Creating Sacred Worship for High Holy Days
September 15, 2011 
13 Comments
by Rabbi Rex Perlmeter
URJ Worship and Spirituality Specialist and
Director, URJ Congregational Consulting Group
If you’re a baseball player or fan, and you hear someone speak of “The Show,” you know it can mean only one thing – the big leagues. In synagogue life, I suspect if someone used that phrase, we wouldn’t have to strain too hard to guess what they intended. By no means do I suggest that we should think of the High Holy Days as an entertainment or sporting event. On the other hand, considering the effort and thought that go into them and their prominence in the gestalt of our temples, the metaphor may have something to offer.
If the High Holy Days are our event in planning, it is only because they hold so significant a place in the lives of our congregants. Even those who would tell you they are not religious, much less spiritual, usually feel the tug to come, at least for Kol Nidrei. And, as long as they are coming, they want to learn something, experience something and/or feel something.
For the leaders of worship, this reality has clear implications with regard to choices of sermon topics, liturgical music, etc. My colleague, Cantor Lanie Katzew, and I are always glad to be of whatever help we can in helping with those preparations. In the meantime, there are things the congregation, in consultation with the worship leaders, can do:
- People want to feel welcome and important. How are yourcongregants greeted when they arrive for High Holy Days worship? If youwork with ushers, are they trained in what to say (and what not tosay!), particularly to those who appear at worship less frequently?
- Whether you know it or not, worshippers bring their stories withthem to the congregation. Tying their story to the narrative of ourpeople as the cycle of life is renewed is a great blessing. One meansof making that connection is through group aliyot. Instead ofcalling one honoree to bless the Torah, consider the possibility ofinviting individuals who share a similar tale from the past year(people who have come newly to the congregation; those recovering fromillness; families that have experienced a simchah). If thegroups are small enough, people can even be asked – if they are willing- to share (in a sentence) the nature of the event. It’s a great wayof bringing the community into the lives of your members.
- It has been suggested that all theology is narrative. If that isthe case, then God is the sum of our personal stories. On a deeperlevel than the idea of the group aliyot, sharing of sacredstories is a wonderful Yom Kippur afternoon event for those who chooseto spend the entire day at the synagogue. Visit the URJ’s Sacred Conversations projectfor prompts that will help facilitate such story-sharing.Alternatively, if yours is a study-oriented community, consider adiscussion based on Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman’s book, Who by Fire, Who by Water: Un’taneh Tokef, which provides great grist for the mill.
In the end, helping make these High Holy Days personal to the real,lived lives of your members is likely to make a huge difference inspiritual and communal connection. What better way to renew the year? L’shanah tovah tikateivu!
Spotlight on: High Holy Days, Worship and Music: This September, the URJ highlights resources to help congregations make the High Holy Days meaningful, and to enhance worship and music experiences throughout the year.
“God is the sum of our personal stories.”
You have GOT to be kidding me! Is this what we’ve come to? I’m sure that the intention behind that statement is actually quite nuanced, and should not be reacted to based solely on prima facie concerns, but I will never get used to such thinking. If the Reform Movement is so intent on returning to tradition and adopting a more positive-historical approach, then we should probably not turn our back on the theism that underscores every single mitzvah and minhag.
@Jordan Friedman
I find Rabbi Perlmeter’s description of God as the sum of our personal stories perfectly consistent with a theistic Reform Judaism, and with the Tradition that teaches us that God’s voice is heard by each according to his capacity, just as everyone tasted the manna according to his or her particular need. (Exodus Rabbah 5:9.)
There may be only One God, but S/He is perceived in as many different ways as there are perceivers, and thus described (whether verbally or internally) according to the story line of each describer.
I don’t see that this has anything to do with where the movement stands on “returning to tradition.” To the best of my knowledge, we never left tradition, even when we abandoned a variety of traditional rituals.
Our Bible tells us that God exists independently of mankind. He was here first and acted as Creator. He interacted with people, including the Jewish people at times in history, sending guidance for living, warnings when people were sinful, and messages of hope when times were darkest. God has literally destroyed and has saved.
To reduce Him from a deity to just a character in a multitude of stories is to reduce Judaism from a religion to something far more mundane.
If we all ever get to that point, won’t it be time to close the synagogues and temples, tell the rabbis and their staffs to look for other work, and cancel the holidays?
Tying individual stories into the Aliyot is a very cool idea. The more personalized and communal the services become, the more relevant they become.
