Chief Rabbi Sacks: Beyond the Fringe

The following Dvar Torah is from Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks - published May 29, 2013- and raises great points on the tension regarding our inner and out clothing and our quest for spiritual connectivity. 

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Beyond the Fringe

Our sedra ends with one of the great commands of Judaism - tsitsit, the fringes we wear on the corner of our garments as a perennial reminder of our identity as Jews and our obligation to keep the Torah’s commands:

God spoke to Moses, telling him to speak to the Israelites and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments for all generations. Let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner. That shall be your fringe: look at it and recall all the commandments of the Lord and observe them, so that you do not stray after your heart and eyes which in the past have led you to immorality. You will thus remember and keep all my commandments and be holy to your God.

So central is this command, that it became the third paragraph of the Shema, the supreme declaration of Jewish faith. I once heard the following commentary from my teacher, Rabbi Dr Nahum Rabinovitch.

He began by pointing out some of the strange features of the command. On the one hand the sages said that the command of tsitsit is equal to all the other commands together, as it is said: “Look at it and recall all the commandments of the Lord and observe them.” It is thus of fundamental significance.

On the other hand, it is not absolutely obligatory. It is possible to avoid the command of fringes altogether by never wearing a garment of four or more corners. Maimonides rules: “Even though one is not obligated to acquire a [four-cornered] robe and wrap oneself in it in order to [fulfill the command of] tsitsit, it is not fitting for a pious individual to exempt himself from this command” (Laws of Tsitsit, 3: 11). It is important and praiseworthy but not categorical. It is conditional: if you have such a garment, then you must put fringes on it. Why so? Surely it should be obligatory, in the way that tefillin (phylacteries) are.

There is another unusual phenomenon. In the course of time, the custom has evolved to fulfill the command in two quite different ways: the first, in the form of a tallit (robe, shawl) which is worn over our other clothes, specifically while we pray; the second in the form of an undergarment, worn beneath our outer clothing throughout the day.

Not only do we keep the one command in two different ways. We also make different blessings over the two forms. Over the tallit, we say: “who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to wrap ourselves in a fringed garment.” Over the undergarment, we say, “who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us concerning the precept of the fringed garment.” Why is one command split into two in this way?

He gave this answer: there are two kinds of clothing. There are the clothes we wear to project an image. A king, a judge, a soldier, all wear clothing that conceals the individual and instead proclaims a role, an office, a rank. As such, clothes, especially uniforms, can be misleading. A king dressed as a beggar will not (or would not, before television) be recognized as royalty. A beggar dressed as a king may find himself honored. A policeman dressed as a policeman carries with him a certain authority, an aura of power, even though he may feel nervous and insecure. Clothes disguise. They are like a mask. They hide the person beneath. Such are the clothes we wear in public when we want to create a certain impression.

But there are other clothes we wear when we are alone, that may convey more powerfully than anything else the kind of person we really are: the artist in his studio, the writer at his desk, the gardener tending the roses. They do not dress to create an impression. To the contrary: they dress as they do because of what they are, not because of what they wish to seem.

The two kinds of tsitsit represent these different forms of dress. When we engage in prayer, we sense in our heart how unworthy we may be of the high demands God has made of us. We feel the need to come before God as something more than just ourselves. We wrap ourselves in the robe, the tallit, the great symbol of the Jewish people at prayer. We conceal our individuality – in the language of the blessing over the tallit, we “wrap ourselves in a fringed garment.” It is as if we were saying to God: I may only be a beggar, but I am wearing a royal robe, the robe of your people Israel who prayed to You throughout the centuries, to whom You showed a special love and took as Your own. The tallit hides the person we are and represents the person we would like to be, because in prayer we ask God to judge us, not for what we are, but for what we wish to be.

