Rituals operate in environments that are simultaneously biological, geographical, social, politic... more Rituals operate in environments that are simultaneously biological, geographical, social, political, historical, and cultural. A ritual’s environment is the totality of whatever surrounds it and interacts with it. The traffic is two-way, although not necessarily equal. Participants walk into ritual precincts and then walk out, carrying with them in both directions ideas, feelings, images, and predispositions to act (or not). Some rituals are designed to minimize this traffic, others to maximize it. In either case, to study a ritual by whittling away its contexts without ever reconstructing them is to make a serious mistake. Environments suffuse rituals, and rituals touch or even create environments. Although condensed into events with beginnings and endings or condensed in thick walls, rituals nevertheless leak, exerting influence and being influenced. Rituals both shape and are shaped by environments, even after their enactments conclude. The words and songs may have evaporated, but the legs remember; so do the back and neck. Transposed into kinesthetic memories, rituals take up mental and social space. Because they are oriented (do it here, not there, please), they orient; engaging in them, you learn the appropriate posture for navigating the world.
Jews are famous for their food. Jewish cookbooks are selling, and Jewish (non-) kosher delis and ... more Jews are famous for their food. Jewish cookbooks are selling, and Jewish (non-) kosher delis and diners are visited by observant and nonobservant Jews alike, as well as by interested or outright enthusiastic non-Jews. Jokes are told about the Jewish fixation with food as a means to express festivity and happiness: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat! But behind the neon lights of kosher delis and the colorful covers of the latest Jewish cookbook hides an ancient stratum of Jewish theology. During the first two centuries CE (at the latest), rabbinic Jews began to observe a number of additional rules regarding their food choices and its preparation, and to accompany their daily meals with blessings. The new custom established a strong sense of belonging within the small group of rabbinic Jews. But the rules are daunting, even baffling, for people unaccustomed to legal texts, and the novice is likely to dispense with the whole exercise as meaningless legalism, when in fact, Jewish law is an indispensable form of theology, the rhetoric with which the rabbis approached the world in all its complexities. Therefore, in this article, a textual analysis of the blessings will be followed by an outline of the cultural context in which Jewish eating rituals emerged, the theological claims at the heart of the blessings, and the rabbinic worldview embedded in them.
The word leitourgia, meaning the work of the people, is often used to describe Christian worship ... more The word leitourgia, meaning the work of the people, is often used to describe Christian worship and has also been adopted by many scholars of Jewish public worship. This word implies that liturgical worship in the Jewish and Christian traditions is a work that incorporates a people or assembly. The time- and place-shifting afforded by new recording technologies, however, alters the nature of liturgical work and its relationship to tradition, memory, and the assembly. In this article, phenomenology and reflexivity are deployed to examine the role of the body and its liturgical formation on producing and revisiting recorded liturgy. Liturgical work is already practiced by worshippers who (often in defiance of official leadership) record and view recorded liturgies. The embodied work of this displaced assembly reveals unexpected similarities in Jewish and Catholic ordained leaders’ “flattening” before the physical and metaphorical cameras of Western public life. Finally, diverse exper...
The story of the siege of Jerusalem and Rabbi Yoh.anan’s escape during the First Jewish Revolt is... more The story of the siege of Jerusalem and Rabbi Yoh.anan’s escape during the First Jewish Revolt is the origin myth of rabbinic Judaism. Featured most prominently in B. Gittin 55b–56b and paralleled elsewhere, the story has been read and reread myriad times. From the Roman siege and the threats of radical rebels within the city, through a compromise with a rebel leader that allows Yoh.anan to escape, to a dramatic meeting between Yoh.anan and the soon-to-be-emperor Vespasian, who is besieging the city, the story moves from the temple to the rabbinic study house. In Sonja Pilz’s study, Food and Fear: Metaphors of Bodies and Spaces in the Stories of Destruction, she returns to this foundation story to offer a new interpretation that focuses on the bodies and characterization of three individuals: Martha bat Boethus, daughter and wife of high priests and victim of the famine, Rabbi Z. adok, a priest-cum-rabbi who survives the siege, and Rabbi Yoh.anan ben Zakkai, symbol of rabbinic Judaism. In this study, Pilz’s methodological lenses draw the reader to the importance of bodies, bodily transformation, spaces, and spatial movement as key components of the story and its characters, and she envisions her study as a pedagogical tool, an introduction to rabbinic literature and literary approaches to the rabbinic corpus for novice and expert students alike. The core of Pilz’s study is a spatial and bodily analysis of three characters. Martha is wealthy and privileged, ensconced in the highest level of society. During the siege of Jerusalem, Martha suffers along with the rest of the city’s residents, but the story Pilz analyzes focuses on how far she falls, before dying in the city streets. Pilz describes Z. adok’s story arc as liminal: he abandons his post as a priest, instead undertaking an extreme and debilitating fast in an attempt to forestall disaster. Yoh.anan is ostensibly the hero of the story, as he confronts Vespasian and is rewarded with a home for the nascent rabbinic movement. According to Pilz, the story “depicts the events [of the siege] as an organic process of change,” while Rabbi Yoh.anan, and the rabbinic Judaism he represents, “actively (even proactively) foresees [the end of the temple], evokes it, and embraces it” (175, emphasis original). Thus, the transformation from temple to rabbinic Judaism Pilz describes is embodied by these three characters, from Martha, representing the past, templefocused Judaism, through Rabbi Z. adok in transition, to Rabbi Yoh. anan, who helps make the transformation happen, assuring space and bodies for rabbinic Judaism. Pilz’s methodological approach is “that rabbinic storytelling must be read as a dialogue of ideas” (88), following Bakhtin, where each character of her study is a different “idea” about Judaism and Jewish life. Thus, Martha is the “idea” of Second Temple Judaism, corrupted by wealth, power, and femininity. Z. adok is the “idea” of transition, focused on a priest’s self-abnegation from the temple and its food. And Yoh. anan, who “dies” and is reborn by leaving Jerusalem and saving Rabban Gamliel’s royal family, healing Z. adok, and preserving “Yavneh and its sages,” is the “idea” of rabbinic Judaism. By analyzing these three characters, Pilz concludes that “nothing could be more apt than telling the Book Reviews
