Reinterpreting Jewish Liturgy – Daniel Stein Kokin

Episode 54.
Since his childhood in Los Angeles, Daniel has lived in various parts of the U.S. as well as in Israel, Italy, and Germany. In each place, Daniel has enriched his Jewish practice by familiarizing himself with the local language and traditions, including trope (the melodies used to chant the Torah and other parts of the Bible in synagogue services). Another expression of his curiosity about histories and cultures is through writing liturgical texts and prayers. Daniel also taps into his lifelong fascination with the weather in order to get to know, and respond to, a place. For instance, upon moving to Arizona, he found a connection between that desert climate and Israel, inspiring him to write a new prayer for the Southwest’s summer rainy season, which he linked directly to a Torah portion read each year in June or July. In these and other ways, different aspects of his identity – including being an Ashkenazi Jew and American – reinforce one another.

Highlights:
- For Daniel, Jewish identity is grounded through food, sounds, texts, and melodies, not a particular denomination.
- Daniel values the use of different languages and melodies in synagogue services.
- He writes liturgy and enjoys exploring new elements of holidays and other aspects of Jewish tradition.
- Living in various countries has facilitated exposure to different forms of Jewish practice.
- Learning about the weather in a new home prompted the composition of new Jewish liturgy, such as Daniel’s prayer for the Southwest Monsoon after moving to Arizona.
- Exposure to different Jewish narratives in Berlin expanded Daniel’s knowledge of German-Jewish history beyond the Holocaust.

Social Media links for Daniel:   
Shofarot – https://ritualwell.org/ritual/shofarot-tripartite-proposal
American Kaddish – https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2018/11/02/an-american-kaddish/
“New Simanim for a New Year (5781) – https://ritualwell.org/ritual/new-simanim-new-year-5781/
Monsoon prayer – https://ritualwell.org/ritual/tefillat-ha-monsoon-prayer-southwest-monsoon
“Praying for the Monsoon: An Arizona Liturgical Adventure” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lLGR-TBgSI
Homage to the Italian Jewish tradition (and Purim) – https://youtu.be/-njuXO2sqso

Social Media links for Méli:
Talking with God Project – https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisolomon/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066435622271

Transcript:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/1851013/episodes/14024564

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Transcript

Daniel Stein Kokin transcript

Reinterpreting Jewish Liturgy

Meli  [00:00:05]:

Hello, and welcome to Living Our Beliefs, a home for open conversations with fellow Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Through personal stories and reflection, we will explore how our religious traditions show up in daily life. I am your host, Meli Solomon. So glad you could join us. This podcast is part of my talking with God project. To learn more about that research and invite me to give a talk or workshop, go to my website, www.talkingwithgodproject.org. This is episode 54, and my guest today is Daniel Stein Kogan. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Daniel earned his BA in classics from the University of Chicago and his PhD in cultural and intellectual history from Harvard. He has taught at Yale, the University of Oregon, UCLA, and the University of Greifswald in Germany. Currently, he is a visiting researcher at Arizona State University. With research interests spanning Jewish, Israel, and European studies. Daniel has published on Renaissance humanism, Christian Kabbalah, Jewish visual culture, and Israeli film and music. In addition, he creates academic dramatic hybrid performances. Daniel is also the founder and director of All The Points, which produces online interactive maps tracing the history of settlement in modern Israel and Palestine. Finally, he enjoys creating new liturgical texts that draw upon the Jewish tradition to address contemporary concerns. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his family. His social media links are listed in the show notes. Hello, Daniel. Welcome to my Living Our Beliefs podcast. I'm so pleased to have you on today.

Daniel [00:02:13]:

Hello, Meli. I'm so pleased to to be here with you today. Thank you so much for inviting me. 

Meli 

There are a number of things we want to talk about, your own faith path and some things about the work you do, but first I'd really like to start on the personal side. What is your religious and cultural identity?

Daniel [00:02:33]:

I am an American Jew, an American Ashkenazi Jew with Eastern European background.

Meli  [00:02:40]:

What denomination are you currently a part of?

Daniel [00:02:44]:

Yes. Perhaps I should have said that. So I was raised as a conservative Jew. And I guess if you had to insist on Placing me in in this rubric, then I would still be a conservative Jew. But honestly speaking, I don't particularly identify with Any of the denominations, and I actually pride myself to a certain degree on my ability to navigate fluidly amongst them.

