Davening As A Woman

Davening As A Woman

Karla J. Worrell

Sermon: August 23, 2013

Temple Beth-El (Richmond VA)

I want to talk tonight about prayer, and what it means to me to daven as a Jewish woman. Prayer has been a significant part of my life since childhood. Of course, on my journey to Judaism, the form, structure and theology of my prayers has changed. However, Judaism has only deepened my commitment to prayer. Davening plays a central role in both my personal and communal life, so it was natural that the first group I joined at Beth-El was the Morning Minyanaires. I was fortunate to begin my daily davening journey with such a welcoming and supportive group.

For all of us, Jewish prayer has obstacles we must work to overcome: Hebrew fluency, davening speed and the pursuit of kavanah  meaningful focus - are a few examples.  Davening as a woman, I also had the challenges of seeing myself as part of the minyan as well as finding myself spiritually in the words of the prayers.

In Conservative Judaism, we often speak with pride about being egalitarian, but do we stop to think of what that really means? What does being egalitarian require of us? One morning, a few years after joining the Morning Minyan, one of our members had a yartzeit. Since we often fell short of ten, he invited a couple of friends to join him so he'd be able to say Kaddish. One of his friends sat in the row in front of me. Shortly before time to pray, he turned and said, with a mischievous grin, to his friend past me in the rear, "Oh, that's right, you count women in your minyan here" I responded with a smile and said, "Yes, and that's why I converted here and not at your shul"

When I've told that story, most women - and many men too - want to stop and cheer at this point, BUT this isn't the end of the story. All I'd done at this point was give a quick comeback. It's what I did next that really mattered: I davened together with him and the rest of the minyan knowlegably and with kavanah. By the end of the davening, I'd earned his respect, regardless of his beliefs on counting women. Being part of an egalitarian community isn't what gets us counted; it's participation that gets us counted. And participation isn't limited to the times we are able to make it to a minyan or services either. I've found that davening at home allows me to explore both the prayers and melodies we use here, as well as different prayers and melodies, praying at my own pace. Having learned from Rabbi Creditor, and others, the structure and meaning of the prayers and services has allowed me the flexibility to explore the prayers and find my place spiritually in them. Davening at home - whether once a week or every day - not only builds my knowledge and skills, but also my spiritual and emotional connections to the prayers. This is what makes prayer real and meaningful and allows me to pray with kavanah.

As women, it's all too easy to sell ourselves short in settling for the superficial of "inclusion" as a substitute for "participation." But if we do, we'll miss out on the deep richness of our faith - settling for shallow political correctness instead of real connection.

Imagine if we had done this in US politics: won the right to vote and hold office but focused more on inclusion than our participation. Would we have women able to be elected and serve with skill and distinction in local, state, and federal offices? I dont think so.

When it comes to Jewish liturgy, we often settle for the superficial in other ways as well. We use the inclusion of the Matriarchs as a way to feel included without looking beyond this to find our personal place in the prayers - both those that mention the Patriarchs, and those that don't.

If the prayer doesn't include feminine references, we can tend to - consciously or subconsciously - exclude ourselves from the text rather than finding, or making, our own connections to it.

We don't do this with other areas of Jewish worship. The tzitzit on both of my tallitot are the traditional white. The tefillin I wear every weekday as I daven shacharit are the same halachic black as a man's. As proud as I am to be a woman, I wouldn't want it any other way.

That's not to say there's no room for us to express our femininity. We can attach our white tzitzit to beautiful tallitot and carry our tefillin in bags that express our pride in keeping the mitzvah as women. However, most of us would probably be offended if we were told we must wear pink tzitzit or purple tefillin because we are women. Or, as in the case of Women of the Wall until just recently, that we must wear our tallit like a scarf rather than fulfill the commandment to wrap ourselves in the tzitzit the way men traditionally do. We would be offended to be told we must feminize these aspects of Jewish worship rather than be included in doing them in the traditional halachic way with the community. But when it comes to the words of prayer, we've told ourselves that they must be feminized for us to be included.