As usual, there are those ready to Kvetch about some phrase or another. I’m not really sure what God being the sum of our personal stories means- I think I’d probably say our communal understanding of God is the sum of our personal stories- but still…God is what God is, and maybe one thing God is is our communal understanding of God? I dunno.
And it’s weird to hear someone like MB repeatedly call God a “He” while sounding off on how God’s existence is utterly separate from humankind. Just seems a tad hypocritical, no?
I cannot speak personally for MB since I do not know him (though I wish I did!), but my best guess would be that he, like many aging Classical Reform Jews, believes in a personal God and follows the practice of using gendered pronouns out of habit and a sense of tradition, but likely would concede that a Transcendent, formless, all-emconpassing Being like God completely transcends corporeal categories such as gender. Many people who like the old Union Prayer Books find comfort in calling God “Father” and “Lord”, but do not literally believe that “He” is male.
I certainly believe that while God is in everything in the Universe, God is also a sentient Being who exist independently of the physical Universe and certainly independently of anyone’s opinions and conceptions about Him/Her/Whatever. I am comfortable with UPB-style language for God, but tend to prefer some of the less awkward gender-neutral liturgies. I love it when prayers are translated as “We praise the Eternal God, Ruler of the Universe” rather than “We praise the Lord our God, King of the Universe”, but even then, it must be recognized that the original Hebrew is quite gendered. God is Avinu Adoneinu, and Malkeinu, our Father, Lord, and King. I have no problem taking those words, in either language, metaphorically, and filtering them through my non-gendered understanding of the nature of God. I am a little sad that some are so allergic to gendered English prayers that they cannot appreciate their poetry and imagery, but I do understand the desire for alternatives.
Upon reflecting on Larry’s response to my comment above, I am willing to believe that Rabbi Perlmeter did not intend to question traditional theism. I am still troubled by the statement though. Many DO believe that God is either just a concept, or the sum of our experiences, or an impersonal Force, or whatever. I certainly don’t fear for people with such God concepts (doctrinal exclusivism is not the Jewish way), but it should be recognized that with few exceptions, they are outside of the norms of historical Judaism in a way that even the radical reformers were not.
Judaism never gave us a good physical description of God. The earliest and most complete description in the Bible appears in chapter 1 of the book of Genesis which says the God created man in His own image, in His own likeness. That appears in stories that are prehistoric and which we generally understand today as not literally accurate. Still, a good story. There are other places in the Bible which indicate a physical being with some resemblance to a human, but little is revealed.
A remarkably interesting conversation is reported in Exodus, chapter 33. Moses, had known and worked with the Lord for years, witnessing step by step the miraculous deliverance of the Hebrew slaves from cruel Eqyptian bondage and the handing down of the Ten Commandments. Moses pleaded “Oh, let me behold Your Presence! And He answered,”I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name Lord, and the grace that I grant and the compassion that I show. But you cannot see My face, for man may not see Me and live… you will see My back, but My face may not be seen.”
The Bible never explains why man may not see the face of God and live. It implies that man could see the face of God and die. Is that because something about seeing God’s face would kill any human, or because God, for some reason, will not permit people to know exactly what He looks like? It doesn’t say. Allowing Moses to see His back once again indicates that God has a physical being, which bears similarity to a human and as Jordan points out, the Bible does use male pronouns to refer to God.
So I am left with the working hypothesis that the exact physical appearance of the Lord is simply not important for humans to know; it is the behavior of God that is crucial. By His words and His actions we know the Lord. Our Bible and our knowledge of history and science combine to tell us about God. I would suggest that for Reform Jews, the ethical teachings of God that apply to our everyday conduct are what make Him vital to us. That is what the Bible reveals as being important to God, what makes Him pleased, disappointed, frustrated or angry as He observes and interacts with humanity. People are curious by nature and will always wonder what God looks like. I am willing to leave divine physical appearance as both unknown and unimportant to us. I am no Michelangelo or Rembrandt striving to depict God. Instead, Jews need to focus our attention on what we can all learn about how to maximize our potential as individuals and societies and live better lives.
Brian M,
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Pronouns for G-d have been discussed in this forum before.
Everyone agrees that G-d has no physicality of any kind, and certainly no gender. G-d is beyond all time, beyond all space. He created time and space.
So why use the He pronoun?
