Praying with a Whole Heart and a Clear Mind

Rav Yosef Karo, one of my favorite people from Toledo (Spain), wrote in the Shulchan Aruch, Orach Cha’yim (98:1) the following:

The one who prays must wholeheartedly concentrate on the meaning of the words which he utters with his lips. He must imagine that he stands in the presence of God. He should remove all other thoughts [from his mind], until his consciousness and concentration are completely absorbed with his prayer. He must imagine that if he were speaking before an earthly king, he would carefully compose his words and concentrate on them so as not to falter, all the more so  [when speaking] before the King of all kings, the "Holy One, blessed be He", who sees to the very heart of all thoughts. This was the practice of the early pious people and men of good deeds. They would meditate in solitude and concentrate on their prayers until they achieved a transcendent spiritual state wherein their soul overpowered their body, thus approaching a state of prophecy...

How do you teach this to kids?  Again, I find it interesting that meditation is a key word that is appearing in tefilla tips from Rabbis of every generation, but I am not hearing this word (nor concept) reverberating much amongst contemporary educators. 

Guest Post: James Jacobson-Maisels

The following was originally published in the Pardes June Newsletter as a Dvar Torah by James Jacobson-Maisels. In the coming months, the blog will share some more concrete insights along this thematic angle. 

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R. Pinchas of Koretz, an early Hasidic master, taught, "The world thinks that one prays before/to the Holy One, blessed be He, but it is not thus. For prayer itself is truly (mamash) the essence of divinity. As it is written: He is your prayer and He is your God (Deuteronomy 10:21)." (Midrash Pinchas, Sec. 1:52, p. 37-38) 

I clearly recall my first time reading this text and the excitement and wonder its radical call to rethink my entire approach to prayer engendered in me. Here R. Pinchas asks us to focus on the process of prayer itself. He challenges us to consider what it would it mean to not think of prayer as a secondary process, as an act of communication which reaches beyond itself, but to experience the process itself. He calls on us to experience the very words, movements and consciousness of prayer as divinity.

Such an approach opens our eyes to see that the divine is not out there somewhere but right here. Although it is also true that the divine is right here in the sense of being within each one of us, this is to say that the divine is right here in the sense of the full gestalt of the moment. When we take our three steps forward into the amidah we normally imagine ourselves as entering the presence of God, approaching the King.

Here, however, when we step into prayer we enter the very body of God. We merge into God's presence. Indeed, the very stepping itself is the flow and movement of the divine in and through us. 

What if, before we prayed, we paused and recognized our body, words and movements as the body of God? What if we paused and saw the full totality of our experience as the presence of divinity in all its majesty and subtleness? What would it mean if we entered prayer with the intense mindfulness of this process being God, of walking through an ether of God, of our breath being God's breath, of our words being divinity itself and with the fundamental insight of non- separation and non-duality? How much care and mindfulness does such a conception draw forth when every letter, every sound, every phoneme, every shudder, every shuckle, every thought, every bow, every step and every moment is God's very being? Can we enter tefilah (prayer) with that consciousness and in doing so be radically brought up short, shocked out of our complacency and the sometimes rote nature of prayer?

We can all do this. It doesn't require us to believe anything in particular or to commit ourselves to some mystical perspective. It requires only the fundamental commitment to be fully present with the experience of tefilah, to recognize its permeated sanctity and to be unwilling to neglect any aspect or detail. It challenges us to cherish every instant as immersed in a sea of divinity.

That is the opportunity and challenge that R. Pinchas gives us - to see the very matter of our practice, its physicality and its process along with the thoughts, emotions, movements and sensations which make it up as the very presence of God's self.

Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Judaic Studies from Brown University and an M.St. in Modern Jewish Studies from Balliol College the University of Oxford. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in Jewish Studies specializing in Jewish mysticism.

Prayer Without the Body

I spend a lot of time thinking about tefilla - and not just when I am trying to daven.  In the past few months, I have written about what I feel is need to teach students how to meditate and practice what it means to focus mindfulness in prayer.  Some of you have written to me about incorporating yoga into tefillot or the tefilla curriculum and I have heard your advice.

Recently I went to a session by Andrew Hahn, who is apparently known as the Kirtan Rabbi (this is his bio from the LimmudLA website where I met him: one of a new breed of artist-rabbis whose joyful music and teachings address the deepest longings of the 21st century. He holds a PhD from JTS and ordination from HUC-JIR. A long time martial arts instructor, he also teaches a Jewish form of Tai Chi. Hahn tours the country offering concerts, workshops, and Shabbatonim.).  I had a wonderful experience working and speaking with Andrew and hope to interview him for this blog.

What really stood out from our conversation - and his session on "Fear and the Amygdala" - was how disembodied our tefilla is today.  Think about how you use your bodies when you pray.   You might bow a few times, or kiss your tzizit, and some of you may shuckle (sway), but think about it in a more broad perspective, most of us are not so aware of our bodies when we daven.  One result of this approach is that the emphasis on the prayer experience is about the intellect and the mind, and not the body.  Such an approach would explain perhaps why so many people are bored (for they my seek a more emotionally charged outlet) and why others (who do connect intellectually) bring books to read while in synagogue.

Hebrew and Day Schools are producing disembodied daveners (Read more about embodied cognition here, as it pertains to literary theory). I hope to develop over the coming weeks my thesis how the current approaches and traditions for teaching davening are failing in schools and how and educators and reapproach this difficult and sacred topic by embracing a mind/body pedagogy.