Q. Why don't we modernise the prayerbook?

A. A person was studying a page of the Talmud. A friend saw what he was doing and noticed which page it was. A week later the same friend came by and was astounded to find that it was still the same page that was open. "Haven't you moved on?" he asked. "Moved on?" came the reply; "Why should I move on? I like it here!"

Now something which actually happened to me when I was a professional youth worker. When a group of teenagers objected to the conventional Shabbat services because they were boring, they said they wanted to create their own service. I said, "Go ahead!" They sat and thought and planned and got busy. One suggested this change, another suggested that one. Eventually they were ready to conduct their service. I said nothing aloud but I grinned inwardly when the service they produced was identical to the standard Shabbat service!

Both stories show you get used to certain ways of doing things and in time they define who you are and what you stand for. Changing the Siddur has been tried in non-Orthodox movements but without dramatically better results than the prayerbook of tradition. True, they have shortened the services and brought in more vernacular prayers, but if they had worked from within the halachah they could have found halachically sanctioned ways of addressing the same issues. In some cases they have changed the theology, for instance by rejecting references to a personal Messiah, resurrection of the dead and the rebuilding of the Temple, but on most of these questions their own adherents are apathetic. Recent attempts to rework the Siddur have tried to be gender inclusive, though I cannot see how it is an improvement to refer to God without Biblical terms like "Father" and "Lord".

We are moulded by our history and tradition, and if this is how Jews have always spoken of God it is part of our identity.


THE ARIZAL

Q. Some Jews say they follow the customs of the Arizal. Who was this?

A. Arizal is the name popularly given to Rabbi Isaac ben Shlomo Luria, 1534-1572. Because his ancestry was German, "Ashkenazi" is often added to his name. Hence "Ari" is the initials of "Ashkenazi Rabbi Yitzchak", though it could also be "Eloki Rabbi Yitzchak", "the divine Rabbi Yitzchak" or, as a nickname, "Ari" meaning lion (of the kabbalists). "Zal" is the abbreviation for "zichrono livrachah", "his memory be a blessing".

One side of the Luria family settled in Poland, the other in Israel. Isaac Luria's father was told by Elijah the prophet that his son would bring kabbalah to the world and save the Jewish people from suffering. Shlomo, the father, died when Isaac was a child and the family moved to Cairo where they had rich relatives. There Isaac was already writing rabbinic works as a young age; at 15 he married his patron's daughter. Acquiring a copy of the Zohar, the handbook of the mystics, he spent long periods studying kabbalah in seclusion. Some years later he moved to Tz'fat (Safed) and took over kabbalistic leadership from Rabbi Moses Cordovero. His disciples included Rabbi Chayyim Vital, who like Luria taught that to come close to the Divine Presence one has to love all human brings. Luria insisted on strict compliance with Torah ethics, including the prompt payment of workmen. There are several Sabbath z'mirot composed by him.

Luria died in 1572. He left little written work; his ideas flowed forth so freely that it was hard to systematise and record them. His disciples collected and embroidered the facts of his life and gathered and disseminated his kabbalistic teachings. In liturgy, Luria preferred the Sephardi tradition and enriched it with his mystical interpretations. His liturgical and other practices were adopted by the Chassidim and the Ashkenazi kabbalists.


MALPRACTICE & DOCTORS

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Shabbat Shalom!