Episode 39: Pleas and Please (Middle blessing 13 & R’tzei)

3:24PM Feb 3, 2023

Speakers:

Eliana Light

Josh Warshawsky

Ellen Dreskin

Keywords:

prayer

hear

listening

shema

words

sound

blessing

world

baruch

avodah

people

josh

sacrifice

israel

adonai

idea

child

mishkan

praying

hebrew

Shalom everybody and welcome back to the Light Lab Podcast. My name is Eliana Light, and I'm here with my dear friends Cantor Ellen Dreskin.

Hello, everybody.

And Rabbi Josh Warshawsky.

Well, hello again.

Well, hello again, always grateful to be in trivruta, our little learning, triumcirate, that's probably not the word, our little learning triangle with you. And you, listener, get to be a part of that. We're so grateful. This is our place to play with prayer and hold the gems of our liturgy to the light. And we like to start with a question. And the question for today is, what is the sound you love to hear? What is the sound you love to hear Josh?

Okay, so I was thinking about this this morning, there's a song that I've been listening to a little bit by Imogen Heap, who in my mind is most famous for writing the song Hide and Seek. And it's called The Happy Song, and it's a song for children. That basically it's just like, I think she asked a bunch of his child psychologists, what are the sounds that children most like to hear? And it's like a calming song. It's got this really sweet melody. And that's like, basically the whole theme. And there's like, little whistles, and like, bike bells, and like a child laughing. And we played it for our six month old when she was crying one time in our long car ride, and she immediately started smiling. And I just liked the idea of a song that like, is so intentionally created with sounds that just make you feel joyful. And so that's the sounds that have been making me feel just like sweet whistling and like, like, bells chiming.

That's amazing. I yeah, I've never heard of that. Intentional. Definitely any parents out there, any grownups with kiddos, might want to check that out, have it in your back pocket. That's awesome. Ellen, what is the sound you love to hear?

Wow, I'm gonna go in a completely different direction here. I, it sounds funny to say I love to hear silence. To see what is there. And I realized in the silence, what I like to hear is my own breath. That if I'm getting anxious or something like that, it's not, I can say to myself, okay, just breathe, just breathe. But I intentionally listen to my like, make it a (deep inhale and exhale). And it's not just the internal feeling that the hearing of it, that really does a number on me. I love to be doing something and have no sound around, whatever. I'm not someone who listens to music while I do other work, or anything like that, I just do in silence. And I feel grounded in that way.

That is beautiful. I feel like I'm very much the opposite. Like I need sound to kind of like fill my chattering brain so that I can focus on whatever I'm doing. But the silence is very special. Especially the silence right after singing something together. That's the most delicious silence there is, I think, one of my favorite non-sounds in the world. My favorite moments.

Yeah, I, one of my favorite ideas from Rabbi Nehemia Polen and Rabbi Larry Kushner is they're talking about a different part of the service. But they say the silence on the way home from the symphony is different than the silence on the way to the symphony. And precisely what you just said, it's, it's different after you hear something to have that beat of silence and see what you hear after you hear.

That's beautiful. That's so beautiful. I'm thinking, when I asked the question myself, what is the sound I love to hear? I can see it right now from my apartment window. There's a space kind of in our mini driveway, that's like a bramble of bamboo and kudzu vines, which are like two invasive species. And my friend Jenna likes to see like, which one's winning? Which one is there more of today, bamboo or kudzu? But it's just this kind of like mess of vines. And this started a couple of months ago or at least I only started noticing at a couple of months ago. As the sun was rising, the bird sound from this bramble was so loud, like at first I didn't know what it was because you I can't see the birds because the bramble is so thick, but it sounded like thousands of birds. And at first I was like, Why am I being woken up? Because I ran out of the kind of earplugs that I liked, whatever. And why am I being woken up at like 6:05 by this cacophony of birds? But I'm like, wait a minute, this is awesome. Like, why am I complaining about it? And then when the sun goes down, it's the same thing. It sounds like a thousand birds, just from that little spot. And I've grown to really love that sound. Something I love about Durham, is that even in kind of more residential areas like the one I live in now or more downtown areas, like where I used to live, it still sounds like a forest. Even if you're not in the forest, there's enough trees and enough squirrels and enough birds, that you, and enough bugs that you get the sounds of nature, wherever you go. And I find that to be very grounding, and beautiful, especially the probably not 1000 but sounds like 1000 birds that are outside my apartment. So friends, we're back on our Amidah journey making our way today we have hit a milestone but first, let's recap. We started with three steps back and three steps forward. We explored what even as a blessing? What is baruch atah yud hey vav hey? Let's get back to the episode one of my favorite ones still, I think getting to go deep on those three words. We connected with our spiritual ancestors. We talked about what are God's powers, the gvurot? What do they do in the world? What is kedusha, what is holiness? And then we started on our journey into the middle petitionary blessings of the weekday amidah. Including, I was gonna say in no particular order, but yes, in a very particular order, knowledge and repentance and forgiveness and redemption and healing and space/time and in-gathering and justice and boo heretics and yay righteous people and rebuilding Jerusalem and whatever Messiah means. And now we have arrived at the last petitionary blessing from the weekday Amidah. Very exciting. Josh, take us to that very exciting blessing.

