blogs/brentspodek

Beacon Hebrew Alliance is organized around the big idea that Judaism is a pool of living waters in which to swim, not a precious, fragile heirloom we're afraid of breaking.

That means we try, we experiment, we splash around in the water and see what works and what doesn't.

Over the past few months, Cantor Ellen and I have been tinkering with a more contemplative approach to Friday night davvening, which we are calling Bina (pronounced: bee-nah).

When Zoketsu Norman Fischer came to speak and lead last year, we improvised a Friday night service which used the traditional Friday night service as the basis for meditative chant. Instead of saying every word of the liturgy quickly, we chanted a few verses deliberately, in Hebrew and in English, so they had a chance to no only come out of our mouths but into our hearts.

Later, Cantor Ellen added a shruti box, which is sort of an Indian accordion that provides a musical foundation for a Indian call-and-response devotional chanting known as kirtan. The tone the shruti box provides will become the foundation for our own Shabbat call and response davening on Friday night.

Finally, the name - Bina is one of the highest aspects of the Divine in the kabbalistic system. It's understood to be the foundation for Divine energy in the world and in modern Hebrew it means insight.

It is very much our hope that this way of davvening will become the basis for Divine energy in our own lives and will be the basis for renewed insight about the world and our role in it. The next service is this Friday night, March 11, following Rabbi Regina Sandler Phillips teaching on Death and Dying in the Jewish tradition. Details here.