Meli  [00:03:12]:

I've had people say, I'm just a Jew or I'm just a Christian or, you know, whatever. They don't even wanna use a denominational label. Do you feel that way? Do you prefer to just say, hey, I'm a Jew, and you're not really interested in in using the label at all?

Daniel [00:03:29]:

Pretty much, yes. Yeah. I think, I find it for me most accurate to say exactly what I said before. I am an Ashkenazi Jew. I come out of the Eastern European heritage that my family's been in America for many generations. Again, I mean, I'm very familiar with I'm most familiar with the conservative movement because it was I was raised and the synagogue that I currently most frequently attend is conservative. The synagogue or the small community where I sometimes lead services identifies as Limiting. And, again, I I don't feel that it quite does justice to who I am given that I feel comfortable in other contexts as well.

Daniel [00:04:13]:

Part of the reason for my discomfort is that I'm I I don't so much like these names themselves, reform, conservative, orthodox. I think for me, because my Jewish identity is so connected to my love of the Hebrew language, I'm a little bit reluctant to actually use English terms to to identify myself Jewishly. Of course, there are Hebrew equivalents, at least some of these designations, so for conservative in Israel or in Europe for that matter, people will refer to masorti, Judaism. Masorti, being related to the Hebrew term for tradition, masoret. But even there, I'm not so comfortable because I don't Simply like to label myself a, a traditional Jew. Though I am very, very connected to tradition, there's also very much a part of me that is interested in Reworking that tradition and trying out different things and really pushing the tradition in new directions, revisiting portions of the of the tradition while questioning others. So traditional doesn't quite do it for me, whether it's in Hebrew or English. Conservative is a problematic term I find because it so quickly has political or cultural connotations that one doesn't that one may or may not like.

Daniel [00:05:25]:

Orthodox, For me is somewhat limiting and problematic because first of all, it connotes correct opinion. That's what the Greek term orthodox literally means. And, I'm not comfortable labeling my I would not be comfortable labeling myself as somebody who holds to the the right Opinions. There are certain places where I think my opinions or my beliefs very much push in somewhat different directions. So That gives you a sense of why I find these particular labels somewhat somewhat limiting, somewhat baffling, honestly. And and also, I think part of the the Concern that I have with these labels is that, especially in an American Jewish context, it's very easy to just imagine that it's almost kind of natural that the Jewish world is Divided into reform, conservative, orthodox, but we shouldn't forget reconstructionist and renewal as well. I don't like this preconceived notion that, okay, these We can cut Judaism into all these different pieces. I actually think there's a lot of potential for reimagining how we think about what Judaism is, isn't, was, could be.

Meli  [00:06:28]:

I find it interesting that that the term you you are really comfortable with is the Ashkenazi heritage. What meaning does that hold for you?

Daniel [00:06:39]:

Yes. And I must confess I'm a little bit surprised perhaps that I even used it, but but I think it's Correct that I did, and your question is now prompting me to reflect on why that might be the case. So I guess I'll say in terms of my lived Jewish experience, So much of what I got from my upbringing in terms of the kinds of foods that we ate on Jewish, specifically holiday occasions, So many of the melodies that I was exposed to, these are things that very much continue very much to inform my Jewish practice they come out of an Ashkenazi Eastern European rubric, which is not to say that I don't have tremendous curiosity or even adopt or make use of, say, traditional foods or melodies that come from other other forms of Judaism. I do. I think, actually, What a nice thing about our current era, we live in what I sometimes would refer to as a kind of eclectic period of Jewish practice in which it's very standard to say, Your Pesach Seder make, a different kind of haroset. You encounter a recipe for Egyptian style haroset, and so you make that. And I actually do do that. I I try actually every year to try out a different harosset recipe.

Daniel [00:07:51]:

So I've made Moroccan, Egyptian, Yemenite, Italian, And so forth, in addition though to the standard, Ashkenazi charoset with apples and and walnuts. But, nonetheless, if I think about where I really come from, what are the foods, The melodies, the sounds, the Jewish atmosphere, the Jewish colors, so to speak, they are very much informed by an Ashkenazi experience. So I I talked about food quite a bit, But I'll I'll actually say further that my family and it strikes me as perhaps a little bit distinctive about my family. And I'm really speaking here about my father's side In comparison with Jewish friends or others that I often speak to, I often ask ask people, for example, like, what in your family, what do you eat on such and such an occasion? And people often tell me, well, we don't have any we try you know, we don't actually have something in particular that we that we consume. And in my family, I've we've actually held on to a number of of tradition. So for example, on Rosh Hashanah, we make a a yeast cake that's a it's a kind of babka, and this is something that my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, would make every year for Rosh Hashanah. We've held on to, quite a number of those, actually. So that's been very important.

Daniel [00:08:58]:

But not just food, also sounds. So, my father and uncle. My my father's brother grew up in Burrell Park in Brooklyn. And at their synagogue, there was a very famous cantor who produced a lot of records, and I grew up listening to these records, especially leading up to the Amim Noraim, to the high holidays. And Still today, I always will put on some of that music, in advance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And as I've, in recent years, have begun to lead services more and more myself, I I really have enjoyed very much learning the traditional noussah, the traditional melodies of Eastern European Ashkenazi duties, you know, the melodies that are used for particular services throughout the normal year and then particular melodies that are used, for particular holiday services and then the particular melodies for The various readings from the bible for the special Megilotes or scrolls that are read on festivals, Purim, and and so forth. So so, yes, I think it's quite appropriate that I that I refer to myself as an Ashkenazi Jew because, yes, traditional Ashkenazi practices very much inform how I might practice.

Meli  [00:10:06]:

What I'm hearing is that the food, the sounds, the melodies, the atmosphere, all of that grounds you in your Jewish identity and expression, which for you is Ashkenazi. But that doesn't mean that it is just that, that you you do experiment. You bring in other things. The thing that that I find for myself and what I hear from a lot of guests is the value of identifying with a denomination is, again, this sense of grounding in an identity, a sense of of being held and having a sense of, okay, this is how we practice. It's not that we are closed to other ways of doing it, but it's a lane to travel in.

Daniel [00:11:02]:

Mhmm.

Meli  [00:11:02]:

Because otherwise, you could just be, you know, constantly trying to reinvent and always question, and that can just be kind of chaotic. For me, this is the value of saying I'm a conservative Jew and I attend a conservative synagogue. Does that ring true for you, or or is that off base?

Daniel [00:11:23]:

What you say makes perfect sense. I think we all need or we all desire to feel grounded in in certain ways. I suppose for me, It's maybe other things that provide their grounding. I very much like the dialogue or the encounter between different forms of doing things. And perhaps for that reason, I am less comfortable with or require less to define find my Judaism in an ideological or movement or sectarian sense. I should say about myself that I've tended to be, in my adult life, somebody who has not really wanted to commit to 1 particular prayer community, one say, one particular synagogue, But it's actually enjoyed navigating between various communities. The moment that I am at one place, I feel I feel restricted or limited by that place, and I wanna sort of experience something else. And so it's precisely, again, that dialogue among different possibilities that actually, in the end, best captures who I am.

Meli  [00:12:30]:

So one of the other ways in in which you've been rather peripatetic is you've lived in a number of different countries and different cities as well. You're American. You grew up in America, but we know each other from our time in Berlin, Germany, and there are others yet besides. So could you just give a a fairly quick rundown of the different places you've lived, and then, you know, I wanna talk about what it's been like to be a Jew in those different places.

Daniel [00:12:59]:

Sure. And I think it makes the best sense to do this chronologically. So born and raised in Los Angeles until 18 until I finished high school, went to college in Chicago, then started graduate school in Boston. During graduate school, I then spent 2 years in Jerusalem in Israel, Then I came back to Boston, then I went back to Jerusalem, back to Israel for a year, then I was in Connecticut for 3 years, then Eugene, Oregon for a year, then Berlin, Germany where we met for 3 years. But then during that time, we then went to Florence, Italy for a year, and then we came back to Berlin for, I think, 2 or 3 more years. Then we went to Los Angeles, for 3 years and then the last I think we're now in our 4th year living in Phoenix. So yes. So I've lived in United States. I've lived in Germany. I've lived in Italy. I've lived in Israel. So, yes, I've seen a lot of different forms of Jewish practice. It's been tremendously enriching.

