Open My Lips: reflections on the Amidah

It's funny, but when I was a kid, I thought that the Amidah was The Silent Prayer (intoned portentously, with a deep and booming echo).  We would stand.  We would mumble some Hebrew-sounding words.  And then we would go silent. 

There were no instructions, no words of wisdom from the bima to bend and bow, chant or sing or speak.  Nothing.  But we all went silent together.  Our prayer book contained some Hebrew, but mostly old and dusty English, littered with "thees" and "thous" and a very male (and very stand-offish, kind of angry) God on high.  So, we would come to this silently screeching halt, and I would try to keep focus, read the English (but really: who could get through that English with a straight face) (or worse, stay awake while reading it), and wait (fidget) until time started up again in a forward motion.

Who knew?

Who knew the sweetness, the power, the community contained in the Amidah?  Why did no one ever tell me of the raw vulnerability offered at its start, and the answers that can be found later in its passion and hope?  Yes, there is silence, but not the silence of the fidgety and bored.  Rather, it's the silence of  thought and consideration and yearning.  It ascends in a delicate spiral, a plea-- for connection, for redemption, for past and present, peace and holiness.  It is all there, a silent prayer, shared.


So, my own offering, another of my Bar Mitzvah poems.  This one a reflection on the Amidah.  Feel free to read it aloud. <3

Open My Lips

Prayer.

It is a reaching out
A yearning
Desire wrapped in longing
Despair wrapped in joy

We cry out into darkness
And luminous silence
And glorious, sheltering peace
And offer
The sacrifice of

Of what?
What do we sacrifice?
What do we place on the altar of our hope?

It is not what we pray that matters
It is, ever and always
That we pray
That changes us
And redeems us
And heals us

Prayer is the heart of us
The center of us
We open our lips
And let our souls fly
Free

From Generation to Generation

Just a few weeks ago, Nate and I were in Rosenblum’s Bookstore, ordering kippot for his Bar Mitzvah-- those omnipresent black suede head coverings, imprinted with his name (in both Hebrew and English) and the date, to be given away at the service-- and on impulse, I asked him to pick out a yad (a pointer to use while reading from the Torah).  He walked over to the case and carefully inspected the array displayed there, and then said “Mom, I want to be able to pass this down to my children.”  

Here's a surprise-- my eyes instantly welled with tears. But my primary thought was "He's getting it."  All the years of talking and teaching and trying to live what's important, and he was getting it: family and connection, from one generation to the next, stretching out to forever in every direction, what was and what will be.  We are a part of it all, the center of it, the border of it, a link in a chain as fragile as memory, as strong as thought.  

So my beloved boy steps into the whole messy, vibrant, jumbly mix, with his own offering: a yad.  It is small and delicate, gold wire wound around a garnet sheath, ending in a hand poised to guide him (and all who will follow) through Torah, that whole messy, vibrant, jumbly and beautiful gift that generation after generation have studied and chanted and struggled with and wept over.  All the love, all the questions, all the doubt, focused at the end of that small and delicate yad.

As he creates a new tradition with that beautiful yad, we practiced an older tradition on the day of his bar mitzvah: I presented him with my grandfather’s tallit. My grandfather wore it as he prayed, and as a cohan, he wore it as he blessed his congregation with the priestly benediction. My father, in turn, gave it to me.  It was the first tallit that I wore, and now I’ve passed it to Nate, l’dor vador –from generation to generation. It is my hope that he will feel the blessings and love of all the generations who have worn it before him.

And so he stands, poised himself, right there, at the entrance-- to adulthood, to community, to his Judaism, to the adventure of his life.  It all waits for him, waits for him to step through. 

In honor this day, I also composed a series of poems to introduce each section of the service. The poem that follows, The Gate, can be just as much about how we all wait to step through, to enter, to begin as it is about how we gather together to pray.

I hope you enjoy this.  I hope we will meet all together at the gate one day soon.

The Gate

We start, as we always do, standing at the gate.

It’s a good place to wait,

This gate.

It is the entrance to our service,

to a holy place

and a sacred community.

As we step through,

We step outside of

Place

and into Time.

We come together

to celebrate

with friends and family,

with strangers and loved ones,

with song and prayer,

words and silence.

As it happens every Shabbat morning,

We start at the gate.

We start with mystery and wonder,

If we allow it.

We welcome small miracles

And stretch our souls

Outwards and

Upwards

And meet one another at the gate

This gate

This holy gate

And we enter

Together

Choreography in Holy Time

When my son was born, I cradled him against my heart, arms wrapped gently yet surely around his small and fragile body.  I would stand, holding him, our breaths mingled, our hearts beating in an elegant call and response, one beat to the next, and I would sway, a slow and gentle side-to-side rock that lasted for the eternity that exists between heartbeats.  I could feel his body relax into the motion, like oceans, like drifting, like peace.  I loved the simplicity of that rhythm, the warmth of him, the smell of his newness and his infinite possibilities.  As he drifted, as he gentled, my own body would react in kind, and I followed him.

