UNDERSTANDING THE UNETANEH TOKEF PRAYER
For Houston rabbis, Harvey was reminder that we are here to serve
In the Jewish calendar, we are in the middle of the 10 Days of Awe.
This time is set aside for reflection between Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is a period of soul-searching and forgiveness, when Jews are called to take stock of their lives and make amends with those they’ve wronged and with God.
One of the central prayers of the High Holy Days, known as Unetaneh Tokef, dramatizes these themes through stark poetry. It depicts God as a judge enthroned on high, recording all our deeds and assessing our lives accordingly. “On Rosh Hashanah it is written,” goes the prayer, “and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: How many shall pass away and how many shall be born; who shall live and who shall die; who in good time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire … .”
That last one — who by water — is raising eyebrows and questions this year, as so many families and institutions in the greater Houston’s Jewish community have suffered from floodwaters. Are we really supposed to believe that God sends floods to punish people?
Rabbi Steven Morgen, of Congregation Beth Yeshurun in the Meyerland area, has taught this prayer in depth. On the surface the prayer suggests an image of God decreeing judgments upon us based on our behavior. But to accept that interpretation, Morgen says, is to misunderstand the poetic artistry of the prayer.
The poet, he says, uses “very dramatic language to get us to take our spiritual assessment seriously. How? By reminding us: You don’t live forever. Some people will die this year. That’s for sure. Who knows who it will be? It’s about the fragility of life. Every day is precious. We should take every day to focus and pay attention. What did we do right? What did we do wrong? How can we be better?”
Rabbi Jill Levy finds the prayer troubling every year, whether or not there’s a flood. The theology, she says, is “If you do X, then Y will happen — and we know that isn’t how the world works.”
Levy is the director of the Bobbi and Vic Samuels Center for Jewish Living and Learning at the Meyerland-based Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center. Harvey’s rains sent 8-10 feet of water into Levy’s office and the entire lower floor of the JCC.
Since Harvey hit, hundreds of volunteers have come through to help at the JCC and the area where homes flooded. The outpouring of support may be why Levy focuses on a different part of the prayer: “Repentance (teshuvah), prayer (tefilah) and righteousness (tzedakah) soften (ma’avirin) the severe decree.”
The way Levy reads it, “It’s not that teshuvah, tefilah and tzedakah have magical power”; the word “ma’avirin” means not
only “soften” but also “carry you through.” She explains, “Good things and bad things will happen. But prayer, repentance and tzedakah will carry us through the bad times.”
Like Levy, Cantor Rollin Simmons of Congregation Emanu El has struggled with the Unetaneh Tokef prayer since long before Harvey’s floods. Now, she says, these words feel “more distressing to read, more difficult to sing.”
In many synagogues, it is the cantor who vocalizes this prayer through song. In her struggle to make sense of the challenging theology, Simmons wrote her own musical setting for the closing stanzas about the fragility of human life. For her, the medium is the message, inviting her congregation to sing the refrain together and reminding them, “As we sing, let us listen to the voices around us and know we are not alone.”
Rabbi Barry Gelman witnessed the water of Brays Bayou escape its bank and wash into United Orthodox Synagogues of Houston, which sustained serious damage. He works hard “not to turn this flood into a biblical event.” Gelman tells his congregation, “I do not believe God pointed his finger at our neighborhood and city and said, ‘I’m going to ruin it.’ ”
Gelman urges his communityto resist asking “why” because it’s a waste of energy. “The right question is, what now? How are we going to strengthen our communities now that the water has receded?”
In Gelman’s view, that is a deeply religious response. He asks, “What are my mitzvot — my sacred obligations — now that I find myself in this situation?”
One of those mitzvot is tzedakah, which is often translated as “charity” but means something closer to “righteousness.” Gelman likes to remind his congregation that tzedakah is about people needing people.
There was a lot of tzedakah in West Houston after Harvey moved out of the region. It’s where Rabbi Annie Belford of Temple Sinai has seen how people need people after the flooding — and how they show up for each other. She estimates that 40 percent of her neighborhood was underwater — some homes for two weeks — after water was released from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs. Volunteers rallied to get food and supplies to displaced families.
In the wake of this disaster, Belford sees no theological challenge in the Unetaneh Tokef prayer — only a reminder that life is fragile. “I never bought into the idea that God causes the suffering,” she says. We forget the rest of the prayer, she suggests, which is not a threat of who will die and how, but a “promise that God is with us, remembering, recounting, present. God remembers it all: It’s not a threat, but a loving promise.”
Belford acknowledges the starkness of the poetry, especially in light of recent events, but she thinks of it as a “spiritual alarm clock.” During High Holy Day services at Temple Sinai, the Unetaneh Tokef prayer is paired with Leonard Cohen’s musical adaptation, “Who By Fire.” Cohen’s refrain asks, “Who shall I say is calling?” For Belford, it’s a wake-up call.
“Where is my own power in what happens to me?” she asks. “What control do I have over my own fate? We can’t always control what happens to us. We can’t control when the Army Corps of Engineers will release water and flood our neighborhood — but that’s what happened. We can control how we respond.”
Rabbi Morgen believes that humans were endowed with free will and reason so that we can respond with compassion and justice when the world needs it. “This storm was the laws of nature at work,” he says. “God forbid we should think God punishes people like this. We are God’s hands and feet in fixing the problems that physics can create.”
For Beth Yeshurun, those problems include a flooded sanctuary just weeks before the holiest season of the year. Their fix? They will hold High Holy Day services at Lakewood Church this year while their building is being repaired.
“Regardless of what happens to you or your neighbors in the coming year, if we do repentance, prayer and charity, we will create a world that lets us look back and say, I’m proud of how I lived,” Morgen says. “If we do those three things, we’re guaranteed a meaningful, good life.”
In a world of uncertainty and suffering, it is a welcome message. It also is a reason for hope, as Jews around the world pray for a sweet new year. djs@gmail.com