Meli  [00:13:59]:

Quite different places.

Daniel [00:14:01]:

Absolutely.

Meli  [00:14:03]:

Although you did note in an earlier conversation that one of the things you like about living in Phoenix, Arizona is that the landscape and perhaps also the weather is quite like Israel.

Daniel [00:14:17]:

Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, it depends obviously where exactly you are in Israel. And even growing up in Los Angeles, I grew up with a Mediterranean climate that's rather similar in many respects to that of Israel. But, yes, I would say that living in the desert here, I feel like it's just encouraged my creativity a little bit because what I've tried to do In being here is to place the conditions here in dialogue with the conditions in in the land of Israel, by which I mean the natural conditions, the the the climate conditions. I should note for the listener that I've always I'm a kind of hobby meteorologist. I've been a a weather buff since my early childhood. So one of the ways that I connect in a place in a new place when I go to it is to get to know the weather. And when once I have feel that I have a sense of the weather patterns, and I actually, it helps me feel at home in the place. And I I love rain. I love when interesting stuff happens. And one of the things that I'd always read about, growing up in Southern California is the Southwest Monsoon. So when I came to Phoenix, that was one of the things I was actually most curious about experiencing. And I had the idea of writing a prayer for the monsoon season, sort of a Jewish prayer for the monsoon. We have in various Jewish traditions, Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and and, you know, the various prayers for rain, that are said really according to the rainy season in the land of Israel, which runs from the fall through the spring, peaking in intensity in the winter. And so I thought when I got to Phoenix, oh, why not try to create a version of that prayer for the for the summer monsoon? Again, it really made Put my current situation in the land of Israel. It's very much in dialogue with one another. I was trying to think when exactly would one wanna say this prayer. And I thought to myself, well, why not try to link it to one of the weekly Torah portions that would anchor it sort of liturgically in in Jewish tradition? And so the monsoon typically starts sort of in July, early to mid July in in the Phoenix area. Looked at the Parshi oath or the Torah portions that are typically read, you know, in mid to late June, into early mid July. And I came upon Parashat Hukat, which is a Parashat that's really chock full of water issues because it recounts actually the Israelites in the desert, how they didn't have water and how they fought over water. And there was water, but it was bitter. It wasn't really drinkable. It just so happens that that Parasha really is chanted right around the time that the the monsoon Starts or should start in Arizona. And I used, actually, a lot of the contents of that parsha as building blocks for the various verses of the prayer. In writing this text, I learned so much more and became so much more at home in Arizona. And at the same time, I learned so much more about Tanakh, about the bible, and so much more about rain and water in the land of Israel. And I love it when that happens because I think a fundamental principle of my life and my identity is that one side of the identity and the other side of the identity, say, the my Jewish side, the Jewish side of my identity, the non-Jewish side of my identity, they actually don't need to conflict with one another. They can actually reinforce one another. If I could just actually add something, that's something that I really learned from my exposure to the Italian Jewish tradition. At its best, that's exactly what happens. The Italian side of an Italian Jew's identity and the Jewish side of their Jewish identity, they just reinforce one another. And so I think when I engage in projects like this prayer, I think I'm in a sense trying to implement the lesson that I learned from that Jewish heritage.

Meli  [00:17:53]:

I'm hearing a merging of aspects of identity in these experiences, not a toggling between.

Daniel [00:18:01]:

Yes. Merging is good, but I would say even more, they strengthen one another. It's not necessarily that they disappear into one another. They they, in a sense, remain distinct things, but they the the encounter between them strengthens each side. At least that's how I like to think about it.

Meli  [00:18:18]:

But in thinking more broadly, and and thanks for the rundown, the long rundown of all the different places you've lived, some of these places have larger Jewish communities than others. When we were in Berlin, Germany, that was certainly for me, and I I'm guessing for you as well, quite a different kind of experience than Israel, LA, which I understand has a big Jewish community. Can you say just a few words about how it's been for you in terms of feeling your life as a Jew and expressing that side of yourself when you've been part of the minority versus the majority culture?