Don't misunderstand me, I think it's great that we all now thank God for "creating me in the Divine image" rather than men thanking God they "weren't created a woman," and women that they are created "according to God's will", and that we include the Matriarchs in many of the prayers where we do. However, it isn't just the fact their names are there that makes it meaningful, but the dimension that they add to the meaning and purpose of the prayer. For example, prayers like those after an aliya, for the ill, or at a baby naming, open with "mi-sheberakh avoteinu" literally, "(May) He who blessed our ancestors" Since God blessed both the Patriarchs and the Matriarchs, it adds to the blessing to have both women and men named. We want those being prayed for to be blessed just as they all were.

As much as I find meaning in the inclusion of the Matriarchs in much of our liturgy, it might surprise you to learn that, as a woman, I'm offended by the inclusion of the Matriarchs in the Amidah.

To understand the reasons why, it's important to understand the reason the Amidah begins the way it does in the first place.

Most people, men and women, think of the opening phrase, "Elohei Avraham, vElohei Yitzchak, v'Elohei Yaakov" "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" as simply a way our rabbis chose to describe God. If this were all it was, it would be wrong to exclude the Matriarchs from such a description, since He was certainly their God as well.

But, if all the rabbis who created the Amidah wanted to do was identify God, then, "Eloheinu v'Elohei Avoteinu" and "Our God and the God of our Ancestors" would have been more than sufficient.

Rather, in forming the core prayer of Judaism, the rabbis sought to connect us to God through the core concept of Judaism: Covenant with God, as revealed in the Torah.

The story of Moses and our deliverance from Egypt begins our shared narrative as a distinct people and not just a family-clan. When God speaks to Moses for the first time from the burning bush in Exodus 3:6, God identifies Himself as, "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

By opening the Amidah with this phrase from Torah, our rabbis link us - each of us, men and women - to Torah and our covenant with God. They want us to understand that, as Jews, we approach God by way of our unique covenant. The petitions we make on weekdays and the praises we offer on Shabbat and Holidays in the Amidah are rooted in that covenant. When we use the phrase, "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob" we are invoking the covenant, and our covenantal right to petition the Creator of the Universe!

Every time we daven the Amidah, we are also personally affirming the covenant and connecting to our sacred history. Although the Matriarchs are part our history, they were not the ones God made our covenant with. I don't believe God was being misogynistic; just that He worked within the social structures of the day, in which it was men who made the covenantal contracts - not men and women.

To return to my earlier political analogy; we don't deal with our civil Patriarchal history by feminizing it. Most of us would be shocked if our child, grandchild, niece or nephew told us they had learned in school that George and Martha Washington were our country's first President, or that the U.S. Constitution was created by our "Founding Fathers and Mothers." We accept our country's Patriarchal past while taking our rightful place in its egalitarian present. We understand that to revise our history would diminish women's struggles to achieve all that we have today.

If someone told me that I had to distort our county's historical narrative for me to have the right to vote or hold a political office today, I'd be offended. To tell me I can't take my place in accepting Torah or our foundational covenant without distorting our spiritual narrative is equally offensive to me. I don't want to begin my petition to God with a lie.

For me to add the Matriarchs to the Amidah, would be saying that I, as a woman, don't have the power to affirm the covenant unless I can feminize it in some way. To engage in spiritual revisionist history like this, would take much of the power from this prayer because, for me, every time I daven the Amidah with kavanah -stepping into the covenant and making it my own - I make it egalitarian. I not only connect with God and covenant, but with the generations of Jews past, present and future who davened this prayer in its traditional form. I connect to klal Yisrael as a Jew and as a woman.

As a Jewish woman, I want to step up and take my place in our living stream of history rather than disconnect from Torah and covenant. I don't want to revise history - I want to write the next chapter. We, not the Matriarchs, are the women that need to become part of the Amidah.