The deeper symbolism of tsitsit, however, is that it represents the commandments as a whole (“look at it and recall all the commandments of the Lord”) – and these becomes part of what and who we are only when we accept them without coercion, of our own free will. That is why the command of tsitsit is not categorical. We do not have to keep it. We are not obligated to buy a four-cornered garment. When we do so, it is because we chose to do so. We obligate ourselves. That is why opting to wear tsitsit symbolizes the free acceptance of all the duties of Jewish life.

This is the most inward, intimate, intensely personal aspect of faith whereby in our innermost soul we dedicate ourselves to God and His commands. There is nothing public about this. It is not for outer show. It is who we are when we are alone, not trying to impress anyone, not wishing to seem what we are not. This is the command of tsitsit as undergarment, beneath, not on top of, our clothing. Over this we make a different blessing. We do not talk about “wrapping ourselves in a fringed garment” – because this form of fringes is not for outward show. We are not trying to hide ourselves beneath a uniform. Instead, we are expressing our innermost commitment to God’s word and call to us. Over this we say the blessing, “who has commanded us concerning the precept of tsitsit” because what matters is not the mask but the reality, not what we wish to seem but what we really are.

In this striking way tsitsit represent the dual nature of Judaism. On the one hand it is a way of life that is public, communal, shared with others across the world and through the ages. We keep Shabbat, celebrate the festivals, observe the dietary laws and the laws of family purity in a way that has hardly varied for many centuries. That is the public face of Judaism – the tallit we wear, the cloak woven out of the 613 threads, each a command.

But there is also our inner life as people of faith. There are things we can say to God that we can say to no one else. He knows our thoughts, hopes, fears, better than we know them ourselves. We speak to Him in the privacy of the soul, and He listens. That internal conversation – the opening of our heart to Him who brought us into existence in love – is not for public show. Like the fringed undergarment, it stays hidden. But it is no less real an aspect of Jewish spirituality. The two types of fringed garment represent the two dimensions of the life of faith – the outer persona and the inner person, the image we present to the world and the face we show only to God.

If You Could Ask God One Question?

Tefilla is special time to think and ponder - not just to chant words and verses (sometimes I forget this).  One of the biggest tensions in tefilla is that between form and substance - the rules of what must be said and when against the feelings and thoughts of the heart behind the structure. The Mishna in Brachot cites Rebbe Eliezer teaching, "one who makes his prayer fixed (keva) - his prayer is not a prayer (tahnunim)". The natural structural platform for spontaneous prayer is during the shma koleuni section of the Amidah - we you can add your own requests and ruminations.

But what if you only could as one question?  Chief Rabbi Sacks answers this question arguing that it is the "best question anyone should ask God."  I think this is a great exercise to ask your students - and push each person to focus the essence of their prayers and actions.

A Yom HaShoah Prayer

The following is the Chief Rabbi's Yom HaShoah Prayer, which starts Sunday night (although it is technically today but pushed off one day by the Israeli Parliament to prevent Sabbath violation in setting up official ceremonies.  It is important to also note that this date was chosen as it is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943; you can watch the official government ceremony at Yad Vashem at 8PM Israel time. 

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On Yom HaShoah, we remember the victims of the greatest crime of man against man – the young, the old, the innocent, the million and a half children, starved, shot, given lethal injections, gassed, burned and turned to ash, because they were deemed guilty of the crime of being different. We remember what happens when hate takes hold of the human heart and turns it to stone; what happens when victims cry for help and there is no one listening; what happens when humanity fails to recognize that those who are not in our image are none the less in God’s image. We remember and pay tribute to the survivors, who bore witness to what happened, and to the victims, so that robbed of their lives, they would not be robbed also of their deaths. We remember and give thanks for the righteous of the nations who saved lives, often at risk of their own, teaching us how in the darkest night we can light a candle of hope. Today, on Yom HaShoah, we call on You, Almighty God, to help us hear Your voice that says in every generation: Do not murder. Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor  Do not oppress the stranger. We know that whilst we do not have the ability to change the past, we can change the future. We know that whilst we cannot bring the dead back to life, we can ensure their memories live on and that their deaths were not in vain. And so, on Yom HaShoah, we commit ourselves to one simple act: Yizkor, Remember. May the souls of the victims be bound in the bond of everlasting life. Amen.

