Prayer-as-Protest, in this Hard Week

As we approach this Shabbat, the world feels crushingly broken to me.

Here in the U.S., each new day this week -- with its accompanying executive orders, confirmations of unfit appointees, slashing of departments and firings of government employees, and direct attacks on minority groups and on diversity itself -- has pulled our society further and further from America's vision of democratic and just ideals. (It's all happening so terrifyingly fast, too!) Separately, for Jews everywhere, yesterday was a particularly gut-wrenching day -- even on top of almost a year and a half of a gut-wrenching baseline -- as two red-headed babes were returned to Israel in coffins by their Hamas murderers.* (*Yes, I know it was even worse than that, as Shiri Bibas's body was not returned and she is still considered missing; Hamas's sadism and cruelty is breathtaking. And yes, I also believe that our care absolutely extends to all, including the thousands upon thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israel's zealous bombings during this last year of war. Still, this is where my own focus is landing today... I just can't stop thinking about Ariel and Kfir.)

This week, our Torah portion, Parashat Mishpatim, contains a huge range of laws: laws that prohibit striking a parent, homicide, and kidnapping; laws about assault and damage to property; laws of business ethics, judicial integrity, and the fair treatment of an enemy; laws mandating care for the disadvantaged, prohibiting oppressing the stranger, instituting the Sabbatical year and holidays, and more. 

Stepping back and looking at this Torah portion in total, one key takeaway from Mishpatim is that laws matter. Having a system of laws, rooted in a moral framework, is necessary in order to build the kind of society we would all want to live in. Laws help us regulate society, protect people's rights, ensure stability and equality, and resolve conflicts. But laws work only when they are applied fairly and equitably, and when they can be enforced. Although the situations here and there are different ("l'havdil," as they say in Hebrew!), this week I've felt like whatever direction I look, it's easy to spot almost cartoonishly-evil supervillains, who operate with cruelty and utterly outside of the framework of law.

What do we do when lawlessness and chaos replace law and order, when the world around us simply doesn't work as we know it should? We protest, of course! Sometimes this means taking to the streets, and sometimes this means resisting through other means. In addition, one of the tools we Jews possess in our spiritual toolbox is prayer-as-protest!

Perhaps the best example of prayer-as-protest is Mourner's Kaddish. Growing up, I remember learning that Mourner's Kaddish was a prayer of praise to God, recited by a mourner as an act of faith: that even at a time of loss, the right thing to do was to praise God. In more recent years, I have learned this prayer anew, from my friend and colleague Rabbi Elie Kaunfer (of Hadar). His reading of Mourner's Kaddish flips this prevailing interpretation on its head; he re-defines the prayer as "a prompt that reminds God of the brokenness of the world." 

Kaunfer grounds his re-reading of Kaddish in two specific lines of the prayer (and if you're interested in reading about this in more detail, I invite you to click here to read his whole article entitled "The Mourner's Kaddish is Misunderstood"). The opening line "Yitgadal ve'yitkadash shemei rabbah," he argues, must be read in light of its biblical reference text (Ezekiel 38:23). He writes: "In a world of death and mourning, it is clear that God is not fully holy, great, or even king. This prayer -- put in the mouth of the mourner -- begs God to speed the day when God is, in fact, great and holy. But it acknowledges that we aren't there yet."

Second, he points to the congregational response of "yehei shmei rabbah...," noting that Kaddish is one of the few prayers in which God isn't actually mentioned or addressed (only "God's name"). Kaunfer argues: "This is a prayer that is acting out the reality we live in: a world in which God's name is diminished. And while we want God's name to be great and blessed, and ask for that in this prayer, we still live in a world where that hasn't happened fully. Exhibit A? The death we are mourning, the death that brought us to this prayer."

Re-read in this way, Mourner's Kaddish becomes a radical prayer: one that laments the state of the world and reminds us of God's absence, a prayer of woe and grief, for both the mourner and for God. As Kaunfer concludes:

"The Kaddish is not a stoic praise of an unfeeling God who for reasons we can't know let our loved ones die without remorse. Rather it is a plea for a better world in which God is more fully holy, and the presence of God more completely experienced. We are not living in that world, and the Kaddish knows it; but it offers us a path to imagine a world beyond our current one. And critically, God is in league with us in begging for that world to come soon."

As I said above, this week, the world feels so very broken, so dis-ordered. A world of lawlessness and evil is a world in which God's name is diminished; all is not as it should be.

I hope many of you can join us tonight for a Kabbalat Shabbat service -- led by Rabbi Jay and with musical accompaniment by Kohenet Traci Marx. I will be there too, and together, we can join in prayer-as-protest,lamenting the injustice of the world and reciting the words of Mourner's Kaddish together for the victims of such cruelty.

Wishing all of us a Shabbat that offers some degree of shalom (peace) and respite from the chaos and cruelty. At hard times, especially, I'm grateful for the company of this community of fellow-travelers. 

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum