Yesterday I wrote about “theologically objectionable” prayers and how my liturgy professor wrote, “but we can hardly editorialize in the English of every prayer that bothers us” (“How Liturgy Tells the Truth” in The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Spring 2019). What about prayers in English only? “Easy answer,” you might say, “don’t read them!” and I usually don’t. But here is a prayer that bothered me terribly when I first read it just a few years ago, but something happened which I’ll discuss if not in this article, then Part III. It’s from Mishkan Tefilah, Shabbat Evening Service I.
Disturb us, Adonai, ruffle us from our complacency;
Make us dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the peace of ignorance,
the quietude which arises from a shunning of the horror, the defeat,
the bitterness and the poverty, physician and spiritual, of humans.
Shock us, Adonai, deny to us the false Shabbat which give us
the delusions of satisfaction amid a world of war and hatred;
Wake us, O God, and shake us
from the sweet and sad poignancies rendered by
half-forgotten melodies and rubric prayers of yesteryear;
Make us know that the border of the sanctuary
is not the border of living
and the walls of Your temples are not shelters
from the winds of truth, justice and reality.
Disturb us, O God, and vex us;
let not Your Shabbat be a day of torpor and slumber;
Let it be a time to be stirred and spurred to action.
Baruch Atah Adonai, m’kadesh HaShabbat. Blessed are You, Eternal One, who makes holy the Sabbath.
Every selection concerning Shabbat in prayerbooks of every branch, probably since the day God rested, has been focused on uplifting the day of rest, encouraging Jews to take advantage of that one day in the week to think of non-material matters. Every selection has music composed by those who understand that music adds to the theme, and just about every musical version I’ve heard has done just that. You don’t have to understand one word, but even the music conveys the joyful calm of Shabbat.
For the author of this selection what we’re “told” in the quiet of the sanctuary, in the prayerful words of each piece, in the spirit of Shabbat SHOULD BE theologically objectionable if, indeed, there’s nothing more to it than “calm” and “joy,” “quiet,” “prayerful” and “spiritual.” Why he says this…and who he is…. gives us a Shabbat jolt. That’s for Sunday in Part III.
(Speaking of “theologically objectionable,” when a Jew converts to Christianity all he gets is a new religious title. But when a Christian converts to Judaism s/he at once becomes retroactively eligible for two thousand years of persecution!)