Episode 9- Palace Enough for me (Adonai S'fatai Tiftach)

4:51PM Dec 29, 2021

Speakers:

Eliana Light

Josh Warshawsky

Ellen Dreskin

Keywords:

adonai

prayer

blessings

steps

lips

rabbis

moment

words

shabbat

melody

rabbi

podcast

josh

hearts

open

ellen

hear

thinking

prepare

talk

Shalom, everybody, and welcome again to the Light Lab Podcast! My name is Eliana Light, I am so so excited to be here with my friends Cantor Ellen Dreskin,

Hello, everybody!

And Rabbi Josh Warshawsky.

Hello again!

And here is our intro question, a preparation question, if you will, which is how do you prepare for prayer? However you want to take this question, I'm really interested to hear your thoughts because as you see from our notes, my answer is blank, because I don't know what I'm going to say yet. And so hopefully y'all can inspire me, Ellen, why don't you go first?

Oh, great. Thanks a lot. I actually did think about this, I did my homework. I love a quotation from Reb Chaim of Tzanz, who said that his there was a prayer in order to pray. And he would say, I pray that I may be able to pray. And I know that important things even before I start to do them, or even before there's an exercise warm up, I'm thinking in my head, how am I even going to prepare to warm up and getting my mind in the right in the right zone, to even begin to think about what I'm about to do. So I got to go there mentally before I can go there spiritually.

Beautiful. I love that quote. Josh, what about you?

I love that idea. I love the question about preparation for prayer. Because I think it's a question one that's like, of the utmost importance to the rabbis, and also one that I think should be of utmost important to us, because and whenever I talk about prayer, go to any community, I always try to arrive way before like a Thursday evening, and help everybody prepare for Shabbat because everything that we do that we care about in life we prepare for, right? If we are doing a presentation at work, you prepare for that presentation. If you were on a basketball team, you would show up, you would show up at halftime, you'd show up early. I think I've may have said this before on the podcast, you practice your layups, you'd figure something out, you'd have to figure out a way to prepare and like our even our service service structure is set up - the pseukei dezimra is the service that's preparatory for the ones that come later. Kabbalat Shabbat prepares us for Shabbat. Yedid nefesh prepares us for Kabbalat Shabbat. But there's there's all this preparation before preparation before preparation. And the idea is that this is something that we should be caring about. And I think we should be caring about because it has the ability to change us and change the way that we walk in the world. And so I also I've been trying to collect a variety of different quotes from different people on prayer. And this one's from Soren Kierkegaard and it says, The function of prayer is not to influence G?d, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. And so when I'm trying to prepare for prayer, I think about what is it that I need today? How do I need to change the way that I'm walking through the world today to be the best version of myself today? And to pray with real feeling and real emotion and connection?

That's so beautiful. I think one of the reasons I'm having a hard trouble with the question that I posed to the group, so it is my own fault, but it's good. It's it's a good challenge is that there's a difference between the spontaneous prayer of my heart, I don't often prepare for that it erupts it arises, it's the world meeting me where I am and expressing itself through my song through my feeling through my thoughts through my actions, then there's when I'm leading prayer, and I do a lot of prep work, you know, if I'm being brought into a community, or if I'm leading in my own home community, I think about what is the mood we want to set? What's the vibe we want to set? How can we best help people open their hearts and be present for T'fillah? For prayer? What are the melodies that can do that? What do people know? What don't people know? What does the Siddur look like? Do I need to write my own? I usually do. So what do people need, and that takes a long time. And then kind of once I'm there, and I'm sitting or I'm standing, just looking around the room and taking that little deep breath for myself and starting and being on in that moment. If I'm at the front of the room, it's just kind of like a click, and then I'm on and then I'm present and it's the starting that actually gets me there. Even if I'm not feeling up to it. So often the moment I open my mouth I feel so much better. And I find a lot of joy in holding that space for other people. Yeah, Ellen.