What Inspires your to Engage with this World?

One of my favorite Jewish thinkers today is soon-to-be-former Chief Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks, as I often find that he eloquently captures the passion, relevance, and richness of living a Jewish life.  Last month in Jerusalem, Rabbi Sacks spoke at a book launch for his 24th book and I think his remarks again captures the importance and drive we need to pass on to our students.

The video, found here, gets super intense in the 23rd minute, but I think the full 31:27 is well worth the watch.   We indeed must engage with the world - and I pray that we succeed in spreading positive Jewish arithmetic.

Prayers for the President

Yesterday, Rabbi Sharon Brous delivered a blessing at the 57th Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service in Washington, DC.  A rabbis' presence at a multicultural (interfaith) service does not always go without controversy, especially when its held in a church. (It could be considered a similar situation to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks attendance to the Royal Wedding in 2011).  But one thing is for sure, such an event does call for prayer and blessings - as it is truly an amazing part of living in a democratically free country.

Here is the text she shared (and a video):

Elohei ha-ahavah, God of Love. Help us widen the boundaries of our hearts. You know us better than we know ourselves: the distinctions we make, the biases we hold, the ways in which we fail to manifest our greatest potential as we diminish ourselves and others with our impatience, lack of compassion and vision, lack of hope. Give depth to our faith; let our actions bear witness to the expansiveness of your mercy. Grant us the grace to love our neighbors and to love ourselves. We pray that you bring your presence among us, as light, as life and as holy inspiration.

I am always amazed at the creative abilities of those who compose prayers as I am a davener that is much more comfortable in a well worn siddur.  Also, I feel that spiritual meaning is naturally in Hebrew and thus personally feel disconnected by the English liturgy in prayers (I recognize that this is my personal stance).

One final comment - I think that the blessing shared above, although targeted to the Creator, captures the sentiment of the blessing codified by the Shulchan Orach to be recited upon seeing a non-Jewish king which may be appropriate to say upon seeing the newly inaugurated President:

ברוך אתה ה' אלוקינו מלך העולם שחלק מכבודו לבשר ודם 

Blessed are You, Lord our God, who has given from His glory to (humans of) flesh and blood.

Guest Post: Chief Rabbi Sacks - Encountering God

Encountering God - Yayetze
24 November 2012 - 10 Kislev 5773

It is one of the great visions of the Torah. Jacob, alone at night, fleeing from the wrath of Esau, lies down to rest, and sees not a nightmare of fear but an epiphany:

He came to a certain place [vayifga bamakom] and stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream. He saw a ladder resting on the earth, with its top reaching heaven. G-d’s angels were going up and down on it. There above it stood G-d . . .
Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “G-d is truly in this place, but I did not know it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of G-d; this is the gate of heaven.” (28:11-17)

On the basis of this passage the sages said that “Jacob instituted the evening prayer.” The inference is based on the word vayifga which can mean not only, “he came to, encountered, happened upon” but also “he prayed, entreated, pleaded” as in Jeremiah 7: 16, “Neither lift up cry nor prayer for them nor make intercession to Me [ve-al tifga bi].”

The sages also understood the word bamakom, “the place” to mean “G-d” (the “place” of the universe). Thus Jacob completed the cycle of daily prayers. Abraham instituted shacharit, the morning prayer, Isaac minchah, the afternoon prayer, and Jacob arvit, the prayer of nighttimes.

