More on Prayer (Column 78)
With God's help
The previous post, which dealt with prayer, the synagogue, and the phenomenon of the pamphlets, sparked a lively discussion and many responses. The discussion sharpened several points for me and made it clear that some of what I said, and some of my aims, had not been understood, and it also helped me formulate a more pointed position. I therefore decided to continue the discussion in another post. Fair warning: there is a twist in the plot.
The question of the pamphlets
I will not deal here with the phenomenon of the pamphlets. Even in the previous post they were brought mainly in order to sharpen the problematic features reflected through them in our prayer. I also added problems inherent in the pamphlets themselves (their low level, the prohibition on ordinary documents, and speaking of [mundane] matters, weekday-like conduct, etc., the political and economic interests, and of course also the monotonous preaching and the simplistic nature of the arguments, especially when they are directed at a captive audience with no real choice about what to read), but fortunately most of the responses did not focus on that, and I assume that on this point there is fairly broad agreement. It is, however, important to understand that if we do indeed agree that this is the state of affairs regarding the pamphlets, then in my opinion this expresses a problem in prayer itself—and precisely on that there was no broad agreement.
The motivation, the aims, and the framework of the discussion
At the outset I should clarify that I did not come to issue a Jewish legal ruling or prescribe changes, but for two main purposes: 1. To bring the problem to the surface. 2. To propose a line of thought that usually does not arise in discussions of prayer, according to which even if someone does not succeed in the task, that does not necessarily point to a problem with him; perhaps it also points to a problem in prayer itself. That is at least helpful for the frustrations that accompany people like me who do not manage to cope.
I should further preface that, in my view as well, directives for the public—especially on a sensitive and central issue like prayer—should emerge from a public discussion that is aware of the full range of arguments and consequences, and it is preferable that they be based on some sort of consensus. I do not see myself as an authorized institution to issue directives to the public on this matter (or any other), and therefore my main aim was to awaken a discussion that until now has not really been taking place. In many cases people raise difficulties, but at most they receive suggestions for how to solve them, and they are told that the problem lies with them and how they can cope with it (= rise above it). That is what I wished to challenge. I wished to argue that no serious discussion is being held of the possibility that these difficulties may require us to reexamine the matter of prayer itself. In my view, a respectful and serious attitude toward prayer requires discussing it seriously, and not out of an automatic commitment to defend everything that exists merely because it exists.
I am certainly aware that bringing the problems to the surface may (or might) lead people to draw conclusions (rashly?), and perhaps there are those who see me as an authority and will rely on my words in order to change and shape for themselves a different prayer. I took that into account and still decided to write these things, and I even allow myself not to regret it, for several reasons: first, stopping a discussion on the pretext that people might draw conclusions from it is of course absurd. The point of discussion is that conclusions should be drawn from it. But there is a fear that seems more justified: fear of drawing hasty conclusions. Yet this very cautiousness also carries heavy costs when the discussion is not held at all. Such fears are a regular way of paralyzing any significant discussion. To the best of my judgment, it is not right to keep going on as before simply because of these fears, and therefore my policy is generally to put everything on the table and conduct an open discussion, and let what will be, be. Second, I always repeat that I do not recommend relying on anyone, and certainly not on me. A person must make his decisions himself. It is desirable and worthwhile to consult and hear different opinions, but your decisions are yours alone. Anyone who hands me responsibility for his decisions should hear from me, in the strongest possible terms, that I bear no responsibility unless I wrote something in a way that constitutes a practical Jewish legal instruction (which I usually do not do). And third, if a person has in fact decided in accordance with my arguments—that is his decision. Even if I do not agree with it, that is not a consideration for me. After all, I am raising the discussion precisely so that it will have conclusions. True, I do not see myself as authorized to issue directives to the public, but when an individual draws conclusions from the discussion (even if I do not agree with them), that itself is my aim. From my perspective that is a success (though of course it may also have problematic sides). And on the practical plane I do not have many fears. Usually the conservatives will not listen to me anyway (I am, after all, a notorious heretic), and as for the reformers (like me), they may draw even more far-reaching conclusions (such as not coming to synagogue at all), and so there too I may perhaps help (in rare cases). And what about those who weigh the arguments on their merits? It is to that marginal and negligible group that I direct most of my remarks.
I repeat that regarding style and sarcasm I do not see any real problem. But even if I am mistaken about that, fixation on style is an evasion of the substance. The criticism of reading secular books during prayer or in synagogue is also marginal to our issue (especially since I do not know whether it is possible to define what secular literature is, and this is not the place).
The overall picture
Our prayer is composed of different layers. According to most opinions, prayer is rabbinic in origin (except perhaps calling out and crying out in a time of distress). True, according to Maimonides there is a Torah obligation to pray. But as for the definitions and details of the prayer we have in hand, it is clear that everything is rabbinic. This begins with the enactment of the Men of the Great Assembly, who instituted the Amidah, and enactments of various Tannaitic sages regarding communal prayer, and then later additions that were added over the generations (Pesukei DeZimra, Kaddishes, and even Kedusha deSidra), and of course various liturgical poems, and isolated passages such as Mi Sheberakh, Av HaRachamim, Yekum Purkan, and the like. Interwoven within it are also parts that are not really prayer (such as the Shema and its blessings, Torah reading, remembrances, and so on), for which prayer is mainly an opportunity to institutionalize their performance so that we do not forget them, and perhaps also so that they will have public value—In a multitude of people is the king's glory. From this I conclude that not everything is necessarily sacred, and not everything is necessarily binding and beyond change. In addition, my assumption is that what was right in one generation is not necessarily right in another—and this even on the optimistic assumption that whatever was established in any given generation was indeed right for that generation (personally, I am not sure even of that). But I still have not said what the problem is—that is, why I am speaking at all about changing prayer.
To the best of my judgment, certain parts of the prayer are relevant but too long. Other parts are irrelevant and/or anachronistic. And in general, fixed liturgy—even if all of it were relevant—makes intention and assigning meaning to the words very difficult. It is not practical to try to find in the prayer additional ideas and dimensions, since this is the same text recited every day (and sometimes three times a day), and we have to finish mumbling all of it before going out to work or to eat. Even if a few people manage this, in practice it is not realistic (see Column 76 on the relation to the public as opposed to the relation to individuals).
In my replies to the comments I wrote as follows:
Think about your child coming home from school and telling you that every day the teacher gives them two lessons on those same two psalms in Psalms, each time in exactly the same way, once in the morning and once in the evening. They are required to be creative and maintain concentration and listen every single day to exactly the same thing. You would call the police for abuse, wouldn’t you?[1]
One cannot seriously expect people to cope by concentrating and deepening their intention in a prayer that is said three times a day, every day. It is simply detached from reality. People grind through the prayer in order to discharge their obligation (or out of habit) and return to their business. By the same token they could recite the phone book as a religious duty (as Leibowitz famously suggested). Psalms, with all their beauty and depth, lose a little (!) of their radiance when you repeat the same psalm again and again every day for all the days of your life. There is a limit, no? Is it really so surprising that for most of us this becomes a mantra (at best)?
The question of requests in prayer came up for me only incidentally. I only wanted to argue that since people generally do not really count on their requests being answered (and in my opinion there usually is no basis for such an expectation), this is yet another indication that their prayer is mere mantra. They say it in order to discharge an obligation and not because they truly mean what they are saying. I will not enter here again into my well-known views on this issue, because it is not really important for the discussion. One can of course also add the Aramaic passages, the lamentations, or simply unclear sentences whose meaning most of the public does not understand at all. These too are indications that we are mainly moving our lips and not praying.
