Why Is This New Year Different From All Other New Years? - Tuesday Kavvanah, 3/27/2012

On Shabbat afternoon at minhah / the afternoon service, I had just concluded my private recitation of the Amidah when I looked over my shoulder and noticed the tree outside the chapel in full spring bloom.  Having just passed one of the four New Years of the Jewish year — the Mishnah (Rosh Hashanah 1:1) calls the first day of Nisan, the first month of the Jewish calendar, "Rosh Hashanah limlakhim velirgalim," the New Year for kings and festivals* — I am reminded that this is the more sensible choice for the beginning of the year.  Spring is the time of renewal: cleansing rain, cheery flowers, the scents of wet sod and decaying leaves.

There is a berakhah / blessing to be recited upon seeing trees in bloom for the first time in the spring:

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העולם, שלא חסר בעולמו דבר, וברא בו בריות טובות ואילנות טובים להנות בהם בני אדם

Barukh attah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha'olam, shelo hissar be'olamo davar, uvara vo beriyot tovot ve'ilanot tovim lehanot bahem benei adam.
Praised are You, Adonai, our God, who rules the universe, which lacks nothing; for God created fine creatures and pleasant trees in order that humans might enjoy them.

As we recited this berakhah together, my thoughts returned to the coming festival.  Pesah is heralded by the Earth's return to life, like the royal trumpets that would have been sounded long ago at this time.  The trees explode in colorful harmony, and a new year has begun.  Happy spring!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson



* So called because for Jewish kings, the next year of their reign always begins on Nisan 1, even if they ascended to the throne a day earlier, and it is also the deadline for fulfilling a vow to bring a dedicated item to the Temple in Jerusalem.  Neither reason is applicable today, of course; there has been no functioning Temple since 70 CE, when the second one was destroyed by the Romans, and there has not been an Israelite king for nearly 2600 years.

Who Has Made Me a Woman and Not a Man

An illuminating piece of history crossed my desktop today.  Elana Sztokman's post on the Forward's Sisterhood blog calls attention to a woman's siddur from 1471 in the Jewish Theological Seminary library's collection, includes a variant on a controversial line in birkhot ha-shahar, the morning blessings.  Today's Orthodox siddurim read as follows:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם. שֶׁלּא עָשנִי אִשָּׁה
Barukh atah Adonai, eloheinu melekh ha-olam, shelo asani ishah.
Praised are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has not made me a woman.*

The Conservative Siddur Sim Shalom (all three editions) has changed the traditional berakhah to read:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם. שֶׁעָשנִי בְּצַלְמו 
Barukh atah Adonai, eloheinu melekh ha-olam, she-asani betzalmo.
Praised are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has made me in His image.

This avoids slighting the half of humanity that is female, yielding a positive formula that recognizes that both women and men were created in the divine image.

But the 15th-century siddur, produced by scribe and rabbi Abraham Farissol as a groom's gift to his bride, replaces the "traditional" formula with the following:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם. שֶׁעָשיתַנִי אִשָּׁה וְלא אִישׁ
Barukh atah Adonai, eloheinu melekh ha-olam, she-asitani ishah velo ish.
Praised are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has made me a woman and not a man.

You can see a scanned image of this page in the siddur here.  Select page MS-8255_005v, and you will find this formula in the tenth line down on the page.  (The first six words are condensed into two acronyms.)

What is the import of this liturgical innovation?  As Sztokman points out, 

it demonstrates the flexibility and ongoing evolution of the prayer texts, even when it comes to issues of gender. It is perhaps obvious that prayers are not fixed in stone — after all, there are so many variations in “nusach,” or version, that it would seem difficult to make the opposite argument. Yet, the staunch opposition in even the most liberal Orthodox circles to the slightest textual changes can be astounding.

Particularly prior to the printing of Jewish books, which began in the very same decade that this hand-written siddur was produced, variations abounded.  There was no sense of fixed liturgy that many of us have today, and innovations such as this were not unusual.

Furthermore, the change in this berakhah

also disproves the notion that history has some kind of linear progression. The medieval Italian rabbi was pre-modern, pre-feminism, and even pre-industrialism. And yet, he executed what was arguably a great feminist act. Orthodox women are so often told by rabbis that change takes time, that we cannot rush history, that social understandings have to evolve at their own natural pace.

A similar case was made by Dr. Elisheva Baumgarten when she visited Temple Israel last spring, when she taught us that there exists a wealth of evidence that some Jewish women in medieval times donned tefillin on a regular basis, a scandalous act in many corners of the Jewish world today.  What many of us perceive to be normative Orthodox practice today was not necessarily what existed in the Middle Ages, and those who defend "tradition" should take a close look at what they are in fact defending.

Now that we are facing, particularly in Israel, horrific encroachment on women's rights to live, dress, walk on sidewalks and ride buses according to their will at the hands of extremists, this fascinating artifact sheds light on how much ground we may have lost in the last 500 years.  All the more reason, in my mind, to embrace the historical approach that Conservative Judaism has always favored.



~
Rabbi Seth Adelson



* Some traditional siddurim substitute a line for women to say here, concluding with שֶׁעָשנִי כִּרְצונו, Who has made me according to His will.  That is, thank you, God, for choosing to make me something that is not quite as important or relevant as a man.

Tuesday Kavvanah, 5/17/2011 - The Wonder of Thunder

In the middle of this morning's Shaharit service, thunder erupted during one of the quieter moments. Although you can't interrupt an established seder berakhot (a particular series of blessings) to say a separate berakhah, we added this at the end of the service:

Barukh atah Adonai, eloheinu melekh ha-olam, shekoho ugvurato malei olam.
Praised are You, God, Ruler of the universe, whose power and might fills the world.

The windows in the chapel were open (I think they're stuck!), so the room really rumbled. Thunder and lightning are to us merely natural phenomena and an occasional nuisance; to our ancestors, who were much more in touch with nature and less insulated from the weather, they must have been truly frightening symbols of God's power.

For a moment, with the windows open and thunder shaking the room as we mumbled our morning
meditations, maybe we could feel God's power. Just for a moment.

Tuesday Kavvanah, 4/12/2011 - The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring

A week away from Pesah, the temperature is climbing gradually. Pesah is as much about spring renewal as it is about freedom; at least two of the symbols on the seder plate are there to remind us of spring, but the earth is dropping natural hints all over the place.

This morning when I arrived at Temple Israel for our morning minyan, I was greeted by a floral explosion right outside the chapel windows - the tree that sits just outside has blossomed. At the end of Shaharit, as we were wrapping up our tefillin, we recited the following berakhah, which is customarily recited when one sees trees in bloom for the first time each year:

ברוך אתה ה' אלקינו מלך העולם
שלא חיסר בעולמו דבר
וברא בו בריות טובות ואילנות טובים
להנות בהם בני אדם

Barukh atah Adonai, eloheinu melekh ha-olam
shelo hiser be-olamo davar
uvara vo beriyot tovot ve-ilanot tovim
lehanot bahem benei adam.

Praised are You Adonai our God, who rules the universe,
which lacks nothing;
for God created fine creatures and pleasant trees
in order that humans might enjoy them.

The berakhah says nothing about flowers. Rather, this is a larger opportunity to appreciate the trees and the other features of the environment and our enjoyment of them, which returns every spring.

Pesah is in bloom! Happy cleaning.