Okay, here we are at the very last petitionary blessing. I'm reading again from the Conservative Movement's Lev Shalem Siddur. And away we go. Shema koleinu adonai eloheinu chus v’rachem aleinu v’kabel b’rachamim u’vratzon et tefilateinu ki el shomea t’fillot v’tachanunim atah u’milfanecha malkeinu reikam al tashiveinu ki atah shomea t’fillat amcha yisrael b’rachamim. Baruch atah adonai shomea tefillah. Hear our voice Adonai our God, be kind and have compassion for us, willingly and lovingly accept our prayer, for you, God, hear prayers and listen to pleas. P-l-e-a-s, pleas. Do not send us away empty-handed, for in your kindness you listen to the prayers of your people Israel. Baruch atah Adonai, who listens to prayer. What do we notice? What are we seeing so far?

A couple of things I noticed in the English and the Hebrew. First of all, Josh, spelling out pleas. That was really great. But I think there's also maybe something to be said for who listens to please - what is it mean, that the tone or the way that we're asking for something is more or listenable? But I think that was really cool.

Well what I thought of for a second was that I was wondering if I was looking back to see if there was a na in the - in there.

Oh!

Because there na in other, right, there's like you have, yehemu na rachamecha, and there's, in yedid nefesh, we have the v'chusa na al bein ohavach, and so there's the please and other places with that same chus, there wasn't the please that was most apparent to me didn't exist in here. But I wonder if there's, there's something to like, I think what you're saying about the way that we can use please.

I think there is. And then something I was feeling very much in the Hebrew, this go around, was the interplay between the nu ending and the word atah. So it was almost like it was flowing back and forth, words with the new ending mean our or us, right, eloheinu, our G?d, t'filateinu, our prayers, and then moving back and forth to atah, which is you. And the flowing and connection back and forth between we and you, and us and you, that really made an impact on me this morning.

I'm also resonate, yeah. So I'm also noticing the atahs and, like, the, the connections to the you, and calling out, and trying to tell G?d what G?d is. Right? You are a G?d who listens to prayer, which brought me back I was trying to look at what some of the other blessings had said. And if there were other ones that a bunch of them did it. Right? Ki mochel v'soleach atah, because you're the one who is forgiving. Ki goel chazak atah, because you're the Redeemer, right? We do this a lot in the Amidah, we ask G?d for a thing, and then we tell G?d that G?d already does this thing. So it's not so hard for G?d to do it, because G?d's already doing it. So I think that's an interesting way in which to ask for what you want is to say, you know, there's precedent here, there's precedent of you doing this before. So just continue to do the thing you're already doing. You're doing such a great job at it. Can you just keep doing it for us right now?

This speaks back a little bit to our, the comments we've made in the past that all of these chatimot, all of these final baruch atah sentences are present tense, and then just confirms, what you're, affirms what you were saying, Josh about it being constant all the time. I noticed, I'm looking at Mishkan T'fillah here the, in the Reform tradition, and it's pretty much identical, except for some reason, usually, I know the reason but here, I don't, why the sentence Don't turn us away empty handed, has disappeared from the Reform liturgy. The rest of it is there. But the al tashlicheinu milfanecha is not in the Mishkan T'fillah. And I think that's very interesting. I don't know if they're saying that's not possible that you could walk away empty handed or, or if it's trying to awaken us to, you know, try to avoid instant gratification, that's not going to happen right in the second you say it, be patient, I really have no idea why they would choose to leave that sentence out.

That is very interesting. In the My People's Prayer Book, it shares that the part that kind of the predecessors of the Reform tradition were uncomfortable with was the particularism. And that there's a Sephardic and Spanish Portuguese tradition, that instead of saying, amcha yisrael, you listen to the prayers of the people Israel, with with rachamim, with, with rachamim, with mercy. It says, kol peh, you listen to the prayers of all mouths, all lips, which universalizes it a lot. And it's interesting to me that since there is a precedent for that, going back in the Sephardic tradition, that I didn't really see that in any of the siddurim that I found, even ones that make an effort to make the liturgy more universal.