I just got reminded of starting the ignition to a car and sitting there and really getting ready to you know, and adjusting the mirrors etc, etc. And then in terms of leading and then when you put it into drive, and you actually begin the journey, but there's that warming up the motor beforehand. That's what just popped into my head while you were describing this.

I love that metaphor, especially because I like to start when I'm leading tefillah with a song, kind of people are talking or milling about, or if they're on Zoom, then they're still saying hi in the chat, but I just start, I start the song, I start the niggun, and people join in. And then we can do the logistics, and then we can talk about what's coming next. But you're right, it is that starting the ignition, and I find it hard when I walk into a synagogue, where I am a participant, I have to take a moment to myself to breathe, to sit, I can't just jump in with the words everybody is saying in the Siddur. I need that kind of pre moment, that preparatory moment, because it's hard to just jump into prayer because prayer is hard. And actually, we are going to just take this head on because for the next, we don't exactly know how many, but many, many, many, many episodes, we are going to be doing a deep dive on The T'fillah, what the rabbis called HaTefillah, the Amidah. We are going to do a deep dive on the Amidah. And I'm really, really excited because the Amidah is one of the oldest prayers that we have. It's superduper old. And if you want to get a really cool picture of exactly kind of how old it is and how we know and who's been doing the sleuthing around it. There's a really great essay by Lawrence Hoffman in My People's Prayer Book. You know, that's one of our favorite series on this show. I'm not gonna dig into the details, but just know that it's really old. Rabban Gamliel, the head of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish court, was already talking about codifying the Amidah in his time. And in the Talmud, it talks about how the Amidah originated with the men of the great assembly, the Anshe Knesset HaGedolah. Now, they're a little controversial because some scholars say that they didn't really exist at all, but they kind of serve as a bridge between prophetic times and the rabbi's. So for the rabbis of the Talmud to say that something originated with the men of the Great Assembly, it means that it's really old, it means that it was handed down to them. It wasn't even something that the rabbis themselves originated. And plus, we have fragments from the Amidah from the Cairo Geniza. My People's Prayer Book shows this too. While the Amida is talked about in the Talmud, the first recorded manuscripts of the full out language of the Amidah doesn't show up until the middle ages. And we can compare and contrast the themes in the text from the Cairo Geniza, which is the same as the one that we have today, but the wording is a little different, with the one that we have. So just know that it's very old. And we say it a lot. And Josh, I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what the rabbis had to say about the Amidah?

For sure, yes, the Amidah is super old. And and it was put together we have all these different blessings that were added at different points of time. And the rabbi's have a lot of conversations in Masechet Brachot all about the tractate of brachot, a tractate about blessings, all about specifically this prayer that a lot of questions about praying in general. But some of it surround this particular prayer, when we're supposed to say it how we're supposed to say, are we allowed to be interrupted while we're saying it? What if we're in danger? And there's like a snake going around your ankle? Can you stop saying it? Or do you have to keep focused on it? The answer is you can stop saying it and get out of danger. You know, we're just trying to make sure that we're safe when we're praying. And so they have a lot of conversations about what's supposed to be happening and how we're supposed to say it. And in the very beginning they talk about whether you're supposed to say all of it and the importance of saying all at that point 18 blessings. So there's a there's a machloket between the rabbis, a conversation and argument, where they tried to decide how much of it we're supposed to say. So Rabban Gamliel says we're supposed to say all 18 blessings every single day. Rabbi Yahushua says that you can have an abridged version, you don't have to say 18, you could say less, it doesn't necessarily mention how many is less, but something that isn't the full version is okay. And Rabbi Akiva sort of takes an in between route, he says if you're fluent, you recite all 18 blessings and if not, then an abridged version is fine. And one of the commentaries on the Mishnah, bar tenura, says that the halacha, the decision, is that we go with what Rabbi Akiva says, which is usually what happens when it's the last one that gets the speaker gets the final word. The abridged version is three first blessings, the ones that talk about our ancestors, the three final blessings, and then a prayer called the vehavineinu prayer, which is sort of a summary of all the middle blessings. And the key for me when I was looking at this is that that blessing is the one that ends with shomea tefillahh, G?d who hears our prayer. And I think the idea is that even if we don't feel comfortable with all of the language of the Amidah, if we're able to say this one about G?d hearing our prayer, then the idea is that G?d is hearing the intention, hearing what we meant to say. And even if it's not the complete version that's in the Siddur, it's the version that's in our hearts that opens us up to everything we really meant to say in that particular moment.

Amazing. Speaking of the complete version that is in our Siddur. Ellen, why don't you walk us through a little bit of the structure of the Amidah?

Well, it's so you know, Josh was just talking about the 18. And the 18 blessings in the full amidah being 18 blessings, there's so many names for this part of the service. We've already mentioned the amidah, amidah means standing. This is the part where as much as we are able, we rise to the occasion, the amidah. And also you mentioned already hatefillah in the midst of all our communal public worship, this is the prayer, which is actually a series of prayers. And it's also called the Shmona Esrei. The shmonah esrei is shmona esrei in Hebrew is 18. Because it began with 18 blessings. And over the years, one of the blessings was split into two we don't need to go into too much detail. If you try and count in the amidah today in your Siddur you've actually actually find 19 blessings to be counted, but it's still called the shmona esrei. And as Josh mentioned, three at the beginning stay the same all the time, and three at the end stay the same all the time, and the middle 13 change according to the day or even sometimes the holiday or time of year. that is. During the weekday those 13 middle blessings are more petitionary in nature, and they are replaced on Shabbat by just one blessing. So on Shabbat rather than 18 or 19, there are only seven blessings. And so you may also have heard of at the very end of the amidah in the traditional Siddur there's a page that says my me'ein sheva. This goes back also to what Josh was saying, what if you come in late and you miss part of the amidah? Me'ein Sheva means in place of the seven. So in place of the seven blessings of the amidah on Shabbat if you come in late if you're unable to participate in the whole thing, you can fulfill the mitzvah by praying Me'ein Sheva, the one that is in place of those seven. And as you say in future weeks, we're going to go into a lot more detail about these areas, blessings, I know.

Oh, you are so right about that. So much detail. But that's what's great is that we have this expansive time to explore, talk about, look at the different facets of this tefillah that comes up in every service, really, that we have. It's in shacharit, the morning service, it's in mincha, the afternoon service, it's in maariv, the evening service. On Shabbat we add an extra one for musaf in the morning, this extra service that more traditional synagogues do that has a call back to the temple service. And then on Yom Kippur, we get another one with neilah. There are so many amidot, standing times, that we have. But before we jump in, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Before we jump in, we have to take a step back. Actually, we have to take three steps back and three steps forward. And we will talk about that later. But I'm saying because the Amidah opens even before we get into the opening blessing. There is a prefix there is a pretext. There is a preparation. So Ellen, why don't you tell us all about it?

Sure. It's this beautiful passage, very short. And it serves as a kavannah, intentional focus statement, for hatefillah, for amidah, and I'm going to read it in Hebrew first, nice and slow, maybe a couple of times so we can digest it. And then and then I have the three of us can have a conversation about what it means and what it what function it performs. In Hebrew it says adonai sefatai tiftach oofi yagid tehilatecha. Adonai sefatai tiftach oofi yagid tehilatecha. Adonai open up my lips and my mouth will tell your praise or will sing your praises or tell of your glory in some translations. And it's funny we were talking before we actually turned on the podcast today about, we don't find a lot of creative translations of these lines. I think because each person absorbs them in their own soul. With y'all's permission I would love have to share a poem by contemporary poet although he has passed away in the last couple of years Syd Lieberman, a storyteller and poet from the Chicago area, he has a poem called A Short Amidah. And I like it because he kind of tells it like it is. What does it mean that when I asked G?d to open my lips, and then we're going to enter into conversation Syd Lieberman says they say we're supposed to be in a palace. So we bow and take certain steps as the prescribed supplication drops from our lips. But what do we really know of castles and kings, my kitchen faucet constantly leaks, and the kids faces usually need cleaning. If a door opened up to a real palace, I'd probably forget and carry in a load of groceries. No, the door we stand in front of when the amidah begins is silence. And when we open it and step through, we arrive in our hearts. Mine's, not a fancy place. No jewels, no throne, certainly not fit for a king. But in that small chamber, just for a few moments, G?d and I can roll up our sleeves, put some schnaps out on the table, sit down together and finally talk. That's palace enough for me.

