The Rituals & Practices of a Jewish Life

Description

An inspiring how-to guide to help you understand
and participate in a Jewish spiritual life.

Across the spectrum of Jewish observance, people are seeking ways to give higher meaning to their spiritual lives—but how do you know where to begin, and what should you do first?

This easy-to-use handbook explains the why, what and how of ten specific areas of Jewish ritual and practice. Each chapter provides you with guidance and background if you are just beginning to explore Jewish ritual and practice, and offers creative ways to deepen the meaning of Judaism in your daily life, even if you are experienced with ritual observance.

All of the chapters have personal stories of people who have taken on Jewish ritual, and will inspire you to consider how to infuse your life with the wisdom of Jewish tradition.

Foreword VANESSA L OCHS Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Tefillin RABBI KERRY M OLITZKY 2 Tallit and Tallit Katan HAVIVA NER-DAVID 3 The Broad Spectrum of Kashrut RABBI MARK SAMETH 4 Entering Shabbat RABBIS DANIEL JUDSON and KERRY M OLITZKY 5 Daily Prayer DR MARK KLIGMAN Contents 6 Torah Study RABBI RUTH M GAIS 7 Blessings throughout the Day RABBI NINA BETH CARDIN 8 Covering the Head RABBI DANIEL JUDSON 9 Upon Rising and Going to Bed: Traditional Morning and Evening Blessings RABBI ANDREW VOGEL 10 Mikvah DEBRA NUSSBAUM COHEN Notes Glossary Suggestions for Further Reading About the Contributors About Jewish Lights

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Jewish holiday
• Judaism
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 09 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580236638
• Langue: English

Extrait

This Book Is for You If
You are interested in beginning a spiritual practice rooted in Jewish tradition.
You want to enhance a Jewish practice you already perform.
You are looking for information on how to perform Jewish rituals.
You are interested in the variety of ways Jewish rituals are performed.
You are looking for spiritual inspiration.
You are a liberal Jew who is curious as to how other liberal Jews have made a place for traditional rituals in their lives.
You have left Jewish practice and are seeking a way back in through ritual.
You are not Jewish but are interested in the background of Jewish ritual.
Contributors

Nina Beth Cardin
Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Ruth M. Gais
Daniel Judson
Mark Kligman
Haviva Ner-David
Kerry M. Olitzky
Mark Sameth
Andrew Vogel

Rituals Practices
Upon Rising and Going to Bed
Covering the Head
Blessings throughout the Day
Daily Prayer
Tefillin
Tallit and Tallit Katan
Talmud Torah
The Continuum of Kashrut
Mikvah
Entering Shabbat
For Joyce Cohen, z l
-DJ