Yet, for all I've said about not adding the Matriarchs to the Amidah, there is a prayer we will daven in the upcoming holiday season where I believe women should and could be inserted, yet even our egalitarian siddur gives them no voice.

If you'll turn to page 218 in Siddur Sim Shalom, you'll see "Geshem", a piyyut or liturgical poem , which is inserted in the Musaf Amidah of Shemini Atzeret, when we begin adding "mashiv ha-ruach" to our prayers until Passover.

This prayer is specifically a request to God, as we enter the autumn rainy season, that He would grant us life giving rain because of the *merits of our ancestors* Each verse links an ancestor to water then asks that, in their merit, we be granted water. As you can see, the verses recall Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron and Israel's Tribes. But where are the women? I'd at least expect to see Miriam on the list. After all, don't our Sages teach us that it was in *her* merit that the rock that gave water followed the Israelites on their desert journey? Where is Miriam?

This piyyut is not a covenantal piece, nor a core piece of liturgy connecting klal Yisrael like the Amidah itself. There aren't halachic restrictions on amending it like there are with the Amidah. I hope our next Conservative siddur will include the verses for Geshem featuring Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah and Miriam written by Mark Frydenberg and translated by my teacher, Rabbi Simcha Roth (z"l). Even the addition of just the Miriam verse would add richness to the prayer. It would make saying Geshem more meaningful for me if she were included.

I hope all of you here tonight have learned a little and that you'll daven with more awareness of the depth and power of our liturgy - for both women and men - in the year ahead. I look forward to davening with you all.


Shabbat Shalom


* May be found here: http://neohasid.org/resources/geshem/

Experiencing God

D'var Torah: Parashat Re'eh 5773

"Experiencing God"

Karla J Worrell

August 3, 2013

Temple Beth-El (Richmond VA)

　
　
In Parashat Re'eh, which means to see, perceive or understand, the Israelites are reminded to obey God's commandments after they enter the land God promised them. To reinforce this, they are to gather at two mountains: Gerizim and Eval - an area that is a natural amphitheatre - every year to hear the blessings for obedience, and the curses for disobedience. 

They are given specific instructions on ways they must, or must not, worship God including: to destroy all places of worship to pagan deities, no matter how beautiful they might be, and to avoid various pagan practices. They are to worship God alone and only in the place and ways He has told them. They are to understand that entering the land means they are to be holy by God's standard and not by what seems right to each of them. After all, it was God who led them out of slavery and into their own land to be a nation. Anyone, even family or friends, who try to pull people away from God to worship pagan deities is to be put to death. Even if a prophet. were to prophesy or perform a sign or miracle, if he directs them to worship a foreign god - one whose deliverance and care they had not experienced - he is not to be believed or followed, but executed.

Though the Israelites likely had knowledge of both the gods of Egypt - passed to them from the generation that left Egypt - and the Canaanite gods of the land they were about to enter (and possibly other gods as well), they had only experienced the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who had led them out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the land He had promised their ancestors. This God of Israel had provided food, water, shelter, protection and instruction, while the gods of Egypt and Canaan gave them nothing but slavery oppression and war. They were God's children - His chosen treasure - and they were to live differently from other peoples - in what they ate (or didn't eat), how they worshipped, and how they provided for the poor and disadvantaged among them.

The parshah starts with the mention of the curses for disobeying God's instructions and the blessings for obeying them, but ends with verses describing the shalosh regalim - the three "pilgrimage festivals" of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, that were to be celebrated in the place God would choose: Jerusalem - by stating, "They shall not appear before the LORD empty- handed, but each with his own gift, according to the blessing that the LORD your God has bestowed upon you." (Dt 16.16-17 JPS Tanakh) Despite the people's history of disobedience and rebellion, Moses and God see their future as one filled with the blessings of obedience.
　
　
In this parshah, we, along with the Israelites, are asked to see or perceive that the God who has proved Himself by experience to be our God will reward obedience and punish disobedience. Though it is certainly true that all actions have consequences, still, this raises many questions for us to explore - most of which I will not tackle this morning. The one I want to look at is foundational: What does it mean "to experience God"?