Wow. That's palace enough for me. I love that so much. And I was even feeling when you were saying the Hebrew, the expansiveness of the vowels. I've talked on the show before about Victoria Hannah in the work that she does with the different vowels in the letters. And just how expansive it sounds, Adonai, Sefatai, Tiftach, even that word for openness. Tif is kind of inner, tach right, is this outer open sound. Ufi yagid, again, inside, tefilatecha, and then it comes out. So there's this interplay, even in the way that it sounds between what is inner and what is personal and the challenge of getting it out. Which is what the prayer, I think this kavanah this intention is all about. Before I started doing research on adonai sefatai tiftach, I didn't know where it came from. There's so many things in our siddur, some of it, a lot of it is different pieces from text from our Tanakh, that the writer of the prayer, put in particular orders. So even if it comes from Torah, or Tanach, it almost doesn't matter how you understand Tanakh whether you think the Torah was written by G?d directly, whatever that means, divinely inspired, whatever that means, a person decided to put these words there. So we can learn a lot from that choice, because this comes from Psalms, Psalm 51. The Psalm as it says, at the beginning, written by David after being confronted by Nathan the prophet about his affair with Bathsheba. So this is a powerful man finally needing to take responsibility and come to terms with terrible things that he's done in his life. And it's a really heartbreaking and beautiful psalm. The beginning is mostly David, asking for mercy, understandably, asking for mercy from his transgressions asking for understanding from G?d. And then we know from our understanding of intertext, as I said, I learned about this really from Rabbi Ellie Confer of Hadar, that we've got to look at what comes after the line that is quoted. So right after adonai opened my lips that my mouth may declare your praise. David says in verse 18, you do not want me to bring sacrifices, you do not desire burnt offerings. In verse 19 true sacrifice to G?d is a contrite spirit. G?d, you will not despise a contrite and crushed heart. It's amazing to think that the Amidah developed alongside the destruction of the temple, when sacrifices were no longer able to be given. And here to open the Amidah, we have a quote from David who afterward says, it's not only that this is in place of sacrifices, this is better than a sacrifice. You don't even want my sacrifice, G?d. That does not compare it to me coming before you with an open heart. There's something so so powerful about that, that what we are doing is not a replacement, in what way the rabbis and the whoever was that first decided to put that line as a kavannah before the Amidah. What message are they telling us about what we're about to do? And also to notice that in this case, it is adonai the word Adonai, my Lord, it is not so often we see in our tefillot, yud hey vav hey, the unpronounceable name for G?d that we talk about a lot on this podcast, we often substitute the nickname, Adonai, My Lprd for it. But here it actually says, Adonai. So what does it mean in this moment where we feel so powerless and we are unsure how to continue to call upon the nickname for G?d, that is the power that is over us? What does that mean? Ellen, I would love to hear your thoughts.

I was only going to say that what I'm reminded of at this moment hearing you speak is that in this context, it was through speech, that David ended another person's life by sending them to the front lines or you know, that, that with his power through his words, carried particular weight. And so for him to give that power over to G?d to be a guide, because things went terribly wrong when he did it on his own perhaps, I don't know but but that now G?d, you open my lips, you you guide me from here, because speech is a very powerful thing.

Yeah, G?d who is baruch omer veoseh, the Blessed One who speaks and stuff happens. Right from our baruch sheamar prayer, which harkens back to the creation of the world, words are incredibly powerful. And one of the ways that we are made in the image of G?d is that our words have that power.

