Morning Blessing Experiment

For my week of leading services at HUC, I wanted to do a little experiment...Here is the introductory iyyun and the handout from the service.:

There’s this commercial for Febreeze that I haven’t been able to shake. Here’s the scene: a teenage boy in his room, thinks everything is just fine. Mom walks in and the screen shifts to what she smells: a dirty, unlaundered locker room. Febreeze warns us against “nose blindness” those things we think are fine just because we have become accustomed to them. But, when we stop to really take a nice long whiff, we realize that something is very very wrong.

I’m worried that we may have gone nose blind to our liturgy. That even though there are parts that are unsavory…we have been in it long enough that we stop noticing. I worry that the language we use to connect humanity to the Divine, to the essence of holiness within each person, uses liturgical imagery that paints צלם אלהים narrowly. Why does our language only reflect half of our kahal?

On the daf there are some new blessing formluae. I think we ought to experiment with our God language. Let's chant them together to see how it feels. Maybe it will be uncomfortable, but maybe we need to be made to feel uncomfortable. Or, maybe it will be awesome, and…well…that would be awesome. Together, let’s breathe deeply and try to make the world smell a bit sweeter and give our community new avenues to access the source of life and blessing.