A number of years ago, my husband required major surgery to replace his knees. The only date the surgeon had available was on the 7th day of Pesah. We made arrangements for food in the hospital, and Bikkur Cholim found me an apartment a few blocks away. A day or so before the surgery we received a phone call from the hospital’s chaplain, who had noticed our order for kosher food. Could she come by to visit after the surgery? Of course, we said, curious about the “female Reform rabbi.” And so, on shvi’i shel Pesah, a Friday, while my husband was in the step-down recovery unit, the rabbi came by. She was older than us, and the rabbinate was her second career, one that she found very satisfying.
We chatted a bit, and then she asked if she could make a Mi sheberakh. My husband nodded yes and he gave her his name in correct form – Borukh Yaakov ben Beyla Ita. The rabbi expressed surprise that he knew the correct traditional formulation, while I wondered how she was ever going to remember it for Shabbat services the next day without writing it down. But then she took my husband’s hands and placing them under her own on his chest, proceeded to recite the Mi sheberakh right then and there. It seemed so odd to us, so different from our normal experience, that we were speechless. And then, very unpredictably and to our great surprise, it became a powerful and meaningful moment.
That evening, back in the apartment, I was telling one of my roommates, whose father was in Sloan Kettering hospital, about our experience. In response, she told me that her husband, a rabbi, had done quite a bit of research on the Mi sheberakh, and learned that originally, the blessing was offered at the ailing person’s bedside.
I had not thought of that event for a long time, but it came to mind after I attended a day-long conference called “This Is My Prayer – Va’ani Tefillati: Jewish Women in Prayer.” The conference on March 1, 2009, was held at the Heschel School in Manhattan and was attended by 350 people – mainly women, but some men as well. More than 100 had been turned away for lack of space. The conference was sponsored by a number of organizations representing Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist denominations. For a few hours, women of all ages and religious backgrounds sat together talking and listening.
What are prayers? I learned about prayer as poetry and prayer as legacy, about rewriting traditional prayers, and using song to hear old prayers with new ears. Where do we pray? In shul, at home, on the way to giving birth while clutching a book of prayers! How do we pray? When do we pray? Is it only during the mandated periods of Shaharit, Minha, and Ma’ariv and over the flickering lights of the Shabbat and Yom Tov candles? Is it also while standing with a child under the huppah, or while watching a life drain out of you during a miscarriage? And what do we say? Do the standard words of the siddur capture our fears and desires, or do we struggle with the liturgy? Does habit prevent us from achieving mindfulness when we pray? Does it matter if the words are in English or Hebrew? Are prayers that come unbidden to ourlips at moments of stress or joy valid? Isit enough once a week to recapture our feelings as we sit in shul? Is it permissible to make up a prayer? What is the formula for prayer?
Some of the stories at the conference I heard were these:
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“For the past four years, my daughter has been in rehab. She’s a recovering drug addict. This week, she graduated from her program, and she’s doing okay. But I remember back four years ago. . .” Here, the woman’s voice broke, and she leaned forward, pausing to collect herself. Then she sat up and briskly continued. “I remember how I prayed then. Now, when I say the words “Mehayyei Meitim” – God who brings the dead back to life – I am overwhelmed at the meaning this and other prayers have for me.”
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A Reform rabbi told us how her husband had taken her on a trip to the Arctic Circle to view the aurora borealis, about which she was passionate. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see anything; she made the best of her vacation, but was clearly disappointed. Then, a few years later, on her way home from a conference in London, the airplane had to be re-routed – over the Arctic Circle. She was arguably the only person on board who was delighted. As luck would have it, she had a window seat and spent hours with her head pressed to the window. She described it for us: the white lights forming an undulating curtain across the sky, punctuated by a hem of red lights. Overwhelmed, she said, “I wanted to fall on my face,” and then she quoted from the psalm: “You cover yourself with light as though it were a robe. You stretch out the heavens as though they were curtains” (Psalms 104:2). Her words were a prayer.
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A long-time community activist told us how she had an anthropological view of prayers – that she often read the words wondering who in the past had said them and under what circumstances. My heart jumped in recognition. I often fantasized about the old mahzorim and siddurim with German translations that sit on my bookshelf, a yerusha – a legacy – from my father z’l. If I could go back in time and meet my great great-grandparents, I could not talk to them, but I could go to shul and daven with them!
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A professor at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College told us stories about her frum grandmother and, while acknowledging that her own practice of Judaism is much removed from that, asserts that it is precisely because of her grandmother, and the memories she has of her davening, that she became involved in Jewish life professionally. And then she showed us her legacy – her grandmother’s siddur – and her own, lace-covered siddur, a gift from her grandmother on her wedding day.
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One speaker read us parts of the eulogy she composed for her mother, who had passed away the previous fall. Her words were poetry and her poetry was prayer.
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At the conclusion of the conference, Debbie Friedman was introduced. I had heard about this woman, a hazzanit, singer, and performer with many CDs and a huge following in the Jewish world – but I had never heard her voice. She sang her signature piece, “Mi sheberakh,” with words echoing the prayers of the Rosh Hodesh bentshing I know so well. All around me, people knew the song and were singing with linked hands. Debbie would not allow any applause; this was prayer, and she wanted us to experience it that way. And so it was.
I am learning to recognize prayer in forms different from those I know and love in the siddur. The conference’s keynote speaker was Dr. Aliza Lavie. Her book, A Jewish Woman’s Prayer Book, a best-seller in Israel and recently translated into English, reveals that the tradition of original prayers written by women predates the eastern European tehines by many centuries, going back to the biblical Hannah, whose silent prayer in the Temple became the rabbinic paradigm for the amidah. Lavie’s book unearths a myriad of inspiring prayers relating to women’s lives, along with tantalizing biographies about the women who wrote them. I know that I plan to write down my personal tefillah for lichtbentshing to share with my daughters-in-law and granddaughter, and to add the blessings I composed the night before my own wedding, and those in honor of my sons’ weddings. I hope the other women in my family will add to them, as we create a new family tradition that celebrates a time-honored custom – endowing the unique experiences of our lives as daughters, mothers, wives, and sisters with new meaning.