Jewish-Christian Dialogue in Liturgical Studies: Exploring Jewish Hybridity In 2015, I was leadin... more Jewish-Christian Dialogue in Liturgical Studies: Exploring Jewish Hybridity In 2015, I was leading a Shabbat morning service for a group of children in the Jewish kindergarten of the community in which I was interning. Reaching the Torah service, I opened the scroll, showed the beginning of Sefer Shemot to the kids, leyned a couple of verses, and took out several colorful pictures of Pharaoh, Yoheved, Aaron and Miriam, the pyramids, and baby Moses in his basket on the Nile. I knew that the children had heard the story at least once before, so I asked them what they saw on the pictures while re-telling the story and pointing out some details they missed. When we reached the picture of little Moses in his reed basket, I asked the children who that little baby was – and it was then that I heard the clear voice of a confident little girl answering me proudly: " That's little baby Jesus! " This little scene occurred in the liberal Jewish community in Hanover, Germany. But in fact, it could have happened also here in the United States. Obviously, this former little congregant of mine had been exposed to the Christian narrative in quite a formative manner; maybe through grandparents , one of her parents, or even just a babysitter or a friend of the family. Whoever told her about little baby Jesus had, I am sure, the best intentions. And the fact that many Jewish children and adults are listening to different cultural and religious narratives today is, first and foremost, a simple fact; an element of the reality we share today.
Jews are famous for their food. Jewish cookbooks are selling, and Jewish (non-) kosher... more Jews are famous for their food. Jewish cookbooks are selling, and Jewish (non-) kosher delis and diners are visited by observant and nonobservant Jews alike, as well as by interested or outright enthusiastic non-Jews. Jokes are told about the Jewish fixation with food as a means to express festivity and happiness: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat! But behind the neon lights of kosher delis and the colorful covers of the latest Jewish cookbook hides an ancient stratum of Jewish theology. During the first two centuries CE (at the latest), rabbinic Jews began to observe a number of additional rules regarding their food choices and its preparation, and to accompany their daily meals with blessings. The new custom established a strong sense of belonging within the small group of rabbinic Jews. ...
In den jüdischen Synagogengottesdiensten werden im Lauf eines Jahres alle fünf Bücher der Tora (5... more In den jüdischen Synagogengottesdiensten werden im Lauf eines Jahres alle fünf Bücher der Tora (5 Bücher Mose) vorgelesen. Den jeweiligen Tora-Lesungen folgen Lesungen aus den Prophetenbüchern. Dreimal kommt da auch der Prophet Micha zu Wort. Rabbinerin Sonja Keren Pilz erklärt, was es damit genau auf sich hat.
For centuries, the Yizkor section of the Three Festivals and Yom Kippur has marked a moment of co... more For centuries, the Yizkor section of the Three Festivals and Yom Kippur has marked a moment of communal and individual commemoration. Until today, it has served as a liturgical form to contain the memories and emotions of Jewish communities. Communities worldwide have engaged in creating liturgical languages to commemorate those who were murdered in the Sho’ah. These prayers differ radically in their social construction of both the group of the commemorated as well as the community of commemorators, in their particularistic and universalistic tendencies, by their choice of biblical or contemporary language, in their perception of the Sho’ah as a rupture or continuation within Jewish history, and, ultimately, their versions of Jewish theology. A contextualization, analysis, and comparison of American and German Yizkor prayers provides insights into two different concepts of Jewish identity and two different versions of Jewish theology.
More than 20 years after the immigration of almost 200.000 immigrants from the former Soviet Unio... more More than 20 years after the immigration of almost 200.000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union, the Jewish community in Germany still faces a series of challenges and changes. One of the central questions necessary to define the Diasporic nature of its diverse streams is that of the communities’ relation to the Land and State of Israel versus their commitment to their historical antecessor of anti-Zionist German Reform Judaism. Based on an analyses of its main prayerbook and of one of its daily prayers, the Amidah (עמידה), this article aims to explore the theology of Progressive Judaism in contemporary Germany. The texts depict a relationship characterized by warmth and the feeling of responsibility - nevertheless, the identity of German Progressive Jews is to a much higher level based on a worldwide connection to Progressive Judaism and the theologies at its heart than on regional loyalty. Thus, Progressive Judaism in Germany serves as an example of contemporary identity operating beyond the common notions of Diaspora and homeland, of migration or journeys.
So I want to ask you now to take a moment to look at someone else’s face, in this ZOOM gathering,... more So I want to ask you now to take a moment to look at someone else’s face, in this ZOOM gathering, and just smile at them—and in your heart, wish them a good new year. May this coming year be a year of sweetness. A year of prosperity and growth. A year of joy, of resilience, and connection. A year of familiarity, a year of reflection. Even if we find ourselves socially distanced, may we feel emotionally connected, and may we continue to grow together. May we ask ourselves, and each other, on any given day, anew: How can we do this best?
The following liturgical sermon was written for Congregation Kolot Chayenu, my congregation in Br... more The following liturgical sermon was written for Congregation Kolot Chayenu, my congregation in Brooklyn. It was delivered as part of the Torah service of three aliyot: Part I-1 st aliyah-1 st blessing-Part II-2 nd aliyah-2 nd blessing-Part III-3 rd aliyah-3 rd blessing-Mi shBerach laCholim.
PART I: In order to learn deeply, we have to repeat the lesson. True learnings come back to us, a number of times. We have to learn every lesson over and over again. Our lives and our stories unfold in circles. Around a table. Around a bimah. Around a calendar. Around a space. Around a feeling, a tacit sense of: "Oh, I recognize this feeling!" and "Oh, I have felt this way before!" This week, the story that comes back to us is one of liberation, of revenge, and of grandiosity; of miracles, of belief, and of song. 400 years of slavery are ending. 400 years of hard physical labor. 400 years of bare survival, maybe, as a midrash tells us, only due to the excellent cooking and the sexual hunger of the Israelite women; maybe because of the empathy and moral sense of the Egyptian midwives who refused to kill the newborn babies, catching their first breaths; maybe because of the prophetic instincts of a four-year old girl, looking at her mother's big belly and seeing the future of her people; maybe because of one baby, of one teenager with bad temper, of one man who had to learn the most painful lessons early on in his life-to leave home, that is-and accepted a mission too big for a single person... who knows why?-but the story tells us that slavery is over. And so we left. And who is that "we"? We, that is fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, men, women, and non-binary folks, children, and old people; artists, prophets, shepherds, construction workers, singers, musicians, weavers, healers, priests, and levites; all the animals; families carrying the names of our forefathers, and families with other names, whose members had watched our learning, and decided to become part of this story; seekers, doubters, bored people blind to any lesson whatsoever, and the faithful (not so many of these, I heard)-adorned with some nice jewelry, don't forget that, Egyption style. We left, and we threw ourselves into the sea, first hesitantly, than feverishly, than in outright panic. And what a relief, when we saw our enemies behind us drowning in the waters of the reed sea. The shrieking cries of their horses, the bursting sounds of their breaking wagons, the hoarse cries for help of the Egyptian soldiers, all slowly making space for the soothing sounds of the sea. A midrash tells us that God forbid the angels to rejoice teaching them a lesson about equality and empathy, but that was not the lesson we learned back there. We learned to rejoice in our survival, in our sudden understanding that our story would, indeed, continue, and that it would be radically different and other than what we had imagined. Because, you know, we would live as Jews. So we began to sing, for the first time, a song of our people, a song that is story is song is pledge is memory is mission is destiny is a song, is the song of our people, is our song, is your song. It was not our task to sing another song. It was not on us to outgrow the moment and learn, simultaneously to survival, the art of empathy. This task, you know, is on you. You are the teachers and tellers-we are only the protagonists...
I, personally, try to laugh that laughter more often these days. It’s a laughter that is forgivin... more I, personally, try to laugh that laughter more often these days. It’s a laughter that is forgiving towards myself, towards the human beings around me, and towards this entire mess of our chaotic world. I try to internalize that all we have is a little Torah (a book written after all, on the skin of a dead cow) in order to help us figure out together the nature of this mystical creation, and write together the Torah of our lives, Torat Hayim, the Torah of life, a living Torah. In other moments, I, like so many others, grow impatient, and then I write poems like this one: Creation: Fed up with Tohu
What if in the beginning Something did get consumed? With black coal a universe got written Dancing, twisting, whimpering, crawling, What if in the beginning, Something was broken.
You and I, we shine together.
What if we were to learn How to calmly tame our fire? Will we then crush gently, And rise, With a kiss?
Most of our time on earth, it seems to me, gets spent trying to figure out how to live this life right here and now. We are getting used to ourselves and to others. We build relationships, co-creating our own entire little universes. This way, all of us re-create and change the world in every single second. This, now, is a moment when the world gets re-created by us. And now. At every single moment of our lives. And in these moments, as all of us are sitting here together, creating a universe of prayer, Torah, singing, learning, the order of prayer, reflection, and beauty, I want to share yet another poem with you, a second poem by the American writer Mary Oliver who wrote the poem with which I opened my sermon: I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life? May each of us, in the year that begins today, write a chapter in our lives that will be filled with prayer, dignity, joy, and growth. May we feel guided by Torah. May we feel at home in the universe that was created for us and that we re-create every day. May we find words to speak to both God and our follow humans. May we pay attention to the beauty in the chaos that unfolds every day in the world around us. And let us say: Amen.
Rituals operate in environments that are simultaneously biological, geographical, social, politic... more Rituals operate in environments that are simultaneously biological, geographical, social, political, historical, and cultural. A ritual’s environment is the totality of whatever surrounds it and interacts with it. The traffic is two-way, although not necessarily equal. Participants walk into ritual precincts and then walk out, carrying with them in both directions ideas, feelings, images, and predispositions to act (or not). Some rituals are designed to minimize this traffic, others to maximize it. In either case, to study a ritual by whittling away its contexts without ever reconstructing them is to make a serious mistake. Environments suffuse rituals, and rituals touch or even create environments. Although condensed into events with beginnings and endings or condensed in thick walls, rituals nevertheless leak, exerting influence and being influenced. Rituals both shape and are shaped by environments, even after their enactments conclude. The words and songs may have evaporated, but the legs remember; so do the back and neck. Transposed into kinesthetic memories, rituals take up mental and social space. Because they are oriented (do it here, not there, please), they orient; engaging in them, you learn the appropriate posture for navigating the world.
Jews are famous for their food. Jewish cookbooks are selling, and Jewish (non-) kosher delis and ... more Jews are famous for their food. Jewish cookbooks are selling, and Jewish (non-) kosher delis and diners are visited by observant and nonobservant Jews alike, as well as by interested or outright enthusiastic non-Jews. Jokes are told about the Jewish fixation with food as a means to express festivity and happiness: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat! But behind the neon lights of kosher delis and the colorful covers of the latest Jewish cookbook hides an ancient stratum of Jewish theology. During the first two centuries CE (at the latest), rabbinic Jews began to observe a number of additional rules regarding their food choices and its preparation, and to accompany their daily meals with blessings. The new custom established a strong sense of belonging within the small group of rabbinic Jews. But the rules are daunting, even baffling, for people unaccustomed to legal texts, and the novice is likely to dispense with the whole exercise as meaningless legalism, when in fact, Jewish law is an indispensable form of theology, the rhetoric with which the rabbis approached the world in all its complexities. Therefore, in this article, a textual analysis of the blessings will be followed by an outline of the cultural context in which Jewish eating rituals emerged, the theological claims at the heart of the blessings, and the rabbinic worldview embedded in them.
The word leitourgia, meaning the work of the people, is often used to describe Christian worship ... more The word leitourgia, meaning the work of the people, is often used to describe Christian worship and has also been adopted by many scholars of Jewish public worship. This word implies that liturgical worship in the Jewish and Christian traditions is a work that incorporates a people or assembly. The time- and place-shifting afforded by new recording technologies, however, alters the nature of liturgical work and its relationship to tradition, memory, and the assembly. In this article, phenomenology and reflexivity are deployed to examine the role of the body and its liturgical formation on producing and revisiting recorded liturgy. Liturgical work is already practiced by worshippers who (often in defiance of official leadership) record and view recorded liturgies. The embodied work of this displaced assembly reveals unexpected similarities in Jewish and Catholic ordained leaders’ “flattening” before the physical and metaphorical cameras of Western public life. Finally, diverse exper...
The story of the siege of Jerusalem and Rabbi Yoh.anan’s escape during the First Jewish Revolt is... more The story of the siege of Jerusalem and Rabbi Yoh.anan’s escape during the First Jewish Revolt is the origin myth of rabbinic Judaism. Featured most prominently in B. Gittin 55b–56b and paralleled elsewhere, the story has been read and reread myriad times. From the Roman siege and the threats of radical rebels within the city, through a compromise with a rebel leader that allows Yoh.anan to escape, to a dramatic meeting between Yoh.anan and the soon-to-be-emperor Vespasian, who is besieging the city, the story moves from the temple to the rabbinic study house. In Sonja Pilz’s study, Food and Fear: Metaphors of Bodies and Spaces in the Stories of Destruction, she returns to this foundation story to offer a new interpretation that focuses on the bodies and characterization of three individuals: Martha bat Boethus, daughter and wife of high priests and victim of the famine, Rabbi Z. adok, a priest-cum-rabbi who survives the siege, and Rabbi Yoh.anan ben Zakkai, symbol of rabbinic Judaism. In this study, Pilz’s methodological lenses draw the reader to the importance of bodies, bodily transformation, spaces, and spatial movement as key components of the story and its characters, and she envisions her study as a pedagogical tool, an introduction to rabbinic literature and literary approaches to the rabbinic corpus for novice and expert students alike. The core of Pilz’s study is a spatial and bodily analysis of three characters. Martha is wealthy and privileged, ensconced in the highest level of society. During the siege of Jerusalem, Martha suffers along with the rest of the city’s residents, but the story Pilz analyzes focuses on how far she falls, before dying in the city streets. Pilz describes Z. adok’s story arc as liminal: he abandons his post as a priest, instead undertaking an extreme and debilitating fast in an attempt to forestall disaster. Yoh.anan is ostensibly the hero of the story, as he confronts Vespasian and is rewarded with a home for the nascent rabbinic movement. According to Pilz, the story “depicts the events [of the siege] as an organic process of change,” while Rabbi Yoh.anan, and the rabbinic Judaism he represents, “actively (even proactively) foresees [the end of the temple], evokes it, and embraces it” (175, emphasis original). Thus, the transformation from temple to rabbinic Judaism Pilz describes is embodied by these three characters, from Martha, representing the past, templefocused Judaism, through Rabbi Z. adok in transition, to Rabbi Yoh. anan, who helps make the transformation happen, assuring space and bodies for rabbinic Judaism. Pilz’s methodological approach is “that rabbinic storytelling must be read as a dialogue of ideas” (88), following Bakhtin, where each character of her study is a different “idea” about Judaism and Jewish life. Thus, Martha is the “idea” of Second Temple Judaism, corrupted by wealth, power, and femininity. Z. adok is the “idea” of transition, focused on a priest’s self-abnegation from the temple and its food. And Yoh. anan, who “dies” and is reborn by leaving Jerusalem and saving Rabban Gamliel’s royal family, healing Z. adok, and preserving “Yavneh and its sages,” is the “idea” of rabbinic Judaism. By analyzing these three characters, Pilz concludes that “nothing could be more apt than telling the Book Reviews
Jewish-Christian Dialogue in Liturgical Studies: Exploring Jewish Hybridity In 2015, I was leadin... more Jewish-Christian Dialogue in Liturgical Studies: Exploring Jewish Hybridity In 2015, I was leading a Shabbat morning service for a group of children in the Jewish kindergarten of the community in which I was interning. Reaching the Torah service, I opened the scroll, showed the beginning of Sefer Shemot to the kids, leyned a couple of verses, and took out several colorful pictures of Pharaoh, Yoheved, Aaron and Miriam, the pyramids, and baby Moses in his basket on the Nile. I knew that the children had heard the story at least once before, so I asked them what they saw on the pictures while re-telling the story and pointing out some details they missed. When we reached the picture of little Moses in his reed basket, I asked the children who that little baby was – and it was then that I heard the clear voice of a confident little girl answering me proudly: " That's little baby Jesus! " This little scene occurred in the liberal Jewish community in Hanover, Germany. But in fact, it could have happened also here in the United States. Obviously, this former little congregant of mine had been exposed to the Christian narrative in quite a formative manner; maybe through grandparents , one of her parents, or even just a babysitter or a friend of the family. Whoever told her about little baby Jesus had, I am sure, the best intentions. And the fact that many Jewish children and adults are listening to different cultural and religious narratives today is, first and foremost, a simple fact; an element of the reality we share today.
