Tears

[liv]

Way back in January I promised lethargic_man that I'd talk about which bits of the High Holy Day liturgy make me cry, and I didn't get round to it at all. And now the festival season has come round again and my head is in the machzor, the special prayer book for this time of year. So I might as well finally answer that question from months back!

The main section I'm thinking of is the introduction to the ritual confession. It's almost obvious to be moved by this, but there's one of those collections of Biblical verses arranged as a poem, and one actual piyut or "hymn" that always get me. שמע קולנו which asks God to hear our prayers, and includes

Do not cast us out when we become old,
When our strength fades, do not abandon us

I mean, it's such an obvious tearjerker that it's a running joke that cantors mark up their prayer books 'choke up here'. Even so, there's the image of vulnerability, and it's easy enough to feel vulnerable when you're a good way through a long fast. Also, in thinking about Divine qualities as ethical examples that we should imitate, I strongly feel that we as a society are pretty bad at protecting the old and weak. My mind goes to people I've known who ended their lives alone and in pain.

And the poem, כי אנו עמך, which is basically a list of metaphors for our relationship with God. Specifically,

We are Your friend, and You are our beloved
We are Your treasure, and You are our kin

Because friendship is such a great blessing in my life. The use of friendship metaphors for God in among the much more grand metaphors like servant / lord, work / creator, people / king conveys a hope that deep affection, even friendship, could be part of our ideal relationship with God, even though God is beyond description, let alone that sort of interpersonal connection. And yeah, it's full of references to Song of Songs, which is a very extended metaphor of God as beloved, and that also has a lot of resonances for me. Also

We speak of Your being, and You speak of our being

I don't really know what that means, but I have tended to interpret it as nodding to the somewhat radical theology that to some extent we "make God in our image".

I suppose similarly, in the sayings of Remembrance in the Rosh haShana additional service, the verse from Jeremiah:

I will remember for you the devotion of your youth, the love of your bridal days, when you followed after me into the wilderness, the land unsown.

The opening to the Yom Kippur additional service, the prayer of the representative of the congregation. It's quite often a cantorial set piece, because obviously you're going to pick the most brilliant singer and scholar to lead the most solemn section of the most solemn service of the year. Except for me it's not false modesty at all:

I have come to plead before You on behalf of Your people Israel, who have made me messenger though I am not deserving nor qualified for the task.

I'm really not, I'm not particularly pious, I'm not particularly knowledgeable, I'm totally unmusical, I end up leading the YK musaf because, well, I have a reasonably pretty reading voice and I'm willing to volunteer, and because my poor community really don't have a lot of options.

The service in remembrance of the martyrs. This is partly because I'm Reform by background, and it's a much bigger deal in our liturgy than the Orthodox version. Lines from the long prose poem describing the ten martyrs אלה אזכרה:

These I will remember, and I will pour out my soul within me
How the arrogant have devoured us, like a cake, greedily...
This happened to us, let us recount it in bitterness
And let us pour out our hearts, weighed down with grief

Also the actual descriptions, R' Akiva flayed alive and rejoicing in the opportunity to obey the commandment to love God with all your soul, even when God takes your soul from you. And Chutzpit the interpreter, who lived by words and whose tongue was torn out. The Reform liturgy connects this explicitly to others who have died as martyrs throughout history, during the Crusades (and I've heard enough sermons from Dr Sapir Abulafia with details of what some of them went through, and looked at some of the poetry from that era which makes the connection to this bit of the liturgy and to the Roman martyrs), and in the Inquisition, and people like Hannah Senesh and Janusz Korczak who voluntarily chose death to protect others during the Holocaust.