I do, you do notice it, by leaving out the sentence about turning away empty handed, it also skirts the issue, because that sentence continues with what you were just saying about whose prayers get to be heard here. What I found interesting was I looked in my Kabalah Siddur, particularly at that line, and the Kabalistic Siddur, which certainly leans toward the more Orthodox tradition, says kol peh and not Israel, and I was kind of heartened by that, for some reason, the expansive nature of it.

Kol peh also takes me back, at least when I hear kol peh, I think of nishmat. Ki kol peh lecha yodeh v'chol lashon l'cha tishavah. Every mouth thanks you and every tongue pledges loyalty. But that I think is a more, I don't know, if that's necessarily an expansive view, I think it's more of a, eventually, we'll all come to worship this one G?d kind of a view, which I wonder if that's also the same kind of thing that's trying to happen in this kil peh. It's not just that Yisrael is coming to worship this one G?d, it's that everybody is all worshiping this, this same universal divinity. But that that's where that's where my mind goes too.

I think these questions or ideas of what does it mean, for us to ask not to walk away empty handed, really go along with this question of what does it mean to ask something of G?d? Which has been on my mind, and we've certainly mentioned it throughout this entire petitionary prayer experience, because that seems to be the goal. We have these kinds of communal requests, most of which we've had for a really long time because they were put into place by the rabbi's of the Talmud, which means they have been our community goals for a very long time. And what does it mean to ask? You said, Ellen does empty handed kind of get into our minds as my friend Rabbi Shmuel Feld says that like, God is like a vending machine. And that prayer is, like the money that we put in the vending machine, and we're picking it, but we know that it doesn't work out that way. And there's something particularly powerful about ending this list of petitionary prayers with this one, as if to say, I hope this all did something. Right, whether we're saying, I hope, it helped me more focus on what these goals are, or I hope it made something happen in the world. We're ending with this is to say, I hope this did something. I'm wondering what that something is for y'all. How you're thinking today about what these prayers and what this prayer in particular can do.

I think it speaks so strongly to the desire that each of us has just to be heard. Regardless of the outcome, and what does that sound like? What does it feel like for G?d to be hearing our prayers, regardless? I'm going to go to the musical theater world and not only the musical theater world, but the old lady musical theater world, to a show of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. And that refers to Molly Brown, who's on the Titanic and did survive. But there's a song in the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown that says, Are you sure that you haven't been answered? Now think children, think. And it's about praying to G?d. And there's one line I've always loved that says: If you pray for something, and it's no go, don't come around with I told you so. Your prayers were answered, the answer was no. He heard you all right. So the, and for me, it kind of that colors the expectation, there's a difference between feeling heard, and having all your prayers answered. And feeling heard sometimes is more than enough.

That is reminding me, Ellen, of a book that I have on my shelf, just to the left, a children's book called, I believe, The Rabbit Listened, which a friend told me about and I absolutely love, we'll link to it in the show notes. And the conceit of the book is that a child has built this block tower. And then something happens and the block tower falls down and the child is very upset. And the chicken comes by click, click, click and says, Oh, let's talk about the problem. Let's talk about the problem. And the bear comes by and says, grr, let's get really angry at the problem. And, you know, all of the different animals have all of these different solutions that they're offering. And then the rabbit, the bunny, comes in, and just sits down with the child. And then after a couple of beats, the child speaks. And the rabbit doesn't say anything, the rabbit just listens. And then when the child has said what they need to say, and felt heard, they're ready to build the blocks again. And it's just a very kind of beautiful reminder of the importance of being heard and listened to. How that in itself also can be an answered prayer. Right now I'm studying in hevruta, learning partners, the, a collection of prayer essays, by Rav Kook called Olat Reiyah. And it's, it's really, I haven't studied in Hebrew like this for a really long time. So we're going incredibly slowly. But it's been very, very beautiful these ideas of that the soul is perpetually in T'fillah. And when it meets an outside stimulus, it kind of bursts forth, all these beautiful, flowery metaphors. But what Rev. Cooke says about the point of prayer, he specifically says: Don't think that you're praying to change G?d's actions in the world. You're not going to change G?d's mind, right? What's going to happen is going to happen, the only thing you can really pray for is to be close to G?d. And through prayer, you become closer to G?d. So by doing the act itself, you're already getting what you're asking for. I'm not sure totally how that sits with me. I think it's really beautiful. I don't want to discount the particularness of the things that we are asking for. But it's, it's a beautiful idea to sit with. What does it mean for the act of prayer and the act of calling out and feeling heard, that itself to be the answer to what we yearn for?

I love that. I feel like what you're both getting at it and really what the rabbit who's listening is getting at is, is, is apparent in this prayer also, if you look at the words that are repeated over and over again, the words that are most present in this prayer are shema and rachamim. Right, that, that what's really being asked for is just this mercy which I feel like it's just like a turning towards. It's like, it's not necessarily anything about a response other than presence. And other than just noticing and being and being close. And I think that that's that's definitely intentional. And that's what we're getting at the sum of all these things, I've said so many things, I've said all these prayers, I've said all these things, I've asked for so much. But really, what I really need at the end of it is just to feel heard, listened to, and to feel connection.