Jews are famous for their food. Jewish cookbooks are selling, and Jewish (non-) kosher... more Jews are famous for their food. Jewish cookbooks are selling, and Jewish (non-) kosher delis and diners are visited by observant and nonobservant Jews alike, as well as by interested or outright enthusiastic non-Jews. Jokes are told about the Jewish fixation with food as a means to express festivity and happiness: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat! But behind the neon lights of kosher delis and the colorful covers of the latest Jewish cookbook hides an ancient stratum of Jewish theology. During the first two centuries CE (at the latest), rabbinic Jews began to observe a number of additional rules regarding their food choices and its preparation, and to accompany their daily meals with blessings. The new custom established a strong sense of belonging within the small group of rabbinic Jews. ...
In den jüdischen Synagogengottesdiensten werden im Lauf eines Jahres alle fünf Bücher der Tora (5... more In den jüdischen Synagogengottesdiensten werden im Lauf eines Jahres alle fünf Bücher der Tora (5 Bücher Mose) vorgelesen. Den jeweiligen Tora-Lesungen folgen Lesungen aus den Prophetenbüchern. Dreimal kommt da auch der Prophet Micha zu Wort. Rabbinerin Sonja Keren Pilz erklärt, was es damit genau auf sich hat.
For centuries, the Yizkor section of the Three Festivals and Yom Kippur has marked a moment of co... more For centuries, the Yizkor section of the Three Festivals and Yom Kippur has marked a moment of communal and individual commemoration. Until today, it has served as a liturgical form to contain the memories and emotions of Jewish communities. Communities worldwide have engaged in creating liturgical languages to commemorate those who were murdered in the Sho’ah. These prayers differ radically in their social construction of both the group of the commemorated as well as the community of commemorators, in their particularistic and universalistic tendencies, by their choice of biblical or contemporary language, in their perception of the Sho’ah as a rupture or continuation within Jewish history, and, ultimately, their versions of Jewish theology. A contextualization, analysis, and comparison of American and German Yizkor prayers provides insights into two different concepts of Jewish identity and two different versions of Jewish theology.
More than 20 years after the immigration of almost 200.000 immigrants from the former Soviet Unio... more More than 20 years after the immigration of almost 200.000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union, the Jewish community in Germany still faces a series of challenges and changes. One of the central questions necessary to define the Diasporic nature of its diverse streams is that of the communities’ relation to the Land and State of Israel versus their commitment to their historical antecessor of anti-Zionist German Reform Judaism. Based on an analyses of its main prayerbook and of one of its daily prayers, the Amidah (עמידה), this article aims to explore the theology of Progressive Judaism in contemporary Germany. The texts depict a relationship characterized by warmth and the feeling of responsibility - nevertheless, the identity of German Progressive Jews is to a much higher level based on a worldwide connection to Progressive Judaism and the theologies at its heart than on regional loyalty. Thus, Progressive Judaism in Germany serves as an example of contemporary identity operating beyond the common notions of Diaspora and homeland, of migration or journeys.
So I want to ask you now to take a moment to look at someone else’s face, in this ZOOM gathering,... more So I want to ask you now to take a moment to look at someone else’s face, in this ZOOM gathering, and just smile at them—and in your heart, wish them a good new year. May this coming year be a year of sweetness. A year of prosperity and growth. A year of joy, of resilience, and connection. A year of familiarity, a year of reflection. Even if we find ourselves socially distanced, may we feel emotionally connected, and may we continue to grow together. May we ask ourselves, and each other, on any given day, anew: How can we do this best?
The following liturgical sermon was written for Congregation Kolot Chayenu, my congregation in Br... more The following liturgical sermon was written for Congregation Kolot Chayenu, my congregation in Brooklyn. It was delivered as part of the Torah service of three aliyot: Part I-1 st aliyah-1 st blessing-Part II-2 nd aliyah-2 nd blessing-Part III-3 rd aliyah-3 rd blessing-Mi shBerach laCholim.