This is a striking idea. Though each of the weekday prayers is identical in wording, each bears the character of one of the patriarchs. Abraham represents morning. He is the initiator, the one who introduced a new religious consciousness to the world. With him a day begins. Isaac represents afternoon. There is nothing new about Isaac – no major transition from darkness to light or light to darkness. Many of the incidents in Isaac’s life recapitulate those of his father. Famine forces him, as it did Abraham, to go to the land of the Philistines. He re-digs his father’s wells. Isaac’s is the quiet heroism of continuity. He is a link in the chain of the covenant. He joins one generation to the next. He introduces nothing new into the life of faith, but his life has its own nobility. Isaac is steadfastness, loyalty, the determination to continue. Jacob represents night. He is the man of fear and flight, the man who wrestles with G-d, with others and with himself. Jacob is one who knows the darkness of this world.

There is, however, a difficulty with the idea that Jacob introduced the evening prayer. In a famous episode in the Talmud, Rabbi Joshua takes the view that, unlike shacharit or minchah, the evening prayer is not obligatory (though, as the commentators note, it has become obligatory through the acceptance of generations of Jews). Why, if it was instituted by Jacob, was it not held to carry the same obligation as the prayers of Abraham and Isaac? Tradition offers three answers.

The first is that the view that arvit is non-obligatory according to those who hold that our daily prayers are based, not on the patriarchs but on the sacrifices that were offered in the Temple. There was a morning and afternoon offering but no evening sacrifice. The two views differ precisely on this, that for those who trace prayer to sacrifice, the evening prayer is voluntary, whereas for those who base it on the patriarchs, it is obligatory.

The second is that there is a law that those on a journey (and for three days thereafter) are exempt from prayer. In the days when journeys were hazardous – when travellers were in constant fear of attack by raiders – it was impossible to concentrate. Prayer requires concentration (kavanah). Therefore Jacob was exempt from prayer, and offered up his entreaty not as an obligation but as a voluntary act – and so it remained.

The third is that there is a tradition that, as Jacob was travelling, “the sun set suddenly” – not at its normal time. Jacob had intended to say the afternoon prayer, but found, to his surprise, that night had fallen. Arvit did not become an obligation, since Jacob had not meant to say an evening prayer at all.

There is, however, a more profound explanation. A different linguistic construction is used for each of the three occasions that the sages saw as the basis of prayer. Abraham “rose early in the morning to the place where he had stood before G-d” (19:27). Isaac “went out to meditate [lasuach] in the field towards evening” (24:63). Jacob “met, encountered, came across” G-d [vayifga bamakom]. These are different kinds of religious experience.

Abraham initiated the quest for G-d. He was a creative religious personality – the father of all those who set out on a journey of the spirit to an unknown destination, armed only with the trust that those who seek, find. Abraham sought G-d before G-d sought him.

Isaac’s prayer is described as a sichah, literally, a conversation or dialogue. There are two parties to a dialogue – one who speaks and one who listens, and having listened, responds. Isaac represents the religious experience as conversation between the word of G-d and the word of mankind.

Jacob’s prayer is very different. He does not initiate it. His thoughts are elsewhere – on Esau from whom he is escaping, and on Laban to whom he is travelling. Into this troubled mind comes a vision of G-d and the angels and a stairway connecting earth and heaven. He has done nothing to prepare for it. It is unexpected. Jacob literally “encounters” G-d as we can sometimes encounter a familiar face among a crowd of strangers. This is a meeting brought about by G-d, not man. That is why Jacob’s prayer could not be made the basis of a regular obligation. None of us knows when the presence of G-d will suddenly intrude into our lives.

There is an element of the religious life that is beyond conscious control. It comes out of nowhere, when we are least expecting it. If Abraham represents our journey towards G-d, and Isaac our dialogue with G-d, Jacob signifies G-d’s encounter with us – unplanned, unscheduled, unexpected; the vision, the voice, the call we can never know in advance but which leaves us transformed. As for Jacob so for us, it feels as if we are waking from a sleep and realising as if for the first time that “G-d was in this place and I did not know it.” The place has not changed, but we have. Such an experience can never be made the subject of an obligation. It is not something we do. It is something that happens to us. Vayfiga bamakom means that, thinking of other things, we find that we have walked into the presence of G-d.

