D'var Torah

Happy Pride!

This Friday night, we’ll be celebrating Pride Shabbat. In so doing, we’ll be participating in a tradition that has been around since the 1970s, and in recent years, has become increasingly important to Jewish communities all around the world. I’m personally very excited to be experiencing my first TRS Pride Shabbat, and hope to see many of you there. If you’ve never been to Pride Shabbat and are curious about what it is, or if you have been to many Pride Shabbats but are curious about Pride Shabbat’s history, this d'var Torah is for you!

What is Pride Shabbat?

Pride Shabbat is a Shabbat service (or sometimes, a weekend of services) that takes place sometime in June, LGBTQIA+ Pride Month. Many communities mark Pride Shabbat on the same weekend as their local pride celebration. (In our case, Arlington Pride is this weekend.)

Pride Shabbat marks as holy the anniversary of the June 1969 stonewall riots, and all of the justice work that came and is still coming in their wake. Pride Shabbat is a liturgical innovation that began in LGBTQIA+ synagogues and has since spread to many other communities (all around the world), including ours.

How Is Pride Shabbat Similar To, And Different From, Other Friday Night Services?

In most ways, Pride Shabbat is just like our other Friday night services! We say all of our regular prayers (including the Mi Shebeirach and Mourner’s Kaddish), and we are joined for several of our prayers by this weekend’s b’nai mitzvah students and their families. We’ll also hear a d’var Torah, connected to both the weekly Torah portion and some of the themes of Pride Shabbat.

There are a wide variety of pieces of creative liturgy (often, English or Hebrew adaptations of traditional prayers) that have been written either specifically for Pride Shabbat, or more generally to celebrate the life experiences of LGBTQIA+ people and communities. We’ll hear a couple of those pieces of creative liturgy (in the spots where we regularly have different English readings), including an adaptation of “Al HaNissim” for Pride.

“Al HaNissim” means “for the miracles,” and it is a holiday insertion into the Amidah (specifically, into the “modim,” a blessing of thanksgiving) that offers thanks for survival in human struggles for independence and freedom. The oldest versions of “Al HaNissim” were written about Chanukah and Purim (and are still recited on those holidays). In the mid-twentieth century, some Jewish communities also began reciting a version of Al HaNissim on Israeli Independence Day. And in the late twentieth century, a Pride-specific Al HaNissim entered the mix. Like most Pride Shabbat liturgy (and like much of Jewish liturgical innovation in general), the Pride Al HaNissim builds on pre-existing Jewish prayer structures and applies them to the experience of Pride. (One additional really lovely example of this that we won’t experience tomorrow — because it’s a custom for morning services, not evening services — is that some communities recite Hallel on Pride. Hallel is a series of celebratory psalms recited at the beginning of each new Jewish month, as well as on several holidays.)

Finally, last year on Pride Shabbat, Cantor Rhodes started a tradition that we’ll be continuing this year of intentionally including many melodies by Jewish composers who identify as members of the LGBTQIA+ community. The majority of these melodies are very familiar to our community, because many composers who are responsible for huge swaths of the music in use in the Jewish community today (like Debbie Friedman, Julie Silver, Elana Arian, and others) identify (or identified while they were alive) as part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Who Is Pride Shabbat For?

Everyone! We’re so excited to celebrate Shabbat together tomorrow night, and we hope to see you there! For those who have signed up, we are excited to see you at dinner afterward.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Alexandra Stein