I think there's something really really important there about the power of speech, the power of language, and and it's really, you know, it seems like a very difficult thing to give over your the power of your voice to someone else right to G?d or you know, in a few words after this, which I'm sure we'll talk about another week we we talk in the voice of our ancestors we call out we call out in their names instead of our own. It reminds me of like, you know it to me it's the first thing I thought of was like The Little Mermaid of Ariel giving away her voice. Right and and what is it? What does it even look like to give your voice to somebody else and, and that voice can be wielded for good or for evil? And so how do we think about the power of our own voices and how we use them? And I mentioned that they're, you know, this this was put here in this particular moment, right before the Amidah. We learned that in the Talmud that it was put here by Rav Yochanan, both this beginning one and also bracketed at the very end of the Amidah with the words of the yihiyu leratzon prayer, these brackets were put in together at the same time. And it's interesting to think about what it looks like that we're we have this beginning prayer about opening up our lips, and then in the end, we have that closing yihiyu leratzon imrei fi, may the words of my mouth be acceptable to You. But in that particular paragraph, which is one of my favorite parts of the Amidah, also a later edition a personal prayer of the rabbis, elohai netzor leshoni meira, G?d guard my tongue from evil protect my tongue, I know that it has been used, like Ellen was saying, my tongue has been used for bad things. So how can I figure out every single day reminding myself to use it for good? And you know, when I when I first started paying attention to that elohai netzor paragraph, the words were very familiar because they also appear in an earlier psalm, Psalm 34, where we say the words mi hachafetz chaim, right, who is the one who desires life, ohev yamim lirot tov, the one who is looking for years of good fortune. It's the person who netzor leshoncha meira, right the person who guards their tongue from evil, usfatecha midaber mirma, and their lips from deceitful speech. And the thing that's most interesting there in comparison is this paragraph at the end here is and then the words of adonai sefatai tiftach is in these words, we're asking G?d to guard our own lips, to guard our lips for us. But in the pslams we say, netzor leshoncha, like guard your own tongue, right? Guard your own tongue from evil, and guard yourself, guard your lips from speaking lies. And so it's who is responsible for the words that are coming out of our mouth. And I think that's something that's important to think about when we're saying these words in these prayers, that these are the words that are coming from us. But we also want to make sure that we're opening our hearts and souls up to something that's happening without and within. And so the rabbis try and figure out in Hasidic understanding, this blessing is not going out to an outer G?d, it's turning inward. It says G?d who is inside of me, help turn the words of my mouth towards the words that I want to say. Right, the G?d who is within open up my lips, the way that I want to be able to speak. It's a prayer sort of ultimate humility, in a way that connects back to those verses from from the psalms that Eliana was discussing earlier, a prayer of humility to open up our hearts and open up our lips.

It's so interesting, Josh, that we're while we're speaking now, we're using our lips and my lips interchangeably. So it's important to note I don't know that we've mentioned yet that adonai sefatai tiftach. It's not our G?d. It's not our lips. It really is first person singular. Both of the prayers that you're speaking about now are are intensely personal.

Yeah absolutely. And in contrast to many of the other prayers that we have in the section that preceded us about that, that are all in the plural, right and also Kabbalat Shabbat, our prayers are all in the plural. But this particular prayer the Amidah is inherently personal and individual prayer, even from the very, very outset.

And with that, we'll be right back!

Welcome back, everyone. Now that we have explored a little bit of the words, let's explore a little bit of the choreography. Yes, this part of the service does indeed come with choreography that has been handed down to us just like the words have been handed down to us from our ancestors. So has the choreography. I couldn't find a lot of stuff about when the practice of taking three steps back on adonai sefatai tiftach, then three steps forward on ufi yagid tehilatecha, came from. If you dear listener, know, please let us know. But that is what we have inherited. And Josh, I would love to hear your thoughts or understandings of this practice.

Were you the first person who taught me prayer aerobics? I feel like it was you.

So I learned prayer aerobics from Cathy Berkowitz educator extraordinare now in Boca, but she was my camp education director and my synagogue education director. So yeah, prayer aerobics.