Many non-gendered words in Hebrew have a linguistic gender tagged onto them. For a good week, we say “shavua tov”, but for a good year, we say “shana tova”.
Are we to conclude that a week is male, but a year is female? Of course not.
G-d has no body. G-d has no gender. Our sacred text says “Baruch ATAH” (not AT) when referring to G-d.
“it” sounds a bit demeaning, and “she” is both incorrect literally (as G-d has no gender) AND linguistically incorrect as well.
So, the best pronoun to use is He.
When we discussed this last time, I also mentioned that other Divine concepts are indeed feminine.
Shchina – the ability of a human being to recognize a concentrated presence of Divinity in a certain place, is linguistically feminine.
Shabbat is also feminine. (If someone asks, “how was shabbat”, and you want to say it was nice, you say “yafa m’od”, not “yafeh m’od”)
The Land of Israel is also feminine. (Just don’t tell that to the macho soldiers guarding “her” borders!)
In any case, former Reform Jew, we are way off topic here.
With regards to the post above:
I think the notion of shared story-telling focused on the themes of Yom Kippur is one of the best ideas I’ve heard on this blog. Too often at Shul we listen only to the words and sounds of fixed liturgy, and miss out on listening to the words and sounds of one another, which I think are just as important.
I appreciate MB’s thoughtful explication, but remain stunned that someone whose religious sensibilities are so liberal as to be labeled “Classical Reform” would entertain the notion that God might be a physical being with ANY sort of appearance. Since MB seems not to take Biblical stories literally, I wonder why he is attached to the highly metaphorical language referring to God’s “face” and “back”. This is clearly symbolic.
Classical Reform was (and is!) steeped in broad, transcendent conceptualizations of God which deny both corporeality and gender. However, such panentheistic concepts can be traced back much earlier. Even Maimonides’ third “principle of faith” from his collection of thirteen, re-stated in the Yigdal hymn, implied that one MUST deny the physicality of God in order to be considered a Jew. Even the early Rabbis understood that the Torah speaks in the language of humans, and utilizes anthropomorphic imagery to help people conceive of the Inconceivable. MB might want to take a gander at hymn number 54 in the old Union Hymnal. Verse 2 is based on verse 3 of the traditional Yigdal, and states “Formless, all lovely forms declare His holiness”. That is a beautiful paraphrase developed jointly for the Union Hymnal by Rabbi Max Landsberg and the Unitarian Minister Rev. Newton Mann. Would that there could be such interfaith collaboration today, to the point where joint worship is possible.
To X-Reform Jew:
It is not true that “Everyone agrees that God has no physicality of any kind and certainly no gender.”
How would that work anyway? How could God do or say anything without “physicality of any kind?” What support is there in the Bible for that? Is there any difference between saying that He has no physicality and saying that He does not exist?
To Jordan:
You make some good points. Still, I remain in the “I can’t tell you what God looks like and that’s not the important part anyway” camp. (Our camp has a nicely descriptive name, but not a very short or punchy one.)
Mother (to 7-year-old busy with paper and crayons): What are you drawing?
Child: I’m making a picture of God.
Mother: But Sammy, no one knows what God looks like.
Child: Of course not. I’m not done yet.
To MB:
You said: “I can’t tell you what God looks like and that’s not the important part anyway”. What I’m saying, and what virtually all Jews who believe in God, from Orthodox to Reform, would say, is that the question “What does God look like?” is the wrong question because God doesn’t “look” like anything. God has no physical appearance, because God is not a physical being. God INTERACTS with the physical universe (if you believe that), and may somehow PERMEATE everything, including the physical, but is not a self-contained entity which can have appearance. By even approaching the “question” as you do, you seem to be missing the point. We certainly can’t know what God looks like, but I’d say that we ALSO can’t NOT know what God looks like, because answers to that question don’t exist to be known (or not known). I hope I’m articulating this in an understandable way–it’s kind of hard to put into words (as it should be).
I think our Muslim neighbors are wise to avoid any depiction of the Divine. Historically, of course, Jews had similar prohibitions, but nowadays children DO take up crayons and markers and “draw” God. When I tried to do that as a child, I was SEVERELY reprimanded by my parents, because they thought that any attempt to depict God was like making an idol. I’m not sure if I’d go that far, but I think it’s important to impress upon children that God is so much greater than anything that can be conceived of visually. To suggest that God can be encumbered by physical or visual attributes diminishes God’s nature, which is something I don’t think we want to do.