New Year 5782

As the young, lithe, graceful and seemingly grace-filled dancers circled, held hands, bent and raised and swayed their bodies, individually and communally lifted their arms and pranced their joy or crumbled and undulated their despair, ancient tunes and plaintive songs, Sephardic Judeo-Spanish “Ladino” phrases and rhythms and rousing and mournful solo violin and Ashkenazi klezmer melodies encircled them. “Let this beautiful beginning set you off to a sweet New Year 5782,” the choreographer announced, first in English and then in Russian translation, as she promised us highlights, through modern dance vignettes and musical interludes, of some significant celebrations and commemorations that will unfold throughout this new Jewish year. 

And so the six young women began to dance. They danced a memorial to the expulsion of Jews from so many territories; they interpreted the harshness of life in the shtetls always under threat from pogroms, increasing oppression, and war. They also danced the year’s promised delights: harvest feasts, wedding celebrations, Hanukah festivities, of the sweet joys the changing seasons bring. Yet even in these latter more exuberant moments, the dancers and musicians always mixed in a tinge of sadness, an underlying wariness, a brief foreboding of troubles that might come. The promise of the New Year as “sweet” slowly turned into something more like bittersweet, and that made the performance even more complex, more profoundly affecting, and more exquisite in its beauty.

Highly prominent in this artistic overview of the Jewish year was the focus on Yom Kippur which was to happen later that week and has already happened for us. The Yom Kippur dance and music centered on an interpretation of the Avinu Malkeinu, the prayer recited over and over all day long on Yom Kippur. It asks, on the day we are judged for the wrongdoings we are now acknowledging and for which we are repenting, that we be forgiven and protected from harsh reprisals as we begin anew.

What do the words, Avinu Malkeinu, they keep repeating mean, I wondered.  I glanced down at the program and saw the translation as “Our Father, Our King”.  Looking up at the young girls, reverent now, their movements softened, and hearing the female singer’s passionate rendition of the prayer, I was once again struck by the contrast, of their appeals going, once again, to a male authority figure. How do we ever reconcile all of this?

I found an answer in an explanation Rabbi Ethan Bair had given to his congregation on “The Meaning of Avinu Malkeinu” on Yom Kippur 2016. He started with this:

“It’s worth noting upfront that Avinu Malkeinu, which means Our Father, our King, is a gendered name, used at a time when patriarchal language was not objectionable. But it’s not the only name we have; we might contrast Avinu Malkeinu with God as Shechina, which as Reb Zalman teaches, conjures up “the female presence of God, who abides among us when we are connected and pines in exile when we are cut off from our roots and from the ground of our being.” 

And then he suggested how we might even transform this male gender specific language into our own by internalizing it in a way that it becomes our own inner power, the one we all possess and can all access:

 This prayer says that God is both intimately connected to us and distant, imminent and transcendent, loving and caring but also the ultimate authority. With the image of the intimate avinu, father, we conjure up our inner resources which contribute to our teshuvah (repentence, returning). And by immediately referencing Malkeinu, God from on high, we acknowledge that we need external help as well.

He then related the Talmudic story of how the Avinu Malkeinu came to be. A severe drought had ravished Israel and people gathered to pray for rain. A prominent rabbi began the traditional series of prayers “saying 24 blessings – but none was answered.” Then another rabbi spoke to the gatherers of his heartfelt sympathy for their plight and recited a simple Avinu Malkeinu acknowledging to God that they were all sinners and pleading for God’s mercy. The rain fell abundantly.

Rabbi Bair interpreted: The story “raises a fundamental tension in all of prayer: that of keva (set prayer) and kavannah (heartfelt intention). How do we take an existing prayer and make it urgent and real? How do we keep prayers fresh and as full of meaning today as when they first arose?” He posited an answer:

On Yom Kippur, we attempt to bring our emotions forward, for our heart to overpower our intellect, just as we hope God will do in overpowering God’s din, judgment or justice, with God’s rachamim, compassion. In this way, the set prayers become a kind of canvas for our own prayer…

And I love this:

My Rabbi, the late Reb Zalman said that “Prayer is not a switch with which we can control the universe. But … with our prayers, [we can] reach dimensions of existence that we do not otherwise have access to…. Prayer may not bring world peace, but it gives my heart peace…. A prayer, truly prayed, is the beginning of its own answer.”

He concludes with:

So what is the name of God that you need on this Yom Kippur? Do you need a “friend, a comforter, a rock that you can lean on, or a recipient of your joy and thanks?” (Reb Zalman, Jewish With Feeling, 17-19.)  I encourage you to give that face of God a name – either a name from our tradition or something you make up. Can you take that name into the rest of your day and year, and rely upon it when you feel the need to reach out?

That felt like the reconciliation and the freshness I needed to go with the refreshment the dancers and music had brought forth. I actually felt a bit like dancing myself.