Before we can consider experiencing God, we have to decide this is something we want to do.
At Mt. Sinai, the Israelites experienced God as an intense voice like thunder and lightning from a cloud on top of the mountain. The experience was so overwhelming and frightful that they asked Moses to communicate with God for them. After that, their experience with God came in more everyday, indirect ways - through the manna they ate, having water supplied from a rock in the desert, their clothes and shoes not wearing out over forty years and a Divine cloud that led them.
Is Ashrei, we say, "Karov Adonai l'kol kor'av, l'kol asher yik'rauhu v'e-emet" - "The LORD is near to all who call Him, to all who call Him with sincerity."
We need to want to experience God, or we'll miss - or explain away - all our opportunities to do so.

Once we've decided we want to experience God, how might we go about it?
God isn't human, so we can't use many of our familiar ideas of human experience to answer this question. We can't see, touch, hear, smell or taste God directly. God no longer appears to us in fiery clouds or with a thundering voice. But does this mean we can't - or haven't - experienced God? Or just that we need to look for other ways to do so?
I believe our Shabbat prayers this morning offer clues on several different ways we can experience God both individually and communally. I'll share just a few:

We began today with Birkat Hashachar - the Morning Blessings - thanking God that our daily needs are met. Just like our ancestors, we can experience God by realizing that all the things we have - freedom, the ability to sense the world around us, shelter, clothing, physical strength and the wisdom to use it to make a living - come from God and the resources He created. Man can manipulate and shape these resources, but can't create something from nothing. When we acknowledge that it's God who gives us the power to produce wealth, we experience God in His care and concern for our lives.

In Baruch SheAmar, we praise God as the Creator of all; and in El Adon, we sing of God's creation reflecting His Sovereignty. For many, reflecting on the vast beauty and power of Nature is a way to experience God. Sunrises and sunsets more beautiful than any human art form, inspire us. Ocean waves and wind storms that remind us we can't control everything, humble us. Mountain peaks that invite us higher, challenge us to reach beyond our limits. The designs of Nature draw us to know its Designer and experience Him in our lives. Yet another way to connect with God.

In Ahavah Rabbah we thank God for His instruction through Torah and mitzvot. The texts of Torah, Talmud and Tefillah (prayer) have always been at the heart of the covenantal relationship we have with God as Jews. Just as with human relationships, words can reveal much of God's character and wisdom. When we read or pray words that reflect current events in our own lives - both happy and sad, difficult and rewarding - and find ourselves becoming part of the story, instruction. or prayer; drawing wisdom, strength, comfort, encouragement and affirmation through the dialogue, we are experiencing that text as part of our lives. Then we experience God through His words to us and ours to Him.

By observing mitzvot - acts of ritual, holiness and worship - we can experience God. Lighting Shabbat candles and taking a "time out" from everyday work, activities and stress, supporting the poor and defenseless with dignity, keeping kosher which in part is using an everyday act to remind us we are more than just a physical body - its our soul that makes us unique and invaluable, celebrating holidays that remind us and our children of our history and destiny with God; all can give us that awareness of being part of something bigger than ourselves that's another way of experiencing God.

These are just a few of the ways we can encounter God every day. I'm sure each of us has others we can think of in our own lives.
　

As we approach Elul, and preparation for the High Holy Days, will you accept the challenge of Re'eh - to see and perceive God in your own life? To reject the idolatry of society today in thinking you are in control of the world around you? That your success is the result of your intelligence or efforts alone? Will you look for new ways to experience God in your daily life and the world around you...? I will, and I hope you will too.
　