Assessing reality
In the responses, the remark came up again and again that I am relying on an unrepresentative sample. They mocked the synagogues I know and claimed that these are not serious synagogues. Some claimed that in Sephardi synagogues the situation is different (see below the description of the Minchah prayer and coffee preparation in a completely typical Moroccan synagogue, or the morning tea, for those who know), because there prayer is taken seriously (perhaps owing to greater participation of the congregation in the prayer). In addition, they argued, there are synagogues of full-time Torah students in which the attitude toward prayer is more serious. Some added that among Haredim there is no phenomenon of pamphlets (though of course there are rich libraries of sacred books), and so on.
About all this I will say several things. First, in my assessment my sample is actually fairly representative. It is hard for me to believe that the collection of synagogues I happened to visit all somehow belongs to one marginal subgroup of worshippers. Second, there is a growing segment (according to my impression and the impression of others with whom I spoke) of people who do not come to synagogue at all. They certainly do not enter the sample, but they have already drawn the conclusions from the irrelevance of prayer. It is important to take them into account as well when sketching the overall picture and asking whether change is needed.
Second, even in synagogues where the attitude is more serious, that is because they are more God-fearing (full-time Torah students) or simply more respectful (Sephardim). That still does not mean that the prayer is constructed properly for them. It seems entirely plausible to me (and this is indeed my assessment) that there too many do not really concentrate, but out of respect they are careful not to read Shalem books (only other sacred books, or perhaps not even those). The answer to the question whether the prayer is constructed properly for them is, in my opinion, far from simple. I assume that from their perspective as well, something shorter and less monotonous would be preferable. They may meet the challenge in one way or another because they are convinced that this is the perfect solution (otherwise why would our rabbis have instituted the prayer this way? And in general, what has been accepted by the public is presumably sacred), but why place before people problematic challenges? Why not construct a prayer that would not present such a challenge, but would simply enable people to pray more effectively? Would that not help those synagogues as well?
I repeated several times in my responses the words of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), also cited in Rema, sec. 101, who assume that people generally do not concentrate in the Avot blessing of the Amidah. One has to understand that this is only one blessing, that it is the only blessing in which intention is indispensable, and that it is the main blessing instituted by the Men of the Great Assembly. In other words, if there is any binding part of our prayer, it is this blessing. This is the very heart of the matter. If even in this blessing the people around Rema and the other halakhic decisors did not really concentrate, then it is hard for me to understand the amazing improvement reported in the comments—that in the synagogues of our day, in most of them, people manage to concentrate through most of the prayer (and not only in the Avot blessing). This came from the Lord; it is wondrous in our eyes, or at least in mine.
True, those halakhic decisors nevertheless did not give up on the blessing and on the intention required in it (although de facto they did give up on actual concentration), but one must remember that this is the principal blessing in our entire prayer. I was not speaking about changing the Amidah, and certainly not the Avot blessing, but rather other additions. Moreover, I described an inability to concentrate throughout the entire prayer and not only in one blessing, and thus the argument is all the stronger. And beyond all this, even if they did not give up, that does not mean that we are not permitted to exercise renewed judgment and reach more far-reaching decisions than they did. Each generation and its considerations.
Between prayer and other commandments
It is important to clarify a misunderstanding that recurred again and again in the comments. Prayer is exceptional in comparison with every other commandment. There is a dispute in the Talmud, and later among halakhic decisors, whether commandments require intention or not. The intention under discussion there is only the intention to discharge one’s obligation, nothing more. Feelings, experiences, and other dimensions are at most optional additions. Therefore, in Jewish law, if a person takes a lulav or sits in a sukkah, then even if he did not intend even to discharge his obligation, there is still value to his act. If commandments do not require intention, then he has discharged his obligation (even though it is agreed that this is not an ideal performance of the commandment, yet according to that opinion the intention is not indispensable). And even if they do require intention, there is room for the reasoning of Presumed to have been done for its own sake—that is, that his actions indicate that he is doing this for the sake of the commandment (for otherwise why is he taking a lulav or putting on tefillin?)—and therefore it is possible that he discharges his obligation even according to those views. It is no wonder, then, that with ordinary commandments the problem is not so acute and does not arouse special difficulty.
But prayer, beyond being a commandment that requires intention like every other commandment (for the view that commandments require intention, this too is indispensable), is speech. Speech is not lip movement but a cognitive act. Speech requires intention in the sense of understanding the words and in the sense of meaning what I say (and also the intention of standing before God, as in Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik’s well-known comments on Maimonides in the Laws of Prayer). This does not derive from the rule that commandments require intention, but from the very definition of prayer as speech to the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore, if prayer is performed without intention toward the words and their content (that is, without intending to praise God, thank Him, or request from Him), this is simply not prayer. We are merely moving our lips, nothing more. In prayer, intention is not a halakhic detail, marginal to a greater or lesser degree; it is the very essence of the matter.
Remarks by Rabbi Amital of blessed memory on prayer were mentioned several times in the responses. But I was reminded that he has another important statement (brought in the book A World Built, Destroyed, and Rebuilt), which, although said with respect to serving God out of gratitude, is very relevant to prayer as well. He cites there the Talmud in Yoma 69b:
For Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Why were they called the Men of the Great Assembly? Because they restored the crown to its former glory. Moses came and said: “the great, mighty, and awesome God.” Jeremiah came and said: Foreigners are ravaging His sanctuary; where is His awesomeness? He did not say “awesome.” Daniel came and said: Foreigners are enslaving His children; where is His might? He did not say “mighty.” They came and said: On the contrary, this is His mighty might—that He suppresses His inclination and extends patience to the wicked. And this is His awesomeness—for if not for the fear of the Holy One, blessed be He, how could one nation survive among the nations? But how could the Rabbis do this and uproot the ordinance instituted by Moses? Rabbi Elazar said: Because they know that the Holy One, blessed be He, is truthful, therefore they did not ascribe falsehood to Him.
The prophets omitted attributes from the praises of the Holy One, blessed be He, and they did so against the formula established by Moses our teacher, greatest of the prophets. How did they permit themselves such a thing? We do not change even the custom of the wagon drivers of the Krakow community, and they dared to lay hands on the very formula of the Torah itself? The Talmud explains: Because they know that the Holy One, blessed be He, is truthful, therefore they did not ascribe falsehood to Him. There is no point in speaking falsehoods merely because that is the fixed formula. Falsehood is not speech. When we are dealing with speech, moving one’s lips is not an act of commandment without intention; there is no commandment here at all. If so, by the same token, there is no point in simply moving one’s lips without meaning and without intention merely because that is the fixed formula. That too is a kind of falsehood. By the way, the Men of the Great Assembly restored the formula to its place when they understood that it had again become relevant. That too, of course, was a change in prayer.
Rabbi Amital, by the way, concludes from this that today there is no possibility, and therefore also no obligation, to serve God out of gratitude. This despite explicit verses (Is this how you repay the Lord, O foolish and unwise people?) and countless sources. Simply because we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, is truthful and hates falsehood. The conclusions regarding prayer seem obvious to me.
From here we can understand that all the comparisons made in the comments to the Independence Day ceremony on the one hand, or to a lack of meaning in study or in lulav or tefillin on the other, are meaningless here. They argued against me that I do not call for abolishing the commandment of lulav just because people do not find meaning in it. But that is a category mistake. The problem is not that prayer lacks intention; rather, specifically in prayer, when it is recited without intention, it is not prayer at all. As stated, prayer is different from other commandments.
It is important to understand that such a consideration is relevant even to the obligatory prayers. The later additions are at most custom, and it is easier to change them when necessary (though of course there is fierce opposition even to that), but what shall we do with the obligatory parts of prayer? With the enactments of the Men of the Great Assembly? I am not saying categorically that one must change them, but I am calling attention to the fact that if there is no intention, then perhaps in any event we are not praying, and therefore there is not necessarily a difference between obligatory parts and additions.
How does one deal with difficulties?
It was argued against me that when we have difficulties, in serving God and in general, it is wrong to solve them by giving in and lowering the bar. On the contrary, it is important to demand of people greater effort. Folding is surrender to reality, whereas what is demanded of us is effort and struggle in order to realize our values. I completely agree with this principled approach. Even so, it is important to understand that if the problem is indeed also in prayer itself and not only in us, then the situation is different. In such a case the difficulties are justified, and we must examine not only the modes of implementation and our efforts, but also the values we are trying to implement. If there really are problematic parts in prayer, it is not necessarily right simply to continue demanding effort; one should consider changing them.
It seems absurd to me to begin from the premise that this is a challenge we must overcome by making an effort to concentrate and find new insights and additional meanings in every prayer anew. Why place before the public an impossible task and demand of it efforts to escape it unharmed, instead of constructing it in a more sensible way that is no less beneficial (and perhaps more so), and then we will stand better in the task? I do not think it is right to treat challenge as valuable merely for the sake of challenge. A real and proper task should be placed before us, and then one can and should demand that we make an effort and not give up. In Column 62 I mentioned that sometimes the feedback one receives from laypeople on the ground gives correct insights to the people of the study hall, who sometimes set the wrong standards because they are detached from reality. The difficulties of people on the ground are not always a weakness that only requires them to try harder. Sometimes they indicate that the path itself is not correct. I explained there that for this reason Jewish law determines that A decree that did not become accepted by the community as a whole is nullified.
Counterarguments
Some argued against me that there is value even to ‘mutterings,’ that is, to the technical movement of the lips, on two main levels: 1. Kabbalistic mechanics (the muttering of psalms arranges the heavens and the sefirot; see details in Nefesh HaChaim, Gate 3). To my mind this is a rather far-reaching interpretation even if one accepts Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin’s premise, for if without intention one does not discharge one’s obligation, then I doubt how much this arranges any heaven or sefirah. 2. The value of our religious routine. It was argued that even if we do not discharge our obligation and perhaps there is no genuine value to our prayer, there is importance in standing before God three times a day in order to place our religious lives within a framework, and in effect to place our general lives within a religious framework of serving God.
Prayer and the synagogue as a religious framework
You can understand that I am not inclined to agree with the first argument, but I am very far from scorning the second (in fact, this is the main reason I still take part in these operations). In my view this is the principal argument for continuing today the framework of prayer as it is (even if with certain changes). Not a few of my friends in the religious public conduct their lives in such a way that the main religious element in their lives is the fixed prayers and the synagogue. This is a very important consideration, and when one considers the framework of prayer and changes to it, there is no avoiding taking this into account as well.
In one of the comments (to Eitan) I quoted a WhatsApp message I received from someone who had read my post and happened that day to end up in a Moroccan synagogue (see above the remark about Sephardi synagogues), and this is what he wrote:
Good evening, Rabbi, I am now at a long Minchah prayer in a Moroccan synagogue, and I cannot help recalling your article while I see, during the cantor’s repetition, the rabbi studying Talmudic text, and one of the worshippers, who went even further, actually made coffee for himself and his friend in the middle… it raises a smile…
And about this I wrote there:
To tell the truth, these things actually led me to the opposite thought from that of the writer. Suddenly I saw the value in the routine of prayer, mainly for simple people. I am still thinking about all this. The discussions here have stirred many thoughts in me, and from my perspective that alone was worthwhile.
I must mention here our family joke about typical figures in the synagogue. In every synagogue there is the one who hands out candies to the children, the one who hushes the talkers, the one who fights against the pamphlets or for them, the one who throws loud jokes into the air, the one who distributes roles (the gabbai), the one who plays cantor, the one who cuts kugel and herring or arranges tables for kiddush already during the Torah reading, the one who critiques the rabbi’s lesson (‘the lesson was worthless’), and the one who gossips about the latest news among the worshippers, the one who follows the football and basketball results, the one who hurries the cantor along or scolds him for going too fast, and so on and so forth. Tradition has created universal collective structures, and they find solutions for every hyperactive type who cannot pray (and/or read Shalem books during the boring parts of the prayer). Every person finds his place in this astonishingly amusing fabric, and so it is no wonder that in every synagogue each one of these figures exists (in our family the terminology is: this is the Cohen of this synagogue, and this is the Moshe of this synagogue, and this is the Lipschitz, and so on and so forth. Fictitious names, of course).
But this phenomenon too arouses contradictory feelings in me. Once one finishes mocking all these phenomena and characters, one understands that they serve a very important function. Everyone has a role in this fabric, and thus everyone finds his place in the synagogue. True, this has little connection to prayer and intentions, but the religious framework of the individual and of the community finds here an almost magical solution. Think of a focused and short prayer, centered on intentions and standing before God, perhaps with the addition of an in-depth lesson on varied topics. What would Cohen the herring-cutter do there? He cannot sit on the chair for even a minute. And whom would Mushiko scold for hurrying or for being too slow? This is really unbearable. What is the point of setting the tables if there is no kiddush after the prayer? When and how would we hear about the latest Europa Cup results? By the way, I say all this in complete seriousness. These are communal needs, and in an ideal prayer they would not be met, and that would threaten the very existence of the community.
In addition to the comments, I also spoke orally with quite a few people, and many, many of them drew my attention to this important point (thanks especially to Itzik Biton). To tell the truth, I am entirely inclined to accept it. An institutional change in the framework of prayer may lead to disastrous results for a considerable portion of the public, and it will really not help a considerable portion of the public. A twist in the plot, as I said.
Bottom line
At the end of the day, to the best of my judgment, almost all of my substantive arguments remain in place. Our prayer is very problematic, and it contains non-obligatory parts that are certainly open to change. Other parts, which are obligatory, also require judgment, since if we do not concentrate in them then in any case we have not prayed. On the other hand, the question of framework is weighty. I very much doubt how far one can damage the general framework without paying heavy public and personal costs. What will remain of the connection of an ordinary religious person to the service of God without the framework of prayer familiar to us?
True, this is very annoying, because once again the general standard is set by the lowest common denominator. But that is the price of communal life. Service of God and a uniform Jewish law have a communal and public dimension that cannot be ignored. Therefore a significant change in the prayer or the prayer book will probably not help and may even be very damaging. Beyond the fact that most of the public, including many of those who suffer like me, will not accept it (I fear that the Herring Cutters’ Union will come block roads in Lod with crates of pickles).
But one cannot get away with doing nothing. It seems that there is probably no escape from the current solution. The public will continue to conduct itself according to the directives of the Bureau of Herring Cutters. The spiritual elite who try and succeed in finding taste, intentions, and meaning in the fixed prayer, so that each day it is new in their eyes, will continue and accompany with holy melody the slicing in the hall outside. And the nudniks (like me)? After all, it is finally clear that the nudniks are the ones really in the right, and so they too deserve a solution. They will apparently have to continue finding creative solutions, such as Daf Yomi, a Shalem library, Shev Shema'tata, or Scott Aaronson (for now we will leave Chipopo and Agatha Christie aside. Something should remain for future generations of embittered people and reformers). And thus there will remain a place and a role for every member of our Jewish community, and And a redeemer shall come to Zion.
I will conclude my remarks with two comments that appear after the previous column, and describe two solutions that friends in the group of nudniks found for themselves. My words should not be seen as approving any of this, and each person will find his own way. Such is the lot of nudniks, who They have no one to rely upon except their Father in Heaven…
The least of the students:
Honored Rabbi (= that is probably me J), hello,
The problem you raise, in my opinion, bothers most of the public to one degree or another. I would like to focus on the practice I have adopted for myself.
A. Prayer with a quorum is not an obligation; that seems to follow from the plain wording of Maimonides. I know there is discussion of this among the later authorities (Acharonim), but a simple study of the Talmud and the medieval authorities (Rishonim) leads to the conclusion that praying with the public is a ‘virtue in prayer.’ The Talmud is full of stories of Amoraim who prayed alone; the impression that emerges is that this was not among the essentials of prayer. Therefore each person should calculate whether prayer with a quorum, which for the most part can ‘steal’ an hour and a half (including the walk and getting to the synagogue), is important and necessary for him. And if so, when and in what dosage.