Partly because of that connection, I can get really caught up in אבינו מלכנו, especially the last bit where we ask God to act for the sake of the martyrs:

Our father, our king, have pity on us, on our little ones and our infants
Our father, our king, act for the sake of those slain for the sake of Your holy name
Our father, our king, act for the sake of those who went through fire and water to sanctify your name

And partly because the tune for the final chorus is so almost-catchy (yet melancholy), and it's the one thing everybody in my unmusical community knows, and thankfully they have the same tune I grew up with. (The arrangement at the link is kind of horrible but it is at least the tune I'm talking about, the chorus starts from about 3'30''.) So everybody joins in and sings together, even if they don't know Hebrew very well or find most of the liturgy confusing:

Our father, our king, be gracious to us and answer us, for we have no good deeds. Act with justice and with kindness, and save us

Yes, that does come right at the end so it means that in a few minutes I can collapse and put down the weight of the community's hopes, so I think that's part of why I find it moving.

Also stuff I miss from the Reform liturgy that either isn't in the Orthodox liturgy (I think maybe it comes from services of poetry asking for forgiveness during the month leading up to YK, rather than the day itself), or is so unprominent that it basically gets skimmed over. אנשי אמונה אבדו, in R' Magonet's magnificent translation:

Those we could trust have passed away
Whose power came from their own good deeds.
They had the strength to stand up to evil
Protecting others from its consequences.
Their example is still our defence and our shelter...
Those who could face evil, who had the strength
To seek You, are dead and gone.
We wander all over the world
But who can fill their place?

And Ibn Gabirol's Crown of glory, which is full of quotes or allusions from the liturgy woven together into a really personal poem, every year I'm not at home for YK I miss it terribly:

My God, I am too ashamed and I am too confused to stand in Your presence, for I know
That Your greatness extends as far as the depth of my frailness and my weakness,
And that You are as perfect as I am lacking.
For You are one. And You are life, and You are great, and You are eternal,
And I am a clod and a worm, dust from the earth,
A cup full of shame, a passing shadow, a breeze that passes and never returns

Also this year I'm going to preach on the Haftarah, the reading from the Prophets, Isaiah 57–58. Partly inspired by this really excellent sermon by a Christian friend of mine, in fact.

And now I should really go and finish learning the liturgy, instead of sitting here crying over the poetic bits.

Comments

[kass]

Oh, my heart. Some of the bits you've mentioned here are among my favorites, too. And also you've made me reconsider the martyrology, which my community hasn't done in years; I'd like to talk more with you about that. (Later. AFTER the chagim. Not now. *grin*)

This year I am particularly moved by the unetaneh tokef, and by the recognition that we simply do. not. know what the coming year will hold. Who will live and who will die? Who will be contented and who will be relentlessly driven? Who will be healthy, and who will be sick? That not-knowing is so huge for me right now: will mom get well, or won't she? And the prayer's refrain -- that tefilah, tzedakah, teshuvah can soften whatever the decree might be. It doesn't say that we can change what will be, but that we can change how we respond to what will be. I don't know -- I'm finding that incredibly moving this year.

May you be written and sealed for a good year to come.

[liv]

Best wishes for a good and sweet new year, in spite of the beginning of it being overwhelming, in spite of the uncertainty. I would definitely love to talk to you about the martyrs when you actually have time for conversations. I'm really fascinated that your community leave out that bit; I think it makes sense to downplay it in eg an Orthodox community where they make a much bigger deal of 9 Av, but in my tradition it's always been really central.

Unetaneh tokef has so much in it, I almost don't dare to talk about it! (Also the context of the question I was answering was implicitly apart from that prayer, what moves you?) But yes, really understanding and accepting that you don't know what the coming year holds, that's what it comes down to a lot of the time. You'll remember 2001 better than I do, but the experience of coming in to the new year within a week of the moment the whole world order flipped upside-down, will always be embedded in how I read Unetaneh tokef.

[kaberett]

<3

[liv]

I'm really touched you sent me lessthanthree, this feels a mixture of religious technicalities with talking about spirituality that I expect a lot of people to find offputting. So I'm especially glad this post seemed worthwhile to you.

[sfred]

Thank you for writing about this.

