Jerusalem Day- Song & Prayer

Tonight begins Yom Yerushalyim - the historic day in 1967 that the Old City and Temple Mount returned to Jewish control for the first time since the Second Temple period.  There is much to say about this day and this city.  Gil Student wrote an excellent piece a few years ago about the quandary the victory posed for some religious Jews to say or not say Hallel. Obviously there is politics, and ideology, and geography, and other craziness that is associated with Jerusalem but I am still amazed, as an 11 year resident of the city, how powerfully the tune and words to "Jerusalem of Gold" effects me.  For me, it is a tefilla-like experience and thus I am thrilled to pause today and appreciate that we have such special place in the world, despite the politics, ideology, geography and craziness.

Why is it so Hard to Daven?

I don't mean to actually daven - connecting and transcending to Hashem.  Rather I am referring to the difficulty to find the time and space to really have a good davening.  Life gets in the way and by that mean, tasks, errands, people, pop-ups, pressures, and laziness.

The following article, by Josh Kulp, appeared in the Times of Israel titled "Why is it so easy to keep kosher but so hard to diet?"  I wanted to share it because I believe the author compares a personal struggle with a conventional Jewish tradition within a cultural context of choice and desire. I am personally motivated by the obligation to daven daily and think that Kulp's thesis pushes one past the temptation for spirituality and mindfulness and into a structure of positive struggle to achieve these goals. Without the obligation to pray, I think my tefilla would be like a diet.
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I once heard of someone who wanted to lose weight but was having trouble laying off late night sweets. So what she would do is eat a little piece of meat at night and then she wouldn’t find it difficult to refrain from eating dairy desserts. This made me wonder why it would be easier to keep kosher then to diet. After all, the rewards for keeping kosher, if there really are any, are far less tangible and immediate than the rewards for losing weight. For most people, losing weight is almost certainly healthy and our society generally thinks that skinny people are more attractive than heavier ones. Compliments, such as “did you lose weight? You look great!” are common. “I heard you’ve successfully been avoiding eat milk after meat. Wow! Very impressive.” Not so much. Why would this woman, and probably many like her, find it impossible to break keeping kosher but exceedingly easy to ignore a diet?

I don’t think the answer is simply that fear of God is greater than fear of being overweight. While this might be true for some people, it’s not true for a lot of people I know who keep kosher more out of habit than out of any belief that God will punish them for breaking it. I suspect this woman’s diet “trick” would work equally well for a person whose “fear of heaven” is not an overwhelming force in their lives. They would be far more likely to cheat on a diet that they are convinced will improve their health and looks than eat something non-kosher.

So what can dietitians and those wishing to lose weight (for the sake of clarity and so that my mother won’t worry – I do not want to lose weight) or just in general eat more healthy learn from kashrut? I am going to suggest a few but I’d be happy if readers would pipe in with their thoughts as well. Here are my three possible answers for why kashrut is easier than dieting:

1: It’s set in stone

Kashrut has a defined list of what you can eat and what you can’t. It’s relatively simple (even if the nitty gritty laws get a bit complicated). What I would suggest this translates into is that a more effective diet doesn’t count calories, but gets rid of certain bad ones – basically simple sugars. I’ve often told people cut out the following four “horsemen of the apocalypse”: bread (not just white bread, all bread), pasta, refined sugar and potatoes. Another piece of advice I give is don’t drink any calories (except beer  ) This makes it a little more like the certainty of kashrut. The person who won’t eat dairy after a meat meal doesn’t really need to think, should I eat it this time, should I not? She just does it.

2: It’s forever

Keeping kosher is for life, dieting is seen as temporary. This is an important distinction. When one decides to diet, usually the idea is that you’ll diet now, lose weight and eat more again later. Or at least “go back to normal”. But no one I know decides to keep kosher for a short time–i.e. I’ll keep kosher now until Yom Kippur, then I’ll stop. Keeping kosher means you plan on doing so for life. If you want a diet to work, you can’t think that you’re going to make a temporary change. Of course this means that a diet cannot be so intolerable that it won’t be sustainable. A resolution to diet might mean to decide that for the next six months I’ll suffer a bit, be a bit hungry, so that I can really lose weight. And after that, I’ll find a sustainable balance of diet and exercise. But that “after that” period must be a commitment in one’s mind to do so forever. I know this is not easy, but the minute one says, “I’ll diet today so I can go back to my usual habits tomorrow” nothing will really be accomplished, just like keeping kosher today so that I can have a cheeseburger tomorrow doesn’t seem to make much sense.