B. Even when I pray alone, I adopt for myself the text of Rabbi Saadia Gaon in his prayer book. It is short and concise, exactly according to the demands of the Talmud [he adds supplication—which is optional—as well as Kedusha deSidra, but that too is optional, yet the text he brings is far shorter than the accepted one]. For example, in Pesukei DeZimra—apparently he brings only the five Hallelujah psalms. Of course, according to the Talmud this is not obligatory, and it can be skipped entirely. As is known, Barukh She’amar and Yishtabbaḥ are not mentioned in the Talmud and are apparently an enactment of the Geonim. Or one can say only Barukh She’amar, Ashrei, and Yishtabbaḥ. The blessing Yotzer Or is significantly shorter; all the material about the angels was omitted from it, as that is a late addition, and likewise Emet VeYatziv focuses on the Exodus from Egypt without excessive elaboration. The Amidah is significantly shorter than the accepted version; in my opinion it reduces by about 70% the usual verbiage. In short, worth a look.
Rabbi Saadia’s text was accepted in the two Babylonian academies, and apparently it is a text very close to that of the Amoraim. It follows, of course, that they too did not invest nearly as much time in prayer as we do. The morning prayer according to Rabbi Saadia Gaon’s text should not take more than about ten to fifteen minutes. Minchah and Arvit are significantly shorter than that.
C. There is no doubt that the cantor’s repetition and the abundance of Kaddishes are a burden, and therefore they drain the prayer of its flavor.
D. Experience shows that when a person prays briefly and to the point, he has a greater ability to feel like a person standing before a king. A three-minute Amidah does the job.
E. There is no doubt that praying in an Ashkenazi synagogue [of which I am usually a member] is depressing and boring. Sephardi prayer, and even Yemenite prayer, with the special melodies of Pesukei DeZimra and the rest of the service, plus significant shortening in accordance with Rabbi Saadia Gaon, and omission of the unnecessary parts [the cantor’s repetition, the sacrificial passages, thousands of psalms], would do the job. [Also inwardly.] It may be worth considering variety in Pesukei DeZimra as well, so as not to repeat the same psalms all the time; it loses the effect.
F. You probably forget that most of the public is not made of your [excellent] material. If you believe that prayer accomplishes nothing and you continue to pray because of other elements, good for you. For the masses, that does not work. Prayer has to rest on something ‘real,’ on an existing fact, something that has meaning in the practical world. Merely an act of serving God—that is a high level.
Therefore my claim is that if the public accepts your position [which I really do not think there is any necessity to ‘believe’ in; it too is still a belief, like the belief of those who believe the opposite], in the end they will not pray at all.
Niram Yehoshua:
Sound words, our rabbi Miky (that is probably me again J).
In this spirit I wrote in a post published today:
The institutionalization and obligation of prayer and the cantor’s repetition
a) Prayer is an address by man to the Creator of the world—in petition, in praise, and in thanksgiving—a conversation that emerges from the human heart. In its essence it is an act that arises from within—as much as a person is able and desires, whenever he wishes (see Maimonides, Laws of Prayer 1:3). The fundamental role of prayer is cleaving to the Creator, drawing close to Him, for prayer replaced the sacrifices.
b) Since chaos arose in the manner of addressing God, the Sages, the Men of the Great Assembly, decided to institutionalize prayer—to obligate its observance, set precise times for it throughout the day, establish a uniform and fixed text without alterations, and even add the matter of striving for communal prayer. All this was in order to create order, so that every simple Jew would be able to lay out his words properly before the Creator.
c) Ostensibly, this is a blessed move intended to benefit every single Jew, so that he will know what to say before his Maker. But in practice, over the years, this institutionalization caused prayer to become mostly a boring, banal, lengthy act, with texts some of which are not relevant to our period and with others with which we do not truly identify. It became a burden, an encumbrance that one wants to get rid of and merely discharge one’s obligation, contrary to the guidance of the Sages themselves that one should not make prayer fixed and routine, but rather mercy and supplication before the Omnipresent, blessed be He (Avot 2:13). Not only that, but the Sages added the public repetition of the Amidah for the sake of illiterates who do not know how to pray on their own (an enactment that became very irrelevant with the printing of prayer books, especially since there are hardly any illiterates among us). Maimonides, who lived more than a thousand years after the Men of the Great Assembly, saw many who treated the communal prayer contemptuously—chatting with one another, walking about, spitting, and being busy with themselves. He was forced to combine the individual prayer with the cantor’s repetition in order to prevent the disgrace of communal prayer. Institutionalized prayer, and especially public prayer, is one of those enactments whose drawbacks are so conspicuous that it is doubtful whether the benefit is worth the institutionalization.
d) My personal solution is to act according to the rule brought in the Shulchan Arukh in the first section: A little supplication with intention is better than much without intention. (sec. 4) and therefore I try to shorten the structure of the prayer as much as possible—according to the halakhic tools available to me—and I also act in accordance with what the Mishnah Berurah wrote there (subsec. 12): And one who is a Torah scholar, and has the mind to understand and study, may refrain from reciting many supplications and requests printed in the prayer books, and it is better that he study in their place.
Therefore I usually keep with me a good Torah book that I can study during the order of prayer; that is how I save myself from boredom (there are times and periods when I also enjoy the tunes and melodies here and there). During the cantor’s repetition, I try to answer amen to the blessings, but I do not hesitate to study at that time (contrary to the Mishnah Berurah and in accordance with Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano), and in my opinion it should be abolished, or at the very least combined with the individual prayer.
[1] An example that actually exists is advanced studies of the doctrine of the wagtail and the squill, which occupies our dear children throughout all their early school years. They spend years delving into the meaning of the wagtail and the squill that heralds the coming of autumn, again and again every single day. Beyond that they do not do much there (as opposed to the years that follow, in which they usually do nothing at all).
Discussion
There is an interesting treatment of this issue by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, brought on the verse in Genesis 20:7 (“Now therefore restore the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all that are yours”): “and he will pray for you” — from the root palal (to judge), related to balal. We have already seen in the episode of the Tower of Babel that one who is bolel does not merely mix materials together; rather, he introduces a new element into the material, permeates all its parts with it, and thereby turns it into a new substance. But this is the role of the judge according to the Jewish conception. Falsehood and injustice divide, creating opposition and strife. The judge introduces law — the divine truth of reality — into a place of opposition and strife, and thus makes peace, creating harmonious unity where falsehood and injustice had produced conflict and fragmentation. Similarly, the one who prays, as it were, ‘judges’ himself: he infuses the divine truth into every corner of his being and existence, and thus acquires inner unity and wholeness in the light of God’s countenance. Jewish prayer thus stands in absolute contrast to the popular conception of ‘prayer.’ It is not an outpouring from within, not an expression of what the heart is already feeling — for that we use terms such as ‘supplication,’ ‘meditation,’ and the like — but rather the infusion of the heart with that truth that is given and acquired from outside. Prayer is nothing other than ‘service of the heart’; one who ‘prays’ is nothing other than one who ‘works’ on repairing himself, raising his heart to the heights of recognition of truth and desire for the service of God. Were it otherwise — if prayer were only the expression of the heart’s feelings — how could fixed times and a fixed text have been established for it? How could one assume that the entire congregation, in all its particulars, would be filled with one feeling and thinking one thought at preset times? More than that: such a prayer would be superfluous. Feelings and thoughts already alive in our hearts do not need expression; least of all do they need fixed, formulated expression. A deep experience always finds expression for itself, and if the experience is very great and exalted, it is beyond all expression — ‘to You, silence is praise.’ Say, then, that the fixed prayers were instituted only to awaken the heart and give life within it to those eternal values that still require strengthening and superior safeguarding. Indeed, truth must be said: a lack of the proper ‘mood’ for prayer only increases the inner need to pray; it only heightens the saving power and lofty value of that ‘service of the heart’ accomplished through prayer. A missing ‘mood’ is merely a clear sign of the blurring of that spirit which is not the basis of prayer but rather its purpose and exalted goal.”
Two comments:
1. Nothing fixes the core of Jewish faith and its contents more than the content of the prayer service, even when it is said like the “chirping of a starling.” What was important to Hazal to pass on to future generations is found there. And its very place there has tremendous influence.
2. Intentions and thoughts, even when one is not actively thinking them, underlie routine actions. I love my family members even when I am not thinking about them at all. Sometimes I think about them and am flooded with emotion, and sometimes I think about other things and feel nothing — and still the love is there somewhere (among other things because of routine and boring actions).
This does not mean that nothing should be done about the problems raised here, but these points are very important in my humble opinion.
The about-face is, in my humble opinion, disappointing.
I fear that you do not understand the “price” of continuing the current situation. Nothing entrenches a community more than its prayer. You will not be able to create a community of “thinking” people as long as they maintain this practice. I think that nothing expresses the problem of shaping today’s Judaism more than its prayer service.
It has everything there — starting with the fact that 80% to 90% of the community doesn’t even come (on weekdays), the degrading attitude toward women, the mumbling of Pesukei De-Zimra, requests for the breaking of the yoke of the nations from our necks and for being led upright to our land — something God already did 65 years ago, requests for sacrifices that nobody wants, the Amidah without intention, etc.
You will never have more than a virtual community if you continue to pray and lend a hand to this institution. No one will ever take you seriously as anything more than another smart-aleck on the internet if you are aware of all the transgressions taking place there — both against ancient traditional religion (the Amoraim and Tannaim would never have agreed to what goes on today) and against liberalism and intellectualism — and yet you still lend it a hand just so that some idiot can go on slicing herring!!!!
True, destroying tradition has a price. But if your whole goal is simply to go on being the internet intellectual who wants to write whatever is on his mind, to be the dog that barks while the caravan moves on, then good luck. You’ll have lots of fun and lots of virtual admirers, but religious Judaism will remain fossilized, liberal people will continue to feel completely disconnected, and very quickly will become “lite.” As long as three times a day you go to their temple and bow along with them against explicit laws in the Talmud — and think that you can build a new society — you are simply mistaken.
“It is not upon you to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it”!!!!
What hypocrisy!
You say you are concerned about the kugel-cutters, when in fact we already know that your main concern is for the readers of Shalem books (by the way, why aren’t they part of the family joke?).
Indeed. They weren’t included because that phenomenon has not yet become standard in all synagogues. Evolution is currently in progress.
Interesting.
Not long ago I heard a lecture by someone called Rabbi Michi from Yeruham (from quite a few years ago) in which he argues that perhaps דווקא the technical mumbling without intention (without love and without fear) is the true service of God. He even proved it from Maimonides’ words about idolatry 🙂
About this it was said: “Be careful with the sons of the poor, for Torah will come forth from them.”
I have nothing against a community deciding to make such a change. On the contrary. My claim is that I would not instruct this as a general ruling. Even if you succeed in building intellectual communities, I doubt how many such communities there will be. Especially since in my opinion there is value in diverse communities as well (including in age and ethnicity).
But I am very, very glad about anyone who is disappointed by my words here (truly). I just think there is only a small minority like that, and they will already know what to do even without me.
Hello Yaniv. Excellent point.
First, I am not speaking here about love and fear but about praying with intention (the words and the aims). Therefore everything I said there remains exactly as it was, and has not the slightest thing to do with what I am saying here.
Second, even if you were right and there were a contradiction here, there would still be no difficulty. To explain this, let me give you an analogy. Once I heard a lecture by a Jew named Moses (his father’s name was Maimon) who wrote that sanctifying God’s name is the loftiest service of God (right there in the Foundations of the Torah). But I have not heard of anyone concluding from this that we ought to seek out situations in which we will be required to sacrifice our lives for the sanctification of God’s name. Consider this carefully.
I actually didn’t mean to show a contradiction, but rather that there is another important aspect to people who come to synagogue and don’t really have proper intention in prayer. True, there is a lot of community aspect in it, etc., but someone who gets up at six in the morning and sits in synagogue for half an hour — even if he doesn’t really intend or understand what he is saying — in my view has still done a certain service of God.
Indeed. And still, it is not advisable to provide people with sanctification-of-God’s-name challenges. Better to make them unnecessary.
I agree with all of the rabbi’s words, but I would like to sharpen what follows from them for anyone who didn’t notice (hoping the rabbi agrees with me).
It is not the swayers and eye-closers and lovers of cantorial music and Carlebach who are the righteous ones, and who graciously tolerate those who use the dead time in prayer for reading.
The intellectuals, the truth-seekers and haters of fakery, are the ones who graciously tolerate all the excess baggage in the prayer service מתוך understanding that the ignoramuses need it in order to preserve a framework.
First of all, I should note that unfortunately I am not very knowledgeable in halakhah (to put it mildly), and in addition that I agree with most of what is written here. What I did want to draw attention to is that the prayers were also instituted corresponding to the sacrifices, and in that sense they serve as a substitute for the sacrificial service since the destruction of the Temple. I did not see you address this consideration, and I would actually be glad to read how you would theoretically deal with that issue, because on the one hand one cannot ignore the fact that a significant part of the inability to have intention is because of the repetitiveness! And on the other hand, the repetitiveness is there because the sacrificial service is repetitive, and what can we do — we need to continue that service because that is apparently what God wants (or at least that is what the sages thought when they instituted the prayers).
Hello Meni.
I did not come to rank anyone. Each person has his own path, and the One who tests hearts and minds will decide each person’s worth. Generalizations are usually unnecessary and of course inaccurate.
I’ll just note that I printed the article a few minutes before Shabbat — and read it during the prayer service.
Even so, the prayer corresponding to the sacrifices still has to be a prayer. I did not propose abolishing the fixed prayers.
And then it became clear to you that what you were doing was not proper? 🙂
But how are we supposed to have intention if it’s the same text 3 times every day? I mean, practically speaking, what can even be done? Even if we changed the text to something more relevant, it seems to me that I still wouldn’t be able to have intention if it’s 3 times a day and over time. It would just become a mantra too. Maybe it would be possible to add a free-form dimension to the prayer and then that would solve the issue, but I don’t know what the implications of that would be and whether it serves the purpose of prayer… And another question: is there an issue of intention in the commandment of offering sacrifices? (Sorry for the ignorance.)
The sacrifices are offered by the priest. There are six intentions involved in slaughtering the sacrifice (as explained in the Mishnah Menachot).
A short prayer is much easier to say with intention, even if there will be misses. That, apparently, cannot be avoided. A prayer that is entirely personal and subjective is simply not practical. The overwhelming majority of people would not know what to do in such a situation at all, and the others can do that even today.
I highly recommend Abraham J. Heschel’s book Prayer. It really helped me orient myself properly toward prayer.
And the book also deals with the problems Rabbi Michi mentioned. I recommend starting from chapter 2.
A question related to the previous article — could you address the halakhic binding force of custom? If in all ethnic traditions and communities people say Pesukei De-Zimra in the synagogue, does that not become binding by virtue of custom?
In honor of the rabbi (apparently that’s me X)
A. I truly do not understand how one can conduct a discussion about the implications of the above topic after its foundations (lack of providence, etc.) are founded and lodged deep in our rabbi’s fevered mind, may he live long, (vain prayer), and are doubtful to most readers.
B. For the needs of those lacking imagination and bereft of emotional talents, nowadays there are wonderful books about prayer (about what to get emotional over and how, and even the required quantity of emotion; see Yesodei ha-Torah u-Yesodei ha-Avodah) — so go to them and be satisfied (double meaning intended).
C. I know quite a few people who do not connect to studying “an ox that gored a cow,” and דווקא to emotional, experiential prayer they do connect.
D. Sometimes it seems from your articles that you have no idea what it means to struggle with the evil inclination: (a) because in most matters apparently you have no evil inclination — and as is well known, the saying goes, “I created the evil inclination, I created for it mathematics, desolation, and total repression”; (b) in those areas where you do have an inclination, you have no ambition at all to fight it.
But you ought to know that there are people who have inclinations such as stealing, adultery, murder, violence, and dirtying public places (and by the way, your wonderful solutions in matters of prayer etc. are called for there too), and for them the battle with the inclination is exactly like your battle with prayer (double meaning intended). And for them, for some reason, solutions in the style of “nobody can do it and nobody wants it and the source is unclear and the tradition is wrong” are not solutions.
E. In short, allow me to accuse you of dishonesty and bias that prevent you from looking at things clearly, namely this:
Anyone can find pleasures in prayer (long or short, most of which is not requests at all but verses of splendor and thanksgiving to the Creator of the world — which suits even an apikorus like you). And this does not even require as much struggle as you think. Nor is this some heavenly text at all, but rather texts full of poetry and liturgy, metaphor and allegory, seasoned with meter and refreshing words (and I will not write “hope and faith” for well-known reasons). And of course, one who does not believe in the meaning of the words of the prayer has no place in it.
F. The struggle against the inclination not to pray is not new to this generation; it has existed for many years, and many were afflicted by it, especially people of intellect and originality (sound familiar…). So do not let your spirit sink and do not bow your head, for many great men found this difficult.
The elders of Ponevezh tell that Rabbi Yechezkel Levinstein (the mashgiach), on his way to his place for prayer, would pass by the places of Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky and Rabbi Elazar Shach (the heads of the yeshivah) and confiscate the books they had brought with them under the shtender before prayer.
And I cannot help but place here the beginning of my words.
I truly do not understand how one can conduct a discussion about the implications of the above topic after its foundations (lack of providence, etc.) are founded and lodged deep in our rabbi’s fevered mind, may he live long, (vain prayer), and are doubtful to most readers.
Customs do have some halakhic force, but when they begin to cause harm they can be changed or abandoned.
I allow you to accuse me of whatever you like, but it is recommended first to read what I write. I have already addressed all the points you raised, again and again. All the best.
I labored and did not find.
A perfect article
A suggestion for change that crossed my mind, and to some extent also deals with the problems presented in this post:
A move to a triennial Torah reading cycle.
To the best of my knowledge, the annual cycle is indeed the accepted one today among the Jewish people, but nowhere is it presented as an obligation (Maimonides, for example, presents the two customs as equally valid, and says that the accepted one is the annual cycle). But those more expert can correct me.
This would significantly shorten the prayer service, and would still leave the kugel-cutters with a taste for life,
To Reuven:
… do not believe.
To Noam,
That much? Many thanks.
Hey, that wasn’t me.
A proposal for change is not an academic matter but something that is supposed to be practical.
That everyone should leave after Kaddish Titkabbal like you is an idea that may be reasonable, and perhaps should be instituted in some synagogue, but changing the Torah reading cycle is completely impractical. Especially given the Jewish holiday calendar with Simchat Torah in it (but even aside from that).
In my opinion it also would not shorten things by much, because most of the time of “Torah reading” on Shabbat is not the reading itself, but the mumblings during taking the Torah out and returning it, and especially the Mi Sheberakhs for the 7 aliyot that would remain. It is more practical to cut those down (say, to do one Mi Sheberakh for all those called up at the end, because getting rid of them entirely already sounds a bit too extreme to me…).
You wrote to me that when customs begin to cause harm they can be changed or abandoned. Can you bring sources for that? In my view it is much simpler to abandon a rabbinic enactment whose rationale has lapsed (because according to some of the Rishonim, when the rationale lapses the enactment is no longer binding) than to abandon a custom whose rationale still exists. Today in all communities it is customary to say all of Pesukei De-Zimra.
A. On the matter of practicality — I am writing in the spirit of the tone in the recent posts here, namely from the assumption that we are dying to make a change and really need one and the current situation is truly harmful, blah blah; but what can we do, it would cause damage, so we will remain stuck in the current situation. If one accepts these assumptions, changing the reading cycle sounds to me more reasonable than shortening the Amidah to only two blessings or adopting Saadia Gaon’s formula for the blessing Yotzer Or. If your point of reference, by contrast, is the current situation, then of course it is very difficult to introduce such a change.
B. In my opinion, Simchat Torah could דווקא be a very positive side effect (perhaps worth changing just for that alone) — the annual festival circus would stop, it would become a normal holiday with a sensible schedule, and only once every few years would Simchat Torah come around on amphetamines.
C. As for the Mi Sheberakhs, obviously one should start by exterminating them. And that is so even if one does not adopt the assumptions of the recent posts here — they are simply a nuisance and a real burden on the congregation.
First, the Gemara itself says that when the rationale lapses, a quorum is still needed to permit it. The dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad at the beginning of chapter 2 of Mamrim is, simply speaking, when there is a court (= Sanhedrin), but it is not greater in wisdom and number.
Customs change all the time, like dividing the Torah reading on Shabbat into one year or three years, wearing a suit and hat in prayer and in general, Sephardic and Ashkenazic pronunciation, and much more. הרי every custom that came into being was itself a change, so ending it is also just a custom that comes into being.
The fact that today in all communities people say Pesukei De-Zimra does not in any way mean that the rationale still exists. It only means that no one has yet arisen to abolish it.
With God’s help, 9 Tammuz 5777
And thus writes Rabbi Yehuda Amital (And the Earth He Gave to the Children of Men — chapters in thought and education, pp. 95–96):
“… Rabbi Eliezer emphasized and said: ‘Know’ — do not suffice with mere ‘intention.’ ‘Intention’ can be something artificial and external. ‘Know before whom you stand,’ and then out of that ‘knowledge’ the prayer will be natural. ‘The early pious ones would wait one hour and then pray…’ … for מתוך their knowledge of before Whom they stand, their hearts would naturally be directed. And thus Maimonides says in the Laws of Prayer (4:15): ‘What is intention? That one should clear his heart of all thoughts and see himself as if he is standing before the Divine Presence’…
We fulfill today the counsel of those ‘early pious ones’ through the recitation of ‘Pesukei De-Zimra’… We recount the wonders of the Holy One, blessed be He, His kindnesses and His greatness, so that we may sense and feel before whom we stand. Generally speaking, it is easier to speak about Torah, about fear of Heaven, about observance of mitzvot and the like, whereas directly turning to the Holy One, blessed be He, is much harder. Herein lies the root and foundation for opening the prayer with the recitation of ‘Pesukei De-Zimra.’”
We are far from the level of the ‘early pious ones,’ who would wait an hour before their prayer in order to prepare their hearts to stand before their Creator, but a few minutes of contemplation on the greatness of the Creator before approaching the acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven and prayer — that is fitting preparation for every worshipper.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
With God’s help, 9 Tammuz 5777
The foundation of prayer is the belief that we have not yet reached our optimal state, that it is always possible to rise higher and improve. We place before our eyes exemplary figures and ask: ‘When will my deeds reach the deeds of my forefathers?’
We begin with the songs of David, who even while establishing a young kingdom of a ‘peripheral’ people dreamed that his small kingdom would grow in strength and become ‘a light unto the nations’ and bring the whole world to the ideal of ‘Let every soul praise Yah; Hallelujah.’
We continue with the blessings of the Shema, describing the luminaries that give light to the world and the angels who praise their Creator in unity and love — and we hope that we too will give light to the world and make the name of Heaven beloved.