Daniel [00:19:00]:

Yeah. It's a it's a great question. And I I think the first thing I wanna say is that the demographic size, it's not the sole criteria. It's not just how Jewish is a place today, but the history of the place also matters. So for example, Berlin. You're right. We lived in Berlin. I mean, it's relative to Los Angeles with its perhaps 600, 700,000 Jews. Berlin, officially 11, 12,000 in the community, maybe 30,000 in total. Quite a small community by North American or Israeli standards, and yet Berlin is in so many ways a very Jewish city because of its because of its past. There's still a very strong presence of Judaism and Jewish culture in the city today in the sense in terms of how things are remembered. But even in terms of the kinds of conferences or cultural events or things that are happening, there's quite a lot Jewishly that's that's happening there, actually. And for me, what was so enriching about being in Berlin was just the exposure to different kinds of Jewish narratives. I really didn't know that much about the German Jewish German Jewish history before I got there, but you imbibe some of it as you're there even if so much, of course, was lost and horrendously lost. Nonetheless, they're little pieces. They're strands that remain. It was really wonderful being exposed to those and even adopting some of those into our Jewish life. If you're living in a place that's sort of in a way saturated with Jewish life, like, you know, New York, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, I'd say less incentive for you to carve out or create your own distinctive Jewish approach or Jewish identity sometimes leads to, I would almost say, a kind of laziness in the North American Jewish world that I think in a place like Berlin or Italy, you don't have the luxury of just sort of going with the flow. And even in Phoenix, you know, it's a it's a it's a large Jewish community relative to most of the world, but it's quite small relative to Los Angeles and New York or places in Israel. And it's also a young place. Know, people Jews haven't been here for so long, or it's only in recent years that this community is fairly substantial. And that, for me, has constituted an invitation to really try to to create stuff here. And in some ways, in terms of the kinds of Jewish cultural stuff I'm doing, this has been one of, and perhaps the most creative period in my life, precisely because I feel like there's just space and indeed a need to try to to create things here.

Meli  [00:21:31]:

Part of your answer surprises me a little just because, you know, we were in the same city, we lived in the same part of the city, and we went to the same synagogue. So there's a lot of parallel in our experiences, and yet I had a slightly different experience. I was very aware of needing to actively choose, seek out, find, identify, join a congregation, really contribute as a volunteer in a much more active way than I'd had to do in the American cities I lived in, Boston, New York, and Seattle, all of which have sizable Jewish communities and where you can and you alluded to this. You can be kind of passively Jewish, and you can get, as you said, kind of lazy about it. I suppose in this way, we we had similar experiences in Berlin where it was invigorating. Actually, I found it really invigorating to need to be conscious and and show up because the congregation was so small. The history you mentioned, certainly the history in Germany and typically in Berlin, there's so much dark history in terms of the Jewish history there that All those visitors that were constantly traipsing through our synagogue was one of the things that I loved about showing up for services. I loved that aspect, and yet it was so often clear that they were visiting on a dark history tour. Right? They were going to the camps, that the Nazis built, and and then they would go on to Israel and do life as a Jew today. So that was the aspect of history that really was very strong for me there.

Daniel [00:23:24]:

Oh, interesting. A few comments. So one, this goes back to size. And again, it's not for me, it's not just the demographic also what is the experience like. And as you noted, one of the great things about being in Berlin is that it was just so many people are constantly passing through Berlin from so many places Jewishly, such that even though the community itself is very small, there was I had the exact same feeling of, oh, who am I gonna run into today? And we had that sense because one often quite often did run into You know, every time pretty much every Shabbat, there was somebody visiting from the states or from Israel or somewhere else, and sometimes people who were new in some way or had some connection with. That's one thing. And in terms of what was bringing them there, yeah, I mean, certainly, the dark past was one of the main motivations why people came. But, certainly, there was also a lot of interest, And there's a lot of official interest and a lot of official tours meant to showcase the rebirth of Jewish life in Germany and so forth. And that, sometimes maybe even that narrative gets a little bit tiresome. But nonetheless, there were people who were coming and were interested in seeing that there was actually life. There was some new beginning a new start in some form there. So that to me, I mean, I I would also throw that in as an important part of the of the experience. In terms of how you're thinking about the history look, I, having grown up in in North American Judaism, I mean, there's a certain kind of Holocaust saturation that I've experienced, that is that it's just discussion and commemoration of the Holocaust has been just such an important and ever present part of my Jewish education, I actually seek out opportunities to see the the other sides of of Jewish life. When I when I did those years in Berlin, I really was seeking out and exploring German Jewish history, you know, you know, pre-Shoah. And even just sort of learning sort of narratives of Jewish history, sort of the the the impression that one had sort of from spending time in North America or Israel was that, course, after after the Holocaust, there was no future for Jews in a place like Germany, so everybody you know, they went to Israel or they went to North America or they went somewhere or they to England or they went somewhere else. But when you were in Germany, you actually did hear about or encounter people who came back to Germany. Not saying that we're talking about a lot of people, but it was some. And even about people who went to Eastern Germany to, you know, to communist part of Germany after the war because they wanted to, you know, play a part in creating a new society. That was fascinating for me. I got I was exposed to an entirely new Jewish narrative. I appreciated that that opportunity. I think I've taken something with that in delighting and are trying to to push narratives against one another and see what emerges when you when you do that. Because if you are too steeped in a particular narrative, it closes you off in a sense. I'm very glad. I feel very blessed that I had the opportunity to experience firsthand other kinds of narratives. And sort of the importance of Zionism in the state of Israel and my Jewish identity, we haven't really touched upon, but that plays a humongous role in my in my identity and lived practices as a Jew as well. So it's not that I'd prefer, you know, this German, narrative over that. It was just it was enriching to have that narrative, you know, to learn about German Jews who spent the war years in Palestine and then after World War 2 came back to Germany. What? They didn't stick around for the creation of the state of Israel? They came back to Germany? Or they moved to Germany in the fifties or the sixties? Yes. There are people like that. Or they come they've come to Berlin now in the last generation. Fascinating.

Meli  [00:26:52]:

Yeah. Absolutely. It's so good to be reminded that there are many, many, many ways of living a religion. And, again, just as as a as a final note on the Berlin experience, one of the populations that hadn't gotten mentioned yet is is the Russian Jews. Right? That was, for me, also, a new aspect of a Jewish community. And it was fascinating. You know? I I loved that as a greeter at the door of the, a sanctuary I would be handing out books. And and the first question was, what language do you speak? Because we had books that had Hebrew and German, Hebrew and English, and Hebrew and Russian. And so you had to know, you know, what what book should I give you? There was an opening to other experiences.

Daniel [00:27:48]:

Yes. Yeah. No. The Russian Jewish experience was definitely important or that aspect of life there was certainly important for us. Our kids were at, at the Jewish schools, and a very large portion of their classmates were were native Russian speakers. So our kids learned how to sing, happy birthday in Russian and picked up some other Russian slang at school. And for me, I think, It often threw people off when I would show up, and I would insist on taking one of the Russian Hebrews, Siddurim. I used my time in synagogue to gradually, you know, Learn the Russian alphabet and to learn some Russian by comparing the Hebrew with the with the Russian.

Meli  [00:28:26]:

How is it for you to be in a service that is predominantly Hebrew, but then also whatever the local language is. Do you take the prayer book of that local place, and does it feel different? How does it feel different?

Daniel [00:28:47]:

First of all, say I just I love it. I mean, I love languages. So much fun to just Have a siddur that looks different, feels different, has a different language in it. And from looking at these siddurs, try to see what you can learn about that place and its history and its identity. From the introduction to the siddur, you know, how old is it, where was it printed? What what rabbis or what people in the community were involved in producing it? What Interesting or surprising extra stuff does it have in it that you wouldn't have expected? I mean, all, you know, any book, any prayer book, it will reveal things about the place you're in. Maybe there's a little bit of anthropologist in me that just wants to start to see, like, how much can I figure out about this about this place, about this community? To what degree can I sort of manage to integrate myself into it even though I'm obviously an absolute foreigner? And one of the ways that I've tried to do that on a few occasions is by trying to learn some of the local melodies. So I had this many years ago, and when I was spending a few months in Rome, I was asked at one point if I would do the chant, the Haftarah, one Shabbat, the reading from the from the prophets after the weekly Torah portion. And I said I would, but I wanted to do it in the with the melody that was typically used there. And so one of the active people in the in the congregation made made me a recording of the of the haftorah that I had been called upon to chant. And I remember as I was walking to the libraries where I was working in Rome from where I was living, I would always have my headphones on and just be listening to this as I was crossing the Tiber River. I love that. And, actually, this past summer, I was back in Florence for a month. And on my last Shabbat, I For my last Shabbat, I asked if I could do the haftarah, and I had the rabbi make me a recording of the of the different different melody that they use in Florence as compared with melody of Rome, and I and I chanted the haftorah as it's done in in Florence. It's not easy to learn a new melody, but enjoy the experience of, like, trying to See, like, can I manage? Not to pass off as a native, but at least to to learn, what what's done in a place.

