Something tells me we are in prophetic times.
The great prophets of Torah, the great prophets of human history, rose up in times of turbulence and these are times of turbulence.
I hear voices… not that way.
I hear words of wisdom rising above the turbulent waves.
Some of those voices come from Torah.
Some of the voices come from luminaries of our age.
Some of the voices come from musical lyrics.
Some come from teenagers testifying to the United Nations.
Some come from actors speaking from the stage.
Some are recent.
Some are not.
Some come back to me over and over again like words from our prayers or words from vinyl as it spins round and round on the turntable…
Dan Nichols sings...
The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw
And the teacher said.. What you doin' young man
I'm paintin' flowers he said
She said,
It's not the time for art young man
And anyway flowers are green and red
There's a time for everything young man
And a way it should be done
You've got to show concern for everyone else
For you're not the only one
And she said
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen
But the little boy said
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one
Well the teacher said
You're sassy
There's ways that things should be
And you'll paint flowers the way they are
So repeat after me
And she said
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen
There are certain musical passages that I turn to a lot and there is something about this song from Harry Chapin that feels prophetic to me. I get choked up every time I hear it. The boy just wants to be who he is. His soul sings the colors of the rainbow while his teacher forces him back into line. Flowers are red… all looking exactly the same. Be quiet and get back into line.
It was back to school night in my older sister’s first grade class. There on the bulletin board, proudly displayed for all the parents to see… every flower was red, every leaf was green, all cut to the same size. I got the benefit when my mother saved me a couple years later from having to be in that same teacher’s class.
And how many of us had the same experience in school? Taught to fall into line. Do as everyone else is doing. Repeat back the words of the teacher… flowers are red, green leaves are green. There’s no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen.
And then the lyrics of our liturgy rise in my head.
They’re both powerful and plaintive…
Sh’ma koleinu…
Dan sings the first few words of Helfman's Sh'ma Koleinu...
Hear our voice, Adonai our God, have compassion on us.
“Hear our voice, Adonai our God, and have mercy upon us…”
There are all sorts of rabbinic tales about the words of children and the beautiful, honesty of those words. There’s a classic about a child who could not speak but at what seemed to be the most inopportune moment in the services, the child pulled a flute from his pocket and played it. When the community complained to the rabbi, he responded that it was the notes of the boy’s flute, the prayer of the boy’s heart, that was the voice heard on high by God that morning.
Sh’ma koleinu, hear our voice.
The boy painting flowers in all the colors of the rainbow. The child bearing his soul through the notes on his flute. The sixteen year old girl, beseeching leaders of the world to listen…
In fact, the history of this prayer, Sh’ma koleinu can be a cautionary tale in and of themselves. Let’s take a brief, retrospective educational moment to understand how they arrived on our page today.
It’s important to keep in mind that originally our prayers were not fixed at all. The earliest recorded prayers in Torah such as Hannah’s silent petition to God for a child were completely unscripted. Up until approximately two thousand years ago prayer was all improvised. People felt free to offer their own thoughts and prayers to God. There was no particular set order. Over the course of several hundred years, people shared their ideas, other people, with some level of authority, felt that particular prayers ought to be said, and a fixed order started to develop. The word for this ‘fixed order’ is siddur, the Hebrew for ‘prayerbook’. The prayerbook was taking shape at the beginning of the first century but still very much in flux. The traditional siddur as we know it today has been fixed for just about a hundred years.
And there on page 278 of this machzor, our High Holy Day prayerbook, you’ll find this prayer… Sh’ma Koleinu…
The original version of the prayer comes from our weekday Amidah. It is number 16 of the 19 daily benedictions in this section of prayer that is the core supplications of our prayer service. The entire section is also known as the T’fillah, simply meaning – ‘prayer’, because the ancient rabbis considered it the prayer par excellence, the time for our personal thoughts and supplications to pour forth. And this particular prayer, number 16, is also known simply as T’fillah, because after running through each of the possible petitions you might offer for understanding, for repentance or forgiveness and such, this prayer was officially intended to be the ‘insert your personal prayer here’ position. You began with the formula… Sh’ma koleinu, Adonai Eloheinu – hear our voice, Adonai our God, have mercy and compassion upon us and with that compassion accept our prayer… and then you would follow that with whatever was on your mind that had not already been covered by the previous petitions.