And we stand to pray with the memory of the patriarchs — Abraham, who called in the name of God and commanded his children in the way of God to do righteousness and justice; Isaac, who was prepared to give his life for the sanctification of God’s name, and who devoted himself to taking hold of the land and bringing forth grain and wine from it; and Jacob, the wholesome man, who worked faithfully and built a splendid family, the foundation of a people that would be ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’
We hold fast to exemplary figures in order to create within ourselves great aspirations, and from them we ask to take one more small step and bring one more small improvement, hoping that at the next prayer we will be able to report a little progress and ask for more.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
A practical way to make concentration in prayer easier is dividing it into paragraphs, focusing in each paragraph on that paragraph’s unique theme, so that every word and sentence naturally receives its context within the paragraph’s subject.
Thus, for example, the Amidah prayer breaks down into nineteen ‘links,’ nineteen blessings, each with its own unique theme — the patriarchs, God’s might in the world, sanctification of God’s name, request, for knowledge, request for repentance, etc. And so too in the other parts of the prayer.
There are siddurim (Rinat Yisrael, Koren, and Feldheim) that marked headings at the beginning of each paragraph in order to make it easier for the worshipper to be aware of the unique topic of each paragraph.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
Which explicit laws in the Talmud are you talking about?
With God’s help, 10 Tammuz 5777
Following Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s words about prayer as awakening the eternal values — there was much engagement among German Jews in studying the contents of the prayer service. For example, Rabbi Munk’s The World of Prayer (2 volumes), and Rabbi Issachar Jacobson’s Netiv Binah (5 volumes). Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s comments relating to the order of prayer were also collected in the siddur Tefillot Yisrael. Studying them can make prayer an intellectual and spiritual experience.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
Blessed are You, Michi, creator of our God and God of our fathers, etc. — I try to aim high in the blessing of the Patriarchs and in the foundational structure of the Michael version, the angel who is at my head, provoking, challenging, and defying.
I make my prayer supplications, that your spirit not fall because of the slanderers, insulters, and hypocrites. And that you continue to write from strength to strength. I know of no one else from among the faithful of Israel (perhaps only to a certain extent the rabbi ) who has balls (not necessarily born on Shabbat), broad wingspan, and as much brains as the good God has graced you with (?), a shoot of Ben Azzai and Rabbi Yirmiyah. Your soul at Mount Sinai strengthened the mighty hand of Moses, who snatched the tablets from the One who gave them and said, “My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me.”
An end to ultra-Orthodox apologetics and to the constant aspiration to harmonize the texts and everything.
Enough of prayer that has turned into nonsense, into something secondary. Enough of rote prayer. ׁ(On the Daf Yomi, the householders keep trying every time to veer away from lomdus and ask about halakhah and prayer.)
And because of our sins we were exiled from Hannah’s prayer, in which “her lips moved” (yes, Michi!) — and from her they learned prayer. And certainly it was not mechanical: at the ‘edge’ of her prayer stood cognition, thought, and emotions.
Alas, prayer speaks to me in its current format and in a minyan and in public. I carry, more than three times in my head, the wording of natural prayer, such as “if only,” etc.
More than that, I do not know whether there is any address at all, besides my own address — in order to join me.
Michi is making an intifada, in the positive sense. He shakes (“Train a lad according to his way”) everything up.
After all, deeds lead to intentions, according to Sefer Ha-Chinukh, but what shall we say endlessly (His name too be exalted): for the sake of the unification of the Holy One, for the sake of the unification of the Holy One, for the sake of the unification of the Holy One, for the sake of the unification of the Holy One, and so on and on (Heaven forbid).
Quite the opposite — this Shabbat I went even further and took Gödel, Escher, Bach to synagogue.
Dear Rabbi Michael, hello,
Your first column on prayer aroused a great deal of anger in me, since it seemed like mockery of prayer and arrogant condescension (look at me — I read important and profound books while you waste your time on “pamphlets”). I also did not agree with you regarding the “problematic” nature of the synagogue handouts. Why must a handout be “objective”? What is wrong with a person publishing a handout expressing his own outlook? Who is preventing you from publishing a handout expressing your views? (In fact, you do that in your books and on your site.) In general, I rather doubt the very feasibility of journalistic “objectivity,” and therefore strongly oppose “public broadcasting” and the like, but that is a subject for another discussion.
The present column somewhat corrected the impression, and yet on one point (of many) I still wish to comment. You keep claiming that since our prayer is the mumbling of mantras, and since none of us truly believes that prayer helps, then prayer is (almost) devoid of value, and therefore you prefer to use prayer time for reading books.
I agree with the diagnosis but vehemently disagree with the conclusion. After all, the Mishnah explicitly says that a bridegroom is exempt from reciting the Shema because of his preoccupation, yet already in early generations this exemption was abolished, since in any case none of us has proper intention in reciting the Shema on other nights either, not only on the wedding night. Seemingly, that itself should imply that all of us ought to be exempt from reciting the Shema. But in my ignorance I know of no halakhic authority who seriously proposed such a thing, and not for nothing.
The fundamental question is: what is the purpose of prayer? Clearly the Holy One, blessed be He, has no need of our praises, and well known are the words of the Zohar (apparently in one of the Tikkunim, but I do not have the book before me) condemning those who see prayer as a list of requests (or demands) directed toward the Holy One, blessed be He, and comparing them to dogs “that bark hav-hav.” (Whoever the author of the Zohar may be, on this point I completely agree with him.) Likewise, it is a grave mistake to seek justifications for communal prayer in its social value, in giving employment to sextons and beadles, etc. The synagogue is not a community club — “Who asked this of you, to trample My courts?”
In my humble opinion, there is great value even in prayer that is nothing more than the “mumbling of mantras”! Indeed, the words of Hazal (Avot ch. 2) “Be careful with the recitation of Shema and with prayer,” etc., have not escaped me, and the phrase “Prayer without intention is like a body without a soul” is on everyone’s lips (it is often cited in the name of Hazal, though the earliest source known to me is Abravanel’s commentary on Avot). But no less famous are the words of Sefer Ha-Chinukh (mitzvah 16): “hearts are drawn after actions.” If so, one may hope that the “mumbling of mantras” of praising the Holy One, blessed be He, and requesting our needs from before Him — even if done as rote observance and as a burden and load — will seep into the soul and leave a mark on it. Even if a person did not say “the great, mighty, and awesome God” with intention except once in his life (for example, in a time of distress and hardship) — that is enough for us. Decades of “mumbling mantras” are worthwhile if at least once in his life a person reaches some slight recognition of “before whom you stand” (as much as one born of woman is capable of). Decades of outwardly asking for needs are worthwhile as long as there is a chance — however slight — that at least once in his life a person will come to recognize that “there is none else besides Him.” Any intelligent person can easily understand that one who מראש despairs of this possibility and arms himself with books (however important and enlightening they may be) in order to “utilize” the “lost time” on Shabbat morning, indeed loses the point of prayer and the chance ever to pray a worthy prayer in his lifetime.
Hello there.
First, an important correction: by the way, the problem is not lack of objectivity (none of the Shalem books I read instead suffers from objectivity, and that is a good thing), but rather poor quality, preaching, superficiality, and monotony. Of course, if someone enjoys that, good for him. Everyone should read what he wants. My problem is that people do not read it because it is what they want. The need to relieve boredom forces people to read low-level material even if they would not do so otherwise, and that is what troubles me about this phenomenon.
As for your understanding of prayer, I disagree with it, if only because usually it does not do the job. By the same logic one could mumble the phone book in the hope that from time to time one would find a name there that evokes an association with the name of God. To be sure, there is value in standing before God, and I discussed that in the second column.
Hello Rabbi Michael. After reading both columns I have several reservations, but I’ll address one of them — you wrote that the problem lies in the current structure of prayer and not in us, and therefore if there is a sense of tedium in prayer, it is the structure that causes it and not us failing to connect. I do not think that is correct. I don’t know if you have had the chance to pray on Shabbat and festivals among Hasidim, but when I did I saw prayers that were definitely not boring; on the contrary, there was a strong feeling of devotion and identification of the worshippers with the prayer, very far from the familiar situation in the sleepy synagogues we know. The same is true in clearly Carlebach minyanim [I am not talking about what you described as Carlebach services in ordinary synagogues, where indeed not infrequently it is a cantor plus a few worshippers who are enthusiasts, while the rest are not really into it, and the singing and dancing do indeed look forced], such as the lively Carlebach minyanim in Nachlaot in Jerusalem. I happened to be there for prayers on Shabbat, and the prayers there were very lively and active and definitely not boring.