Such experiences take place, literally or metaphorically, at night. They happen when we are alone, afraid, vulnerable, close to despair. It is then that, when we least expect it, we can find our lives flooded by the radiance of the divine. Suddenly, with a certainty that is unmistakable, we know that we are not alone, that G-d is there and has been all along but that we were too preoccupied by our own concerns to notice Him. That is how Jacob found G-d – not by his own efforts, like Abraham; not through continuous dialogue, like Isaac; but in the midst of fear and isolation. Jacob, in flight, trips and falls – and finds he has fallen into the waiting arms of G-d. No one who has had this experience, ever forgets it. “Now I know that You were with me all the time but I was looking elsewhere.”

That was Jacob’s prayer. There are times when we speak and times when we are spoken to. Prayer is not always predictable, a matter of fixed times and daily obligation. It is also an openness, a vulnerability. G-d can take us by surprise, waking us from our sleep, catching us as we fall.

Shabbat Shalom,

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This article was published with permission of the Office of the Chief Rabbi.

A New Prayer for the 2012 Olympics

The soon to be unemployed Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has composed a Prayer to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.  While it might be his job as a chief rabbi to compose new prayers, I think it is a tough task.  What do you think of it? 

Additionally, I would encourage those of you on twitter to share #JustOneMinute as a way to spread the word on the efforts to have the Olympic Committee hold a moment of silence for the murdered athletes. One final recommendation is to read Professor Deborah E. Lipstadt's recent article in Tablet Magazine Jewish Blood is Cheap. 

Back from a Short Respite with Some Good Life Advice

I have been on the road the past week+ and I apologize for the lack of new posts and relatively few tweets (for those that follow the twitter feed).  In my July return I thought I'd share a recent post (23 June 2012) of the soon to be unemployed Dr. Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and his article Looking Closely at the Road Less Traveled.  Fascinating that he emphasizes a 'go against the grain' mentality and I humbly agree and believe that prayer is one of the best methodologies to "seek and celebrate the spirit".

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The wisest rule in investment is: when others are selling, buy. When others are buying, sell. Usually, of course, we do the opposite. When everyone else is buying, we assume they know something we don’t, so we buy. Then people start selling, panic sets in, and we sell too. That is how booms and crashes happen. Charles Mackay called it “the madness of crowds,” William Trotter “the herd instinct,” and psychologist Solomon Asch showed how vulnerable we are to the urge to conform.

So when everyone is going in one direction, it’s worth taking the opposite route, the contrarian option, the “road less travelled.” Here is my recommendation for the next few years. While everyone else is thinking about economics and politics, executive salaries and the future of the Euro, do the opposite, even if it’s hard. Invest in the spirit. Focus on the mind and the soul. Read. Study. Enrol in a course of lectures. Pray. Become a member of a religious congregation. Study the Bible or other ancient works of wisdom. Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.

For the next few years European economies are unlikely to grow. Government spending will continue to be tight. Standards of living for most of us will either fall or at least not rise by much. National governments will discover that their power of action is ever more circumscribed by the mobility of capital and people and the interdependence of Europe’s economies and banks. Try setting out on a new economic policy of your own when you are linked by heavy chains to twenty or more other nations each trying to go somewhere else, and you will end up angry and frustrated.

That is when we need to switch to another dimension. When one road is blocked, it’s time to take another. When material conditions are tough, the best investment we can make is spiritual: in the happiness we don’t buy but make. Join a religious congregation and you will find people who care about ideals and are willing to make sacrifices for them. You will make friends on whom you can rely and become part of a community on which you can depend. Study sacred texts and you will find yourself transported to a palace of the mind, the ancient but still compelling wisdom of the past. These are powerful sources of inner strength.