These moments became our own Fibonacci sequence: the delicate curve of our bodies, in motion, at rest, in motion again, twined in an eternal spiral, more intimate than a lover's kiss, repeated again and again and again (world without end, Amen).

So, when I found God again---

No.  When I found the need to find a communal God---

No again.  When I found the need to be part of a community in order to engage and have a conversation with God as part of that community, I began to pray more formally.  I began, as it were, to daven.  In earnest. 

It started with Friday nights, happy, joyous celebrations that welcomed in the Sabbath Bride.  With music and prayer (and clapping, with an occasional crash of cymbal or the downbeat of a drum), we ushered in Shabbat, remembering the light of creation, the promise of wholeness and completion. I needed the community raucousness, the loud holiness of erev Shabbat to ease me into a different kind of worship.  My voice was rusty after years of disuse; there was comfort in the foot-stomping, toe-tapping, almost giddy prayer of those nights.

Saturday mornings came later for me, when I learned how to be still, when I learned that listening was as much a part of prayer as words and song.  They were all about quiet joy.  Intense, but soft and gentle.  If Friday nights were all a communal romp at play in the fields of the Lord, Saturday mornings (and, later, festival mornings) were a way to find individual sacredness in the midst of a holy community.

As I prayed, as I found my voice, something surfaced for me.  It was so familiar, a recognition that washed over me like pools of light: warm and gentle and cleansing.  As a child, I had seen my grandfather daven often enough.  In shul, he and his congregation would shuckle as they bentsched, a quick, rhythmic motion back and forth, as if they were all about to walk forward but were rooted in their places.  The more impassioned their prayer, the faster they moved.  Now, decades later, I found an odd connection to my grandfather: a choreography in holy time.  Prayer moved me, not just emotionally, but physically as well. 

There was a difference, though.  Where my grandfather rocked, forward and back, so ready to be propelled outwards, or upwards, to soar wherever it was that his prayer led him, my dance was different.  Mine was that gentle sway, the side-to-side rhythm I had found in my son's infancy.  Unlike the shuckling of my grandfather's generation, my sway seemed to be centered, to be grounded.  Don't get me wrong: one was not better than the other.  Just different.  I was not meant to be propelled, but to flow.  Like oceans or time.  Like light.

I cannot shake the feeling that there is something holy in that movement.  I can lose myself in that tidal sway, let the sacred wash over me and through me.  I can believe, in those moments, that the movement itself, that easy to-and-fro, is a prayer.

In fact, I know that it is: sacred and holy and eternal.  Like oceans or time.  Like light.

Like love.

My son is preparing to become a Bar Mitzvah.  To be fair, he is a Bar Mitzvah, having passed his thirteenth birthday just last month.  But in fine American Jewish tradition, he is preparing to lead a service, chant from Torah, teach us something about what he chants.  As I've tried to teach him, now, not only does the community have something to offer him, he now has something to offer the community.  It's a two-way street, and he has obligations to fulfill as he steps onto the path of burgeoning adulthood.

But as he prepares, I've really tried to stay out of it.  I'm his mom: I drive him to his tutor's, I remind him to practice (I remind him again to practice), I nag him a little about practicing, I'm planning the social festivities of the day itself (and thinking a lot about wardrobe.  Mine, not his.)  But I am not his teacher--- not for this.  Let others help him prepare.  I have, I hope, laid the foundation and given him guidance enough for him to follow his own path.  But there is a community upon whom he can depend, who have so much to teach and share with him.  Let him learn this lesson as well (I pray).

So I was surprised one day, when I reminded him, but had not reached the level of nagging at him, to practice, and he asked if I would chant with him.   Would I chant with him?  Would I pray with him?  Would I?

I held as still as I knew how, as if a delicate butterfly had lit upon my finger, shyly flapping its gossamer wings, so ready to take flight again.  I held my breath and nodded, hoping I appeared calm and nonchalant, while inwardly doing my little happy-dance-of-joy.  I did not want to frighten him away.

Would I pray with him?

And he came to me while I sat at the table, my not-so-tall boy, my almost man.  He came and stood and nestled his body next to mine, so that our hearts beat in time together, a gentle call and response.  And we prayed, my son and I, and we swayed, he cradled next to me, a simple back and forth, that gentle back and forth, slow and stately, a dance in holy time.  Like oceans, like time.  Like light.

Sacred and holy and eternal, like love.  Exactly like love.