Every day of this past week Kehilat HaNahar has held our “Elul check-ins,” a daily virtual gathering organized by congregant Betsy Stern. This daily meeting (really a minyan!) brings us together for a teaching, often led by a different person, as well as the chanting of Psalm 27 and the blowing of the shofar. It’s a marvelous way to spend 10-15 minutes every morning of the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah.
This week for my contribution, I shared a teaching on the prayer Modah Ani:
מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מלך חַי וְקַיָּם שֶהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ Modah ani l’fanecha, melech chai v’kayam, shehechezarta bi nishmati b’chemla, raba emunatecha
I thank You, living and enduring King, for You have graciously returned my soul within me. Great is Your faithfulness.
Modeh Ani (Hebrew masculine) or Modah Ani (Hebrew feminine) is traditionally recited every morning upon waking. The prayer states: I thank You, living and sustaining Sovereign, who has returned my soul to me graciously, great is Your faith in me. I find that this prayer helps me every morning remember what is important by centering gratitude and Gd’s presence in my life. It is a helpful way to start a new day with great intention.
One time a few years ago, I was leading services for a new community (one very different from Kehilat HaNahar) I introduced the prayer by saying, “Now please turn to page 26 and join me in reciting ‘Modah Ani.’” The cantor of the community leaned into his microphone from his lectern and corrected me, saying, “We know this prayer as Mo-DEH ani on page 26.” Even today, that small interruption made by a well-meaning cantor still upsets me because what the cantor was implying in that moment was that everyone in the congregation only knew the prayer in the Hebrew masculine language, Modeh Ani, not the feminine. And whether he intended it or not, the effect of his words was that the male language was the normative prayer and my version, with the Hebrew feminine language, was the “alternative” version. At that moment, even as a rabbi, I felt othered by him and mocked for my “lack of traditional protocol.”
This was a relatively small moment, but I still think about it every time I use gendered language in Hebrew. This moment, while relatively painless, also gave me some insight into how embarrassing, othering, and treacherous the world of language and traditional norms may feel to a non-binary or transgender person. Hebrew is binary, but there is an effort in modern Jewish spaces to create non-binary prayer language. The Nonbinary Hebrew Project, a free, community-based language initiative, provides language and tools to create more meaningful liturgy and conversations in Jewish community around gender, offering a “third gender Hebrew grammatical system.” For example, they offer “Mo-DET Ani” as a third option to Modeh/Modah Ani.
It may seem simple or unnecessary to many; it’s just an added letter to a word that was already there. But just as Jewish women created, fought for, and popularized more inclusive and egalitarian Hebrew liturgy after being absent from traditional liturgy for so long, transgender and nonbinary people deserve representation as well. Whenever anyone says, why do we need to include nonbinary language in prayer? I think of how foreign it felt for many Jews to add in “Elohei Sarah, Elohei Rivkah, Elohei Rachel, v’Elohei Leah” to the first blessing of the Amidah. But today, most of our students learning Jewish prayer for the first time do not even know that the matriarchs were a late addition.
The beautifully designed Siddur Or U’Masoret: A New Sefaradi Siddur (seen in the image above) also contains this new addition to the Modeh Ani prayer. In fact, the Siddur Or U’Masoret is the first published siddur containing Hebrew additions created by the Nonbinary Hebrew Project! You can find the entire prayerbook on Open Siddur Project here.
Since its creation, our KHN community has been a trailblazer as an inclusive and supportive Jewish space, especially for the Gay and Lesbian Jewish community of New Hope and Lambertville. How do we continue to create more space for those who are currently not represented in our building? In a political climate where transgender and nonbinary people are being attacked at an alarming rate and experiencing a removal of basic human rights, how do we fight for their safety? Adding nonbinary language to liturgy is one easy and small way to show transgender and nonbinary people that we see them and support them.
Here is more information on how we can do even better in 5786 for the transgender and nonbinary community locally and globally:
