good morning and welcome to mosaic i am rabbi eric ice i am honored to be your host. we are joined by rabbi angel and joe ellen green kaiser, ed forof a journal called zeke published nationally out of san francisco. welcome. >> good to be here. >> we are going to talk about the publication of a new prayer book that the congregation recently produced coming up to its first birthday of being out there in the world but took

many years i know to produce, let's start with some basicjust sort of start with what is the congregation and what sort of congregation is it and its history and set the stage for how it was able to produce such a phenomenal new prayer book. >> well, the congregation began in the 70s. started by three gay men with jewish backgrounds who realized they could claim their place in the jewish community and jewish religious community and not have to compromise their sexuality or really any part of themselves, and it was a good time for a great idea and 35 years something like that later, we are thriving. it was at the very beginning of the congregations history when these folks needed words to pray they went to the tradition

and found that their stories, some of the expressions of our humanity were missing and so from the early stage they did become a place for new liturgy. >> so, joe ellen what attracted you and your husband and family to become members of the congregation? >> we were looking for a congregation that would welcome us even though my husband is not jewish that wasn't ask me why he wasn't converting and a place where i felt comfortable with the different sexual identities pres sent and progressive nature of the congregation and participator nature of the congregation. i wanted to be engaged and the life and spiritual jewish life i have never found more engagement than in this one where members lead services,

members serve on a ritual community members run the programming and life of the congregation in a rich way and that attracted me i thought this is the environment where i want my child to grow up knowing as a jew she can take full ownership of her jewish identity. >> that is fantastic. >> that is why i came too. it is amazing now the congregation started out as gay and then lesbian and gay which as i recall was a big issue for awhile and then it is now lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, straight welcoming we include all genders and sexualities and are a welcoming place for people who find themselves wanting to be totally at home with who they are. >> i think as we serve, builds that though the congregation belongs to the reform movement of jewish life and the reform

movement like every movement of every demom nation has its own -- denomination has its own published prayer book, that this congregation though it is a member of the reform movement has never used the movement prayer book but from the very beginning claimed its own liturgical experience. >> i would add to that, that from cover to cover, it is filled with the words that we've retained from the traditions, so they appear in a reform sidur. in orthodox some of the english translations we have used come from both the reform and orthodox, so plus then there is

our own interpretations, maybe i shouldn't go so far into this, yet, but i can't wait to open it. >> yeah, i was the project manager for this prayer book you know and the permissions process we had to reach out back to all the different movements and ask permission to use their prayer this is a comely lace of prayer that is came from reform -- compilations of prayer that came from the reform movement, conservative movement and the whole majority of the prayers created by members of our community, poets, writers through the ages that we wanted to incorporate to make a rich variance for our membership. >> we will take a quick break and come back and talk about the process of is sidur and parts that are particularly tender and appealing. please join us back here in just a moment

good morning welcome back to mosaic. you see on this screen the cover of congregation's new siddur. we are joined by rabbi angel the rabbi of the congregation here in san francisco and member joe ellen green kaiser. editor of a national magazine a journal of jewish thoughts and culture. and joe ellen you were the project manager for the siddur we will show the inside cover it has a ring on it, it embodies the congregation. let us know how this got started and how you got doing it. >> love to. i feel that this image really conveys a lot of what the

process was. this is a prayer book that combines traditional jewish prayers, with the most contemporary jewish prayers and especially with the voices of our members, and what this ring is, the wedding ring is a traditional jewish illustration found in the medieval period but on top of it we have put images of our congregation. if you see on the far right side, there is an image of our actual building on there and previous buildings we have had behind it you see the trans america pyramid and also the buildings of injury us are lem it takes us from the past, -- jerusalem. it takes us from the past, we started with a prayer book that our congregation had been working on already for 25, 30 some years. ever since founding, as the rabbi said, in the last segment we have been creating new prayers what we did was we asked people to participate in this new project by writing

more prayers and andrew rammer who will be on in the next segment, supervised that process. we got 12 different members to be editors and took each section of the prayer book and edited each section, adding -- looking at what we already had and adding a mix of new pieces to it. we had an art committee that brought in new art work and what we did at every stage was we asked congregation members to contribute in every way they could. so many people became writers who never thought they could be writers, so many people became artists who never thought they could be artists. people proofread, people came to town hall meetings and looked at the design and said this is what i thing about this design people gave feedback on the content and they engaged over 200 members of the congregation in this project, bringing them all together, stepping through from their rough draft and initial ideas through an editorial process

that had five different stages including an editorial review board and a are bin call review board so that we could go from the real voices of real people through the tradition, through clergy and are bin call authority, and come out with a prayer book we feel speaks to everyone. >> in fact, contains then the voices of the congregation itself. >> absolutely. there are hundreds of writings in this prayer book that transmit the prayers written by our members that convey their real experiences their experiences of being single, when everybody says get married, their experience of being you know, transgendered when people say you have to be male or female their experience of wanting to share passionate kiss when they are two women. their experience of having to

bury a loved one when their loved one doesn't want to be buried in a jewish ceremony or having to bury a loved one who they were angry with or maybe -- what if your parent disowned you and then how do you bury that parent? how do you express the love and the hate red that you have for that person at the same time these are real experiences of real people that have been missing from our tradition that we were able to put back in because we used voices of real people we brought real people into the process and had them speak directly to god. >> you know listening to you speak it really makes me sort of understand more clearly really part of what was happening is that there was also a spiritual yearing to take these very real human experiences and in some ways put them within a jewish context, a sacred context in some ways a context that

involved a relationship with god. >> absolutely don't you agree rabbi? >> mm-hmm. >> shall we read something of some of is sid did you that gives us a taste -- sid did you that gives us a taste -- sid kerr that gives us a taste of that. >> sure. >> absolutely. >> this is the piece that let me connect to the siddur to the prayer book because i felt like in many ways i was doing this as an intellectual project i had a lot of logistics and i read this and realized my husband who was not jewish might not want a jewish burial we might not be buried in the same way when i read this prayer, it really made the experience live for me. how do i mark a loss that leaves no ritual trace you imagine for yourself no mourners, crowded together over the earth becoming your body,

no weeping against the rising murmur of grief that holds everyone no rending of cloth to resisting and difficult decent to god's perfect judgment by body struggles to keep from standing up my tongue to keep from blessing your name in those strange syllables in no moment and every moment the rising and weeping and struggling move none the less through my veins, fever dreams my spirit cannot forget. >> thank you so much. please join us and we return to mosaic in just a moment ve a love for skating.

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welcome back to mosaic. i ap rabbi eric ice i am honored to be your host this morning. -- wise i am honored to be your host this morning. we welcome the rabbi of the congregation and andrew ram era contributor to the siddur and author of clearing the text, biblical medieval and modern jewish stories welcome andrew and welcome back rabbi angel. what was it like for you as a writer and member of the congregation to contribute to this new prayer book? >> an amazing experience because the prayer book now is an incredible extraordinary object. it has section divisions, an extraordinary ribbon to help you keep or find your place and it allows our community in some

ways of traditional outsiders to enter into the mainstream of jewish culture, jewish american culture through an extraordinarily beautiful and rich volume of words. so not just my words but the words of hundreds of us manage to find their way into this text. >> you yourself are a writer i imagine you have your own evolution of what that means to you internally and manifest and then see your work in published form and all the different ways in which your own artistic process bears fruit. what was it like for you as a writer to work with people, writing, for this particular project? >> for me that was the most thrilling part of the journey i been published i know what that is like, it is a very yummy experience. but to nurture someone who has

written a letter or e-mail but never thought they could write a prayer, appeared watch someone go deep within themselves and their own spiritual core, i might right i could write i am writing, to look at someone's face when the book came out and someone who haidinger been published before and turn to the back of the book where we have written every con agree gant who has written something see their name and hear sitting in the sanctuary, 100 people or more reading something they wrote is an extraordinary experience if you grow up in the jewish world and have a jewish education we are so used to hearing the voices of ancient profits but when you are sitting shoulder to shoulder in prayer next to someone who wrote something or parents or teachers wrote something your spiritual life isn't out of the sanctuary isn't in the past it is in the moment that is one of the gifts of this siddur. >> can you give us a sense in

