexibility. At Hadar, however, we broke the mold, deciding from our very first meetings to use a full traditional liturgy. . . . We wanted to decouple the de facto union in American Judaism between full women's participation and a scaled-down service.
[ ¶ ]
Adding Imahot--A Culture of Cooperation
There was one early exception to our insistance on tradtional liturgy: the option for the prayer leader to add the imahot (matriachs) to the first blessing of the Amidah. We developed a unique solution to this problem: instead of forbidding the addition, we decided to allow the prayer leader to choose whether or not add their names in the middle of the blessing--as long as he didn't alter the final line of the blessing. More important to me than the result was the process of reaching this decision. This might sound unremarkable, but it demonstrated one of the most important contrasts between Hadar and other communities I had participated in.
[ ¶ ]
For the past twenty years, adding imahot has been a particularly hot-button issue in egalitarian prayer communities. People noticed that only men were cited in the first blessing of the Amidah: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The fix this problem, some liturgists wrote an additional line that mentioned the corresponding four matriarchs and altered the final blessing to read: "shields Abraham and remembers Sarah (see the appendix.) When I was in college, this was an issue that tore apart our tiny, thirty-person Shabbat morning minyan. . . .
[ ¶ ]
Discussing this issue at the founding of the minyan, we had no angry fights, no vote, no walking out. Ethan [Tucker] and our friend (now colleague) Rabbi Shai Held had done much thinking about the issue and concluded it would be halakhically acceptable to add imahot in the body of the first paragraph, but not change the final line of the blessing. Ethan, Mara [Benjamin] and I decided to leave it up to the person leading the prayers to make the alteration in the body of the prayer (but not allow a change at the end). . . ."
[ ¶ ]
Now there's a compromise that I could live with.
Labels: Hadar--https://www.hadar.org/
posted by Shira Salamone at 9:44 PM
13 Comments:
I've suggested the same compromise with respect to the imahot. The various nusachs do have different bodies to the amidah, but all of them have the same closing blessing for each paragraph.
I have absolutely no recollection of who was leading the service, or what was the occasion, but I have a distinct memory of having attended a service many years ago at which the baal tefillah (service leader) improvised each brachah (blessing) of the Amidah in English (following the "theme" of each brachah), but ended each brachah with the traditional Hebrew "closing." I wonder whether the fact that "The various nusachs do have different bodies to the amidah, but all of them have the same closing blessing for each paragraph" might serve as a precedent for that approach.
According to what I was taught, before prayers were standardized the way you describe is how it was done every day - the baal tefillah was expected to improvise prayers along the required theme of each bracha. both for the amida and also the blessings before and after the shema. I suspect that if this was ever true, people still used repetition a lot rather than doing improvisation prayer from the heat every single day.
"I suspect that if this was ever true, people still used repetition a lot rather than doing improvisation prayer from the heat every single day." I agree that improvising, or even reciting, different words every day can be challenging. That's one of the reasons why I vastly prefer davvening (praying) to reciting Tehillim (Psalms. It took me about 2-3 months to learn the weekday Amidah, as I recollect, but there are only just so many variations on the Amidah (weekday, Sabbath, Festival, High Holiday), so I'm saying the same words most days. It would take me literally years to learn 150 different Tehillim!
I have the opposite opinion - I find the idea that every day my boss calls me into a private meeting and demands I read almost exactly the same script 6 days a week, 3 times a day, to be really boring and to reflect poorly on the boss.
I remember how excited I was the first time I came back from a [Unitarian] church service. "They have a constant structure to the service but the prayers change every time. Do the rabbis know about this?"
At Hadar, however, we broke the mold, deciding from our very first meetings to use a full traditional liturgy. . . . We wanted to decouple the de facto union in American Judaism between full women's participation and a scaled-down service
I might be suffering from missing the content of the ellipsis, but this is certainly not an innovation of Hadar. Traditionalist Conservative synagogues were doing the same thing about 10 (20?) years earlier.
I also thought Hadar made the substitution of past-tense reference to sacrifices in Musaf an optional replacement for the future-tense reference, but I might be wrong about that (also an innovation of the Conservative movement).
These seem to me to be examples of cases where Hadar did not have to fight or innovate because someone else already did.
The various nusachs do have different bodies to the amidah, but all of them have the same closing blessing for each paragraph
This is true if you're willing to ignore the split between the majority of Asheknazim and those who follow the Vilna Gaon and the Sephardim on the closing of the final blessing of the Amidah during the Ten days of repentence and if you ignore some of the nuschaot that did not survive until today. (Regarding the latter, there are clues in some of the piyyutim we say that the authors probably knew different concluding formulations.)
