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Unetanah Tokef: Asking the Unanswerable
Taught by: Rabbi Adina Lewittes
Date & Time:
Wednesdays: August 23rd, August 30th, September 6th, 7:30 - 8:45 pm ET
Location:
Zoom
Cost:
$72 (sliding scale pricing information below)
About the Workshop:
The Unetanah Tokef, "We shall ascribe holiness to this day," prayer is arguably the most well-known prayer centering on human mortality. It is the liturgical climax of the High Holy Days. More than any other prayer, its haunting melody and vivid text cuts to the fragility and unpredictability of life, exposing the white elephant in the sanctuary, the question that taunts and torments our quivering hearts: who will live and who will die?
During the month of Elul, with learning and reflection, we prepare for the Days of Awe and the personal transformation they inspire. This year, join Rabbi Adina Lewittes for an immersive 3-part exploration of the Mahzor’s gripping centerpiece informed by rabbinic commentary, medieval poetry, psychoanalytic insight, and contemporary wisdom.
1. Wednesday, August 23
Judgment and Chaos: A Life Story
Do our communal prayers harmonize the disparate voices in our sanctuaries and those in our own heads and hearts, or do they make room for the varied and often conflicting beliefs (and doubts!) that lurk among and within us? Of all our sacred liturgies, the words of the Unetane Tokef artfully express both universal thoughts about mortality and the diverse feelings we each bring to it.
2. Wednesday, August 30
Death as a Way of Life
Rilke wrote, “Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened.” Learning to die before we die is what keeps us open to life’s holiness and deepens our capacity to truly love life and love this world. Explore the tools our Jewish tradition offers to help us cultivate a more intimate relationship with death so that, as the African proverb admonishes, when death finds us, it will find us fully alive.
3. Wednesday, September 6
Dust and Ashes: Death and Resurrection in a Time of Planetary Crisis
How might our approaches to death and bodily disposition evolve in response to our increasingly imperiled planet? Do we have a Jewish responsibility to rethink how we care for our dead so that we can better care for our living? In what ways do our Jewish and environmental values cohere, and in what ways do they clash? Can we even distinguish between them? **Join us for a special dialogue following this workshop with Rabbi Lauren Bellows from Dayenu
This workshop will be recorded and shared with all participants following the session.
Taught by Rabbi Adina Lewittes
Rabbi Adina Lewittes (Dini) is the founding rabbi of Sha’ar, a northern NJ/NYC-based, values-driven Jewish community oriented around the call to societal, environmental and spiritual sustainability. For over twenty years Sha’ar provided multiple gateways into Jewish life exemplified by a commitment to inclusiveness, diversity, innovation, scholarship, excellence and collaboration. Dini recently served as the Scholar in Residence at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in NYC, a synagogue renowned for its commitment to social justice and spiritual activism. Dini is also a member of the senior rabbinic faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute, and of the Boards of Trustees of Keshet and of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School. Previously, Dini served as the Assistant Dean of the Rabbinical School at JTS, and founded a synagogue in Englewood, New Jersey, modelling shared leadership and collective communal responsibility. Dini regularly enjoys speaking engagements in the US and Canada and publishing essays on topics including Jewish identity, leadership, Jewish innovation, sexual/gender diversity, multifaith/multiheritage marriage and engagement, and contemporary Jewish spirituality. She is currently teaching contemporary Jewish Law for rabbinical students at JTS and writing a book on the changing landscape of identity and belonging.