I want to turn that back so much on Shema. And this is here we're asking G?d to Shema. And how does that relate to earlier in the service when basically G?d said to us not as as a request, but as a command. Y'all listen up! Shema Israel, and that same kind of, of not, not answering necessarily, not responding, not saying yes, yes, yes, but Josh, what you just said about pay attention. Notice. I love the idea of G?d's saying to us, just just notice, all I'm asking you to do is notice the echadness in the world, could you please do that for Me? Just this every time because every time we pray and we're saying, we know how wonderful it feels to be heard, why shouldn't G?d ought to be heard with that same kind of play with that same kind of, come on folks get with the program. I love the, the reciprocal interaction there.

There's a, we're recording this podcast right before we read Parshat Shemot in, in the Torah, weekly Parshat Hashavua, and there's a, the rabbis actually go back to this parsha as the first moment of communal prayer. Right, they ask when, when is the first moment of, of communal, of prayer? There's lots of individual prayers. There's Rivka, there's Hagar, there's Eliezer, they Ya'akov, everybody's praying in a variety of different ways. But the first moment of communal prayer, they say it's when the people of Israel are groaning under their bondage and they cry out to G?d. Righ? And G?d hears their prayer. Vayishma elohim et na'akatam. G?d hears that particular prayer, and then there's a machloket, there's an argument amongst the rabbis about whether it was the groaning itself, this cry, that was the true prayer, or there's a Midrash that when the people of Israel cried out, the angels immediately said, Baruch Atah Adonai Shomeah T'fillah. And then G?d hears the prayer. And so what the Midrashes are doing there is they're actually, they're using this blessing that isn't going to be invented for hundreds of years, to say that that fixed prayer that coming together and saying these words, is what allows us to channel our emotions into a purpose. And there's something powerful about the idea of both having the emotion itself and having a way to channel the emotion into a direction. And I think we're holding on to both of those when we get this, this prayer of mercy and listening and presence here.

That's so beautiful. I - It can be hard for me to get past the notion that when we say these things, we're asking for direct change in the world. I think what helps is to remember again, that if we are B'tzelem Elohim if we are made in God's image, and we can take inspiration to the from the nicknames that we give G?d, right, Josh, we were saying at the beginning of this conversation, we say, Hey, G?d, we're calling you this thing. What does it mean for us to be that thing also? What does it mean for us to be Shomeah T'fillah, to be the hearers or listeners of prayer? What does it mean for us to take seriously our own T'fillah? And what does it mean for us to hear the T'fillah of others? Right, to hear the groan of others, to hear the callings out of other people, whether in supplication or praise and thanksgiving, and to take those things seriously? How can each of us be Shomeah T'fillah?

I think about Shiva. And the tradition when you pay a Shiva call, that it'sm people say, gee, I don't know what to say, I don't know what to say. And tradition says you walk into the house and you sit down with the mourners, and you don't say anything, you wait for them to either open a conversation or not. But your role there is simply I, now it's occuring to me, to be Shomeah T'fillah, to just be present for what is both spoken and unspoken. But on a totally different note, I wonder about hearing my own prayers. That, you know, when we're a child and we want to ask G?d for something, it's, you know, it's may I get the new bicycle or could I please pass my math test tomorrow, that these prayers are here to remind us of the kinds of things that we ought to be striving for. That we feel are part of what G?d wants from us. And we're asking to be true and honest in this life. And I need to be reminded that it's not about the new bike. And it's not about the A on the math test. It's about all of these very enormous ideas that we've been talking about now for months and months. That to remind us of what prayer can be, and not just asking for favors from the Magic Man at the top.

It takes me back to the notion of blessings that I learned from Rabbi Steve Sager, zichrono livracha, may his memory be a blessing in itself. It certainly is for me, that when we say, a blessing in this form, Baruch Atah Yud Hey Vav Hey, Blessed Are You All That Is, and we call G?d, one of these nicknames, we're saying that this is possible in the world. Not just, Josh, like you were saying, where this notion that we have that if we call you a nickname, G?d, it means that you can do this thing. This is what we call you. It's appropriate that we call you this, please do it. Wink, wink, nudge nudge, but also in a broader sense to say that this is possible in the world. That actually, we could have a world of redemption, and justice, and righteousness, and a connection to the land, and taking care of each other, and peace, and where we really listen to each other, that these aren't pipe dreams. These are things that are actually could happen because as we've brought up, I think before in this podcast, the rabbis of the Talmud even say, you can't pray for things that have no chance of happening. So even the fact that we're naming them and praying them at all means that these things are possible. How we get there, what it means to get there. That takes different steps. But the first step is saying it's possible. The world that we're praying for is possible. And with that, we'll be right back.

