Approaching Prayer

Art Green calls prayer “the living heart of Jewish faith, the daily outpouring of the soul before God.” Judaism has always tried to strike the proper balance between fixed, prescribed prayer, on the one hand, and spontaneous creative prayer, on the other. Prayer is both a deeply personal phenomenon, and one that is shared and held by the collective.
 
At Congregation Beth El, we give people different outlets to gather together and express prayer. Sometimes prayer happens when we are engaged in song, sometimes when we are fiercely debating a story in the Torah, sometimes when we are dancing, sometimes when we are sitting in silence. Every Shabbat morning from 10am-noon, our community gathers for song, story and Torah discussion. Every Wednesday morning from 7:00-7:45am there is a morning meditation in the sanctuary, and we offer twice yearly 3-4 day silent retreats led by Rabbis Vanessa and Joshua Boettiger and Rabbinic Intern Diana Miller. We also gather on the first Friday evening of every month from 6:00-7:30pm for musical family Friday night services with singer-songwriter Bernice Lewis (link to http://www.bernicelewis.com/ ) and Rabbi Boettiger, followed by a potluck Shabbat dinner, for prayer also happens when we break bread together. We offer alternative chanting or musical services on selected dates, so keep tabs on our calendar (internal link to calendar) of events.
 
If we extend and expand our notion of prayer, we could say that our social action work—whether raising money for Darfur or offering community dinners to those in need in the Bennington community—are also examples of prayer. When Abraham Joshua Heschel marched with Martin Luther King on Shabbat in Selma, he famously said that his “feet are praying.”