3: It has taboos

Keeping kosher is highly habitual. I know people who really don’t practice much Judaism, who don’t believe in it all that much, and yet still keep kosher because that’s how they grew up. I grew up in a kosher and fairly observant home, but when I went to college I abandoned most aspects of Jewish practice (I returned to them after college). But I never even contemplated eating non-kosher food. The idea of eating pork or milk and meat or even non-kosher meat was simply revolting to me. Diets don’t work that way. People don’t develop an aversion to Cheetos. Coke doesn’t become a taboo. So somehow for a successful diet to work, one would have to turn unhealthy food into taboo foods. I’ve seen this happen with gluten, although I don’t recommend going gluten free unless you’re truly allergic to the stuff. It also happens with people who become vegetarian or vegan, although this won’t necessary cause weight loss. But maybe just thinking of certain foods (the four horsemen and drinks with calories) as taboo or as causing an allergic reaction might help. About ten years ago I decided we would never buy soft drinks (diet or otherwise) in our house again. I made them taboo and basically we don’t drink them at home (occasionally I will have one outside the house, a little like the phenomenon of keeping kosher in but not out of the house).

So, now it’s your turn: Why is it easy to keep kosher and hard to diet? And why, in general, are certain habits or resolutions easier for us to keep than others? Why does our resolve stand up strong against certain temptations but melt away like butter on a warm piece of toast against others?

Davening when Stressed Out

Usually when people are too busy or stressed, it is hard to find the free time for hobbies, be it the gym, reading, or knitting.  The same could be said for davening, in that a person may skip shul, daven quicker at home, or auto-pilot through the words because of the distraction or blood pressure.

The following article from The Atlantic discusses how relaxation techniques can change how you think, how you feel, and apparently your genes.  I don't advise telling someone who is over-stressed to "calm down" or "chill out" (trust me from my own non scientific study) - however if we realize that the habit of properly davening can refocus a person to purpose and mindfulness, one can reduce stress levels.  One final point, I might protest when the author says that "it's not hard to learn" - as I find teaching prayer is a pretty difficult mission.
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Study: How Yoga Alters Genes

Alternative therapies meant to help us "break the train of everyday thinking" have effects on a cellular level.

LINDSAY ABRAMS MAY 2 2013, 10:27 AM ET

PROBLEM: The flight or fight response -- the natural response to stress -- essentially puts the nervous system in overdrive. So it's no surprise that it's opposite state, known as the relaxation response to stress, is associated with feeling good, in a general sense. People are able to evoke the relaxation response by repeating a yoga pose, prayer, or mantra while disregarding other thoughts, and it's been shown to protect against psychological disorders like anxiety and depression as well as physical conditions like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and types of cancer that are exacerbated by stress.

METHODOLOGY: Researchers at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Subjects trained 26 adults with no prior experience in this type of meditation for eight weeks. They practiced deep breathing, repeated mantras, and learned to ignore intrusive thoughts. Initially, they were given blood tests immediately before and 15 minutes after listening to a 20-minute health education CD. This was repeated after their training, only with a CD that guided them in their meditation. Twenty-five other participants, who had long-term experience in evoking the relaxation response, were tested as well.

RESULTS: All of the subjects' blood samples revealed changes in gene expression following meditation. The changes were the exact opposite of what occurs during flight or fight: genes associated with energy metabolism, mitochondrial function, insulin secretion, and telomere maintenance were turned on, while those involved in inflammation were turned off. These effects were more pronounced and consistent for long-term practitioners.

IMPLICATIONS: People who practice simple meditation aren't "just relaxing," explained the study's senior author, Dr. Herbert Benson (he of the aforementioned institute). Instead, they're experiencing "a specific genomic response that counteracts the harmful genomic effects of stress." While this study only looked at one way of reaching this state, people have been figuring this out for themselves for thousands of years, through yoga, prayer, and other forms of meditation. Yet this is the first time researchers have been able to use basic science to show that these practices actually have an observable, biological effect.

It's only gene expression that is altered, not the genes themselves. But these results also showed that the effects of the relaxation response become stronger with practice, typically twice a day for 10 to 20 minutes. Fortunately it's not hard to learn -- in what was perhaps the most pleasant turn an interview has ever taken, Benson guided me through a meditation session. "Do it for years," said Benson, "and then these effects are quite powerful in how they change your gene activity."

How Fancy is your Shul?

I am personally always struck by how unassuming a Jewish place of prayers often is.  I travel often and yet my normal adventures to synagogues rarely leave an impression influenced by the physical structure, but rather the quality and spirit of the quorum.  Recently I was a brand new shul and was humbled by the colors, natural light and decor of the sanctuary. Another famous example is the Belz Great Synagogue in Jerusalem - a must see for its beauty, splendor, and controversy.

