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The Amidah Project: Three a Day the RJ Way

A reader asked how a Reform Jew can learn to pray Judaism’s traditional three weekday prayers. Here’s my guide on using Mishkan T’filah, the current RJ prayerbook, to do just that.

The Amidah Project: Modeh Ani (Video)

The Modeh Ani: prayer upon waking or jaunty country song? It’s how I greet the world every morning, thanking God for the gift of another day. But I’m never able to get a certain Kol B’Seder melody out of my head. And that’s okay. Gratitude is never something to be embarrassed about.

The Amidah Project: Laying Tefillin–Wearing Your Prayer on Your Sleeve (Video)

Phylacteries. Except, no Jew calls them that. They’re tefillin, and Jews are commanded to wrap themselves in them before morning prayer. They’re a part of my morning ritual. Here’s what that looks like.

The Amidah Project: Kol Nidre

To experience the t’shuvah of Kol Nidre, who really cares about the legal basis for Judaism’s most famous High Holy Day chant?

Amidah Project: Everything Is Holy

I find it hard to look at human suffering and see no-suffering. I find it hard to look at human faces and see no-faces. It’s not that, deep down, I feel we have any independent existence from God. It’s that I think we’re not supposed to see it that way.

The Amidah Project

Finding the still, small voice in a silent Amidah? Worth its weight in gold. Finding that silent Amidah in a Reform synagogue? Priceless. Explaining how finding that still, small voice feels? Worth a new blog series.