Is Less Davening More Meaningful?

I have written before how I am personally of the preference that less davening is better davening.  But after some serious reflection this past Shabbat, I firmly want to redact and perhaps contradict what I wrote.

Indeed I think that it in order to get to the level of prayer where shorter davening is meaningful and transcendent, you need to experience marathons of time spent in shul and hours flipping pages in piyyutim and prayers.

On Shabbat, in reading the story (Bamidbar 12:13) of Miriam and Aaron's concern over Moshe's marital situation, I was struck again by the simplicity of Moshe's prayer to heal Miraim's leprosy.

 וַיִּצְעַק מֹשֶׁה, קאֶל-ה" לֵאמֹר:  קאֵל, נָא רְפָא נָא לָה

And Moses cried to Hashem, saying: 

'Heal her now, O Gd, I beseech Thee.'

The authority and power of Moshe's simple prayer stems from his individual greatness and recognized mastery and knowledge of Gd.  He is also known to be a sincere mediator and one that he can pray at great length (see Mt. Sinai 40 days and 40 nights for those doubting).  I think this signifies the key quality for a brief and powerful prayer.

For a more modern example, one small throwaway comment from the President of the United States on a specific topic could send the stock markets or political issues through the roof - whereas my own personal pontifications about the S&P, Bonds, or the Supreme Court will not make the waves at my family dinner table.  The power is in the authority of position and communal value placed in the leader.  Otherwise any student could rise up and say, "get well soon" without moving the congregation.

 Thus, we are moved by Moshe's elegant prayer knowing that he can also daven the long prayer.  My personal conclusion, we need to teach the long form of prayer even though the students probably prefer the short form.  I will enjoy try to enjoy and explore more this paradox.

A Special Siddur

This Shabbat, I read an article in this week's NY Jewish Week and felt the need to share it with the readers here.  The author touches on many significant themes relating to tefilla, from the struggle to be comfortable with the text to the opportunity for transcendent moments. Your responses are welcome.

My Mother's Siddur
Kaddish prayers, from a book fraught with emotion.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Gloria Kestenbaum; Special To The Jewish Week

On the first day I began saying Kaddish for my mother, I walked into shul feeling uncomfortable and out of place. Although I’ve been an observant Jew all my life, I’ve never been much of a davener. Despite being a regular at Shabbat morning services, I did not perceive the synagogue as a place of prayer — I sang and gossiped quite happily, but davening was simply not part of my agenda. So walking into shul on that weekday morning was seriously discomfiting.

Even finding a siddur was a challenge — they all seemed to be for Shabbat only. Finally, on a top shelf, I caught sight of a large-type weekday siddur. I’m of an age where even large type seems surprisingly small, so I eagerly took it down. I opened up the large siddur and caught my breath — inscribed on the flyleaf were the words, “This siddur belongs to Frieda Pearl Stieglitz” — my mother.

For a second, I thought I had entered some strange magical universe, but a moment’s reflection put those thoughts to rest.  After my mother’s death, we had donated most of my father’s extensive Jewish library to a neighborhood yeshiva, but the odds and ends that were inappropriate there, including my mother’s large-print siddur, we had given to the shul. Still, I sat down in the empty women’s section, somewhat shaken.

I had a difficult relationship with my mother. A Holocaust survivor, her family was killed when she was 9 and she wandered around Poland on her own until war’s end three years later. I never quite understand what that meant, the horrors that entailed, although I heard her story many times. But I do know that she never really lost the wild child that allowed her to survive. She was easily enraged and often angry, at me, my brother, my father or the world. And her handwriting, large and bold, mirrored that rage. 

When I was a child, I would often find her notes, left for us to see — angry, blistering recountings of whatever argument had happened the day before. I came to dread seeing her written notes; even shopping lists gave me an unpleasant frisson. Seeing her name in that familiar, large script conjured up, for a moment, that same queasy feeling. But minyan was beginning and I started to daven.

And that’s where all the years of ignoring the service came to roost. Because although I knew the main tefillot, I had no idea what the speeding locomotive of a minyan was up to. I spent most of that first morning scrambling, trying to keep up with the engine racing through on the other side of the mechitza. My mother’s siddur, with its large type and clear instructions, however, kept me on track. It marked where to sit and where to stand, what to say quietly and what to say aloud.