Interestingly I came across a fascinating passage in Hillel Halkin's Yehuda HaLevi, a 2010 Nextbook publication exploring the biography and poetry of a midieval classic. In the middle of Halevi's journey in Spain he encounters a church that has been transformed into a mosque and back - Halkin writes:

Two conflicting theologies i stone, one overlying the other without erasing it. All over Andalusia are churches that once were mosques, the airy lightness of whose minarets now support the weight of Christian Bells.   

And Judaism? A room in Cordoba, a doorway in Seville. Yes, a doorway: the sole known Jewish feature left in that city is the former entrance to a synagogue that is now part of the church of Santa Maria la Blanca.  

Standing in the Mezquita Cathedral, a Jew feels envy.  How much they did for the glory of God, and how little we! 

Of course, we never had the opportunity.  Grand mosques were not built in Christian Spain, nor grand churches in Muslim Spain, nor grand synagogues in either. And yet even when Jews have erected such structures where they could, as in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe and America, their hearts have not been in them. It is striking thing in Judaism, a religion that codified everything expected of its practitioners in exhaustive detail, that it has almost no rules regarding a synagogue's appearance  Whereas mosques and churches have their architectural traditions, there are none for what the outside of a Jewish house of worship should look liked.  This remains true even in Israel, where, unless there is a menorah or Star of David on its roof, a synagogue cannot be distinguished from any other public building and need not be a building at all, since a plain room, large or small, will do as well.  

And so another thought, ironic and dissident, came to me in the Mezquita Cathedral. For whom, it asked, did you intend all this pomp, you who built and decorated this place? Did you think God was so easily impressed? "Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee," Solomon said in dedicating his Temple.  "How much less this house that I have builded!" True, he went ahead and built it anyway, but this was a folly Jews committed only twice. Christians and Muslims have never stopped repeating it.  

Halkin makes his point dramatically and ends with a beautiful poem by Halevi tied into this message about the sanctity of space (I will keep this as teaser for reading the book).  I also hear in his writing Heschel's hallmark point about the Sabbath as an "island in time" and the predominance of Jewish time over space - an important theme for conceptualizing tefilla in a modern mindset. One digestible take-away from this passage is that the history of a place of prayer reminds us that the eternal nature of prayer must be focused on the strength of the daveners and not the physical structure alone. What's your take-away?

Nusach and a Philosophy of Prayer

I'd like to share a fascinating blog titled Nusach Freak - which shares perspectives and experiences on davening.

The following post is from December 2008 and shares what I think is a profound statement about the underlying motivation to public prayer.  My personal notions regarding nusach have evolved and I think that all educators must consider what they are teaching towards when it comes to tefilla.
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Venice, Italy and Nusach Carelbach --

So two weeks ago I ended up in Venice, Italy for Shabbat (long story and largely irrelevant to the Nusach blog). Naturally, I avoided davening with the Chabadnikim given the chance to daven with the Italians. The Italian minyan actually followed a hybrid nusach of 90% Spanish & Portuguese and 10% Minhag Roma...and it was gorgeous.

Now here's what I don't get. Go into any random Ashkenazi modern Orthodox shul where there is no chazzan and you will get baal habatim doing the davening/leining. Invariably, one of the following things happens:

1. The chazzan will not only be unable to carry a tune but will have no idea of what he's reading evidenced by the rediculously bad phrasing and dikduk.

2. The nusach will be butchered or at a minimum, the chazzan will lose the nusach for a few worlds here or there (for instance, when switching to shabbat nusach at the end of kedusha of mincha)

3. The baal koreh will get most of the pasha right but a few taamim will be missed and the occasional mistake will be made resulting in the entire shul screaming out the correct pronunciation  It's one reason why many people go to shul...(Hey Yanki, want to go to shul with Tatty to play heckle and correct the baal koreh?)

In contrast, between Kabbalat Shabbat, Arvit, Zemirot (Pesukei d'Zimra), Shacharit, Kriat Hatorah, Musaf and Mincha not a single mistake was made. There is no formal chazzan in the shul ---Friday night an Israeli (temani) transplant to Venice was the Shat"z and there was literally not a note different than what is done on a Friday night at Shearith Israel in New York. More surprisingly, Shacharit was led by a kid who looked no older than 22 or 23, did not exactly look yeshivesh (more Italian, fresh out of an espresso bar in Milano look), a typical Venetian local yokal, and his chazzaning was perfect --- everything was said out loud and his dikduk, nusach and transitions between the nusachy and singy bits were 100% perfect.

