avanah for the Aleynu

The prayer we are about to read, the Aleynu, is both an everyday prayer, once that is said near the conclusion of most services – and also one with tremendous history. What we are reading today is titled an ‘alternative Aleynu’ in our makhzor. We are a congregation that often likes to bring alternatives into our services. We bring in new readings and alternative blessings that somehow try to capture the ways in which the DJC strives to embrace enough tradition, but also to make space for the many among us who find some of the tradition troubling and who want to creatively, lovingly and thoughtfully be part of building new traditions that include more of us and all the differences we bring to this community.

This particular blessing – not infrequently referred to as one of the most sublime prayers of the entire liturgy - has been changed and shifted over time in so many ways I could not keep track in trying to trace it’s history. However, at the centre of the discomfort with the traditional Aleynu, and the point at which the blessing is most often altered, is the idea of Jews as the Chosen People, and the expressed reverences for God, “who has not made us like the gentiles of the lands…” This sentiment is remarkably similar to another blessing many of us struggle with – the morning blessing said by men which praises God for not making them women.

I was honoured to be asked to give a Kavanah at this service – new-ish to the congregation, I am still finding my way and trying to make a place for myself and my family here. I grew up in a mixed-faith home, and have in turn created a mixed-faith family as an adult. To be with this family in a place that truly, deeply welcomes both Jew and non-Jew is a requirement for me, and is not something I have found easily. The alternative Aleynu, which shifts the idea of being thankful for not being gentile to something more embracing is therefore poignantly meaningful for me…

It is important for me, for my non-Jewish partner, and perhaps most movingly it is important for my children, who despite my best efforts to indoctrinate them as Jews, stubbornly and lovingly won’t ‘renounce’ their father, as I think they see it, and insist they are ‘half’ Jewish, matrilineal lineage aside. The other ‘half’ is part of who they are, and I want and need a Jewish world for them that not only tolerates, but embraces all of who they are.

Many of us embrace differences between us, whether of ethnicity, skin colour, sexuality, financial resources, mother tongue or religion. We find these spaces between us to be places where creativity flourishes, where politics are born, and where kindness and compassion are nurtured. I am thankful to the DJC for being a community that seems to strive for the honouring of these differences amongst us.

The title of the Aleynu loosely translates into ‘we must’ or more clearly, ‘it is our duty.’ Traditionally, our duty to honour god, maybe more particularly to praise god, but also leteken olam, to repair the world. So near the end of this service – the Aleynu reminds me of the need to honour and praise, relish and be thankful for a way of being Jewish that fosters both tradition and change, both Jew and non-Jew, that nurtures and embraces the vast and inspiring differences amongst us, and that prods and reminds us that this work is part of tikkun olam, making our world better for all…

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