Welcome back everyone, with that we have closed the book, so to speak on our petitionary prayers, but we're opening the book right back up and moving on to the final sections of the Amidah starting with Hoda'ah, blessings and prayers of thanksgiving. Once we start here, this part just like Avot V'imahot, Gvurot, and Kedusha, the three sections are basically more or less at least thematically the same, whether you are doing the Amidah in the morning, afternoon or the evening, or on Shabbat or on a holiday. This part remains the same. Ellen can you take us into this next bit? The retzei?

Sure. Here is the traditional Hebrew for that. Retzei adonai eloheinu beamcha yisrael uv’tfilatam v’hashev et ha’avodah lidvirei beitecha v’ishei israel u’tfilatam b’ahava tekabel beratzon u’tehi leratzon avodat israel amecha. V’techezena eineinu b’shuvcha l’tzion b’rachamim. Baruch atah adonai hamachazir shechinato letziyon. This translation is from Hayim Halevy Donin, it's in a book actually called To Pray as A Jew. And he translates: Favorably receive, O Lord our G?d, Thy people Israel and their prayer, restore the worship to Thy temple in Zion, receive with love and favor the offerings of Israel and their prayer, and may the worship of Thy people Israel always be favorably received by Thee. May our eyes behold and return to Zion in mercy. Blessed Art Thou, Lord who restores His divine presence to Zion. There's a lot to unpack. What do we hear?

There certainly is, I mean, the repetition of Tzion, of Zion, certainly connects to not the last blessing Shomeah T'fillah, but the two that we had before about a rebuilt Zion and redemption in the form or not in the form of a tradition Messiah, as we talked about, in the last episode. It, Marc Brettler says in My People's Prayer Book that this and those two blessings were probably kind of one segment, and that Shema Koleinu was slipped in there. So it's, it's interesting to hear this as being kind of of a piece with that in the repetition of those words. But the addition of u'tefilatam, and their T'fillah, connects us to Shema Koleinu and it's repetition of T'fillah.

Yeah, I'm really noticing the ratzon also, and sort of the sound parallels of ratzon and tzion, and connected with beitecha and amecha, right, there's the words are all just written so intentionally to just flow off the tongue really nicely. And then I was reading that line with t'filatam b'ahava tekabel b'ratzon, which I have a similar translation to Ellen, with the prayers of the people Israel be lovingly accepted. But I'm now reading it as the prayers are the ones that are said in Ahavah. U'tfilatam b'ahava, right? If these loving prayers that we're giving to you, may you receive them, may you actually want to hear them, because there's a difference between just listening and hearing and actually wanting to hear actually focusing on it. And, and so that that ratzon, that turning around and focusing I think is is the important thing that we were asking before, and that we're sort of doubling down on here. And we're saying that, that I wonder if there's a way to read, I think there is a way to read it, that we're expressing these prayers with a deep love and hoping to receive that deep love in return.

I really appreciate that Josh, and it got me thinking, it kind of goes back to the pleas and the please, at the beginning of the conversation. But also to think for myself, what is the difference between praying out of love, and praying out of fear, or praying out of hatred, right? There's this idea that the actions that we do can either be through fear or through love, and maybe, like so many other things, our T'fillah can help us practice that, to help train us to ask, and to ask out of a place of love and not out of a place of fear. I really liked that.

I'm taken by this juxtaposition, or the inclusion of those words that we think of as, as prayer words. And that is T'fillah and Avodah. In the Reform tradition in which I grew up, we did the first three prayers aloud of the Amidah. And then we went silent or private for those middle blessings, even on Shabbat, and then came back, now the Reform Movement tends to lean towards I think, coming back with a Shalom Rav and just closing off the Amidah with that last piece, but I remember distinctly as a child, coming back to, retzeih, and this idea of Avodah, which made it to me seemed to be more of a communal prayer than the petitions in the middle. I also think of T'fillah in Avodah, both as prayer, but in two different ways that l'hitpallel of self reflection, self examination, that prayer becomes a verbal thing or a reflective thing. And Avodah has that connotation of sacrifices and the worship service as it was because Avodah means to work, to labor, to put effort into, and also comes from a Avadim. Avadim hayinu. I mean, that's the negative sense of it. But it's, it's not just my inner thoughts and my inner reflection, it is an act of service to another. Service to G?d, which used to be sacrifices, but now it's prayer. And so this speaks to me of this huge transition of do we want the past, do we want the future? Is the communal coming close what G?d is after? Or the prayers of my heart, my T'fillah enough? I have all these questions.