This is not the first time I have been overwhelmed by how important attention to detail is in sephardi batei knesset. Why is it that Ashkenazi tephilot don't come out the same way? Is it somethig in how the kids are educated?

This past shabbat, back in Israel, the shatz in my local shul used Carlebach. Being tired after a long (boring) work week and an even longer Friday getting ready for Shabbat, I had little patience for awkward Kabbalat Shabbat dancing (c'mon, you know what I'm talkign about) and 25 minutes of ny ny ny ny ny....Luckily, my 2-year old, who had spent all of Kabbalat Shabbat next to me happily munching on a candy had had enough and after Lechad Dodi insisted we go home. I was happy to oblige. On the way home it dawned on me why Sephardi (and paticularly Western Sephardi) and Yekke batei knesset have such a different character than the run of the mill Ashkenazi batei knesset and especially those that allow nusach Carlebach now and again:

It's all about philosophy of prayer --- and how we view our tephillot (avodah shebalev) as a replacement for the avodah in the mikdash.

If we are focused on creating a tekes or formal ceremony to take the place of a very formalized (and I imagine a largely unemotional avoda that was conducted in the mikdash) we will try to develop a tephilla that is focused on perfection --- nothing can be off. Everything like the ancient avoda istelf must be done in a formalized manner with pomp and circumstance (l'chavod u'litipharet?) . Of course, as part of this formalized process, we need to speak out to God.

The idea of ny ny nying and dancing in shul seems very out of place according to this philosophy.

On the other hand if we are to focus on reaching out to God via a spiritual experience (focusing on the shebalev part of avodah shebalev) than we don't have to worry about little mistakes in our nusach or for that matter, our didkduk --- the important thing is too get the vibe going....Clearly, chassidut has a strong influence on the latter school of thought.

There is no right or wrong here...just different approaches. Personally, I grew up in that more formal environment and therefore, I find the ny ny nying and dancing in shul thing very foreign and even more so because it is often accompanied by poor nusach/dikduk. However, I do love beautiful singing (both Ashkenazi and Sephardi) ...and I am quick to get a spiritual high from nicely sung davening (with multi part harmony of course) and this helps me to focus my tephillot to the Almighty.

Enough shtuyot...back to work.
Shabbat Shalom

Nusach Man

Prayer and Boston

This is an interesting perspective from The Atlantic on the human reaction to the tragic events in Boston.  I wouldn't exactly call tefilla in this situation a meme - I rather think this is a very post-modern/borderline cynical commentary of tweets and posts on facebook - but there is something here about the pattern of human reactions in times of crisis.  One could apply the aphorism about there being "no atheists in a foxhole" to communal thinking in wake of a tragedy; I personally believe that the miracles do not make believers out of people (and have a biblical argument to support this theory) and rather think that the desire to pray reflects a deep emotional want of people, and the context brings this out.
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Why People Prayed for Boston on Twitter and Facebook, and Then Stopped

Social networks reveal some long-standing human patterns.

ELEANOR BARKHORN APR 20 2013, 1:39 PM ET

After the news broke Monday afternoon that two bombs had exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, prayer flooded my social media feeds. "Thoughts and prayers for folks in Boston," a former colleague posted on Facebook. "Pray for Boston," another friend wrote, echoing a popular Facebook page, Twitter hashtag, and image meme.

It was jarring. There was the weirdness of seeing so many references to the divine in spaces normally reserved for vacation photos and article links and quips about the news. It was tempting to think that all the social-media-fueled "prayers for Boston" somehow degraded the idea of prayer. As one Facebook commenter wrote on the Pray for Boston page: "Do you want me to DEFINE prayer? A solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship. Prayer is solemn. Not a 'like' on facebook."

It was also strange to see so many non-religious friends talking about prayer. The majority of my Facebook friends who wrote about praying aren't especially observant. Maybe they go to church or synagogue on holidays, but not regularly—and they certainly don't post about prayer under normal circumstances.

Odd as the deluge of prayer-related status updates seemed to me, many of them were just high-tech versions of an ancient phenomenon: faithful people reminding other faithful to pray. The Bible is obsessed with prayer. From Genesis to Revelation, variations on the word appear more than 300 times. The Hebrew scriptures describe people praying for strength, for babies, for deliverance from slavery, for food. In the Gospels, Jesus tells his followers how to pray (using the simple, straightforward words of the so-called Lord's Prayer) and how not to pray ("you must not be like the hypocrites"). In Paul's letters, we see the closest analogues to this week's "pray for Boston" tweets: constant reminders to pray. "Pray without ceasing," he tells the Thessalonians. "Be constant in prayer," he writes to the Romans. To the Ephesians he says, "Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests."