Stop worrying about wealth and success, and think instead of the blessings that surround you and you will find your life flooded with meaning. You will sleep easier at night and wake full of hope the next morning. You will look out on the world and see God’s glory. You will smile at strangers and they will smile back. You will worry less and find your fears subside as you entrust yourself to God’s everlasting arms.

You will realise that your life is filled with blessings you had until now taken for granted. You will discover – or perhaps you secretly knew it all along – that happiness has little to do with what we get and everything to do with what we give. You will rush less and savour more. You will stop wasting time doing the things you should never have done in the first place.

Eat only when you are hungry, and stop as soon as you are sated, and you will lose weight. Buy only what you need, and travel light through life, and you will save much of what you now spend. See the good in people and you will, without intending to, make them a little better than they were. Praise others and do not seek their praise, give to others and do not seek their thanks, and you will grow in spiritual health. At least once every day take time to thank God for the privilege of life itself. Don’t judge people by what they wear or drive or earn. In fact, don’t judge people at all. Leave that to God. He is better at it than we are, and more forgiving too.

Your return on investment – not in monetary terms perhaps, but in terms of happiness, fulfilment, flourishing, joie de vivre, and a sense of blessedness – will, I promise you, be better than any alternative on offer today. While others are pursuing material happiness, do the opposite: seek and celebrate the spirit. The price is low. The value could not be higher.

The Transformative Imperative

I think that Chief Rabbi Lord Dr. Rev.the honorable Jonathan Sacks is one of the most eloquent Jewish thinkers of our time (for those looking to expand their mode of thinking about Judaism, please read the six Faith Lectures from 2000-01 - phenomenal!).   Recently he emailed me his thoughts on the weekly Torah parshat Shmeni - which contained the following observation:

The dietary laws in Shmini parallel the prohibition given to Adam. As then, so now, a new era in the spiritual history of humankind, preceded by an act of creation, is marked by laws about what one may and may not eat.

Why? As with sex, so with eating: these are the most primal activities, shared with many other forms of life. Without sex there is no continuation of the species. Without food, even the individual cannot survive. These, therefore, have been the focus of radically different cultures. On the one hand there are hedonistic cultures in which food and sex are seen as pleasures and pursued as such. On the other are ascetic cultures - marked by monastic seclusion - in which sex is avoided and eating kept to a minimum. The former emphasize the body, the latter the soul. Judaism, by contrast, sees the human situation in terms of integration and balance. We are body and soul. Hence the Judaic imperative, neither hedonistic nor ascetic, but transformative. We are commanded to sanctify the activities of eating and sex. From this flow the dietary laws and the laws of family purity (niddah and mikveh), two key elements of kedushah, the life of holiness.

As this is a blog about tefilla, and not about food, sex, or hedonistic cultures, I wanted to mediate here on Sack's point about this transformative Jewish imperative to balance ascetic and hedonistic impulses.  I fear that so much of how tefilla, and Judaism in general, is being taught today doesn't reflect such an imperative but rather sways to the extremes of a particular practice.

As someone who feels the call to pray but feels a tension between personal worship and public practice, perhaps it is best to characterize this as a larger process of Judaic transformation.   Rather than push the practice of prayer in one direction, a celebration of Carlebacian hora dance, or to another monastic Yom Kipur confession warped in a talit, we should teach an imperative to navigate the spiritual and cultural world around us.  Perhaps this call to pray is just this imperative that Sacks describes; otherwise we are just left with the obligation to pray which leads to the very beginning questions about the sad state of tefilla today.  

Good Advice for 2012

Someone wished me a "Shana Tova" today and it took me off guard.  Of course in Israel today, it was a normal Sunday work day so I had mostly forgotten that it was New Year's Day when I received this greeting.

