This year, we celebrate the Jubilee anniversary of women being officially recognized as Jewish clergy (Rabbi Sally Priesand was ordained by the Hebrew Union College in 1971). My kavannot this week will highlight some of the unique and inspirational female voices from our tradition.

I love coming up to our campus and hearing the multitude of languages buzzing—Hebrew, Farsi, or French spoken in our parking lot and on our playground, Aramaic chanted in our prayer services, English uttered in our many gatherings, and even Judeo-Spanish and Yiddish sung on special occasions.

For hundreds of years, Yiddish was a language used by the majority of Jews living in central and eastern Europe. Originally a German dialect with words borrowed from Hebrew and several other modern languages, it is still used amongst mainly Orthodox communities in the United States, Israel, and throughout the world. There is a rhythm, a beauty, a mystery to the language that I so deeply wish my grandparents had taught my parents and me; in an attempt to have a secret code only adults understood in my grandparents’ home, it was a language lost to the younger generations of my family. Only upon reaching young adulthood and, having already studied French and Hebrew, did I embark on my own journey of attempting to learn bits of Yiddish language and lyrics to many beloved Yiddish songs.

The voices of our tradition are so rich—diverse in language and modes of expression, consistently offering those shared Jewish yearnings and questions.

The prominent Yiddish poet, Malka Heifetz Tussman, came to Northern California (where I also grew up) in 1912. Her lyrical poetry was written entirely in Yiddish, the glorious words usually exploring the great questions of our tradition and that deep Jewish yearning to feel closer to the Source of all life. Her most famous piece, I Know Not Your Ways, has, thankfully, been translated to both English and Hebrew and is now used in Reform and Reconstructionist prayer books throughout Israel. I hope Tussman’s words will serve as a spark of inspiration for you at the beginning of this new week. Shavuah tov.

— Cantor Emma Lutz

I Know Not Your Ways
I know not your ways—
A sunset is for me
A Godset.
Where are you going,
God?
Take me along,
If, in the “along,”
It is light, God.
I am not afraid of the dark. 

— Malka Heifeitz Tussman, translated from the Yiddish by Marcia Falk