In the days following, I would take down my mother’s siddur with a growing sense of relief. After a week or two, I was able to keep pace enough to look at the helpful back notes, where the editors had indicated the order of importance of the prayers. When I needed to leave out some paragraphs, which I continued to do in order to keep up, I was able to determine which were integral and which less so.

And for the first time in my life, I was actually enjoying the prayers. The “Pesukei Di’Zimrah,” in particular, with their entrancing, repetitious hallelujahs, were a revelation, magnificent songs of praise — not drudgery, as I’d previously perceived them, but poetry. The English translation supplemented my rusty Hebrew, and when there was a lull, I tried to look back and make sure I understood every word. And my mother’s siddur helped, gently guiding me along.

Every day when I came to shul, I would open up the flyleaf and see my mother’s inscription. And slowly, the inscription lost its negative power. I began to look forward each day to opening her siddur and seeing her words — and soon it became part of my morning ritual to trace those words briefly with my finger before beginning the service. I knew my mother loved me but she wasn’t often able to express it. In the Spielberg tape, which my mother had recorded years ago for the filmmaker’s Shoah Foundation project, and which I could not watch until after her death, she spoke about her regrets in mothering and wish that she could do it over. In the siddur, I felt her positive imprint and it became a way of connecting with the loving and helpful mother I knew she wanted to be. And I was grateful to her for giving me a medium in which to say good-bye to her properly, and to remember her in moments of song and joy, as she would have liked to be remembered.

On the next-to-last day of saying Kaddish — life is never as neat as the movies — I walked into shul, reached up to the usual place, but the siddur had vanished. I searched for a few minutes but with service about to begin, I found another weekday siddur, this time with no difficulty, and sat down to pray. My mother’s siddur was gone, but by now, I was able to find the way on my own. 

Gloria Kestenbaum is a corporate communications consultant and freelance writer.

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.  

Introverts and the Power of Solitude

Today I watched at TED talk that apparently another 1.4 million other people enjoyed by Susan Cain on the "The Power of Introverts".  It gets more intense at the ten minute mark and has a nice Jewish twist at the end.

She discusses the "transcendent power of solitude" in her lecture and it really resonated with me regarding my attempts to teach and evaluate tefilla.  While addressing that we are inherently social beings, Cain promotes reexamining how people do not often enough seek within themselves and ape and mimic "the beliefs of the people around you without even realizing that is what you are doing."  This point zeros in on one of the key modes for teaching kids how to daven: modeling.  For the lucky and determined person that figures out the key to successful tefilla, probably through deep introspection, have you asked how they gained such insights? Usually I think the best practice is to copy their outward behavior and approach.  My 7 year old shuckles (sways) like I do when I daven and has done so before he even went to school.

Cain notes that Western Society has shifted from a "culture of character" to a "culture of personality" - I think this has only enhanced young people's disenchantment with group prayer.  Whereas inidividucals might find the need to have prayerful expression, there are fewer role models on how to do, or even lead, a dynamic tefilla.

Her take away message: Go the wilderness, have your own revelations, and unplug.  Can we as educators teach our students how to do this or are school's curriculum and exceptions too rigid?

What are your thoughts?

Mailing It In?

Does your minyan daven to fulfill it's obligation to pray or does it strive to serve the Creator?

I can feel the difference in the tone of the tefilla and atmosphere in the room when the vibe is the latter (by the way, such an approach also fulfills the first option of 'obligation').  Do the people who are just 'mailing it in' because they are used to doing it all the time - and that's what they always done and don't think about it anymore - really notice that the tefilla's lost that loving feeling?

Recently, I switched up my routine and went to a different minyan and the leader there really tried to express his service and special devotion and it was very much palpable - it also went 10 minutes longer than the usual place I go to daven.  However the ROI (return on investment) of the experience for me was the feeling that my tefilla was more connected to Hashem and those in the room.

Perhaps the routine of davening in schools has produced people who feel need to check off the box (I said shema) and we are lacking the pride and passion to make the tefilla experience transcendent and purposeful.  Let's get the feeling back for the rabbis say, "A prayer without kavana (intention) is like a body without a soul"

Fasting for?