I also received an unexpected email from Chief Rabbi Lord Dr. Soon-to-be-unemployed Jonathan Sacks titled: Three Resolutions for the New Year.  I am sharing his third tip as it pertains to the business of this blog, tefilla; if you'd like to read the whole post click here:

Third, pray. Prayer is our dialogue with the infinite Other. It’s also hard, which is why we have prayer books. The finest collection of prayers is the book of Psalms. It embraces the spectrum of feeling from despair to jubilation. Prayer is to the soul what exercise is to the body, and without it we become emotionally flabby.

Some people don’t pray because they try it and it does not work. They forget that prayer is done best in the company of others, in a holy place, in song, the language of the soul as it reaches out toward the unsayable. The most life-transforming prayers are choral not solo.

Iris Murdoch has a lovely analogy for what prayer can achieve. She describes looking out of a window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of her surroundings, brooding on some resentment, feeling sorry for herself. Then, suddenly, she sees a hovering kestrel. “In a moment,” she says, “everything is altered. The brooding self . . . has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important.” She calls this “unselfing”, and that is what prayer achieves at its best. It opens our eyes to the wonder of the world.

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I think it is great advice and honest.  Wishing you all a Gregorian Shana Tova

Postmodern Tefilla Tip # 1

I recently was struck by a passage in Jonathan Sack's The Dignity of Difference (2003).  In the chapter titled, "The Imperative of Responsibility" the good Rabbi Doctor Lord wrote:

The 'individual' - the creation of the seventeenth century - had an identity, which is to say, a stable sense of self from birth to death. His or her life could be told as a narrative, factually in an autobiography, fictionally in a novel, both of them genres which achieved great popularity in the modern age.  Something happens when change is so rapid that nothing confers meaning - when lives become lifestyles, commitments become experiments, relationships become provisional, careers turn into contracts, and life itself ceases to have the character of a narrative and becomes instead a series of episodes with no connecting thread (page 75).

Since reading this, I have been thinking a lot about my students (and children) and, knowing that it is impossible to reverse the trends of post-modernism to return to a more stable identity, how I can educate them towards a connecting thread and empower them to have the strength to become their true personalities.  

I truly believe that tefilla is one of the most powerful vehicles for strengthening this thread of identity.  Especially if there is a school emphasis to create an extra sensitivity in the students and widen their perspectives to enrich their total learning experience.  The approach that regular tefilla offers is a reflective spirit and engagement in ideas and materials that can put them into an uncomfortable space where they can speak, learn, and develop attitudes that help create their own narrative. Rather than see the prayer slot as a dumping ground for ritual exercise - take an aggressive step to make your minyan the incubator of Jewish identity, the moment to coalesce the themes and goals of your mission as a school.

Is God Listening?

Although I may not always agree with him, I like to follow the writings of Chief Rabbi Lord Dr. Jonathan Sacks as he is one of the most eloquent Jewish philosophers of our day. He has tried an interesting approach to help people get prepared for the High Holy Days, sending out a daily email with some inspiration for tshuva.

I like this quick idea and points to ongoing search for the perfect tefilla:

Bilvavi mishkan evneh. A lovely poem about prayer itself, written by Rabbi Eliezer Azikri, one of the mystics in Tzefat in the late sixteenth century. "In my heart I will build a temple to God's glory. In it I'll built an altar, lit by the fire of Abraham's love, and as a sacrifice, I offer to God my one and only soul."

Prayer is the language of faith, and the prayer book is the map of the Jewish mind. The song we sing to God is the music of the Jewish soul, and somehow in time beyond time and space beyond space, our finitude meets God's infinity and we are brushed by the wings of the Divine presence, the Shekhinah.

Don't expect it to happen every time, or all at once. For there is no human understanding without time and study. Yet it is there in our prayers, written by our ancestors as they strove to find the words that would reach out toward the unsayable like a message transmitted to some distant star.

And there you will find the mystery of Jewish spirituality that turned our ancestors, a tiny and otherwise undistinguished people, into a nation that defied the laws of history and outlasted all the world's great empires. Prayer is the place where speaking meets God's listening, and in ways we will never understand, we are transformed