Guest Post: The Almost Missed Chance to Daven

The following is a true story; experienced and told below by Eli Bialik.  It is so good and pure that I feel the need to share it. I also feel need to share it because for those that pray everyday and feel a personal sense of obligation to daven, the threat of missing the daily ritual of tefilla can be a traumatic and almost paralyzing feeling.  It isn't something you just skip and make up another time - it is a mitzvah.  To understand that a mtizvah is more than an action, but rather has an emotional and spiritual component to it, you will see in Eli's investment in the experience of davening with his talit and tefillin in an airport.

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This week I was on my way back from Vancouver, I had a stopover in Toronto for an hour and a half before heading out to Newark for my flight home. By accident, I had packed my tefilin in my checked bag, and low and behold, it was time to daven shacharit. I was stuck. I didn't see a Jew in sight and had no idea how I was going to daven without my tallit and tefilin.

I walked pass all of the departure gates at Toronto Airport looking for a religious looking Yid to ask if I could borrow talit and tefilin. Nothing, not a kippa in sight.I opened my laptop and started to answer some emails and said “gosh darnit, its time to daven!” and closed my laptop for one more scan of the departure gates for a pair of tefilin.

Maybe 5 or 6 gates away from me was a chasid who was talking with an airline rep and I waited patiently on the side until he finished his business. Once he finished talking, I walked up to him and asked him: “Excuse me, are you in a rush?”

The chasid replied “Why do you ask?”

I told the chasid that I packed my talit & tefilin in my checked bag and would be very grateful if I could borrow his to daven with.

He looked me over, up and down and said “I’m not in a rush anymore, I just missed my flight, and it must be for you.”

He looked me over again from head to toe (as if in wonder that this conversation was actually transpiring) . “It’s my zchut to be mishtatef in this mitzvah! My next flight is 4:30 pm, so I have plenty of time.”

Of course, I was very moved by the words of the chassid and how he saw the Yad Hashem in the fact that he just missed his flight – apparently for me.

I went to the side of a phonebooth and davened with great kavanah. I had a great davening. I was so happy that I was able to daven with talit and tefilin and that I absolutely made the day of this kind stranger.

Now hold on to your hats, men and women…

As soon as I finished davening and had wrapped up the tefilin and folded the talit, the airline rep came running over to the chassid and told him that there had been a cancellation on another flight and that if he hurried he could be on a plane to his destination (Cleveland) in 10-15 minutes.

This guy’s jaw dropped. He couldn't stop looking at me.

The less said the better, because this was a truly one in a lifetime experience where 2 people who had never met, and probably never would think they have much in common, came together, “by chance”, for half an hour to do a mitzvah. I was smiling all the way home to Israel. Pretty awesome.

Watching You Daven

How does your davening change when you know someone is watching you?  I am not speaking about your teacher or rabbi, who might peek over to see if you are chatting with a neighbor, on the right page or have fallen asleep (I have seen this last one quite a bit).

I just got off an airplane trip where it was apparent that the person sitting next to me was so fascinated at the Jewish approach to davening that he was carefully studying each and every one of my moves.  For me, this emphasized the performance aspect to our worship in that we are proscribed to follow the directions and script of the specific tefilla. One equally needs to imbue their personal imprint onto the text and make it a 'service of the heart' but how honest can it be when you know another person is watching you?  

I have had this feeling before, when I first was the shaliach tzibur, leading the tefilla. As the leader I appropriated my concentration to proper enunciation, hitting the exact starting points and choosing good tunes and neglected the greater necessity to put my heart into the words that were exiting your mouth. Further as the leader it has happened (only to me?) that I was more fearful and concerned of the people staring behind me than the greater audience in the heavens which led me to have a near Olympic focus on the performance.  

Someone is always watching you daven - I figure the important lesson is that you need to have tefilla attitude that you must purely connect to your prayers and do your best, regardless of who may actually be paying attention.  

Davening at 40,000 Feet

Everyone who has flown to Israel, usually on El Al but not exclusively, has a davening story. Whether it was being surrounded by shucklers, awoken with a request to join a minyan, attacked by a bag when someone opens the overhead compartment to take out their tallit and tefillin, or just mesmerized but the struggles of people to pass the beverage cart to get to or from their seats for a minyan.  And these are just anecdotes from my most recent flight on El Al (which by the way does offer some tefilla guidelines).  By all time favorite anecdote was the religious woman next to the window who had a blush kit with a mirror and a special Tefilat Haderech engraved into the leather case.

I think that reading some rabbis responsas on travelling tefilla frames the character of prayer in general for the individual as they relate to the group of worshipers.  Rabbi Herschel Schachter refers to it as a common mistake people make when travelling by airplane.  He writes clearly in strong Orthodox terminology: 

Another common mistake people make is regarding davening with a minyan. The Talmud emphasizes the importance of tefillah btzibur; and one who davens with a minyan stands a much better chance of having his prayers answered than one who lacks a minyan. However, it is highly improper for the chazzan of a minyan on an airplane to shout at the top of his lungs to enable the other mispalelim to hear him over the airplane noise, and thereby wake up all the passengers around him. It is true that there is a halachic principle of kofin al hamitzvos, i.e. that beis din has an obligation to force people to observe the mitzvos even when they're not interested in doing so, but this only applies when pressuring an individual will result in his becoming observant. However, when Orthodox Jews disturb non-observant Jewish passengers with their davening, the non-observant passengers sill remain non-observant and now just have another point about which to be upset with the Orthodox. The practice of the Orthodox passengers under such circumstances appears simply as an act of harassment. Rather than having accomplished the hidur mitzvah of davening tefillah btzibur, they have violated lifnei iver by causing the non-observant passengers to become more antagonistic towards shemiras hamitzvos. The shouting tone of voice employed by the shaliach tzibbur to overcome the noise on the airplane clearly does not constitute a kavod hatefillah.

The halacha states that when traveling, if it is too difficult to stand for shemoneh esrei even the "amidah" may be recited while seated. On a short flight of an hour and a half to Canada, it is more correct to daven the entire tefillah while still buckled in, in a sitting position. On the long flight to Eretz Yisroel it is healthier not to sit the entire time; walking about somewhat helps the blood circulation in one's legs. As such, there is nothing wrong with standing for shemoneh esrei, provided that there's no turbulence at that time. However, it is still not proper to gather a minyan together near the washrooms, disturbing all the other passengers and the stewardesses. As much as various Torah giants of our generation have expressed their opposition to such minyanim on airplanes, their message has not yet been accepted. 

He concludes with a nice blessing for safe travels and then cautions "all those traveling to Eretz Yisroel should have a safe trip, but keep in mind - these minyanim are shelo b'ratzon chachamim!"  I find this last statement the most terrific sentiment - that by joining in these prayer groups one is violating the wisdom of the sages. This always seemed counter intuitive for those that feel pressed to daven out of obligation.  Another point worth noting is that some sages and rabbis disagree (Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg to name one) and feel that there should be a minyan on the plane and that is a "preference" to join. I also enjoyed reading the comments in the Yeshiva World News forum on this topic with some outstanding perspectives shared there.

Elli Fischer, in his blog On the Contrary discussed the topic at hand (posted in 2008) and points to a phenomenally challenging question of when to daven on plane:

 Are zmanim (halachic appointed times) calculated based on geographical realities or human realities? Is it about the place or the person?

I did witness to elderly men arguing about this last week, which in itself was bothering the passengers around them.

Let me conclude with a happy Chabad story of a man davening in front of 300 people in his bulkhead seat that will be more of an inspiration to daven, than answer where or when you should do daven.