real life, the congregation, how now has this siddur, actually used in how is it handed out, opened in the pews, prayed from. >> it is my favorite one book to take with me any where these days. i have a trunk full of them because i want everyone to have them and my own experience just in the last few days, i have used this siddur with a group of freshman college students trained to understand what it means to be engaged in repairing the world and social justice and our siddur -- the prayer book is filled with words to inspire us to do the kind of repair that needs to be done. i use the siddur last night with a group of jews from around the bay area, trained to get a better understanding of

what it means to be transgendered i used the words written by some of our trans con agree gants to give them a little sense of what it means to be spiritual being on this particular journey many folks may no have the a sense of what it is about. >> can you read something else from it and give a taste? >> sure. um, there is so many possibilities. how about the blessing for being single which is a radical innovation for a jewish prayer book to have a blessing like this. >> oh, god and god of all people, in first you created one human being, female and male in your image so do i now stand before you complete and whole. fully engaged with your world i open myself to you as miriam for which remains no spouse who

served you all days of her life without a spouse. e come to you as elijah, blessing and watching over us i am blessed and holy sanctified and beloved i am a singular witness and reflecting mirror of your eternal oneness. >> please join us in just a moment when we return to mosaic today is a special day.

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welcome back to mosaic. we are in the midst of a conversation about a wonderful new siddur put together by a congregation in san francisco we are joined by rabbi angel and member andrew rammer what you see on your screen is a picture of what in the siddur in the prayer book? >> these are -- this is just to have photography in a siddur is an innovation itself but this is a beautiful picture by our artist andre gerra do you want to say more about what these redwoods, the light coming through -- >> i think it is an extraordinary image we thing about the cedars of lebanon there are many images to trace but this is where we live this

is here, this is california, for so many it is an indication how so many of us find the sacred not just in synagogue but nature to bring it into the prayer book puts so many pieces together. >> we have been talking a little about the innovation of the prayer book about the kinds of different prayers and i think what is important to say, for example, the shamu is a traditional prayer and the congregation has worked uniquely in that way just with the way you printed the prayer book there is the blue and black print. >> the blue is everything that is directly from the scriptures, and we wanted to exsent wait that so that in the -- excent wait that so that in the course of making our way

through all the texts we make the priority of torah and we also have expanded the traditional, historic language, which speaks of the sons of israel, celebrating shack bat, here we have included the -- sha bat, here we have included all of israel, the communities of israel, we are trying in every way to say you belong here you are welcome here this is us. this is our -- all of our tradition and inheritance to refresh. it appears in different ways to the siddur, you really, on the ritual that is for returning the torah to the ark, on this one page, there is so much history and so much innovation to have the beauty of the talid

as a visual this is something people know and can identify with, these sorts of individuals don't exist in other jewish prayer books it is like we took a chance to say we all know people respond to different images in different ways how can we make this as accessible as possible so that people can open just about any page, jews, non-jews, gays, straight, anybody can find themselves in the siddur that is i guess why i carry it around because i feel like whatever my encounter is going to be i am going to meet someone who i a help them open a door like this and find a bridge to something jewish. >> we have just a moment left but i know this prayer book has launched itself into the world beyond the pews and walls of the congregation do you want to give us a taste of where the siddur is appearing, so to speak in its continued

engagement? >> we have begun teaching in other locations, several of us went down the a rbinnic school in los angeles and taught several workshops and people took it home for the weekend and talked about what their experience was. some were lgbt many weren't and all found something that resonated with their spiritual journey. >> believe it or not we have come to the end of our time together it is really just a comma in the ongoing conversation what it means to put together a siddur thank you for your gift and the gift of this siddur thank you for joining us here on mosaic have a wonderful day