Yeah, I'm not really struggling with that, I'm now really struggling with that, that difficulty also of the holding on and the juxtaposition of the prayer versus the sacrifice, because if we're thinking about this as talking about prayer, and talking about listening and hearing our prayers, the chatima, the ending blessing does not really make as much sense. Because the chatima seems to be specifically about return to Zion. And unless we want to read that, metaphorically, it feels like that's really talking about return to sacrifice and return to G?d's house where we can do the thing that we used to do, which is sacrifices. And so I'm, I haven't really thought about it that way before. But now that you're bringing it up, I think there's a, there's a, there's sort of a jetting up against each other of these two ideas, and we're really trying to figure out what it is that we want to do, how it is that we want to live this religion and holding on to this this same chatima, which is the one that we've had that sometimes the blessings then, the words of the openings of the blessings change. But usually the chatima, the last, the closing part of the blessing remains the same. This is one that's that's hard to keep the same if that's what we're, that's what we're trying to think about if we're hoping for prayer, as opposed to sacrifice. Don't know that that sits with anybody else.

It goes back to this idea of what do we do with prayers that we can't take literally in order to have integrity around them? Right? I think we've, we've been through this. This question keeps coming up, I think for these very important reasons. And part of the reason it's so hard with this is, as is pointed out in great detail by My People's Prayer Book, I'm not going to go through it now. But this version of retzeih that we have today is really two versions strung together, in like an A B A B format, which is why both is an ask for restoration, restoration of the sacrificial system, and, for our prayers to be accepted, which is in the present tense of the thing that we're doing now, with the idea that there was a version that was written before the Second Temple is destroyed in 70 CE that was about accepting the things that we're doing right now. And there was a version and words that were added after the destruction of the Second Temple to say, and we would like to restore the ability to do these things, but they kept in the part about present tense, right? At least in the way I'm hearing it now, the ishei yisrael, accept our fire offerings, that's in present tense, right? That's in present tense along with t'fillatam. I grew up with the Sim Shalom just doesn't have ishei yisrael in it, right. It doesn't have the fire pans of Israel. I believe, and Josh, you can check me because for some reason, I still don't have my own copy of Lev Shalem, that it's added back in parentheses. I know that I've heard people kind of adding it for a while, people on the more traditional spectrum. But it might not even, that part seems, it's still in the present tense. What and that gets me to think about what does it mean, like you said, Ellen, what does it mean for our T'fillah to be an Avodah? To be an offering? Is that different than a T'fillah that is self-reflexive? Is there something to be said and I think there is with this idea that it's beyond just me and the things that I want to think. That there is a level of sacrifice, of closeness, of relationship, of work that it's going to take for this to mean something.

This idea also comes from, from the Donen book To Pray As A Jew, that says, he says words like retzeih and ratzon are nearly always used in association with the way G?d is asked to respond to what we bring, not what we ask. So that we are asking before we are saying, we're asking and all these petitionary prayers for something. And when we come to retzeih it's about bringing that sacrifice, bringing that service, and then it's not about hearing as much as it is about accepting us in all our our wisdom and glory and warts and faults, and all of that. That, what am I hoping to, to achieve? How do I know if I'm getting close? The idea that if this is a prayer to restore the sacrificial cult, that the sacrifices are korbanot, from that Hebrew root to come close. And the reason that I draw that in here at this moment is of course, I'm looking back at Mishkan T'filah. Because Mishkan T'fillah and the Reform Movement is not going to say a word about sacrifices or fire offerings, or G?d actually returning G?d's literal presence to the Temple in Jerusalem. And the Reform Siddur inserts after accept our prayer and love, says el karov l'chol korav, is inserted here in this prayer. God Who is near to all who call, turn lovingly to your servants. Penei al avadehca v'choneinu. And the chatima is the same, hamachazir shechinato letzion is the chatima, taken not literally, but that G?d's presence should be returned to Zion, but not necessarily in the form of sacrifice. I think the Reform Movement buys wholeheartedly the idea that sacrifices are gone and now what we are offering is our, the service of our heart, Avodah shebalev, and as many people call it a labor of love, and distancing us from those sacrifices.