PART I: In order to learn deeply, we have to repeat the lesson. True learnings come back to us, a number of times. We have to learn every lesson over and over again. Our lives and our stories unfold in circles. Around a table. Around a bimah. Around a calendar. Around a space. Around a feeling, a tacit sense of: "Oh, I recognize this feeling!" and "Oh, I have felt this way before!" This week, the story that comes back to us is one of liberation, of revenge, and of grandiosity; of miracles, of belief, and of song. 400 years of slavery are ending. 400 years of hard physical labor. 400 years of bare survival, maybe, as a midrash tells us, only due to the excellent cooking and the sexual hunger of the Israelite women; maybe because of the empathy and moral sense of the Egyptian midwives who refused to kill the newborn babies, catching their first breaths; maybe because of the prophetic instincts of a four-year old girl, looking at her mother's big belly and seeing the future of her people; maybe because of one baby, of one teenager with bad temper, of one man who had to learn the most painful lessons early on in his life-to leave home, that is-and accepted a mission too big for a single person... who knows why?-but the story tells us that slavery is over. And so we left. And who is that "we"? We, that is fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, men, women, and non-binary folks, children, and old people; artists, prophets, shepherds, construction workers, singers, musicians, weavers, healers, priests, and levites; all the animals; families carrying the names of our forefathers, and families with other names, whose members had watched our learning, and decided to become part of this story; seekers, doubters, bored people blind to any lesson whatsoever, and the faithful (not so many of these, I heard)-adorned with some nice jewelry, don't forget that, Egyption style. We left, and we threw ourselves into the sea, first hesitantly, than feverishly, than in outright panic. And what a relief, when we saw our enemies behind us drowning in the waters of the reed sea. The shrieking cries of their horses, the bursting sounds of their breaking wagons, the hoarse cries for help of the Egyptian soldiers, all slowly making space for the soothing sounds of the sea. A midrash tells us that God forbid the angels to rejoice teaching them a lesson about equality and empathy, but that was not the lesson we learned back there. We learned to rejoice in our survival, in our sudden understanding that our story would, indeed, continue, and that it would be radically different and other than what we had imagined. Because, you know, we would live as Jews. So we began to sing, for the first time, a song of our people, a song that is story is song is pledge is memory is mission is destiny is a song, is the song of our people, is our song, is your song. It was not our task to sing another song. It was not on us to outgrow the moment and learn, simultaneously to survival, the art of empathy. This task, you know, is on you. You are the teachers and tellers-we are only the protagonists...
I, personally, try to laugh that laughter more often these days. It’s a laughter that is forgivin... more I, personally, try to laugh that laughter more often these days. It’s a laughter that is forgiving towards myself, towards the human beings around me, and towards this entire mess of our chaotic world. I try to internalize that all we have is a little Torah (a book written after all, on the skin of a dead cow) in order to help us figure out together the nature of this mystical creation, and write together the Torah of our lives, Torat Hayim, the Torah of life, a living Torah. In other moments, I, like so many others, grow impatient, and then I write poems like this one: Creation: Fed up with Tohu
What if in the beginning Something did get consumed? With black coal a universe got written Dancing, twisting, whimpering, crawling, What if in the beginning, Something was broken.
You and I, we shine together.
What if we were to learn How to calmly tame our fire? Will we then crush gently, And rise, With a kiss?
Most of our time on earth, it seems to me, gets spent trying to figure out how to live this life right here and now. We are getting used to ourselves and to others. We build relationships, co-creating our own entire little universes. This way, all of us re-create and change the world in every single second. This, now, is a moment when the world gets re-created by us. And now. At every single moment of our lives. And in these moments, as all of us are sitting here together, creating a universe of prayer, Torah, singing, learning, the order of prayer, reflection, and beauty, I want to share yet another poem with you, a second poem by the American writer Mary Oliver who wrote the poem with which I opened my sermon: I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life? May each of us, in the year that begins today, write a chapter in our lives that will be filled with prayer, dignity, joy, and growth. May we feel guided by Torah. May we feel at home in the universe that was created for us and that we re-create every day. May we find words to speak to both God and our follow humans. May we pay attention to the beauty in the chaos that unfolds every day in the world around us. And let us say: Amen.
Rabbi Sonja K. Pilz, PhD: Behar Bechukotai – Rainbow Day 2018 The last meeting of the first seaso... more Rabbi Sonja K. Pilz, PhD: Behar Bechukotai – Rainbow Day 2018 The last meeting of the first season of Nachalah, a season that moved us from winter to summer, from the Upper East Side to Downtown Manhattan, from the 92Y to HUC-JIR, NY. A season of singing, praising, praying, humming, playing, and breathing in a circle of many known and some unknown faces, sharing the air vibrating with the voices and instruments of friends, mentors, and Zaddikim. We are in a season of counting. Tonight, indeed, begins the 42 nd day of the Omer, which we will count before the Aleinu. The image of piles of golden wheat and barley, fragile bulwarks of protection in a world of hunger, was paired with the image of a people walking towards Sinai to enter a covenant; a covenant of love and responsibility with a God Who asked for both. Required for this covenant, is some sort of inner preparation, a careful counting and focusing on the flow of time and the different layers of our ever-changing lives. Tonight, we enter Rainbow Day, קשת ,יום the 27 th of Iyar, which commemorates the day when Noah and his family and the many animals that accompanied them on their journey, left the ark in order to enter a new covenant and to learn a new life, while watching the first rainbow of the Jewish story: Barukh Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haOlam, Zokher haBrit veNe'eman biVrito veKayam beMa'amaro Today is the 42 nd day of the Omer, a day that holds the sovereignty ()מלכות that makes stability ()יסוד possible. Tomorrow we read the last two portions of Sefer Vayikra. One book will end. This week, the community who studies, teaches, and works in this building had to bury its president, Rabbi Dr. Aaron Panken, PhD, ,ז''ל teacher and leader to the Reform movement. A book has been closed. Teach us the number of our days, so that we can be wise (ה ָמ ְכ ָח ב ַב ְל א ִָב נ ְו ע ַהֹוד ֵן כ ינּו ֵָמ י נֹות ְמ ִ,ל Ps 90:12) … and as we will never know the number of our days, let us to live each day as if it were a mirror to all of what our lives are meant to be. A book ends. The next book, we know, is Sefer beMidbar, the story of a journey full of struggles, mistakes, sudden sparks of understanding, and growing connection. We will embark into summer with Torah and learning and sadness and joy, continuing to count the days, the months, and the years of our life. May we continue to sing and to praise, to breath, to fail, to build, to wither, and to harvest. May we continue to hold both curses (Vayikra 26:14-39) and blessings (Vayikra 26:1-13; 40-46) that make up our Torah and fill our world with so much wonder and with so much pain. May we continue to listen to the voices of our teachers, to breath and to hum with them, and count with them the beats of our days.