Shabbat Shalom
　
　
　
　
　

Where Tikkun Olam Begins

Where Tikkun Olam Begins

I want to talk with you about tikkun olam - but not about writing a check, volunteering your time, or joining a committee to repair the world by bringing about social justice.

Though we are most familiar with hearing the term "tikkun olam" used in connection with these things, if this is all tikkun olam is, what is it that makes it distinctly Jewish except the Hebrew label.

After all, I have Christian friends who do all these things...because they're following the teaching and example of Jesus.

And I have a couple of good friends who are atheists... who do them out of the conviction that there's no God to make the world better, therefore, it's the responsibility of man to create morality and justice.

So, if these actions by themselves aren't specifically Jewish, what is it that makes our tikkun olam Jewish?

We can find an answer to this question by looking at the prayer we say at the conclusion of every service: Aleinu. There we find that "tikkun olam" is only part of the answer. The complete phrase is "l'taken olam b'malchut shaddai"
"to repair the world by God's sovreignty"

Aleinu shares a distinctly Jewish vision that God has created us with a unique mission in this world: to do God's will and bring Him praise. It sees a future in which all people will acknowledge this kingship of our God and serve Him, then the world will be perfected through His kingship. The whole world will now accept our God as King, even as we proclaim God's kingship over us every Rosh Hashanah.

The path to this future is laid out for us in the Torah, where we are given mitzvot - not generic good deeds - but sacred opportunities to be God's representatives on earth, creating His will through both ritual worship rooted in the desire to "be holy because [our] God is holy;" and an interpersonal code of conduct grounded in the premise that each and every person is holy - created in God's image - and is to be treated with dignity.

These mitzvot - both communal and individual - ritual and ethical - give us the purpose and the means to reign in our baser natures and create a society that is just, moral, ethical ...holy.

Torah commands us to do both tzedekah (justice) and gemillat chasedim (acts of compassion). From the mitzvah to leave the corners of the fields for the poor we learn that we are not to be content with producing only enough for ourselves, but we must also provide for those less fortunate. From the mitzvah of shemittah, the sabbatical year, when the land was not to be sown and all debts were canceled, we learn that debt was never to lead to permanent enslavement through poverty and that the land is not ours to abuse for profit but is a trust that requires our stewardship - even if this means less short-term profit.

Other mitzvot teach us that workers deserve safe working conditions and fair wages need to be paid in a timely manner along with many other concepts found in our modern views of social justice. Torah teaches us the principles of a moral and just society as the vision for God's kingdom. This is the society our prophets later urged the people to aspire to. They understood that our beliefs about God and social justice were entwined - to serve God was to act with justice and compassion.

In Torah's model, we repair the world by doing what God requires of us, by consciously acting as agents of the Divine - God's people under His kingship. Doing tikkun olam in this way elevates our social action to more than generic *good deeds*, our social action becomes a way to draw closer to God by fulfilling His will. This tikkun olam will draw others toward our God, as we read in this week's parashah of V'etchanan  :

Observe them [the mitzvot] faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, "Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people." For what great nation is there that has God so close at hand as the LORD our God is whenever we call upon Him? Or what great nation has laws and rules so righteous as all this Teaching that I set before you this day?  (Deuteronomy 4:6-8)

This is our unique Jewish mandate, one that we hope will lead us to the world we pray for in Aleinu.

So go ahead and give, volunteer, and join committees to bring about social justice...but don't do it as tikkun olam - do it as tikkun olam b'malchut shaddai: a sacred opportunity to draw closer to God by repairing His world and bringing justice and compassion to those created in His image.

Shabbat Shalom.

Summer Lay-Sermon Program 5772
Temple Beth-El Richmond, VA

Creating Holiness

D'var Torah Mattot-Masei 5772 '

"Creating Holiness"

July 21, 2012/ 2 Av 5772 

Summer Lay-Sermon Series 

Temple Beth-El Richmond, VA

Karla J. Worrell

This morning we read from the double portion of Mattot-Masei. These two sedras are most often read together and - though each has its own themes - can be looked at as a single unit.

