Tefillah Blog

Ushpizin

This week we watched the Hebrew film Ushpizin (Aramaic for "[Holy] guests") as a way to look at attitudes towards prayer and God.

Some background about the context.

The main characters are Chasidic Jews of the Breslov community. The Breslov Jews are known for their diversity and many members who are hozer b'teshuvah ( חוזר בתשובה  - those who have become observant/returned to traditional Judaism) as opposed to other groups that have many frum (having led pious lives). This community is also well represented in the film by the heavy "foreign" accents in the characters' Hebrew. The more numerous Chabad Jews around the world are members of the Lubavitch community. Many of the Chasidic movements are considered both charismatic and embracing mysticism. Some like the Satmar Chasids are anti-Zionist.

The setting represented in the film is that of an Ultra Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood which are known for little tolerance of secular/profane behavior.

The antagonists may come across as cartoonish but are easily recognizable as tshach-tshach-im (hard to translate but perhaps "low lifes"). These characters have some depth and from my own past experiences mirror reality very well.

Key Points in the film:

·  00:00 Moshe is revealed as a poor married Chasid who cannot afford to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot, which is about to begin. He notices a $100 Citron which is well beyond his means.

·  00:06 We are introduced to two criminals, Eliyahu and Yossef, who are escaped convicts on the run. We also learn of the desperation of Moshe and Malli in poverty and in childlessness turning to argumentativeness.

·  00:12 Moshe and his wife Malli are so desperate that they our out their hearts to God and pray (petition God) for a miracle. Is it answered prayer when they receive $1000 and another's Sukkah?

·  00:18 We see their joy and celebration with praise and thanksgiving to God. Moshe dutifully tithes 10% to a friend in need.

·  00:24 With all of these blessings why do they suddenly discover some "flies in the ointment"? The convicts are headed their way, is the sukkah stolen, is the purchase of the citron exorbitant (what does the citron represent?), is the purchase of a pair of nice earrings responsible? There is seeking forgiveness for the stolen sukkah.

·  00:30 The convicts arrive and they are considered a sign from God as the Ushpizin and are begged to stay. Why is this considered a mitzvah? What would you do in their position?

·  00:35 During the first dinner in their Sukkah we start to see the depth of the characters. We see how they deal with temptation, we understand how childlessness is straining the couple, we see doubt and deep seated anger revealed. This couple appears less as religious stereotypes and more human.

·  00:41 We question whether these Ushpizin are really sent from God - they certainly don't act Holy. We see heavy drinking and an urge to fight in Moshe.

·  00:48 Moshe visits to the Rebbe who advises Moshe to make sure he listens to his wife. This section deals with prayer and revelation - confession/resolve and our guests are revealed to Malli. Moshe gets caught up in lie about leaving to travel to Gadera on a pretext. In their circumstances does this seem reasonable/prudent/believable?

·  00:53 Moshe's guilt is revealed (again) - is it reasonable to expect a blessing as a result of deceit? The "miserable" guests take advantage of their hosts' generosity and guilt - is this foolishness? Are Moshe and Malli repaying evil with good (consider Abraham) or are they receiving their just reward? Notice that Moshe and Malli are not unaware of the exploitation and they seem to be happy even those they are being used. Who is using them? Who are they serving?

·  01:00 Now even the crooks are suspicious don't understand why they are allowed to get away with their actions. Where do we see doubt? Do you see sin? Not satisfied with the explanations - what are they trying to sort out? Moshe seeks forgiveness from his "victim".

·  01:05  Instead of redemption now events in the 'hood turn to a near riot. We see the crooks looking for forgiveness as they pushed the limit and the accusations fly - we see a sense of disgrace? We see crooks being hidden (calling to mind a scene out of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah - perhaps the reverse?) The crooks are completely revealed as fugitives to Malli and Moshe

·  01:12 The deceit catches up with Moshe, Malli leaves miserable and her trust broken in her husband. The truth continues to be wrung out of people - even the crooks take pity on Moshe, asking for forgiveness from Moshe who says (knowingly) 'you didn't do anything'. Why didn't Moshe just blame the crooks for his circumstances?