[liv]

I do always hesitate to write about religion, cos I know lots of people find religious language uncomfortable or even triggering, and I definitely don't want to come across as telling other people what path they should be following. So it's especially valuable to me that you commented indicating you're interested in this, which is a bit of a mixture of technical detail and personal stuff.

[sfred]

I can get quite geeky about my own religious path (I'm a Quaker) and I'm almost always interested in others :-)

I share your hesitation, though - glad to know I'm not alone in that.

[liv]

Yay fellow religion geeks! I am likewise interested in any posts you might decide to make about religion. Also if you have any questions I would almost certainly enjoy answering them, whether that's something that comes out of my occasional posts on these topics, or something you're generally curious about.

Yom Kippur liturgy

[gillianlazarus]

I liked your article very much, especially as you're referring to the Reform machzor which is familiar to me as we use in my community. I think you've chosen very moving texts. I have a blog called neviimtovim.com. Originally it was about various haftarot which we studied, but now it's on a variety of biblical subjects.

[merrythebard]

I'm so glad I read this. Thank you for writing it. <3

[liv]

Oh, gosh, thank you, I'm really touched this was meaningful to you! I have to say, it's a great shame that FB is being so evil but having you back on DW makes this place a whole lot better. Thank you for commenting!

[merrythebard]

Oh, bless you. :-) I'm really loving being back on DW, and reading posts by you is a huge part of it. :-)

[elisem]

Thank you for posting this. So glad I read it, even though I can't put into words why. But thank you.

[liv]

Wow, thank you so much for saying so. I'm amazed by the people who have connected to this post, I was really expecting it to be one of those obscure technical ones with an audience of about three people who have a similar religious background to me. I think the truth is that a lot of the Jewish High Holy Days liturgy is really beautiful poetry, and just quoting it at all resonates with people, even if what I write is mostly lists.

[silveradept]

This is illuminating. My upbringing in Christianity had a very workman-like approach to the ritual and the mysticism. The relative I have as a cleric makes it better in that his sermons tend to be more introspective, but there's still very little sense of the religion being, well, religious.

From my scholar's limited perspective, the line about the reciprocal speaking seems to acknowledge that in the beginning, the entity represented by the Tetragrammaton gave life to the clay by breathing (speaking?) into it, and that those chosen by that entity repay and secure that breath for the future by keeping the rituals he laid down for them. But that's me taking one line out of context, without any actual practice behind it, so this paragraph can disappear if you would like it to.

[liv]

I'm not much good at the mystical and religious bits of religion, honestly, I'm generally quite workman-like myself. I'm really lucky to have some extremely beautiful liturgy to work with at this time of year.

Your interpretation of We speak of Your being, and You speak of our being makes sense to me. It's hard to get any more context for that line because it's a very simple poem, just a list of relationship metaphors. But in the broader context of the kind of theology I come from, how you read it is more or less how I read it. It may not be about creation, the verb root is a-m-r which is usually translated as "to say" and the verb for creation through God's word is much more typically d-b-r, usually "to speak". I think it's something like, God's word forms the Torah, which defines who we are as a people, and part of what we're commanded to do is to make God known in the world through our words about God? But it could almost literally be, You speak us into existence and we speak You into existence, so that connection with creation isn't at all an impossible reading.

[almadsfeika]

This is so beautiful. Thanks for writing about it. I'm into unetaneh tokef too, and hayom haarat olam. Just the tunes make me tear up, most of the time.

[liv]

Thank you, this is a really nice comment. The tunes are another thing. We have some really lovely music, and the emotional associations of coming to shul and hearing the music that you only hear on these special days are so powerful. Problem is, I'm totally unmusical, I can't carry a tune at all. And in my community there's no overlap between people who know the traditional tunes and people who can actually sing, so we really struggle. I have had an offer from a new person to sing Kol Nidrei next year, so that will be a help. As it is, it's a choice between going through the whole festival cycle with no singing at all, or butchering the tunes, and neither of those is really great.

[lethargic_man]

Way back in January I promised lethargic_man that I'd talk about which bits of the High Holy Day liturgy make me cry, and I didn't get round to it at all.

