Siddur Prayer--Elul 18

Whenever I open a siddur or a machzor, I am amazed at the beauty and wisdom of the prayers in the litrugy.  I'm a writer and a theologian, which means that the poetry of language and the adequacy of our language to the complex reality we call God are both important.  Yes, I'm annoyed by the unrelentingly masculine language for God that we still see far too much of in print and hear too much of from the bimah. But this aside,  time and time again I am overwhelmed by the beauty and deep of the truth prayers in the liturgy.

Take Avinu Malkeinu.  This phrase is the perfect paradox of what is traditionally called, immanence and transcendence, or love and awe,  or the One Who Dwells Among Us and the One Who Surpasses All.  Like all Jewish prayer, this phrase does not ask us to choose between our two ways of experiencing the One; it invites us to experience the paradox of the One who exists beyond all our reason and reckoning. To me this is refreshing in an age where many translations and prayerbooks have swung to the side of immanent language for God in an attempt to make God more meaningful and accessible, or in an attempt to combat the imperialistic and two-dimensional transcendence of many fundamentalists.

Take the recurring metaphor of God as Judge coupled with God as the Father of Mercy. Again, instead of handing us a God we are comfortable with, a God who is all sweetness and light, the prayers forge these two into a single reality: righteousness and mercy. No cheap grace here. 

Take the poem/song/prayer Labrit habet.  Its superabundance of metaphors for God and humankind in relation to God invites all to enter, no matter what their experience, and it calls attention to the many faces of God that we encounter.

Take the Al Chet, a work of theological genius. Jews are fond of claiming that we don't teach the doctrine of Original Sin, but this exhaustive catalogue of sins--sins of omission and commission, internal and external sins, sins of thought, word, and deed, individual and social sins--shows the seriousness with which take the yetzer hara, the inclination to evil in all human beings, without exception.  We are not afraid to confess the incredible depth and scope of our propensity to harm others, ourselves, and the One.  We do not minimize the damage we cause.  We do not avoid responsibility for the ills we cause.  We do not make light of how difficult it is to repair the brokenness we bring into the world. We look unblinkingly into the heart of darkness that we may turn, now, wholeheartedly, to the light. 

I love the liturgy for the Days of Awe.  Certainly one can pick it apart and find something jarring to our cultural or personal sensibility; but word for word, prayer for prayer, page for page, it speaks to the depth and complexity of hearts turning toward the One.