·  01:18 Moshe goes to the Rebbe again (the wife having been advised to take some time away) who lures Moshe into prayer. Change in our lives is progress but it tests us and these tests get harder. Why is the prayer to not get angry so pivotal? Upon returning home the crooks are now serving Moshe! When they try to do good and make him a meal with the 'diamond' citron why is this the breaking point? (A symbol to ward off childlessness and representative of Moshe's life and relationship with Malli.) Moshe goes from acceptance (ignorant of the citron) of their gift to a complete breakdown into anger (upon discovery). This is the climax and heart of the film.

·  01:24 Moshe experiences his greatest threat (anger) and instead of killing his guests turns in abject frustration to God in prayer. Moshe is humbled, a broken man. The holiday ends, the guests having left. But Malli returns (is this reasonable?) and her news is a shock. How does this show redemption? Is there a lesson in this about patience? Humility? Coming to terms with our shortcomings? Is there a lesson about pain? What lessons do we learn from this film? What does this tell us about our relationship with God? What does this film tell us about prayer?

We go from answered pray to things falling apart rather quickly. Instead of stereotypical characters we see authentic people struggling to hold on to their beliefs when challenged. One might ask, 'with blessings like this who needs them?' Then we see the crisis’s compound themselves until people are pretty raw and how we find resolution. Recall how the Breslov Rebbe states that when we pass a test we think we can rest, but then things get harder and we can never rest. Consider the personal ‘evolution’ of Moshe as he struggles with his nature and the true miracle is internal rather than external.

The next lesson is Siddur (the Jewish prayerbook).

Worship

Today's class focused on the topic of worship or avodah עֲבוֹדָה in Hebrew in which prayer is a prime component. In modern usage avodah is considered the prayer service.

The Hebrew language is based on a thousand or so three letter roots which make up the majority of the ancient language. In this case the root for worship (A-V-D) can be translated as 'work'. It is helpful to think that Hebrew worship was not so much a concept of thinking but of doing.

Modern day worship is considered a substitute for the Temple sacrificial system (having ended around 1900 years ago). With the Babylonian captivity (around 2600 years ago) exiled Jewish people created a system (precursor of the synagogue) that substituted for the Temple centered services. Different modern day Jewish practices regard Temple worship with different perspectives. Reform Judaism rejects the sacrificial system and has removed certain traditional prayers seeking a return to those practices. Conservative Judaism reminisces about the services of the past and Chasidic Judaism yearns and stresses a return to Temple service.

The heart of the Jewish liturgy is embodied in the Siddur or Jewish prayerbook which has evolved over thousands of years. Originally the concept of codifying the prayers into a fixed format was rejected by Jewish sages but over time accepted in the principle of keva. This is balanced by the personal expression of spontaneity and heartfelt devotion called kavanah.

The Jewish word for prayer is tefillah or תְּפִלָּה  which may come from a root meaning to fall down or be overtaken (N-P-L). The verb to pray is hitpallel or הִתְפַּלֵּל  which is to literally 'judge oneself'.

Four types of prayer are:

·         Petitionary (generally asking for something)

·         Thanksgiving

·         Praise

·         Seeking forgiveness

Jewish thought considers some prayers to be vain and prohibited such as those that benefit an individual to the harm of the community. Indeed in class we reviewed the story of Bil'am (Numbers 22-24) to discuss the power of prayer or curses. We find in this story the origin of Mah Tovu (Num 24:5) which is traditionally recited upon entering a synagogue. This blessing was supposed to be a curse upon the Jewish nation.

We also discussed the word blessing which is bracha or בְּרָכָה in Hebrew. Its root (B-R-C) literally means knee. Although it is no longer a practice to kneel in Jewish prayer the connection is obvious when you consider the way one would approach a king. (Prostrating oneself is also rare and reserved for one service during the Day of Atonement.) 

We started off today's class by learning some of the basics of Israeli folk dancing. Dance, along with music and song has long been an auxiliary component of expression to the divine and it is a great way to get the heart pumping.

The next few classes will gently consider the spiritual aspects of our existence. I also handed out the project assignments for K'Tuvim where each student will (approximately) read, research and teach us about one of the various books.  The research involves using online resources (such as wikipedia), temple library materials and actually reading the assigned book. As a model we will read the Book of Ruth together as a class and then have me create a presentation as an example.

Then the remainder of the tefillah course is going to focus on Jewish liturgy as a guide to developing our communication with God.

To find Hebrew language roots and a decent online Hebrew English dictionary go to Maskilon.

Is this spiritual stuff for real?

Last year due to time constraints I was only able to show sections of some DVDs. This year I am going to try to show each film in its entirety since I can address both the worship aspects as well as biblical passages that challenge our modern sensibilities.

In class I tried to demonstrate the rational consideration of a spiritual world by showing the DVD "What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit Hole" dealing with our perception of reality, quantum mechanics and the messages from water (by Mr. Emoto). Happily some students were familiar with the movie and generated a lot of positive discussion. While the material in this film is neither proof nor wholly convincing it is able to convey to open minded people that there are many mysteries left in our universe and quantum physics challenges many of our basic models of how the universe operates. This is one of those DVDs where the bonus material is as interesting (if not more) than the main feature. An interesting claim (and not to be taken literally) in the film is that it took Native Americans time to "see" the ships of Columbus due to the utter strangeness of the spectacle, so to should we realize that we filter what we see. (A more fact based approach to Native American cultures is expressed in the marvelous book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C Mann. Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto nicely gives us a similar taste of recent research.)

Read the extended post below to see more details about the film and some of my comments.

A New School Year

The new religious school year just started and again I am honored to be able to teach the 7th grade class.

This year I am teaching both the core class both semesters (we use the Level 6 curriculum core from "Chai: Learning for Jewish Life" series from URJ Press) and the Jewish prayer (Tefillah) curriculum that I used last year during the first semester. A very well respected member of the Jewish community is going to be teaching a class "Sacred Choices" during the second semester which will deal with the kinds of sexual situations that middle school students may find themselves in.

Today focused on setting the tone for the school year through introducing ourselves to each other and setting mutual expectations. The students were introduced to the goals for the year and the atmosphere in which we will learn. The results were very positive and I can say we are all looking forward to the rest of the year.

The Jewish (Hebrew) Bible is called the Tanach and is almost identical to the Christian Bible (Old Testament). The Tanach is an abbreviation of the three Hebrew words Torah (Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch); Nevi'im (Prophets - major and minor); and K'Tuvim (Writings).

The three primary differences between the Jewish and Christian Bible (other than the New Testament) are these:

• Verse numbers
  The relatively recent introduction of chapter and verse numbers is slightly different between version. For instance, in Psalms the Jewish Bible starts the verse number even if the verse looks like a description such as Psalms 3:1 "A Psalm of David when he fled from Avshalom his son." The Christian version does not count this verse in their numbering.
• Order of the books
  The idea of compiling the various books into entire volumes led to the adoption of an order to the books which is different between faiths. For an ordered list see Books of the Tanakh.
• Modern punctuation
  The original texts do not use our modern punctuation which has led to various interpretations including something one would think of as pretty basic such as the Ten Commandments. Depending upon punctuation one counts different commandments! This difference of interpretation as shown in that link is not just between Jewish and Christian faiths but also between different Christian denominations.

The Chai Level 6 core curriculum focuses this year upon the K'Tuvim so we are going to be reviewing each of the 13 books. In an effort to increase the level of learning and engage the students, each student has chosen a book or group (I subdivided the Psalms into three groups and combined smaller books into groups) to read, research and teach to the rest of the class. It seems appropriate that every student of a Jewish religious school has had some exposure to each book of the Bible before graduation.