In fact, that was about all there was to the original prayer. The text quoted in the Jerusalem Talmud is: Sh’ma b’koleinu Adonai Eloheinu, b’kol t’filateinu v’racheim aleinu ki Eil chanun v’rachum Atah, Baruch Atah Adonai, Shomeia t’fillah – Hear our voice, Adonai our God, and the voice of our prayer, and have mercy upon us, for You are a kind and merciful God. Blessed are You, Adonai, Who hears prayer. That’s all there was to it.
The final line of the prayer is known as the chatimah, or signature. It’s the Baruch Atah Adonai line at the end of the prayer and it was just before that signature, that we were supposed to insert our own petitions, our private prayers.
This tradition of inserting your own prayer is already recognized as authoritative by the beginning of the third century. The Talmud, in masechet B’rachot, tells us, “A person may ask for his own need in the benediction Sh’ma Koleinu.” (B. Ber. 31a)
But, it seems, we get lazy. We aren’t feeling terribly creative today. We skip the improvisational section. We let someone else fill in the blanks for us, and before we know it, we’ve forgotten that there ever were blanks there in the first place. We’ve forgotten that flowers could be anything but red.
And if we’re not taking the time to voice our private prayers, perhaps we may also not be lifting our voices in the public sphere. Lifting them up for the righteousness that our prophets reminded us to do.
So, it is my job to remind us. Flowers are not just red, and the prayers on the pages are not the only prayers you’re supposed to offer.
And lifting up our voices is not reserved for the synagogue alone.
If we are calling out for God to have compassion upon us and save us then we must at least meet God halfway.
When you ask the teacher for help, the good teacher, not the one who tells you that flowers are only red, the good teacher will help bring you along, coach you through the process… the good teacher will encourage you to paint in all the colors of the rainbow. The good teacher hears you singing your song and reminds us all to listen.
Sh’ma Koleinu - Hear our voice
Think about it. When must we not remain silent? When must we lift up our voice?
I’m not going to tell you when. Remember, the teacher also doesn’t just simply give you the answer. We each have our own individual voices and we each have our own particular moments we must lift them up. There are definitely times when we sit there thinking… “should I say something… or should I remain quiet?”
Think about that child whose flowers should represent all the colors of the rainbow. Think about the amazing courage of Greta Thunberg. She sailed across the sea to testify to the United Nations regarding climate change. Talk about a prophetic call. She is fighting for us to have flowers in the years to come.
Sometimes we have to sing out. We have to step up… or step out of line…
How about the actor Alex Borstein?
She illustrated this point so powerfully just over a week ago as she accepted an Emmy award for her portrayal of Susie Myerson, the manager in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. This comes from Esquire Magazine’s report on the award ceremony…
"Borstein’s speech called on her grandmother’s experience during the Holocaust, an especially powerful message considering her show features so many powerful Jewish women characters. Her incredible anecdote of resilience and strength was among the night’s most incredible moments. As Bornstein said on stage:
My grandmother turned toward a guard—she was in line to be shot into a pit—and said, “What happens if I step out of line?” and he said, “I don’t have the heart to shoot you, but somebody will. And she stepped out of line. And for that, I am here. And for that, my children are here. So step out of line, ladies. Step out of line.”"
In the coming services, we will further explore what it means to find and lift up our voice. Tonight is meant to serve as the introduction to following messages. We don’t always get to choose when we speak up. Recently in our community, the subject of Israel has been taken out of our context and required a response. I’ll elaborate on that tomorrow. Israel is one of the many subjects that needs our voice and as we find our voice, we need to figure out how and when to lift it up. That subject we’ll discuss further on Yom Kippur.
As we approach this coming year, let us ask ourselves, how will we lift up our voices?
When will we unleash all the colors of the rainbow?
When must we step out of line…
The neatly lined up rows of red flowers at Back to School Night…
Step out of line…
The voices telling us to hush…
Make your voices heard.
Sh’ma Koleinu
Hear our voice, Adonai our God. Have compassion and accept our prayer…
Dan sings a selection from Helfman's Sh’ma Koleinu
Comments