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December 27, 2002/Tevet 22 5763, Vol. 55, No. 18
Ring in the New Year with resolve
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
What's one of the unique dividends of being both Jews and Americans? We can celebrate Jewish holidays and holy days while still being part of the rhythm of the non-Jewish year. Case in point, impending New Year's festivities, welcoming 2003 with whatever revelry we desire and whatever resolve we choose to muster. Amidst those New Year's resolutions to eat right and exercise, we can make a distinctly Jewish resolution to improve our Jewish literacy quotient with time spent reading and digesting books on Jewish subjects. What better way to end the old year and ring in the new? Happy reading - and happy New Year!
Rabbis Kerry Olitzsky and Daniel Judson provide a guide to enhanced Jewish practice with their new offering, "The Rituals and Practices of a Jewish Life: A Handbook for Personal Spiritual Renewal," (Jewish Lights, $18.95 paperback). Olitzsky, a prolific author who specializes in Jewish how-to books, is the director of the Jewish Outreach Institute. Judson, also an author (see below), is the spiritual leader of Temple Beth David of the South Shore in Canton, Mass. The pair, who edited the collection, have compiled a series of 10 essays that give both the whys and wherefores of Jewish ritual as well as simple, step-by-step how-tos. Want to learn how to lay tefillin? How to put on a tallit? Wear a yarmulke? The guide contains chapters on each of these subjects, attempting to make each accessible even to those with minimal Jewish background. For many, the authors note, such rituals are often relegated to the Orthodox community. Those with less Jewish knowledge often feel intimidated to even attempt such practice. The book is designed to encourage them to try, while illuminating the spiritual reward such ritual can inspire. The guide also includes personal stories of people who have begun incorporating more Jewish practice into their daily lives and a wealth of resources for those who want to further their study and understanding.
Judson pairs with Rabbi Nancy H. Wiener, clinical director of the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Center for Pastoral Counseling at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in New York where she is also adjunct associate professor of pastoral care and counseling, to provide another guide for Jewish living. This one, "Meeting at the Well: A Spiritual Guide to Being Engaged" (UAHC Press, $12.95, paperback) elevates the period between betrothal and marriage and encourages couples to utilize the time for personal growth and discovery.
"An engagement, however, is potentially precious to no one but the couple about to marry. Subtract the wedding plans, and engagement remains alone, as what it uniquely is: a period betwixt and between - no longer single but not yet married, gifted with a space in time to contemplate the fullness of what togetherness might mean."
The rabbis seek to help couples reflect on "what that togetherness might mean," treating issues as diverse as intimacy, finances, friends and religion. There is a chapter devoted to a discussion of names - his, hers or ours - and another on the discussion of family. Included, too, are contemporary takes on traditional rituals that can enhance the engagement experience. There is renewed interest in the t'nai-im ceremony, designed to announce and celebrate an engagement. Traditionally, the ceremony included the signing of the marriage contract and symbolic exchange of some item of worth. Contemporary renditions can infuse the usual engagement parties or celebrations with an enhanced spirituality.
"The t'nai-im ceremony can be an opportunity to reflect upon and internalize the profound personal changes you are experiencing as individuals and as members of the couple," write the authors.
The guide also provides engaged couples with suggestions for other pre-wedding rituals that can add to their wedding day. Going to the mikvah, or ritual bath, for brides is a way of sanctifying the experience. Visiting the gravesites of deceased relatives to tell them of the impending marriage can add a meaningful dimension.
The book ends with a chapter detailing the ritual of Chanukat Ha Bayit, hanging a mezuzah and dedicating a Jewish home, as the new couple begins their life together.
"A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Path," (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, $24 hard cover) offers a new take on the entire spectrum of Jewish life-cycle events. Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow and his wife, Phyllis Ocean Waskow, leaders in the Jewish Renewal movement, take the reader from birth to death, from marriage to divorce, from celebration to consolation. They seek to infuse age-old ritual with new understanding and meaning while proposing fresh ways of marking life transitions and change. So there are rituals for ending a marriage, rituals for passage to midlife, rituals for conversion. The decidedly spiritual bent of the authors should not deter more traditional readers from picking up the book. It is deeply respectful of ritual yet keenly attuned to the contemporary search for meaning and the role of formalized ceremony. Rabbi Waskow speaks in the preface of the book of the need for "human turning." He goes on to explain the need for public as well as private encounters.
"Though we may be satisfied by the warmth of private connection, when we are real about our lives and our struggles we are left to feel that there is something wrong with us when our deepest concerns do not make for acceptable conversation in the public domain," he writes. Taking such issues public, "We can shape an ever-growing number of moments when we truly 'come of age.' "
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