Music Speaks Louder than Words: Connecting Personally with Davening

By Susan Cosden


Throughout our trip in Israel we have had opportunities to pray together as a community, to experience how some of our fellows teach prayer to their students/congregants, and to attend services at synagogues in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Each prayer opportunity has come down to: How do we connect to pray individually and help each individual we teach connect with prayer, connect with the Jewish people through prayer and connect to God?

Our first service together was spent at the Leonardo Basel Hotel in Tel Aviv. That evening a group of fellows and mentors led a very moving Kabbalat Shabbat and Minchah service for us. At this service they decided to use instruments for Kabbalat Shabbat but not for minchah. The service was full of joyous singing as it was our first Shabbat together and our first Shabbat together in Israel. For me personally, all the emotions I have felt building up to this trip and since we arrived came flooding out during this service and I am grateful for my colleagues who created the kavannah - the intention, mood and focus.

Once again music was a key component this erev Shabbat when several of us had the opportunity to pray at Kol HaNeshamah for Kabbalat Shabbat and Minchah. This seems appropriate as the translation of this congregation's name is Voice of the Soul. On one level this service allowed me to connect with memories as this was the congregation I belonged to when I was a first year student at Hebrew Union College.

On a second level this service allowed me to connect with other Jews as I was greeted by Israeli friends I hadn't seen in a long time, including a classmate from my time at Hebrew Union College who lives in Jerusalem.

 On a third level this service allowed me to connect with Jews around the world as each Shabbat there are guests from around the world and this Shabbat was no exception.

Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman

On a fourth level this service allowed me to connect with the prayers themselves as Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman led us in deep breathing before some of the prayers, led us in guided meditation reflecting on the past week before other prayers, and led the congregation in different paces of singing the prayers to add to the kavannah.

On a fifth level this service allowed me to connect with God as the beautiful singing of the congregation, especially when in harmony or in rounds, was able to carry all of our prayers Higher.

The service that moved me the most and got me to think about applying techniques to my school's prayer experiences was the study session and then havdallah with Bet T'fillah Israeli led by Esteban Gottfried and Company. During our study session and havdallah we were introduced to their siddur, whose design in some ways reminded me of Mishkan Tefillah, the Reform Movement's new siddur. Their siddur is designed with the right hand page being the traditional prayers and the left hand page being a collection of songs and poems whose themes match the traditional prayers yet are part of the popular culture or cultural history of Israel, e.g. Arik Einstein's Ani V'atah for Aleinu. Through our experience with them it was clear to me how they were able to attract hundreds of Israelis to the pier in Tel Aviv during the summer to welcome Shabbat. The experience was so powerful that many of us felt moved to share through song our gratitudes that Shabbat and our hopes for the upcoming week.

Afterwards, a few of us were discussing how could we create a service like this for our teens and how would we know which songs would connect them with this same deep meaning. I shared with my colleagues how twice this year with our seventh graders at Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester, thanks to our wonderful seventh grade coordinator, we gave our students a rubric of the service with an explanation of each prayer and asked them to find songs on their MP3 players that had the same themes. Then we had a service of playing these songs. The experience must have connected with our students because several parents shared with me how their teen came home and shared this with them and some even shared it with extended family.

My thought of how to take it to the next level is to do this a few more times to gather more ideas and create a siddur for our teen tefillah experiences each week at religious school. Even better would be for several of us to do this activity with our teens and create a siddur we all can use. What a great way to allow prosumer learning.

This trip has given us many wonderful gifts. In the case of prayer, this trip has given me many more tools in my tool box to bring our students closer to prayer, each other, Jews around the world, and God. What an awe-inspiring gift this is.

Dream v. Reality

". . . Each bus queue can easily catch fire and turn into a stormy seminar, with total strangers arguing not only about strategy, economy and family, but about the essence of history, the importance of morality, theology, the connection between nation and God, and metaphysics. But even while disputing their moral viewpoint it doesn't stop them from elbowing their way to the head of the line." - Amos Oz

Rachel Korazim began her article, "The Place of Israel in North American Jewish Education: A View from Israel, in What We Now Know About Jewish Education with this quote and another by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, to share the tension "between the ideal or spiritual approach to Zion and the practicalities of everyday life in Israel." As we prepare to depart and go up to Israel, I am finding this struggle between the dream of Israel and the reality of Israel today to be pulling at my heartstrings. It has been seventeen years since I last had the honor of visiting Israel and as many like to remind me, it is as if I have never been to the current State of Israel.

When last I lived in Israel, 1991-'92, it was a time of great excitement, promise and hope. Regularly as I walked past the King David Hotel there was a different country's flag flying as peace was trying to be negotiated. One of my fondest memories from that year was on New Year's Day building a snowman on the Temple Mount with my classmates and African Muslim children. Unfortunately those optimistic times have changed and since graduating HUC in 1994 I have had to teach my students about the Matzav, the "Protective Fence," and raised money for bomb shelters in Sderot. I was running school one Shabbat when I had to announce to our students that Rabin had been assassinated. We have also regularly had to prepare our students leaving for college how to deal with Anti-Zionism. I struggle with how we teach Israel as a Country at War and how for most of my students the only Israelis they meet that have not made Yeridah are Israeli Soldiers.

The first time I had the pleasure of living in Israel I lived on Kibbutz Kfar Blum on a WZO, World Zionist Organization, program for American and Canadian tenth graders. I experienced the dream of Labor Zionism as a reality. I worked picking cotton and oranges, taking care of animals in a children's petting zoo, and cooking and cleaning in the guest house kitchen. It was there on a secular kibbutz that I experienced for the first time the true meaning of preparing a kitchen for Passover and it was there that I learned that chickens have not only feathers but hairs that need to be plucked. Yet, now my kibbutz has gone the route of many with their own version of privatization. In fact, I recently taught a lesson from Torah Aura's Artzeinu about Kibbutz Degania and its decision to choose privatization.

Many of my lay leaders and teachers when asked which of the Eight Faces of Israel (created by Beit Knesset Israel-An Israel Engagement Initiative in Reform Congregations) chose Israel as Larger than Life. This seems to be one area that supports the dream of Zionism with the reality of the State of Israel. We can celebrate all that Israel has done in the area of technological advances and the messages of Start-Up Nation. As a birder I can celebrate how Israelis figured out how to help planes not fly into birds. Yet, the conflicts and challenges Israel faces are mostly ignored by this face of Israel.

Last summer when we first were presented the Eight Faces of Israel document I related best to Israel as Land of Sacred Moments. That was my first connection to Israel as I traveled and celebrated Pesach there on a family mission in elementary school. It was my thought that if we wanted our students to connect with Israel and that this generation is about meaning and purpose, this was a good lens for Israel. Yet, over the past six months as I have struggled with the role of women in Israel, I relate best to Israel as Our Partners. It is this face of Israel I want to see most in Israel, to meet those who are fighting in Israel for the same issues I am fighting for both here and in Israel - religious pluralism, women's rights, GLBT rights, minority rights and environmental issues. It is this face, that we may best be able to help our families create strong bonds with Israel, where the Dream and the Reality of Israel are striving to come together.

My teachers asked me to return with all Eight Faces of Israel so together we can explore the new realities of Israel and how best to teach them to our students. I look forward to wrestling with the Dream and the Reality of Israel through the lens of these Eight Faces so that I can come to a new understanding and deeper love of Israel and so I may share both with my students.