If liturgy’s not shared it’s not liturgy. It’s poetry.” By poetry, I mean someone’s privately owned and privately generated reflections. Liturgy needs not only to be shared in terms of copyright. It needs to be shared in terms of authorship—anyone should be able to modify any prayer and reproduce it. (Of course citing the source can help a liturgist do more and better work.) And it needs to be shared in another way: it shouldn’t make some members of a congergation feel like they belong, and others feel like they don’t belong. No one can own liturgy—not if it really is liturgy.
What is more, since our job is to bring Torah to the tasks of living in the world and making it better, we have to welcome every opportunity of bringing the realities and possibilities of that world to Torah. Any point we make, or that any text makes, or that any historical case study makes, can be amplified or questioned, driven home or rendered more far-reaching, by our ability—and the ability of everyone in every “classroom” or remote learning site—to summon up additional context and put it before the group instantaneously.
Jews have been involved in counterculture since the beginning of history. So there’s always an inherent element in Jewish culture, where you’re obligated to do what you think is right, even if the world is against you. That leads to counterculture. From Abbie Hoffman to Jerry Rubin, you often see that essence in Jewish culture.
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| — | Punk Jews producer Evan Kleinman via Moshiach Oi! Merges Orthodox Judaism and Punk Rock - NYTimes.com |