I just, I can picture as you know, taking three steps back, and three steps forward and bending and bowing. And there's right there's, there's energy, there's a movement that happened, we're getting our hearts running at heart and our hearts beating faster to when we get to this moment. And some of that heart beating, you know, comes from just the pressure of what that moment could feel like, the way that I learned about this as a kid was that this is the moment where we're entering the holy chamber, like the poem that Ellen was talking about before, we take three steps back, again, out of humility, and to prepare ourselves for the moment, or we're going to enter the royal chamber and ask and request and give gratitude and praise. And so we need to make sure that we have a moment to get all the thoughts that are ready in our heads. I like there was a lot in the ponies there was we arrive in our hearts. And so this is the moment where we're sort of intentionalizing that. And then I like the idea that you said also in the poem was like G?d and I are rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. And that sort of feels to me, like when we're taking these three steps back, we're rolling our sleeves up, we're getting ready. And as soon as we take that breath, we take our steps forward, we enter the holy chamber, and we proceed.

Needed a second just to breathe that one in. Thank you, Josh, for that. It's funny, because I learned a really cheeky explanation for the three steps back and the three steps forward. It's not a tradition that I grew up with. So I learned about it as an adult. And but someone would just said to me, when you stand up and you're in synagogue, and you stand up, you find yourself what's directly in front of you is the row of chairs in front of you. And there's really no room to take three steps forward. So you have to take three steps back first, in order that you can take those three steps forward. And it it really is kind of cheeky, but, but Josh, you give, and there is in that its own spirituality of you can't just bust in. Take a step, maybe there's a little moment of I pray that I might be able to pray before we step back in to a different situation. I'm thinking of Willy Wonka, and a world of pure imagination, of stepping into a whole new space than we were just in three steps ago. And again, it's a mindset, a spiritual mindset that I love.

And it's the movement that can help us do that. I'm thinking about how it is so easy to do things without thinking about them. Right? It is so easy to say all of the words of the whole Siddur and be thinking about lunch, right? We do this as human beings, even practices that arose from a deep spiritual place. If we are not in that place where we have not given ourselves the space to be in that place, which again, it's not going to happen every time. I'm not saying that it should happen every time. I'm saying that the embodied practice of taking three steps back in three steps forward is only an embodied practice if we noticed that it's going on and we sink into our bodies as it's happening. I have done plenty pre amidah shuffles and not had a second thought or feeling about it. Right. It's it's a tool that only works if we pick it up and use it. And sometimes we're going to use it and sometimes we're not. But the tool is always there. And that's what I really like. You know in our episode with Yoshi and my interview with him about embodied practice we talked about about these, these Jewish moments of being able to step outside of time. And I'm really just putting the two together in my mind right now we kind of take three steps back, to kind of look at ourselves from the outside, look at time from the outside, until we're ready to step back into the flow of time, having taken a moment for ourselves. And I also really love asking this question to kids. Because if there's a kid in a Hebrew school, that day school, or who has been to synagogue or knows a little bit about prayer practice, they might know this practice and have never thought about why. Because, like we talked about, we don't have a lot of time to stop and think about why. So asking kids, what do you think this is about elicits some really great answers. A couple that I think I remember from kids having said over the years, is that we take three steps back into our community, and then we take three steps forward on our own kind of into the spotlight, which I really love, we are supported and held by our community. But then this is our moment to shine our moment to talk with G?d right here to connect and commune with the Holy One. You know, three steps back is a humbling, I am a nothing. And then three steps forward is I am a something right? I am worthy of being here in the presence of the Holy One. Again, I'll keep saying it on this show. I love that there are so many practices that we have inherited as Jews that we can do together in the same room. And each of us can have our own intention. And each of us can make our own meaning of it. And each of us can be having our own individual experience while still feeling the, as I think Durkheim says collective effervescence of doing one thing all together. It's incredibly powerful. And with that, we'll be right back.