Mattot's focus is on words, openìng with laws relating to vows and oaths for men and women. Vows and oaths were ways of making things holy or prohibited above and beyond the Torah's commandments. By vowing to donate a possession to the service of God or taking an oath that prohibited a normally permitted action, any Israelite could cause an ordinary object to become a holy thing serving a holy purpose.

Next are the instructions to attack Midian to redress the sin of Midian sending women to entice the Israelite men and convince them to follow false gods. The details of Balaam's death are included here as well since Torah tells us this enticing was done "by the word of Balaam." According to tradition, after Balaam was unable to curse the Israelites, he convinced the Midianites to seduce them so they would no longer be worthy of Divine protection.

Mattot concludes with the tribes of Reuben and Gad making petition to Moses to be given their inheritance in the land conquered by Israel east of Jordan rather than in the land of Cana'an. Moses is, at first  infuriated by their words; but, after they take an oath to send troops to the battles for the other tribes' inheritance west of Jordan until all the tribes have their inheritance, Moses agrees provided "[you] do as you have promised"

Throughout Mattot words set the boundaries of holiness and define communal expectation - uniting individuals into a community that brings us to Masei.

Where Mattot's focus is words Masei focuses on actions, beginning with a recap of their journeys from Egypt through the wilderness to this point just before they enter the land.

They are told how to set the boundaries and divide the land by tribe and to set aside cities for the Levites, who receive no lands, to live in. God gives them instructions for dealing with those who commit murder and manslaughter. The land is not to be defiled with blood because "I the Lord abide among the Israelite people" and both God and Israel are to dwell in holiness.

In reading Mattot and Masei, we learn that words and actions are important. Words have power - power to make the ordinary holy and that promised a reality. Words have tangibility and inspire action - what our words define, our actions create. When our actions and words are marked by integrity and humility, others notice and we gain their trust and respect. When our words and actions are inconsistent or dishonest, others notice as well.

When we value this power to create holiness in the world, we can create treasured relationships, productive partnerships, and strong communities. Holiness is not reserved for Shabbat or shul alone.

Certainty, our words of tefillot, brachot and Torah are holy words that define and shape us as ìndividuals and as a kehillat kadosh - a holy community - but, just as importantly, our words and actions have the power to create holiness far beyond these walls.

One way to look at being holy is: Being holy is being as conscious of the way you make people feel as you are of how people make you feel. This isn't always easy to do. However, when we act and speak to others in ways that are honest, respectful, and kind, we are choosing to bring holiness to others and the world around us. The slow cashier in the busy checkout line, the waitress who doesn't get your order quite right, co-workers, friends and family all give us opportunities to create holiness. I can think of many times in my own life where small, unexpected words or acts of kindness and integrity have made a big difference. Usually, the other person had no idea how much that little act of "everyday holiness" meant to me.

As Jews, Torah calls us to be holy and pursue righteousness in our own lives and community. Mattot-Masei reminds us that we have the power to go beyond the Torah's command that our lives be holy and aspire to create and strengthen the holiness and goodness in the people around us.

Next week, we observe Tisha B'Av, mourning the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem. The rabbis concluded that the First Temple was destroyed because of sin, but the Second Temple was destroyed due to sinat chinam - baseless hatred. A Talmud Midrash tells the story of Bar Kamtza, who, due to an error and a personal grudge, was publicly humiliated. When those responsible were unwilling to correct the situation, Bar Kamtza went to the Romans for revenge. The rabbis say these words and actions were what eventually led to the Temple's destruction.

This week as well, we have seen more than once how one person's choice to create death and destruction rather than holiness has caused much grief and suffering in Bulgaria and Aurora, CO. May we each be inspired to choose to speak and act in ways that create holiness in our day-to-day lives, enriching our community and ourselves in the process.

Shabbat Shalom