Ellen, something you said at the beginning really got me thinking differently about this, the idea that we've moved from a place of asking to be heard, to asking to be accepted. And that tone, makes sense, since we're moving from blessings of petition and asking to blessings of Thanksgiving, where it even seems like the asking to restore the sacrificial system is almost secondary, almost as if we have to say that because we're using the language of sacrifice to talk about our prayer. But that it's, it's in this kind of Thanksgiving mode, where we feel grateful, and so we offer a gift. Right, whereas petitionary prayer might be about pouring out our longing, and that is something that needs to be heard. There's something really beautiful about thinking about our prayers, not just as sacrifices, but also as gifts that we hope will be accepted. But once you accept a gift, you as the, once the person you give a gift to accepts it, you as the gift giver actually have no say in what the person does with the gift. Right? I talk about this a lot when I do work around prayer with kids, and thinking about the prayers, and the kind of spiritual objectives and the things that we're teaching the kids, I think of it as a gift. Once I give it to the child, I actually don't get to decide what they do with it. And that's very helpful for me to kind of let it go, as they say, and to get some of the pressure off if it's not like being accepted right away. But also to remind myself and them that these are things that they can come back to. The gift belongs to them now, and they can open it now, or they can open it when they get home, or in 5 years, or in 10 years or even longer than that. Framing it as a gift I think is helpful for me. And I'm going to keep mulling that over in my mind of what do we, what does it do to us, moving from listening is the primary mode, we're calling out you're listening to we're bringing a gift can you accept our gift.

Another word that we haven't said much yet is somewhere between gift and sacrifice are on that spectrum, this word offering. You know, I select a gift for you because it's something that I know you're gonna love. And I want to give it to you and you're right, certainly, that then I don't know what's going to happen. But perhaps when I offer, in the moment when I offer you my opinion, my words, my song myself, in that moment, accept what I'm offering. And it's okay if I don't know if it'll ever do any good to anybody else or, but all I can do is offer my best and, and see what can be done with it.

There's one last word that this is making me think of, which is the idea that you know, with with a sacrifice, it's something, it always makes you think of when you sacrifice something, you're giving it away and you don't get it back, right, and same thing with the gift and things like that. But what if you use this word Ishei Israel, this fire, this is light of the people of Israel. Light is one of those things where you know, everybody talks about if you light someone else's candle with your candle your candle doesn't diminish at all. So this light, this fire, this desire that we have that we're giving to G?d, it can also reverberate back to us in the exact same amount to what we originally had. Right? The prayer doesn't have to diminish us at all. It's something that we can give without losing anything from ourselves, that we can hold on to wholeheartedly at the same time, and allow to fill us up too.

And the more we spread that fire, the closer, karov, the closer it feels like we are to G?d, which may be coming back to this question about the chatima that you had Josh, is why we say shechinato, why we're using the language of G?d's indwelling, right, in the neighborhood. Right, it comes from the same root as neighborhood, G?d being close to where we are. Marcia Falk translates it as let us restore Shechina to her place in Israel and throughout the world, and let us infuse all places with her presence. I love that. And again, presence! Is it presence or is it presents? It all comes back. All of it is a Midrash, all of this is commentary. But how, how can those offerings, those gifts, that fire that is never extinguished, bring more of G?d's dwelling down here in our daily lives and with us.

When we're thinking about fire now and the, the, I think about fires, passion, Josh, your comments made me think about that have a shared passion with G?d for what the future might be, or if we work closely enough together, with enough heat, with enough passion, perhaps this can all come true. I want to mention there's another chatima to this prayer that's used in the Festival Musaf service, from what I understand, that closes the prayer Baruch Atah Adonai sheotcha l'vadcha b'yirah na'avod. Sheotcha l'vadcha, to you alone, b'yirah na'avod, we serve in awe. And this, this na'avod idea of, of our lives being lives of service, and with great awe, and humility, this is how we're coming close. This is what we're offering up right now. But the idea that it was used in Musaf, because that was when the sacrificial offerings would have been going on, evidently, and please correct me listener if I'm wrong in all sorts of ways. But this idea that there would be two different chatimot, one, perhaps more literal, one more figurative. I don't know what we do with that.

I think, one last thing about sacrifices that I'm thinking of is that it can be easy, I think, for us to look back on the Torah, and on the stories of our ancestors and say, Wow, G?d was so much closer to them. It was visceral. G?d was really doing things in the world. People called out and G?d responded. Well, it was kind of like that, but it was only a couple of people, let's be real. And by the time we get to the sacrificial system, we have a priest, and the Levites, and a very structured system of getting close to G?d. So was it open to everybody? Did it need intercessors? We might not need that system now today, not just because we don't want to kill animals. As a vegan, I'm totally cool, not going back to the sacrificial system. But there was something visceral and present about it. So what does it mean to find that viscerality and that presentness, while also saying, today, we don't need any intercessors, we get to find that connection with G?d, for ourselves and with each other, and that there's something very powerful about that. And something about the word worship. You know, I didn't really grow up using the word worship, for T'fillah, and prayer. But it reminds me, I've probably brought this up before of a point that Casper ter Kuile makes in his book, The Power of Ritual. He quotes someone, again, we'll put that there, I should remember who he's quoting, that we're all wired to worship something, right? There is something that we will put above all else, and that we will be willing to spend our time and our money and our resources on. And we can decide for that thing to be status, or power, or thinness, or celebrity, or whatever it might be. Or we can decide for that, for that which we worship, to be yud hey vav hey. To be all that is, to be the echadity, to be that which connects us all. And choosing day after day or whenever we come to these words, choosing to put that above all else, I think is incredibly powerful, and at least for me necessary to remind myself that there is an ultimate goal that is beyond me of L'taken olam b'malchut Shadai, to fix the world under the kingdom of all that is, and that this can be a reminder that it's possible. And with that, we'll be right back.

Welcome back, everyone. It's very exciting once again that we have some music, some melodies to share for these pieces. Ellen, can you share with us a little about the melody that we just heard and a couple more of your favorites?

Yes. What we just heard was Debbie Friedman's take on Shema Koleinu, which contains a lovely niggun, if people are not familiar with Hebrew, and this very calm idea of, of, to me the melody has some assurance to it, of even as I'm asking, I know that it is happening, which speaks to it's already going on, and we just want to pay attention to it. And I also mentioned this today because it as we're recording this, yesterday was Debbie Friedman's 12th yahrtzeit. And her ability to make these words accessible to us, I'm always very appreciative of that. It's a shortened form of, form of the prayer, she does not use all the words that we have spoken about today for Shema Koleinu, but she did have a way of getting to the heart of things right from the get go. So I appreciate, I love this melody very much. I tease you a little bit with the idea that, that Dan Nichols has a Shema Koleinu, which is a dialogue between the Hebrew and the English. It's not out there in the world yet, but the English starts off with: The hardest part of talking to you is taking time to listen. And this is going on with the words of Shema Koleinu and asking G?d to listen. So that's one of the reasons that I like that. We've also spoken of course today about retzeih. Michael Oak, contemporary composer, has a beautiful rendition of Retzei, which is also in Hebrew and English. And I love the way the English takes us into the heart of each individual composer and helps their voices to be heard as well. And included with our own.

We haven't mentioned it yet, but Shema Koleinu is also a part of the high holiday liturgy. So my melodic pick today has the other beautiful words that go along with it. And it's by Saul Kaye. It's a very simple recording seemingly, it's Saul playing blues guitar and singing these words, but I think the blues lends it the kind of yearning, calling out quality. At least when I listen to this I can really hear the prayer in the words, right? Saul is praying with his voice here but also I think praying with the guitar and the connection between different forms of music and how it forms our prayer I think is very powerful.

Josh, what's your pick today?

I'm going all the way back to my high school years to a band called Blue Fringe.

Woo hoo!

Woo Blue Fringe! And they had this beautiful melody for Shema Koleinu, Eliana reminded me that came out in like 2003 and it's just, it really is uplifting and it's just a nice way to sort of sum up what's happening. It sort of wishes us all away into the rest of the words. We will play a snippet here but it just is, it's uplifting it, it fills you up. You're like you accomplished something. I really like this one.

Since our our first blessing we looked at today was all about listening, Shema Kolienu, let's get into a listening space. I invite you if you are able to close your eyes, to feel your feet connected to the ground, to feel grounded through your feet or through your seat, roll your shoulders back, I invite you to sit up tall imagining that your spine is a ladder from heaven to earth and earth to heaven. To feel yourself also connected through the top of your head through your crown. Open up your chest, allow your hands to fall on your lap. And to start to follow the pattern of your breath in and out. Allow yourself a few moments of silence. Now I invite you to focus on the sense of hearing. And I invite you to listen. What is the sound that is farthest away from you? Can you expand your sense of hearing and your awareness, focusing on the sound that is farthest away from you right now? And what is the sound, not that you are making, but a sound being made that is the closest to you right now. Can you bring your awareness to a sound that is close to you? Now I invite you to bring your awareness to the sound of yourself, the sound of your own breathing, the sound of your body, bring your awareness to the sound of you. Now I invite you to expand that awareness. Can you listen for the sound that is farthest away? And the sound that is closest? And the sound that is you? And all of the sounds in between, bringing all of the sounds into your field of awareness and listening without judgment, without commentary. If those things arise that is okay, letting it go. Just bringing listening into our field of awareness, all of the sounds that are around us. May the listening that we ask for in our T'fillah and the listening that we practice in our prayers, help us be better listeners in our lives and in our world. And when you're ready you can open your eyes. Our editing is done by Christi Dodge at Allobee, thank you so much Christi. Our show notes are done by Yaffa Englander, thank you so much Yaffa. Check out our new website light lab.co to look at all the show notes all the things we've talked about and also to sign up for our deep dive Shema class with Rabbi Professor Reuven Kimmelman and me. Thank you so much for joining us, Ellen and Josh, this was awesome.

My pleasure. Thanks for inviting us.

It's always a gift! Always a delight!

Always a gift and delight and thank you so much listener. We will see you very soon.