Actually, following your link, you didn't promise anything at all, but thank you for following up to it anyway.

The service in remembrance of the martyrs.

Why do you like this? What do you think it adds to the Mussaf service? In particular, why do you think it's there, immediately after the Temple service section, rather than as part of either Yizkor or אב הרחמים immediately afterwards, where you might have thought it belonged. What message do you think it is trying to convey to us.

I don't like it, and I'm glad it's largely been missed out in Grassroots Jews. And I don't understand what it's supposed to be saying, following up a message of "God will hear your prayers (and sacrifice) and you will be forgiven" with "but even if you're the most pious, good person imaginable, you might still end up being tortured and killed." What kind of mixed-up theology are people supposed to read as the take-home message from that?

[liv]

I linked to the bit where there was some more context, not to the line in the middle of another post where I mentioned this topic as part of a list of things I'd talk about "soon". (Yeah, right.) But anyway, I'm glad this was useful to you.

The thing about the Martyrs is that nearly all the HHD liturgy, the piyyutim certainly, and a lot of the structure that is more than just the standard liturgy, comes from Mediaeval communities who were going through major religious persecution. I think it's their legacy that really makes the service what it is, so having the Martyrs in there connects us to that part of our heritage. Not just the Biblical Israelites and Chazal, who are definitely in there too, but our more recent ancestors. I mean, I don't totally believe the thing about R' Amnon of Mainz receiving Unetaneh tokef as inspiration while on the way to being executed, but it's true on a symbolic level, the HHD liturgy is how it is because people in the crusader era were unimaginably courageous in the face of systematic torture and state-sanctioned murder.

If you leave that out, what's left is just pretty poetry, really. It's the bridge between being sad because we're religiously commanded to be sad about the destruction of the Temple, and the actual realities of being conquered and subjugated and the early roots of what in the modern era became genocide. I think it really does need to be immediately after the Temple Service bit, because the whole reason we even read/reenact that stuff is because the Temple was destroyed and Judaism had to adapt to a synagogue-based ritual without the sacrificial cult. There's a direct thread linking the commands in Leviticus regarding Yom Kippur, with Second Temple practice, with the Romans' invasion, occupation and destruction of Judea, with the historical situation of being an ethnic and religious minority in Christian Europe, and implicitly to us in the post-Shoah world. If you leave out the link where the Mediaeval community saw their persecution as connected to the Roman persecution and the Churban, it's all totally ahistorical, it's just personal inward reflection. To me it's important that in marking YK I'm connecting myself to Jewish history, I'm not just thinking about my sins and how to be a better person.

And the theology is, well, it's absolutely realistic, isn't it? Even if you're the most pious, good person imaginable, you might still end up being tortured and killed – that's exactly factually true. I would not have any truck with a liturgy that denied that reality, that we have been in a world of violent Jew-hatred for most of the last 2000 years, and God might forgive you but the Crusaders won't. When we read that it's written and sealed who will live and who will die, there's no promise that it will be the good people who perform repentance correctly who will be the ones who live to see the next festival cycle. Repentance and forgiveness aren't magic, they aren't, do this ritual and this consequence will automatically follow.

Since you come from a tradition which omits the martyrology, you won't recognize the passage referring to the martyrdom of R' Ishmael, where the angels protest and say, is this his learning, and this his reward? And God tells them to shut up or God will destroy the world. (There's a similar story in Gemara somewhere which I think I've looked at with you at some point, where Moshe Rabbenu is transported forward in time to the yeshiva of R' Akiva and then to R' Akiva's execution, and Moses himself asks God the same question, of how can someone so obviously pious and good come to such a terrible end, and God tells Moses to shut up too.) It's not a mixed up theology, it's the reality in which our religious context exists, being pious doesn't save if you someone in power decides it's meritorious to kill Jews, and being as secular and scientific and post-enlightenment and assimilated as you can imagine doesn't save you if someone in power decides you have tainted blood.