So yes, it may be that the problem of lack of connection that exists in average synagogues in the religious-bourgeois sectors [I am not familiar with what happens among Lithuanians — as far as I remember, I have not prayed on Shabbat and festivals in Lithuanian synagogues] is one problem within a broader problem of lack of religious seriousness in those circles, and this is expressed in the matter of prayer as well.
My own eyes have seen that in circles where prayer is indeed more meaningful, it also looks that way ………
It is certainly possible that there are places where this works. I would only note that lively and active prayers do not necessarily mean they are meaningful. The fact that people enjoy themselves does not mean the prayer has religious value. It could also be in the category of an enjoyable musical performance. I find it hard to believe that while dancing to Carlebach people are thinking about the words and their meaning, and also saying them with intention both as to the words and as to standing before God. If indeed that is the case, then this phenomenon joins solutions such as cantorial evenings and other routine-breaking activities. But perhaps I am mistaken…
I cannot know what every worshipper is thinking in his heart or intending during the dancing. What I can see is prayer from the depths of the heart [incidentally, among most Hasidim it is customary during Lecha Dodi to say the words of the piyyut quietly and sing a wordless melody between stanza and stanza] that appears not as a musical performance but as an experience of prayer and standing before God expressed through singing and dancing — let us not forget that in the Temple part of the service was the singing of the Levites.
In any case, I wanted to show that this is possible, and that it definitely may be we who need to do some soul-searching if prayer among us is boring, and to take an example from places where it is indeed very meaningful — not by artificial “copy-paste,” but through internalization and seeing what it is in those places that causes prayer to be more meaningful.
P.S.
Regarding what the rabbi wrote about the “de in Bavel” in Yekum Purkan, I do not understand what the big problem is — the term “Bavel” for all lands outside Israel is very old indeed, and when people speak of “Bavel” as opposed to the Land of Israel, they mean not geographical Babylonia but rather a designation for all lands outside Israel. When President Reuven Rivlin eulogized Rabbi Lichtenstein of blessed memory and said that “a lion has come up from Bavel,” he knew very well that Rabbi Lichtenstein came from the United States and not from Iraq, and used the common expression from the Gemara [which in its original context was indeed said about Rav Kahana who came up from Bavel], which became an expression for a great Torah scholar who immigrated to the Land from abroad. Likewise in Chabad, where “770” is called “the house of our rabbi in Bavel,” they did not confuse New York with Baghdad. The expression “Bavel,” as said, became a designation for all of the Diaspora, and therefore when one blesses the heads of the yeshivot in Bavel, the meaning is the heads of the yeshivot throughout the Diaspora.
The problem with synagogue handouts is their very existence and the fact that they are read on Shabbat and during prayer, not their content or level and so forth. (Most of them are indeed substandard, but a few are not.) Someone whom prayer bores should not do God any favors and should simply not come to synagogue at all. But even so, reading handouts (shallow, monotonous, superficial, etc.) is preferable to chatting and disturbing the prayer, especially with mockery, slander, and gossip.
And if Your Honor thinks that the daily mumbling of the phone book can bring a person closer to the Holy One, blessed be He, like mumbling “Our Father, our King” or “the great, mighty, and awesome God” and the like — then by all means, go for it. Who knows, perhaps near the end (presumably around my name, under the letter shin…) you may even merit a revelation!
I wanted to add regarding what I wrote about prayer among Hasidim — I believe the story is well known of the German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, who almost converted to Christianity, and before taking that step he decided to go “take leave” of Judaism [to which he had not been especially connected until then]. He went to the Kol Nidrei prayer on the night of Yom Kippur in a Hasidic shtiebel in Berlin, and that experience simply changed his life. He completely changed his decision, and from then on immersed himself more and more in the heritage of his fathers [even if gradually, and even if not in full observance of mitzvot].
So yes, as someone who has also prayed with Hasidim more than once, and for years — except during my yeshivah period — used to go to Selichot in the synagogue of the Kozhnitz Hasidim in Tel Aviv, I can definitely say that there are different intensities of prayer there, and that Selichot among Hasidim, for example, look completely different from how they look in average Ashkenazic synagogues, and that I truly understand what worked so powerfully on Franz Rosenzweig’s heart in this regard.
So it can be otherwise, and I join what other commenters wrote here and in the previous column: it is not the concept of prayer that is problematic, but rather we need and can also rise upward and connect — and the fact is that there are communities and groups that indeed succeed in this, and it is not beyond reach.
And yes, this sometimes requires us to rise and exert ourselves and not lower the level for our sake — true, some of the piyyutim have lofty and not simple language, but they are wonderful, and if only we make the effort and study them and their meaning [which is definitely possible; this is not gibberish], we will also connect to them more. Is our aspiration to lower the level of prayer to the level of slangy spoken language? When we read poetry, fine literature, or books of thought [such as Shalem books (: ] are they not in elevated language? So when it comes to prayer, suddenly it is hard for us to connect and we cry bitterly?
The prayers that were accepted among the Jewish people in all the communities, each community with its customs and piyyutim, are not only requests and supplications. They are an inseparable part of our heritage — songs were composed on their basis, expressions were taken from them [why, even Rabbi Michael’s latest book, True and Unstable, takes its name as a paraphrase from words in the prayer service] — and they are an inseparable part of our identity, and that too has inestimable value [personally, even when I am dying of exhaustion after the learning on Shavuot night, I am unable to forgo Akdamut, with all the exhaustion and the poetic, incomprehensible Aramaic — I think I am not the only one].
With God’s help, may we merit to rise and ascend ever higher in this service of the heart, which is prayer.
With God’s help, 19 Tammuz 5777
To Amir — greetings,
Franz Rosenzweig’s connection to the world of prayer is not exhausted by the upheaving experience he underwent during the Yom Kippur prayer in the Hasidic shtiebel in Berlin. Rosenzweig dealt extensively in his thought with the subject of ‘prayer and life.’ See Rabbi Ehud Naaman’s book, of blessed memory (one of the founders of the hesder yeshivah in Yeruham), Word and Fire — Gateways to the Thought and Life of Franz Rosenzweig, Alon Shevut 2016, pp. 139–204. And in Dr. Yehoyada Amir’s article, ‘And Establish the Work of Our Hands Upon Us: On the Concept of Prayer in Franz Rosenzweig’s Thought,’ on the Academia website.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
Nice how you condescend to everyone who does connect to prayer, and think that because you are an intellectual truth-seeker you are better than everyone else. You should know that I too am an “intellectual truth-seeker,” but I also love Carlebach, cantorial music, and swaying during prayer. These things are not contradictory at all.
On the themes of prayer and ways to connect to it, the interested reader will find material in the books of Rabbi Uri Sherki, And I Am Prayer — Studies in the Order of Prayer; Rabbi Reuven Fireman, At the Foundation of Prayer — To Pray Truly; Rabbi Dov Zinger, Establish My Prayer.
And above all, one should study, study, and study again the prayer book, and continually find in it ‘newly renewed simple meanings.’
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
If it is difficult, can it be considered harmful?
No. But difficulty is a relevant consideration regarding customs.
A vigorous protest!
I simply could not refrain from protesting the blatant exclusion of the public of those-who-study-Gemara-during-the-reader’s-repetition-of-the-Amidah-outside-the-framework-of-the-Daf-Yomi from the whole range of examples of interesting activity during prayer.
What is this? Aren’t there righteous people (in their own eyes) who also get bored in prayer and are unable to focus on it and it alone?
Now that I’ve let off steam, let us return to learning (if only).
Shabbat shalom