Previously I have explored the concept of tefilla and fasting and wanted to take a different angle today.  Yesterday was the Fast of Esther which leads many people to associate the purpose of the fast to be united at least symbolically with Esther's three day fast before she enters the King's chamber to make her plea for her people (chapter 4).  This is not the case as even wikipedia notes:

The 13th of Adar was a fast day for the warriors while going out to battle, as it is believed to have been customary to fast during the battle in order to gain divine favor.

Rather than explore why some educators avoid emphasizing discussions of power and war with modern audiences, I find it worth noting that ancient Jewish warriors seriously davened to gain favor in their wars even to the point of going out to war in a state of fast - I have a hard time just going to work without eating the whole day...

There is a serious disconnect (beyond the mind/body) between our prayers and actions highlighting how far the concept of fasting is falling out of favor, especially on 'minor' fast days.  Mainstream Jewry (and by that I really mean a majority in number) knows about the big one - Yom Kippur - and might be familair with Tisha B'Av, but the minor ones are really seen as minor in significance (and not in degree of fasting).  There are some people even ask about the relevance to fast on Tisha B'av if there is a State of Israel.  In my humble opinion, this is partly because of a change in traditional  ideology (if there ever was unified ideology), a lacking in appreciation for Jewish literacy/history, and the fact that fasting is seen as an 'outdated' practice.  As educators, I think we need to address this issue and its relevance to how we build an identity around tefilla and spiritual growth.

Do your students seem more focused or less focused in tefilla on a fast day?

Do you discuss with your students how to rise above the hunger pangs to better strive to connect?  What techniques do you use?

Have you had a voluntary fast day in your school for a special occasion?  How was the reaction by the student body? Was that tefilla unique?

A Prayer to Raise Good Children

Privilege me to raise children.... so begins a small tefilla said after candle-lighting on Friday nights.  This moment, when shabbat enters, or better, when we welcome shabbat into our lives, is purposely a moment of pause and prayer.

There is a song to this tefilla that is popular in the Orthodox and yeshivish world and I wanted to share it with the readers here because, as I have written before, sometimes music transforms tefilla and makes it so much easier for us to transcend.

 וזכני לגדל בנים ובני בנים, חכמים ונבונים, אוהבי השם, יראי אלקים, אנשי אמת, זרע קודש, בשם דבקים, ומאירים את העולם בתורה ובמעשים טובים, ובכל מלאכת עבודת הבורא.

Privilege me to raise children and grandchildren who are wise and understanding, who love Hashem and fear Hashem, people of truth, offspring that are holy, who to Hashem are attached, (who) illuminate the world with Torah and with deeds that are good, and with every labor in the service of the Creator. 

Shabbat Shalom

Guest Post: Is Music Transcendental?

The Transcendental Power of Music

Remembering Harry Chapin, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and Debbie Friedman, their lives and their music, enables us to become better human beings.

By Rabbi Yehoshua Looks / Jewish World blogger  Published 09:22 12.02.12

Music can be transcendental and it enables us to become better human beings.

We sing our prayer, we sing around our Shabbat and holiday tables, and our first communal activity when leaving Egypt was to sing after G-d performed the miracle of parting the sea. There is a dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Nechemyah in the Talmud, fifth chapter of Tractate Sotah, concerning whether Moses initiated the song and the people repeated line by line, or whether it was sung in unison. We are left with a question: Do we draw and maintain our inspiration from our leaders or form them as a community?

I was a child of the sixties. There were causes to believe in, causes to fight for – like civil rights – and causes to fight against – like the Vietnam War. There were leaders we believed in: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy – especially Bobby – all assassinated, depriving a generation of its potential greatness.

From a young age, next to a love of classical music (especially opera), the popular music that spoke to me was folk. Harry Chapin, Phil Ochs, and Peter, Paul and Mary all reflected the shifting moods and priorities of the times. They weaved the social conscience of our youth into melodies that we could sing along with. We dropped in along the concert trail with our friends, then with our wives, and then with our children. Harry Chapin moved us with stories of ordinary people, urging us all to adopt the causes he believed in, particularly hunger in America. After his tragic death at age 38, his widow, Sandy, said that "Harry was supporting 17 relatives, 14 associations, 7 foundations and 82 charities. Harry wasn't interested in saving money. He always said, “Money is for people,” so he gave it away."

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach spoke to a generation of Jews through his stories and his music. Rav Shlomo was a complex individual and there were troubling aspects to his life, but his empathy for humanity and his generosity were undeniable; so much so that despite all the money he made from concerts during his lifetime, he died virtually penniless.

This past week marked the first yahrtzeit of Debbie Friedman. She came out of the Jewish summer camp movement, drawing inspiration from folk music, combining it with Jewish texts. Like Rav Shlomo, her music has become a liturgy unto itself, crossing denominational lines.

Last week, at a memorial concert in New York City, Cheryl Friedman remembered her sister: “Debbie was gifted beyond measure. But, first she was a good person. She gave and gave selflessly, often to her own detriment, for the enrichment of our People and Judaism… Her consistent message brought people together from every corner of the Jewish world and beyond. We respond to a messenger who lives what she speaks – what she sings. That is why Debbie’s impact was so profound. Her values were reflected in her music – and in her life.”

Where are the Harrys, Rav Shlomos and Debbies of today? We remember them through their music and are transported to another place. Their words are words of hope and love. Let us not lose sight of their message, the positive in their lives, and their melodies. May they continue to touch our hearts and minds, inspiring us to leave the world a better place, as they did.

Shirah (singing) is referred to ten times in the Bible. All of them are times of great emotion. How are we to express our joy, happiness, sadness and thanksgiving if not in song? Shirah brings us closer to G-d. It makes us like the angels. Nine songs have been sung. The tenth, Shir HaGeulah, the song of redemption, is referred to by the prophet Isaiah (26:1), "In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah..." I await that day with great anticipation.

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Rabbi Yehoshua Looks is Managing Director of HaOhel Institutions in Jerusalem, now launching a new venture, Threshold, fostering Jewish Educational Entrepreneurship.

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

Praying Sitting or Standing

Does it matter?  Does sitting or standing while davening have an impact on your spiritual feeling?  Call it the calisthenics of tefilla if you will, but do I really raise my tefilla when I rise up?

For me, the issue of posture and prayer started back when I was younger and often heard the “please rise” and “you may be seated” conducted in the tefillot in my Hebrew School and at camp.  I once had a rabbi/teacher who explained the conceptual idea behind the Shmoneh Esrei prayer, called the “Amidah” or “standing”, as being titled such since it is said standing upright which he claimed was a uniquely human posture.  Thus standing erect in prayer before our Creator (and bowing) was a way to acknowledge our special position and connection to God.

Another controversial situation is whether it is proper to sit during the Torah reading in synagogue or stand up.  On this issue, the sitters have won out, but it seems that some sources support this position only out of sheer comfort and not as an ideal way to hear the public reading of the word of God.  In Jewish practice standing is a sign of respect and is done for a parent, teacher or rabbi.  When the Ten Commandments are read publically, people customarily stand up out of respect and as if to re-enact this experience as it was described in the Torah.  (Anecdotally, when Senator Joseph Lieberman went to synagogue the first Shabbat after being nominated in 2000 as the VP candidate, a reporter from the Washington Post wrote that “upon entering the entire congregation rose and read aloud the Ten Commandments”; coincidentally he was tardy for Shul on what happened to be parshat Vi’Etchanan).  Also, when the last lines of any of the five books of the Torah are read, there often is a loud clap in shul or a “please rise” so that we can rise to mark the ending of a book. 

One argument that I hear from some educators is that standing keeps kids from falling asleep.  So goes the theory that slouching is a habit of the lazy and lazy, unfocused people cannot find spiritual transcendence.  Now I have many friends that can sleep anywhere – and it is important not to confuse the bliss and harmony of sleeping with a true spiritual experience.  (It is also noteworthy that one can sleep while standing – indeed this is a habit that the IDF imparts into many an Israeli youth).  But is it a more spiritual posture? Recently when I was on an airplane and couldn’t rise to pray - mainly for safety reasons and courtesy to the others that would have been blocked from moving about in the cabin, I davened in my seat, with a slight recline.  It was a different experience but not a bad one.  I think it was just not what I was normally accustomed to.

Somehow, I think there is a power in having a proper posture in prayer. What do you think?