At Light of the Nations, our goal is to provide you with a meaningful, life connecting experience; to create a space where people can recharge, strengthen and celebrate their mystical connection within the whole of existence.
CHECK OUT these short sample videos of Orin LIVE at recent programs
Options
We provide Shabbat, Havdalah, Holiday, Meditative and Healing services, as well as other types of gatherings and concerts, with or without our large screen projections. (See detailed list below)
You get to choose the best way we can do this to meet the needs of your congregation/gathering.
*** See Videos of LIVE Havdalah and Friday Night Hillel Services at bottom of page (Youtube Playlists)
Music
Live Music - All Original Songs or interspersing some Jewish Standards
Large Screen projections - We hope you will take the opportunity to embrace this uniquely engaging aspect of our full concept service, but we are available to provide spiritually meaningful and life connecting services without the animations/videos if that works better for your group in creating sacred space.
Types of Services
If you like what you see, bring us to your community and let us provide you with a wonderful Shabbat service.
While we love the energy of our uptempo songs, we understand that sometimes people prefer a mellower, more meditative gathering. This is one of the options we can offer.
We also offer an all musical and/or meditative service with limited or no speaking.
We'd like to explain a slight variation in the terminology we use for our prayers.
(Note: If this isn't your preference, please let us know and we will offer the traditional language instead.)
We prefer to use “Ruach,” instead of “Melech,” for our blessings. This is because we don’t think of God so much as a human entity, not even a Melech/king. Instead, we relate to the GodForce more as RuachEnergy, the Breath of life, a Spiritual LifeForce influencing and maintaining a universe and our existence.
Additionally, we often use Yah as reference for God. Yah is likely a shortened version of the Holy name some people believe we aren’t supposed to say. “He who must not be named!” But for those who believe love is the best way to connect with the Intelligence influencing the cosmic all, Yah seems to be a friendlier, more personal approach for referring to the Creator.
Yah has been used in Jewish prayers for ages, including in Halleleu-Jah, and Kol Haneshema t'halel - Yah.
Reference letter from the Hillel Rabbi who oversaw Light of the Nations program at Indiana University Hillel
What an inspirational and uplifting Shabbat we had a few weeks back here at the Indiana University Hillel. Our Friday evening worship services are usually led by students, but we invited a local Jewish artist, with an international reputation, Bruce David, to lead us that Shabbat, and it was an amazing experience. Bruce, who is a personal friend of mine, is a Jewish artist, but not just an artist who happens to be Jewish. His art work is Judaica and it is extraordinary. Years back Pete Seeger recorded an album of folk songs he called “Story Songs.” I think of Bruce’s art as story paintings. Each one shares aspects of our biblical heritage and includes themes relating to such things as Jerusalem, peace, and Jewish prayer. In addition, his artwork is extremely unusual. Each painting contains hidden images, and it seems like every time I look at one of Bruce’s paintings I see something I’d never seen before. Remarkable.
Bruce heads up a Jewish educational outreach organization, Light of the Nations, which uses artistic expression to share the modern day benefits of Judaism. Bruce, along with his associate Orin Reynolds, led us in a completely creative, artistic, musical prayer experience. Orin led most of the service with guitar in hand. He is an accomplished musician and singer, former Goldman Union Camp camper, song leader and staff member. The music was new and creative and emotional, all written by Bruce and Orin. Each prayer and song was accentuated by a large screen projection video of Bruce’s art, where the hidden symbolisms in the designs were highlighted as part of the animation that accompanied that sharing. This added so much depth to the service.
Another unusual part of the evening was that we opened the service up to the general Bloomington community (anyone can come to any of our services, but for this one we let the community know that something special was about to happen). Several congregants from our local synagogue, Beth Shalom, including the Rabbi, and other adults from the community who were just interested, came to join our IU students. So the congregation was a great mix of adults and students. There was an air of spirit in the room and all joined Orin in singing. If you can imagine, we all viewed the videos of Bruce’s intriguing artwork while listening to songs and readings encouraging us to make the world a better place, pursue justice, practice ecology and conservation, and be agents of light in this ever darkening world of ours. And we sang songs of Shabbat Shalom and Shabbat blessings. In thinking about the evening I guess I could best describe it by saying, “WOW.” It was an outstanding experience.
Thank you Bruce and Orin for the gift of that Shabbat service.
Rabbi Ron Klotz
Indiana University Hillel
Havdalah Service (Youtube Playlist)
Hillel Friday Night Service (Youtube Playlist)
Havdalah Service (complete)
(Complete) - Bruce's 65th Birthday Celebration and Havdalah Service
Includes added footage plus Rabbi's Blessing and sharings from family and friends
