30
AcAdemic SympoSium:
What is the choreography of transitions
between prayers or songs that create flow?
Who is in the room? Where are they
coming from?
How do we create moments for con-
nection, between clergy and between
congregants?
These are some of the questions we
have been asking at Central Synagogue
as we work as a clergy team on worship
projects each year. I want to share two
different services we’ve worked on and
how asking some of these questions
shaped our worship conversation.
The first was the Kol Nidrei Service.
It is fair to say that the text alone is
not the reason people are so attached
to this prayer:
“
All vows we are likely to make, all oaths
and pledges we are likely to take between
this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kip-
pur, we publicly renounce. Let them all
be relinquished and abandoned, null and
void, neither firm nor established...”
I’m pretty sure those were the terms
and conditions for my last online pur-
chase. Did you know those were the
words your Cantor was singing?
We asked ourselves “Why are People
Here on Kol Nidrei Night?” It’s not
about the words of the prayer. Why
do they all show up on time, no less,
for this service? We realized that three
central themes drew them in: Memory.
Baring Our Souls; Return. This is what
our members truly associated with the
Kol Nidrei Prayer.
Our second question was to identi-
fy the flow of energy in the service.
The challenge here was that the peak
moment, the recitation of the Kol
Nidrei, traditionally happened in the
first five minutes, and the risk was that
the emotional arc of the service would
be all downhill from there. So we tried
something radical – we wouldn’t do
the Kol Nidrei at the beginning. Not
in its entirety. We took the traditional
concept of three recitations, and spread
them out over the service, not chant-
ing the prayer in full until the third
time much later in the service. And we
introduced each reprise of Kol Nidrei
with a theme of Memory; Baring Our
Souls; Return.
We asked Rabbi Larry Hoffman to
write introductions to each section
that would help people enter into the
emotional tenor of the moment, not
just the text. So if you would, close
your eyes and imagine yourself in your
synagogue, on Kol Nidrei night, seated
with your family or perhaps on the
bima as you prepare for the prayer:
Like no other prayer, Kol Nidrei compels
our presence, And not just us alone, But
the memorized outline, too, of younger
years
The gentle feel of those who tucked us in,
who blessed our days, consoled our nights;
And came as we do, on this eve, with
memories of their own
We, tonight, are memories in the making,
Warming seats for others who will
remember us
In some Kol Nidrei they shall hear when
we are gone
Now the truth is, Larry Hoffman can
deliver more than your average 7%.
But starting there, we worked on the
emotional arc of the service, and then
we looked for choreography that would
reinforce our themes. Before the “re-
turn” section, the rabbis walked off the
bima to the back of the congregation,
retrieved two Torah scrolls, and walked
them back home to the Ark as the
cantor sang “Or Zarua.”
The first time we tried this service it
was the most powerful Kol Nidrei we
had experienced. We were able to build
the energy to the full Kol Nidrei. And
the procession of our Torah communi-
cated the power of the day to return, to
make
teshuva
,
to our best selves.
The second worship project we have
been addressing over the last several
years is our Shabbat morning service.
We recognized that it was a different
community each week, usually guests
of the
b’nei mitzvah
.
As clergy, this is
generally a fact we lament and com-
plain about.
But this is actually an amazing op-
portunity. A captive audience for an
hour-and-half, including many who
might not be Jewish, with whom we
could share what was most beautiful
and important and relevant about our
tradition.
To that end, we thought of framing
parts of the service that could have a
universal meaning, even within our
particular Jewish language. The bless-
ings surrounding the Shema (Creation,
Revelation, and Redemption) are
prayers that are master narratives in our
tradition. But these are not just histor-
ical events – they are powerful because
these master narratives are still happen-
ing in our own lives. How could we
communicate that to the community?
We commissioned Dara Horn, a Jewish
author, to write new text that would
invite people to get inside this theme,
to understand that it is ongoing in
their own lives. Can you find yourself
hearing Creation differently?
Here is the story of Creation:
You once walked through a garden, past
a tree you saw each day, and fell hushed
by a surprise: a perfect round egg enfolded
in a nest, trembling from the possibility
within it.
You once stood on the ocean’s edge as
water rushed towards invisible gates, and
heard the silent voice that told the waves,
“
This far, and no farther.”