RJ Blog

By Rabbi Leon A. Morris There was a time, more than century and a half ago, when piyutim were seen largely as a kind of cultural burden to be cast aside in order to make the service shorter and more meaningful. Early liturgical reformers argued that the siddur and machzor had grown too lengthy and no longer inspired modern Jews. Piyutim – medieval poetic extensions of the traditional prayers, with allusions incomprehensible to the average congregant – were first on the chopping block. The irony, however, lies in the fact that the piyut was itself a sort of liturgical reform. While [...]

By Rabbi Richard Sarason In the traditional liturgy, the special character of each holiday is particularly conveyed by the piyyutim (hymns, liturgical poems) that are recited or chanted on that day. Most of these piyyutim have been omitted in Reform liturgies since the nineteenth century, out of a sense that their Hebrew diction is too arcane and their theology too medieval. Yet, some of these poems have routinely been retained in Reform High Holy Day prayer books, particularly for Yom Kippur.1

By Rabbi Edwin Goldberg Part One: Don’t “Bury the Lead,” or Why We Have Placed the Shofar Service into Three Parts of the Service The traditional High Holy Day prayer book, as opposed to the Reform versions produced in the last century and more, includes a service, musaf, that evokes the ancient sacrifices.  Reform Judaism abandoned this service, due to its musty connotations of “barbarian” rites but a key element of this service on Rosh Hashanah, the sounding of the shofar was maintained.  Sounding of the shofar was retained no doubt because the very essence of Rosh Hashanah is bound up [...]

By Rabbi Richard Sarason The blowing of the shofar is surely one of the high points of the Rosh Hashanah morning service. But the “Shofar Service” as the discrete entity we know today is actually a creation of Reform liturgists. Located at the end of the Torah service, before the Torah is returned to the ark, and including the three sections of Malchiyot (biblical verses dealing with God’s Sovereignty), Zichronot (biblical verses dealing with God’s Attentiveness), andShofarot (biblical verses dealing with the sounding of the Shofar), this is a synthesis of two different pieces of traditional liturgy.

By Cantor Hayley Kobilinsky Anyone who has attended an Oneg Shabbat will likely notice that the prayer over the wine, the Kiddush, is significantly longer than the brief “one-liner,” “borei p’ri hagafen,” said on other days of the week. I routinely see our young people eagerly awaiting the sweet taste of their thimble-full of grape juice and then stopping themselves just in the nick of time, because the cantor is still singing! The Kiddush is one of my favorite moments every Friday night not just because of the excitement on those children’s faces, but because of the way in which we make [...]

By Cantor Hayley Kobilinsky            Each year as I prepare for the High Holy Days, I return to the familiar melodies that make up our Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur services. I no longer need to review the unique melodies of the Rosh HaShanah Amidah (prayers said while standing), because after chanting them a dozen times per year for over a dozen years, they are emblazoned on my mind. There is a great deal of consistency within the Amidah, the central portion of every prayer service, but there are certain changes that take place depending upon the time of day, weekday or [...]

By Rabbi Edwin Goldberg The Amidah for the High Holy Days features thematic additions for the Days of Awe.  One significant addition on Rosh Hashanah is “M’loch” – a prayer that celebrates the coronation of God as the Ultimate Ruler.  On Yom Kippur, a similarly sounding prayer is added in its place, “M’chol,” – a request for forgiveness from God.  The Rosh Hashanah addition reflects the fundamental theme of God as universal Creator and Ruler.  The addition in Yom Kippur mirrors the basic theme of God’s forgiveness.  In creating a new machzor for the Reform Movement the editorial committee has [...]

by Dr. Richard Sarason The basic Rosh HaShanah Amidah is an elaboration of that for the Festivals. Both have seven benedictions, as on Shabbat—the first three and last three of the daily Amidah, with the Kedushat hayom (“Sanctity of the Day”) benediction in the middle.1 On both Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, the Kedushat hayom benediction builds on the text for the Festivals: 1. The first portion of the benediction, beginning Attah v’chartanu, celebrates the gift of the festival calendar—which is understood to enact the true, cosmic calendar—as a mark of God’s special love for the Jewish people. The distinctive [...]

By Leon Morris Some Rabbinic texts suggest that the first translation of the Torah into Greek received a kind of divine imprimatur by the Holy One himself (or, herself). Seventy translators each produced an identical translation, a miraculous feat! In contrast, other Rabbinic sources explicitly assert that the day the Torah was translated into Greek was as disastrous to the Jewish people as the sin of the golden calf. So, for the past 2,500 years, translation has been fraught with danger and also with very strong reactions. And so, too for our machzor. The fresh, poetic translations found within the new Machzor are perhaps [...]

by Craig Taubman How do we keep the introspection of the High Holy Days going throughout the year? Ironically it might happen if we don’t think too much. Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought.” Ours is a religion that asks us to act, to do, maybe before we even necessarily understand what we are doing. We recently completed more than six weeks of introspection, thinking, and rethinking. Perhaps the best way we can keep the spirit of the holy days alive is by taking a break [...]

On that occasion…Joshua addressed the Lord…: “Stand still, O sun, at  Gibeon, O moon, in the Valley of Ayalon!”  …Thus the sun halted in midheaven, and did not press on to set, for a whole day; for the Lord fought for Israel. -Joshua 10:12-14 Once again this year, on the Saturday night before Yom Kippur, we went off of daylight saving time (referred to here as “summer time”), over a month before the rest of the world. Not that many years ago, the timing of the clock change, at both ends, was always a surprise, as each year the Knesset [...]

By Deborah Niederman I did not have a typical Reform Movement upbringing, and would say that the three years I lived on an island in Alaska are probably most emblematic of that. People often ask me, “What did you do in Alaska?” And my answer is, “I went to junior high.” This means that we lived in Ketchikan during my 13th year, the year I would have become Bat Mitzvah. When we moved to California for my high school years, I went back to religious school, became an aide in the temple office and was confirmed. But I always felt [...]

Spread over us the sukkah of Your peace. Blessed are You O Lord, who spreads out a sukkah of peace over us, over the entire people Israel, and over Jerusalem. -from the evening service In the old country, that spacious land of garages and basements, we always had a serious sukkah, interchangeable panels of masonite on frames of 2 x 3’s with 2 x 6 rafters, that could be bolted together in less than an hour to yield a solid sukkah, and easily disassembled after the holiday and stowed until next year. 

When the Jewish High Holy Days arrive, is it necessarily more appropriate to log out of our social media apps, or can social media enhance the spiritual experience of these traditional days? Must Twitter, Facebook, and texting just pull us back into our own private (even narcissistic) world, or can they provide individual connections to a communal religious experience? Recently, the New York Times reported “For Young Jews, a Services says ‘Please Do Text’” on one synagogue’s experimentation in a service for Jews in their 20s and 30s. Congregation Or Ami, always open to innovation, similarly experimented with Facebook, Twitter, and texting [...]