For Jesse Michael Olitzky, in honor of his election as international president of United Synagogue Youth.
-KMO
Contents
Foreword
VANESSA L. OCHS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Tefillin
RABBI KERRY M. OLITZKY
2 Tallit and Tallit Katan
HAVIVA NER-DAVID
3 The Broad Spectrum of Kashrut
RABBI MARK SAMETH
4 Entering Shabbat
RABBIS DANIEL JUDSON and KERRY M. OLITZKY
5 Daily Prayer
DR. MARK KLIGMAN
6 Torah Study
RABBI RUTH M. GAIS
7 Blessings throughout the Day
RABBI NINA BETH CARDIN
8 Covering the Head
RABBI DANIEL JUDSON
9 Upon Rising and Going to Bed: Traditional Morning and Evening Blessings
RABBI ANDREW VOGEL
10 Mikvah
DEBRA NUSSBAUM COHEN
Notes
Glossary
Suggestions for Further Reading
About the Contributors
About the Editors
Copyright
Also Available
About Jewish Lights
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Foreword
VANESSA L. OCHS
People are familiar enough with Jewish holiday and special occasion practices. We re known for praying for forgiveness for our sins, blowing the shofar, lighting Sabbath and holiday candles, casting bread crumbs on the water, and hunting out the leavened products in our homes and replacing them with matzo. People expect we ll be standing under a wedding canopy and breaking a glass, circumcising a baby boy, celebrating a bat mitzvah, and saying Kaddish.
It s the daily rituals and practices of Judaism that are less wellknown to non-Jews; some of them-like the ritual bath and the tallit katan , worn under the clothing-are unfamiliar and even exotic to many Jews as well.
Jews have the possibility of performing hundreds of rituals and practices on a regular day and of marking life s much smaller, daily milestones, as mundane as putting on a brand new pair of socks or tucking a child in at night with a bedtime prayer. There are the ritual practices for opening our eyes in the morning, getting out of bed, and getting dressed. There is a ritual for going to the bathroom, a ritual for before we have our toast and coffee, and a ritual for after we ve eaten. There is a ritual for walking out our front door, another for boarding the train to work, and another for opening up a letter or e-mail and reading good or bad news. There is a ritual to mark sundown each Friday as the Sabbath begins and each Saturday at the Sabbath s close. There is a ritual to mark the end of menstruation every month.
In the land of Jewish, there is, in fact, no moment that goes by when there is not some formal Jewish way to behave, interact, mark, respond, bless, or reflect. Nothing-even making love. Even speaking the right words before you make love has its own Jewish way.
Some of these practices are governed by laws that originate in the Torah and get more explicitly and intricately spelled out in rabbinic literature and contemporary codes of Jewish law. Others are cherished customs, minhagim (as they are called), that have emerged out of communities, become venerated, and are performed with the same care and seriousness as the text-bound laws, and with much tenderness. For liberal Jews, commandedness that is of divine or communal origin is not the rationale for engaging in these practices. Most likely it is instead the intuition that doing these practices opens the door to a life of greater purpose, greater moral depth, greater joy, and greater commitment to others. They open the way for transcendence.
To my mind, these daily rituals and practices are intensely poetic expressions of being Jewish, and while they are bound by intricate rules and social conventions that vary from one community to another, they also represent the most spiritually creative ways in which we are blessed to weave Jewish lives. These practices transform us as individuals and also take us out of our aloneness and connect us to the Jewish people.
Anthropologist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett refers to this rich Jewish way of living, a way of life perfused by ritual practices, as the performance of hundreds of precepts. 1 She explains that in such a way of life, through ritual elaboration, small and large, the most commonplace acts become deliberate and conscious activities . The createdness of the universe is brought to consciousness again and again. 2 Each performance of a Jewish practice generates the potential of acknowledging that God created this world and that God is actively present in one s life and in all that happens. The performance of precepts thus ritualizes and invests with meaning activities that would otherwise be habituated, taken for granted, or considered trivial. 3 This means that an encounter with the Divine doesn t just happen when the rabbi shows up, when you enter the synagogue, or when it s Yom Kippur. It means that holiness is a nonstop and continual way of being in which you are in charge. It means that you are engaging in holy behaviors and holy choices no matter where you are or what you re doing. Religion isn t just part of your life, something you do when it s appropriate, conventional, or when it feels right because you re so moved or because you re feeling virtuous. Religion is your whole life, and it s not separable from your private or professional life. It s your whole identity; it s reality itself, and in a cosmic sense it s more true than the facts of mundane reality.
In such a life, every activity is governed by religious rules, teachings, and wisdom about how to perform the practice with sacred intent, even when it gets done day after day. In such a life, How do I live in God s image? , How do I bring God into my life? , and How do I make this life holy? are not abstract questions with touchy-feely answers. An outsider might see such a life, so filled with proscribed activities and words, to be oppressive, robbing people of their free will, creativity, and spontaneity. Such a critique is certainly understandable: any practice that becomes rote risks becoming rigid and taken for granted. However, one could equally see being born into this Jewish way of being as an incredible blessing: here is a disciplined life that does not just go with the flow. It places values of holiness, community, family, justice, and righteousness above all else, and it supports the pursuit of a life filled with meaning, not as a nice and thoughtful private indulgence but as a sacred obligation, a covenant held by an entire people, one that begins with a good deal of training and requires a lifetime of disciplined, habitual performance.
There was a time when many Jews considered a daily life richly filled with Jewish practices to be the exclusive province of what we call religious Jews or observant Jews -people who, since birth, lead lives that are altogether governed by Jewish laws that are carried out rigorously and, seemingly, to the letter of the law by everyone in their family and their community. People live this way because they are brought up to do so. Unless a rebellious spirit or a complicating circumstance leads them to distance themselves from this life, they do not generally question their personal endorsement of this way of being human.
In recent generations this is no longer the case. Many Jews who were not born into families that observe the daily Jewish practices are now paying attention to the spiritual beauty of those practices. They have decided to learn about them, try them out, and perhaps adapt them for their own lives and their own families. They are seeing Jewish tradition as the treasury of not only the traditional performers but of all of us.
Once it seemed to be an all-or-nothing thing: you were born keeping the Sabbath, keeping kosher, or wearing a kipah , and that s what you did. Religious sensibilities have changed. Now a Jew who is unfamiliar with Sabbath practices, for example, and unconnected to an observing community might say, You know, I d like to bring a little Sabbath practice into my week. I won t worry about getting it all right, and I won t worry if regular Sabbath observers will accept what I do as legitimate. I ll light candles this week and see how it goes. Many Jews who are born into religious practices are also selfconsciously reflecting upon the meaning of their practices in their lives today and are revitalizing their stance toward them. This is not a sign of rebellion or critique, but of spiritual hunger and intellectual integrity. In addition to studying the practices in depth, they are rigorously considering the sociological, psychological, and spiritual ways in which these practices give shape to their lives. 4 The reflection doesn t endanger the practice, it deepens it.
Perhaps you are turning to Jewish tradition in order to try out a new practice and, if it feels right, to embrace it as your own. You might be learning this practice according to the guidelines suggested by a particular Jewish community in which you feel at home, or you might be encountering it alone, unbound by the conventions of