Churches have carried on this tradition of encouraging each other to pray, through prayer letters and prayer phone chains and prayer breakfasts and prayer groups. With that context in mind, Facebook shouldn't cheapen prayer any more than the Postal Service or the telephone does.

"Social media platforms are merely a means of communication," Russell Moore, president-elect of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and an active Twitter user, told me. "Asking for prayer via Twitter or Facebook is no different than calling someone and saying, 'We should really pray for this.'

"Social media can be used for harmful purposes, obviously. I'd be concerned about rumors spreading quickly over social media. But social media can be a tremendous force for good in alerting people to things they can be praying about right away."

But what I saw on Twitter and Facebook in the hours after the Boston bombings and the Texas explosion wasn't just faithful people reminding other faithful people to drop everything and pray. It was also the non-religious invoking prayer in a way that they wouldn't under normal circumstances.

At first, this kind of prayer also appears to be nothing new. It seems to confirm the old, disproven "there are no atheists in foxholes" myth—that when confronted with death and destruction, even a hardened skeptic is moved to seek God.

"As a Christian, I would see it as an evidence of a natural human understanding of dependence," Moore said. "People who live their lives with an illusion of independence and self-sufficiency, when a crisis happens, are often driven to prayer, or at least to call upon people to pray...I think that's a natural reaction."

It is a natural reaction for some. I grew up in Manhattan, and September 11th, 2001 was the second day of my senior year of high school. Though I didn't believe in God at the time, I found myself saying, "God bless you" to my friends as we parted ways that day, and in the days that followed. That faint, involuntary urge to call on God's name soon grew into a desire to read His word and then a hunger for friendships with people who believed in Him. Two years later, I said out loud what I knew in my heart was true: "I am a Christian."

But I'm not sure that's really what's going on here. I don't think the outpouring of post-Boston social-media prayer was fueled by a bunch of people who, in the face of tragedy, are suddenly eager to seek God. As Elizabeth Drescher writes in a well-done piece at Religion Dispatches, it didn't take long for the "pray for Boston" meme to die; it was soon replaced by other, more practical sentiments. I noticed that, too. Here it is in graph form—check out how quickly the phrase "pray for Boston" surged on Twitter on Monday, and then how quickly it fell:

My friends who wrote of praying on Monday night soon began thinking about Boston, or standing with Boston, or loving Boston. It's interesting to see what words besides prayer have emerged as the way to respond to and process the terrible things that happened, and continued to happen, in the city.

Drescher believes #PrayforBoston rose and fell so quickly because the prayers were never really about religion in the first place. They were more reflections of temporary anxiety and sadness than a lasting call to pursue belief:

Obviously, we can reasonably conclude, prayer memes shared in times of crisis do something besides expressing traditional religiosity, calling us to God, to regular spiritual practice, or to worship. Rather, in an increasingly secularized America...praying or calling for prayer in times of tragedy seems to mark a kind of existential angst, sorrow, or confusion for which other words or gestures seem inadequate.

Though Twitter and Facebook make it easier to witness those fleeting moments of prayerfulness, they're not all that new, either. A 2002 Gallup report on religious belief in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and September 11th concluded, "Public perceptions of religion's importance in society tend to spike following crises, but those perceptions are often short-lived, and don't frequently translate into behavioral changes." As an example, the report says that religious observance increased the week after September 11th, but by December it was back to normal levels. The same pattern played out this week, only much faster.

A Picture of Prayer - Worth a Thousand Words

There is a wonderful new sidur out called Nehalel, published Nevarech and Urim Publishers, devised by Michael Haruni.  Many readers have probably used the Nevarech bentcher, which I think was really a groundbreaking change to the conceptualized forms of bentching. This new sidur brings that approach to Shabbat davening.

The introduction by Zvi Grumet is an outstanding essay on the conceptual journey of Jewish prayer and desire for visual images.  Grumet dubs this siddur a "visual midrash on the liturgy" to provide a "new avenue for helping us access our inner selves".  While I don't imagine using this siddur every week, it is a great trigger for teachers and parents on how to use the liturgy for everyday prayers and increase kavannah.

The siddur is a perhaps the most under appreciated books on the Jewish bookshelf and I believe Michael Haruni's siddur is a bold step to refresh our relationship to the text inside.  His "cautionary" introduction addressing his motivation for creating this siddur offering educators a fascinating and honest confrontation with the limits of photographs and images to conceptualize prayer.  It is a must read and a great springboard for students to begin to see their own prayer as less fixed and rote.