"I have the opposite opinion - I find the idea that every day my boss calls me into a private meeting and demands I read almost exactly the same script 6 days a week, 3 times a day, to be really boring and to reflect poorly on the boss."
:)
One could make a case that repeating the same words makes the keva (form) easier, but the kavannah (focus) more difficulty.
Elf's DH, my experience has been mixed--I've davvened (prayed) with egalitarian groups that didn't skip a thing and with groups in which the baal(at) tefillah (prayer leader) did a certain amount of picking and choosing. (In one egalitarian minyan that I attend often, Ashrei is always recited after the Torah reading. In another, one never knows in advance whether Ashrei--and, for that matter, En Kelokeinu--will be included or not.)
"'The various nusachs do have different bodies to the amidah, but all of them have the same closing blessing for each paragraph'
This is true if you're willing to ignore the split between the majority of Asheknazim and those who follow the Vilna Gaon and the Sephardim on the closing of the final blessing of the Amidah during the Ten days of repentence and if you ignore some of the nuschaot that did not survive until today."
Ah yes, it's "Oseh Shalom" (Maker of Peace) during the Aseret Y'mei T'shuvah instead of "ha-m'varech et amo Yisrael ba-shalom" (Who blesses His people Israel with peace).
"there are clues in some of the piyyutim we say that the authors probably knew different concluding formulations."
Really? I'd be interested in more information about those formulations, and how we can discern their former existence from the piyyutim (liturgical poems).
Elf's DH, my experience has been mixed--I've davvened (prayed) with egalitarian groups that didn't skip a thing and with groups in which the baal(at) tefillah (prayer leader) did a certain amount of picking and choosing.
Of course! There exist both denominational and unaffiliated egal minyanim that have complete services, and there exist some that don't. My only point was that Hadar didn't invent the traditional egal service.
As for the piyyutim, I don't have the sources here at the moment, but the two I can think of one of the differences off the top of my head:
(1) The "magen avot" paragraph on Shabbat, which alludes to the hoda'ah as "El Hahodaot" (2) a Kallir piyyut from the high holiday liturgy (I think in the neila selichot, but I don't have a machzor that has it on me now) where the beginning of each line follows the closing lines of the blessings in the weekday Amidah. Again, "El Hahodaot" is the ending for the second to last.
At least one geniza fragment (copied in the footnotes of Elbogen's book), which likely represented the Palestinian liturgy (as opposed to the Babylonian liturgy), had the conclusion of that blessing as "El Hahodaot."
Incidentally, the introduction to the me'ein sheva section is also somewhat similar to the Palestinian liturgy ("el elyon konei shamayim vaaretz"
"My only point was that Hadar didn't invent the traditional egal service."
Point taken, Elf's DH.
So there's evidence that "Kel ha-hodaot" (G-d of Thanksgivings) was the original form of the blessing "ha-tov shimcha, u-l'cha nae l'hodot" ("the Good One" is Your name, and to You it is fitting to give thanks"), and that "Kel elyon, conei shamayim va-aretz" (G-d on high/G-d supreme, maker/possessor of heaven and earth [depending on your translation]" is also from the Jewish liturgy that was developed in Palestine, as opposed to Babylonia? That's fascinating. Thanks for the information!
the original form of the blessing
Not necessarily "original", just alternative.
"Kel elyon, conei shamayim va-aretz"<(G-d on high/G-d supreme, maker/possessor of heaven and earth [depending on your translation]"
This one is a biblical quote, and that is the biblical rendition. It is broken up in and rewritten in our contemporary version. The Palestinian liturgy that we have seems to be more directly biblically-based than ours is.
Ah, thanks for the clarifications. Don't shoot me, but where in the Tanach (Bible) can I find the Kel elyon quotation(s)? I hope that a search of my blog still turns up my "quote-hunter" posts--I love knowing from where in Tanach we "swiped" quotes used in the siddur (prayer book).
Gen 14:19 or 14:22
Google is really good for finding Bible quotes.
Ah, here are those quotes, spoken first, in verse 19, by Melki-Tzedek, king of Salem (Shalem) and pagan priest, and quoted afterward, but in reference to HaShem this time, in verse 22, by Avraham Avinu (Abraham Our Father). Thanks!
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