There are so many sights in our world that take our breath away: a sunrise over a dark lake in th... more There are so many sights in our world that take our breath away: a sunrise over a dark lake in the midst of a forest when swaths of mist, ערפל, rise from the water; the moment an airplane breaks through a ceiling of clouds exposing them in their full rosy and orange beauty; the seemingly endless coming and going of the dark and burning luminaries around us; the smile of a beloved person early in the morning...
The story of Yochanan’s escape has been read for centuries as the founding myth of Rabbinic Judai... more The story of Yochanan’s escape has been read for centuries as the founding myth of Rabbinic Judaism. While its great political and theological ambivalence and flexibility has been used countless times to re-interpret the story in the light of various political and theological ideologies, few attempts have been undertaken to understand the literary mechanisms of metaphors of food and bodies the story uses to evoke this ambivalence, as well as to describe its possible ideological ‘derivatives.’ Yochanan’s story as it is weaved into the context of the stories of Martha and Zodok, is much broader in perspective regarding the chapter of Jewish history covered. With the female character of Martha, the humiliated and destroyed Jewish identity of the Judaism of the Temple, formerly proud and politically independent, acquires neither a priestly nor rabbinical, but rather a female face. Zadok, the former “priest of the Temple” and future “rabbi in Yavneh,” symbolizes the liminal state of Judaism in the period of transformation. The figure of Yochanan ben Zakkai might be read as a counterpart to Zadok. The story of evolving Rabbinic Judaism is told by means of metaphors of the body, of food (from meat to flour), of spacial movements (from the Temple to Yavneh), and of literary characters that need to be read as synecdoches for entire schools of thought.
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But behind the neon lights of kosher delis and the colorful covers of the
latest Jewish cookbook hides an ancient stratum of Jewish theology. During the first two centuries CE (at the latest), rabbinic Jews began to observe a number of additional rules regarding their food choices and its preparation, and to accompany their daily meals with blessings. The new custom established a strong sense of belonging within the small group of rabbinic Jews. ...
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May this coming year be a year of sweetness. A year of prosperity and growth. A year of joy, of resilience, and connection. A year of familiarity, a year of reflection. Even if we find ourselves socially distanced, may we feel emotionally connected, and may we continue to grow together. May we ask ourselves, and each other, on any given day, anew: How can we do this best?
PART I: In order to learn deeply, we have to repeat the lesson. True learnings come back to us, a number of times. We have to learn every lesson over and over again. Our lives and our stories unfold in circles. Around a table. Around a bimah. Around a calendar. Around a space. Around a feeling, a tacit sense of: "Oh, I recognize this feeling!" and "Oh, I have felt this way before!" This week, the story that comes back to us is one of liberation, of revenge, and of grandiosity; of miracles, of belief, and of song. 400 years of slavery are ending. 400 years of hard physical labor. 400 years of bare survival, maybe, as a midrash tells us, only due to the excellent cooking and the sexual hunger of the Israelite women; maybe because of the empathy and moral sense of the Egyptian midwives who refused to kill the newborn babies, catching their first breaths; maybe because of the prophetic instincts of a four-year old girl, looking at her mother's big belly and seeing the future of her people; maybe because of one baby, of one teenager with bad temper, of one man who had to learn the most painful lessons early on in his life-to leave home, that is-and accepted a mission too big for a single person... who knows why?-but the story tells us that slavery is over. And so we left. And who is that "we"? We, that is fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, men, women, and non-binary folks, children, and old people; artists, prophets, shepherds, construction workers, singers, musicians, weavers, healers, priests, and levites; all the animals; families carrying the names of our forefathers, and families with other names, whose members had watched our learning, and decided to become part of this story; seekers, doubters, bored people blind to any lesson whatsoever, and the faithful (not so many of these, I heard)-adorned with some nice jewelry, don't forget that, Egyption style. We left, and we threw ourselves into the sea, first hesitantly, than feverishly, than in outright panic. And what a relief, when we saw our enemies behind us drowning in the waters of the reed sea. The shrieking cries of their horses, the bursting sounds of their breaking wagons, the hoarse cries for help of the Egyptian soldiers, all slowly making space for the soothing sounds of the sea. A midrash tells us that God forbid the angels to rejoice teaching them a lesson about equality and empathy, but that was not the lesson we learned back there. We learned to rejoice in our survival, in our sudden understanding that our story would, indeed, continue, and that it would be radically different and other than what we had imagined. Because, you know, we would live as Jews. So we began to sing, for the first time, a song of our people, a song that is story is song is pledge is memory is mission is destiny is a song, is the song of our people, is our song, is your song. It was not our task to sing another song. It was not on us to outgrow the moment and learn, simultaneously to survival, the art of empathy. This task, you know, is on you. You are the teachers and tellers-we are only the protagonists...
In other moments, I, like so many others, grow impatient, and then I write poems like this one:
Creation: Fed up with Tohu
What if in the beginning
Something did get consumed?