Meli  [00:30:53]:

Did you feel that you saw a different side to the text that you were chanting because you were doing the different melody?

Daniel [00:31:05]:

That's an interesting question. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that I that I did. I do definitely feel that some of the different melodies that are used, say, within the Ashkenazic rite do lend a different meaning to the text. I'm thinking in particular of the special melody used for the Torah readings on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which has a very kind of solemn. The bottom, in a way, drops out of the text. You feel that this the depth of it somehow more. They didn't say the the typical trope, the typical melodies of the Torah reading during the regular year. Going from country to country, I it's hard for me to say.

Meli  [00:31:46]:

Yeah. Part of why I ask is because I felt it was a different experience in Berlin when as my German got better, I would sometimes take the German Hebrew book. I don't understand the Hebrew, so I really needed the other side of the book to understand what we were talking about. It did feel different. I felt different saying the prayers in German than I did in English partly because I needed to more actively participate. I couldn't passively understand, and so that already was a different experience. You know, language has a sound, and languages do have a different feel. You know, Italian is so different from German in terms of just the sound and the cadence and just the emotion it it brings with it because of that.

Daniel [00:32:39]:

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And even though I said before that, I mean, that that I have a very deep, strong attachment to the Hebrew language and to the liturgy in Hebrew. I do also like it when other languages are brought in, and it's interesting to me that other languages are brought in. Even in the liturgy that I write, I mean, I there's a lot of, English that that I use for sure.

Meli  [00:33:01]:

Right. So I'm so glad you brought that up. I did want, just in these closing moments, to turn back to the question of your writing liturgy. It sounds like that prairie you wrote about the rain, but I gather that is not a one off. Can you give me a sense of how much you've written, why you write, what you write, what inspires you to write the things you write.

Daniel [00:33:27]:

Mhmm. Sure. And just apropos of that prayer, it's available on a website called Ritual Well, which is run by the Reconstructionist movement actually, and it's a clearing house for new alternative At some point is that the more you invest in anything, the more you get out of it. If you're just sort of doing passively what you've always done, It's hard to grow, actually. Whereas if you say on the occasion of a holiday, I'm gonna do something different that's gonna sort of expand my horizon with that holiday. So I think in that rubric, Liturgy, it's sort of in a way became natural to sort of say, well, well, I'm gonna write something. Or, you know, when I'm in a new place, I'm gonna write something new that's gonna help me connect with that place in the case of the monsoon prayer. I think that's I think that's part of it. Writing liturgy is also constitutes an opportunity to wrestle with, you know, what's what's going on in in the world at a particular point in time. One text that I wrote a few years back, what I, in the end, called an American Kaddish, an American Mourners Kaddish, in which I intersperse the sites or the names of various mass shootings into the mourner's Kaddish prayer. This technique, let's say, of intermixing sites of tragedy into the text of the Mourners' Kaddish is something that goes back Really to the mid 20th century. So, one place we encounter it is in a 1972 Machzor, which is the high holiday prayer book. The distinguished conservative rabbi Jules Harlow edited it. He actually wrote one which intersperses sites of Jewish tragedy, especially the holocaust, but other places in the Jewish past where there were massacres and tragic events took place. I don't know if I'd even like it or not, but something about that, I I found it interesting. I found it an interesting way of engaging with the text of the mourner's Kaddish. So I had this idea of writing such a text, but then the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh happened. And that really was then the impetus to actually to actually write this. And so in the original version of this, basically, I interjected throughout the prayer the names of these various places where mass shootings had happened and then concluded with Pittsburgh. Here was a place where my Jewish identity and my American identity, in a way, sort of collided with one another and, again, strengthening one another. Strengthening one another because I was able to do something with the events of Pittsburgh that, for me, it was meaningful, and it did something for this text of the Mourner’s Kaddish that we're all so intimately familiar with. It lent it a certain freshness. I guess, I hate to use that word in talking about tragic events, but it it enabled it to take on a new valence, let's say. And at the same time, it enabled me to respond as an American to just one of the great ongoing tragedies of contemporary American life, you know, these these horrendous shootings that we have. And again, it was a place where I felt my Jewish identities and my American identities. I guess you could say they merged to go back to your language before, But I would also say they they they reinforce one another. They strengthen one another. Okay. Flash forward a few years, and we're speaking now in late October 2023, And we're just a few weeks out from the horrendous events of, Simchat Torah or October 7th, the surprise Hamas attacks on southern Israel in which in which Jews and a number of, Israeli communities were were massacred and carted away into the Gaza Strip and were still very much the beginning of the aftermath of that, horrendous day. But as I reflected, as I mourned, as I grieved over what had happened, as I tried to process what happened. It occurred to me that here would be an opportunity to write really collate. It's not really writing, but collate perhaps yet another one of these tragedy Kaddish is in that. And so my most recent piece of liturgy is, what I call, a a Mourner's Kaddish for the Israeli south, In which the text of the mourner's Kaddish, which again is a text that that mourners traditionally recite in the aftermath of the death of a close relative or then on the anniversary of of that passing. So I inter interspersed the traditional text with the sites of fatalities in southern Israel. So I I produced this Kaddish for me to give voice to this the enormity of the tragedy because so many communities were affected. And so in Interjecting throughout the course of this prayer, the the names of these different communities, it really there's space to give voice to the just the magnitude, the enormity of the of the of the events that took place. And it was a way for me to engage that part of me that feels very connected to to Israel and the Israeli Jewish reason to write something.

Meli  [00:38:17]:

Hopefully, sometimes you're writing things because of happy times as well. Perhaps your your daughter's bat mitzvah on those 2 occasions maybe or or somebody's wedding. Well, you did the thing about the rain.

Daniel [00:38:34]:

Yes. I mean, I guess I would say there are other there are other things that I do as well. I I've written simanim for Rosh Hashanah for the new year. Ashkenazi Jews in particular, they will eat an apple. Typically, sweet fruit is a way of hopefully pretending a sweet new year. And there's a little text. There's often a a cute wordplay that connects the Hebrew name or sometimes even the non-Hebrew name. Maybe even there are some Yiddish ones. It is something that's not entirely foreign to the Ashkenazi Jewish experience. You know, so one of the things that I've sort of introduced in our household is to to eat tofu On Rosh Hashanah, and I'm playing on tofu and the and the Hebrew word root, which is like to drip, you know, so that there should be a lot of rain in the new year, so and and so forth.

Meli  [00:39:24]:

In so much of what we've spoken of today, Daniel, I've I've been hearing all sort of ways in which you have invited and really eagerly moved towards bringing things together and seeing how do these 2 aspects, these 2 cultures or 2 languages or a Kaddish, and an event. How do they meet, and what does it mean when they meet? This is what really stands out for me in in getting to know your expression as a Jew better, and I I so appreciate that. So thank you again for coming on my Living Our Beliefs podcast. This has been great, and I look forward to reading some of your new creative prayers and, continuing to learn more about how you express your Jewish Identity.

Daniel [00:40:23]:

Alright. Well, thank you very much. No. It's been fun for me to reflect on, I guess, my Jewish history, let's say, in all the places that I've lived and what I've what I've done, you know, how it's impacted my practice or how I think about How to live, lead a Jewish life. Thank you so much for inviting me to be, to be a guest on your on your show. It's been fun. 

Meli  [00:40:48]:

Thank you for listening. If you'd like to get notified when new episodes are released, hit the subscribe button. Questions and comments are welcome and can be sent directly to info@talkingwithgodproject.org. A link is in the show notes. Transcripts are available a few weeks after airing. This podcast is an outgrowth of my Talking with God Project. For more information about that research, including workshop and presentation options, Go to my website, www.talkingwithgodproject.org. Thank you so much.