Welcome back, everyone. There are so many different beautiful melodies for adonai sefatai tiftach, which again, is interesting thinking about the fact that it's such a personal prayer for me and my lips and my relationship to the Holy One. And yet in so many synagogues, we sing it out loud. Just something to hold as we look at these different melodies, and what aspect of the T'fillah they bring out in each of them. So Ellen, we'll start with your pick today.

Well, what I think you've just heard a few seconds of is a kavannah to the kavanah of adonai sefatai tiftach. And this melody, one of my favorites was written by Debbie Friedman. And a lot of people don't know that it exists. So you can find the recording in the program notes. And I hope that you'll do that. But the English with which Debbie prepares us for adonai sefatai tiftach says, Oh G?d, as I stand before You, I ask for strength and for courage. As I take time to look at myself, May I open my lips in prayer. And G?d as I stand alone, I pray my heart will sing out to you so many thoughts and fears that I have. May I open my lips in prayer. And it you know, it's the moment that sets up the moment that sets up the moment. So it really is one of my favorites.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to listen and immerse in that and I am so glad that you keep our podcast being the Debbie Friedman stan account that is. May we continue to bring her legacy forward and you are such a wealth of knowledge of these melodies that we might not be as familiar with as some other ones. So thank you always for bringing the spirit of Debbie into our midst. Josh, what are your picks today?

Amen amen, amen to that, ken yehi ratzon, so may it be. I think the one that I had to choose was the one that I grew up immersed in since childhood which is Craig Taubman's melody. In thinking about it what I wanted to share it I don't know if this is intentional or this is just the way that if it with the melody nicely the words that are repeated or the words ufi yagid. Right, na na na na adonai, na na na sefatai tiftach, na na na ufi yagid, ufi yagid tehilatecha. And what's that like to go back to those words of the lips are calling out? And what is it that the lips are going to call out? Well, hopefully it's tehilatecha. But at first we're not really sure. And then we give ourselves a moment to think what do we want our lios to be reciting? So that's what I'm hearing and Craig Taubman's melody.

Beautiful. I love looking back on the melodies that we have known for so long and finding new meanings and interpretations in them every single time. Ah, isn't that delightful? I'm actually going to talk a little bit about my own melody for Adonai sefatai tiftach because I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. So we'll do like a mini prayer song exploder here. I really like writing somatically. As you might be able to tell, because, you know, I co founded this podcast, I like going deep into things in particular, to bring more meaning out of them. And when I was in college, I thought, wouldn't it be super cool to write a melody for or a new kind of original song for every blessing in the Amidah. And we're going to call it Please Rise volumes one and two. Which would have been nice, I didn't get very far. I think I got like five blessings in so maybe we can talk about some of those other ones as it comes up. But I opened the siddur and I'm like, Oh, drat. Like I can't even started the first blessing. There's adonai seftai tiftach right here. And so I started with that. And the song started out kind of as a heartfelt ballad the way that I was writing it. I imagined it not, as we know, I love musical theater. So I kind of imagined it as the time it's like the character on the stage, pouring out their heart to the Holy One, in this case, adonai sefatai tiftach ufi yagid tehilatecha. The Hebrew kind of goes like this and the English, teach me how to be ready. Show me how to be strong. Plant my feet, and make them steady. Give me the words and I'll sing along. So it's the kind of like, heartfelt, almost childlike quality, where we're kind of asking someone for help, which is something that is good for adults to practice is asking other people for help. I know, I'm not always the best at that. Sometimes I think our prayers help us with that. And then I started working on my album Songs about G?d, with my friend, Uri Salzburg, who was producing it. And he listened to the song and he said, this is reggaeton. I'm like, what? He's like, this is reggaeton. And all of a sudden he was playing it really jaunty. Adonai sefatai tiftach ufi yagid tehilatecha. And the guitar was like Doom Chicka chicka, boom, Chicka. And we would play it that a couple of times, and I'm like, no, no, no, no. This is not the vibe. It was to jaunty. It seems like too big of an ask, adonai sefatai tiftach. It's seemed like a powerful, personal ballad sort of moment, right. And we know this as songwriters. You two. I've been talking for a while. I don't know if anybody wants to jump in. But like, there are times where we just hear the music is not fitting with the emotional core that we are trying to get across with the words. And it's got to fit. It's got to fit. And so I said, Uri, I understand if you don't want this to be a ballad, but it's got to be something else. How about an angsty rock song? Because that still gives it the power that I wanted to have, but it makes it a little more musically interesting. So that's what we ended up with. And also because of the way it fits in that album, and what it's saying about my own relationship to the Holy One to G?d, I use the language of Havavah. That yud hey vav hey version of all that is, even though now I know that it wasn't yud hey vav hey and it actually says adonai. So what do I know? But you'll hear a couple of seconds of it now and you can hear kind of how it evolved, and how different it is from what it used to be.