With black coal a universe got written
Dancing, twisting, whimpering, crawling,
What if in the beginning,
Something was broken.
You and I, we shine together.
What if we were to learn
How to calmly tame our fire?
Will we then crush gently,
And rise,
With a kiss?
Most of our time on earth, it seems to me, gets spent trying to figure out how to live this life right here and now. We are getting used to ourselves and to others. We build relationships, co-creating our own entire little universes. This way, all of us re-create and change the world in every single second. This, now, is a moment when the world gets re-created by us. And now. At every single moment of our lives.
And in these moments, as all of us are sitting here together, creating a universe of prayer, Torah, singing, learning, the order of prayer, reflection, and beauty, I want to share yet another poem with you, a second poem by the American writer Mary Oliver who wrote the poem with which I opened my sermon:
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
May each of us, in the year that begins today, write a chapter in our lives that will be filled with prayer, dignity, joy, and growth. May we feel guided by Torah. May we feel at home in the universe that was created for us and that we re-create every day. May we find words to speak to both God and our follow humans. May we pay attention to the beauty in the chaos that unfolds every day in the world around us. And let us say: Amen.
But behind the neon lights of kosher delis and the colorful covers of the
latest Jewish cookbook hides an ancient stratum of Jewish theology. During the first two centuries CE (at the latest), rabbinic Jews began to observe a number of additional rules regarding their food choices and its preparation, and to accompany their daily meals with blessings. The new custom established a strong sense of belonging within the small group of rabbinic Jews. ...
May this coming year be a year of sweetness. A year of prosperity and growth. A year of joy, of resilience, and connection. A year of familiarity, a year of reflection. Even if we find ourselves socially distanced, may we feel emotionally connected, and may we continue to grow together. May we ask ourselves, and each other, on any given day, anew: How can we do this best?
PART I: In order to learn deeply, we have to repeat the lesson. True learnings come back to us, a number of times. We have to learn every lesson over and over again. Our lives and our stories unfold in circles. Around a table. Around a bimah. Around a calendar. Around a space. Around a feeling, a tacit sense of: "Oh, I recognize this feeling!" and "Oh, I have felt this way before!" This week, the story that comes back to us is one of liberation, of revenge, and of grandiosity; of miracles, of belief, and of song. 400 years of slavery are ending. 400 years of hard physical labor. 400 years of bare survival, maybe, as a midrash tells us, only due to the excellent cooking and the sexual hunger of the Israelite women; maybe because of the empathy and moral sense of the Egyptian midwives who refused to kill the newborn babies, catching their first breaths; maybe because of the prophetic instincts of a four-year old girl, looking at her mother's big belly and seeing the future of her people; maybe because of one baby, of one teenager with bad temper, of one man who had to learn the most painful lessons early on in his life-to leave home, that is-and accepted a mission too big for a single person... who knows why?-but the story tells us that slavery is over. And so we left. And who is that "we"? We, that is fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, men, women, and non-binary folks, children, and old people; artists, prophets, shepherds, construction workers, singers, musicians, weavers, healers, priests, and levites; all the animals; families carrying the names of our forefathers, and families with other names, whose members had watched our learning, and decided to become part of this story; seekers, doubters, bored people blind to any lesson whatsoever, and the faithful (not so many of these, I heard)-adorned with some nice jewelry, don't forget that, Egyption style. We left, and we threw ourselves into the sea, first hesitantly, than feverishly, than in outright panic. And what a relief, when we saw our enemies behind us drowning in the waters of the reed sea. The shrieking cries of their horses, the bursting sounds of their breaking wagons, the hoarse cries for help of the Egyptian soldiers, all slowly making space for the soothing sounds of the sea. A midrash tells us that God forbid the angels to rejoice teaching them a lesson about equality and empathy, but that was not the lesson we learned back there. We learned to rejoice in our survival, in our sudden understanding that our story would, indeed, continue, and that it would be radically different and other than what we had imagined. Because, you know, we would live as Jews. So we began to sing, for the first time, a song of our people, a song that is story is song is pledge is memory is mission is destiny is a song, is the song of our people, is our song, is your song. It was not our task to sing another song. It was not on us to outgrow the moment and learn, simultaneously to survival, the art of empathy. This task, you know, is on you. You are the teachers and tellers-we are only the protagonists...
In other moments, I, like so many others, grow impatient, and then I write poems like this one:
Creation: Fed up with Tohu
What if in the beginning
Something did get consumed?
With black coal a universe got written
Dancing, twisting, whimpering, crawling,
What if in the beginning,
Something was broken.
You and I, we shine together.
What if we were to learn
How to calmly tame our fire?
Will we then crush gently,
And rise,
With a kiss?
Most of our time on earth, it seems to me, gets spent trying to figure out how to live this life right here and now. We are getting used to ourselves and to others. We build relationships, co-creating our own entire little universes. This way, all of us re-create and change the world in every single second. This, now, is a moment when the world gets re-created by us. And now. At every single moment of our lives.
And in these moments, as all of us are sitting here together, creating a universe of prayer, Torah, singing, learning, the order of prayer, reflection, and beauty, I want to share yet another poem with you, a second poem by the American writer Mary Oliver who wrote the poem with which I opened my sermon:
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
May each of us, in the year that begins today, write a chapter in our lives that will be filled with prayer, dignity, joy, and growth. May we feel guided by Torah. May we feel at home in the universe that was created for us and that we re-create every day. May we find words to speak to both God and our follow humans. May we pay attention to the beauty in the chaos that unfolds every day in the world around us. And let us say: Amen.