“Liturgical Field” is a concept central to creating new liturgies that work because they remain rooted in tradition. The “field” is everything that exists around a piece of liturgy, whether a poem, prose, or a song. Elements of the liturgical field include:
- what comes directly before and after
- the meaning or purpose of the piece
- how the sound of the piece works (separate from the meaning)
- if the energy is rising or falling
- what connections a congregation have to the piece (both communal and personal)
- if there is a traditional way the congregation has done that piece (melody, chant, single voice, reading in unison)
- if people are sitting or standing, holding still or moving
- time of day (evening, morning, which also affect the light in the room)
A lot, right? But one reason so many attempts at new liturgies don’t click is because they don’t pay attention to the liturgical field. A prayer is rewritten to better fit modern sensibility, but the sound and rhythm are all wrong so it never feels right. A new song is introduced which people like on its own, but it doesn’t fit into the service because it’s a completely different key or tone than what’s happening around it. Or – a familiar struggle to me – Hebrew written in masculine is switched to feminine, with exactly the same words and meaning, but the familiar “cha” endings become “eich” and everyone is disoriented and unhappy, though they often don’t know why.
When you are creating new liturgy, attending to as many elements of the liturgical field as possible will help people experience the new as also familiar, which honors the prayer life of the community and helps overcome people’s resistance to change. One example from Fringes is our Adon Olam – we had a song that had been introduced into our synagogue because the words were stunning (Jennifer Berezan’s “She Carries Me”) and evoked the same themes and emotions as the words to adon olam. But the melody was written to be performed, not sung as a group, and was never going to work as a liturgical piece people sing together. The piece was in 4/4 so our song leader, Karen Escovitz, started experimenting with setting it to adon olam tunes, settling on a more somber one used in the High Holidays. It fits perfectly for us, and anyone who knows Jewish services can sing along instantly, even though the song itself is new.
The more liturgy I create, the more I’ve been paying attention to the sound patterns of the Hebrew and how I can echo them in English. In an asher yatzar translation I’ve been working on for years now, I knew how much I love the repetition of “nekavim nekavim chalulim, chalulim” – for me, the sound of that was key to the magic of the prayer. While I’ve never gotten that rhythm just right, I eventually captured the repetition through the sound play of “open openings and holy holes.” Even if you don’t know the meaning of the Hebrew, if you’ve heard the prayer constantly you feel the repetition in it, and feel it again in the English, so what is new is at the same time comfortable and familiar.
Here’s that translation, which we read all together after reading the Hebrew original:
Let us bless how from the earth these bodies of wisdom were created, alive as they are,
all open openings and holy holes.
Unconcealed, revealed, we face the fate of our dignity:
if wrongly opened one would be, or wrongly closed another,
we know not how we could withstand.
Broken though this flesh can be,
still we love this life while we last.
Blessed and blessing, we bow to both the healing of sleep
and the daily miraculous of awakening.
Elliott batTzedek holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, where her translation of Dance of the Lunatic by the Israeli lesbian writer Shez won the Robert Bly Translation prize, judged by Martha Collins. Elliott is the recipient of a Leeway Foundation Art and Change Award, and an attendee at the inaugural conference for Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry. Her poems and translations have been published in: Review, LilithIn the midrash (rabbinic story about the Torah story), Lilith is imagined as Adam's first wife. Because she wanted equality, she wss ultimately banished, and God provided Adam with a more obedient wife. Lilith, according to tradition, lives on as a kind of demon, causing men to have wet dreams and stealing infant boys from their cribs. Today, Lilith has been reclaimed by Jewish feminists as a symbol of women's equality., Sakura Review, Apiary, Cahoodaloodaling, Naugatuck River Review, Poemeleon, Poetica, Philadelphia Stories, and a Split This Rock poem of the week. Her chapbook the enkindled coal of my tongue was published in January, 2017 by Wicked Banshee Press. A chapbook of translations from the Israeli lesbian poet Shez, A Necklace of White Pearls, was published by Moonstone in July 2024. She is the co-leader of Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurahLit. Group of friends Commonly has come to mean an alternative prayer community. In the 1970’s, havurot (plural) developed as an alternative to large syngagogues. Some havurot pray together; others study, socialize, or engage in some alternative activity., which was founded in 2007 and serves as a liturgy lab for communities across the U.S. Elliott is a member of Ritualwell’s ADVOT.