Welcome back, everyone. It's almost time for us to say goodbye. But before we go, I'm really honored that today, Ellen is going to be leading us in our prayer practice. Take it away.

Thank you. So I invite you to, to adjust your posture as you wish to be in any position that you're in to be simultaneously relaxed and alert, aware and to without trying to alter anything, just be aware of your inhalation and your exhalation. Just what is the breath doing right now? And as you relax into it, I begin with a very short story of a child who was headed home from services with a parent. And the child says to the parent, can I ask you something about the rabbi's sermon? Parent says, sure. The kid says, didn't the Rabbi say that G?d is inside each of us? Parent says well yes, honey, that's true. And the child said but didn't the rabbi also say that G?d is bigger than all of us? Parent thought for a second said, Well, yes, honey, the rabbi did say that G?d is bigger than all of us. And the child said, Well, that's what I find confusing. If G?d is inside each of us, and G?d is bigger than all of us, then isn't G?d bound to shine through? For me, this is possibly a perfect metaphor for our breath. And for being open to letting G?d and life in, being aware, being awake, taking a step back to look and then stepping back in. So as we inhale adonai sefatai tiftach, just the opening of our lips, as we breathe, open our lips. Help us to inspire, to be filled with the present moment, softening our lips, noting that another word another English translation of sefatai is not just my lips but my limits, my boundaries, my curb sides the things that contain and hold in other things. Let me soften that. Open my boundaries for this moment for this conversation for this breath. May I step fully in to this breath. May I let it shine through me. All I have to do is breathe. Let myself be open. Ufi yagid tehilatecha. May what I shine into the world be praise, be blessing. Adonai sefatai tiftach, open lips, open heart shining through.

Amen. Amen. I could sit in that yumminess for a lot longer. Listener feel free to pause the episode and just stay in that a little more. But for now it is almost time for us to use our lips to say goodbye. Josh wondering if you have any parting words of blessing for us today.

I'm feeling filled filled up from that. I'm going to try and internalize that and internalize the idea of noticing the movement, noticing the intention, not walking through life like a zombie by giving the moment meaning and walking into that moment.

My prayer for right now for today is that I may take as much intention care and love to speak to myself in the same way that I desire to speak to the Holy One in this moment. What does it mean for me to approach myself with respect and openness and love, in the way that I talk, and how can that influence how I talk to others. May our lips be open, may our hearts be open. Listener, thank you for having your ears open. Or for reading our transcript or however you are engaging with this podcast on the show. We thank you so so very much for being here. We are so excited to go on this Amidah journey with you. Expect more interviews not about the Amidah but about other things, more interviews, more music. And I want to take some time because we haven't done this in a while to use my lips to thank Christy, our incredible editor from Allobee and Yaffa Englander, our amazing podcast developer extraordinare, if you haven't been seeing her social media work, please take a look on our socials at the light dot lab. She's doing an amazing job. She also puts together the incredibly extensive show notes that we have every week. If you're not reading those and you're like, what was that book that Ellen talked about? What was that text that Josh quoted? It's all in there. And may this help us open our lips and open our hearts and prayer. We'll see you soon everyone. Bye!