Q&A: On Communal Prayer
On Communal Prayer
Question
I found a powerful passage today on Facebook that Ilai Ofran wrote, very close to what you say (just without the radical conclusions).
“I am among those inclined to think that most of the problems we deal with are strikingly similar to the challenges of earlier generations, and I am fond of the guidance of the wisest of men not to say that ‘the former days were better than these.’ And even so, it seems to me that our situation has never been this difficult—the prayer service, the fixed daily one, the one that the Jewish law we have requires us to pray with a congregation three times a day, is simply dying out.
This is testified to by the many synagogues that function only on the Sabbath, and by no fewer synagogues where on weekdays they can barely scrape together a minyan of Kaddish-sayers and pensioners. A thousand witnesses testify to it in the Sabbath pamphlets flooding us, some of them third-rate journalism, poor in Torah and rich in gossip and advertisements—everything is kosher if it helps relieve the boredom of two hours of prayer. Two hours which, for most of the people in synagogue, are the only time all week that they set foot there. It is testified to by the tiny babies brought to synagogue on Sabbath morning with the openly stated goal of ‘letting Mom sleep.’ Out of the sincere assumption that, between the two possible disturbances, disturbing the prayer is the less severe one.
If some outsider, an alien or a tourist, were to land in our synagogues at any time of year other than Yom Kippur or Independence Day (the only two days that are still truly ‘holy’ in our eyes), we would not be able to convince him that what he sees before his eyes is ‘prayer.’ The noise of the talking, the piles of newspapers, and the shouting of children would make him think he was being had.
Most of the teachers, rabbis, and principals I have met (myself included) stand embarrassed before this issue—everyone understands that we cannot stop demanding and enforcing the matter of prayer, but everyone also understands very well that it cannot go on like this.
‘The youth,’ which is the code name religious adults use when talking about their own problems, simply doesn’t ‘connect’ to prayer, certainly not to something prayed three times a day. (Incidentally, this ‘youth’ is the same ‘youth’ that watches pornography and the ‘youth’ that is on the phone all day. It’s not us, of course, it’s them…)
Once, a generation or two or even three ago, obedience, loyalty, and commitment even toward something I did not connect to were the cultural language not only of prayer and the religious world but of all areas of life. People married whomever was matched for them and not necessarily whom they loved, worked in the family business and not necessarily in the profession they had dreamed of, and enlisted in whatever army unit the placement officer assigned them at the induction base, not the one in which they wanted to serve.
We, unlike earlier generations, seek connection and deep love with our husbands and wives. The profession passed down from generation to generation has given way to the one that interests me and brings me self-fulfillment, and even in the army there is already a preference questionnaire, and assignment options, and selection days, and an interview, and ‘where would you like to serve?’ A person who grows up in a world where in every area he is encouraged to seek connection and affinity, closeness and fulfillment, will likely look for that in the religious sphere as well. In no sphere of his life was he trained in a movement of absolute obedience—’do it because you have to, period.’
Even the very difficulty of feeling connected to daily prayer is not a new phenomenon. Rabbi Eliezer already said that ‘one who makes his prayer fixed, his prayer is not supplication.’ But our Sages tried to cope with the frustration of the daily mumbling of a text that does not necessarily speak to me. They added songs to the prayer—’Verses of Praise’ and the ‘Song at the Sea,’ the ‘Blessing of Song’ and the ‘Song of the Day’—all these are not part of the prayer itself, but an attempt to add to it a dimension of connection and experience through song and melody. The lack of supplication described by Rabbi Eliezer was addressed by our Sages through instituting the supplication prayer at the end of the service, and the unique atmosphere of the Sabbath they tried to enrich through the chants and liturgical poems of welcoming the Sabbath.
But what have we done to all of these? We turned them too into Leibowitz-style mumbling. ‘Come, let us sing’ became ‘come, let us mumble,’ and the ‘Song at the Sea’ has long ceased to be a flowing song of praise and has become mumbling as difficult as the splitting of the sea. In saying the long supplication on Monday and Thursday there is not much supplication to God, apart from the pleas that this very long section should just finally end. Those very additions that were meant to preserve prayer from its shortcomings have become the greatest challenges it faces. Even a commandment like the recitation of the Shema has turned from a ‘recitation’ aloud in public into yet another ‘reading’ from the prayer book.
I often pray in educational institutions—pre-military academies, yeshivot and schools, youth minyanim and youth movements—and every single time it pains me deeply. The situation is bad and worrying, and I fear we are approaching an immensely troubling dilemma—
If a significant change takes place in the text, character, or customs of our prayer, we may, God forbid, damage or even lose an important and ancient Jewish tradition.
But paradoxically, if such a significant change does not urgently take place, we may, God forbid, damage and lose that same important and ancient Jewish tradition.”
Answer
I would be very surprised if his words (at least in part) were not drawn from posts on my site. There is even a strong similarity in wording.
I just do not agree with the connection he makes to the difference that earlier generations were willing to do things without connecting to them, whereas we are not. In my view, the problem is not the trend of “connecting,” which I myself oppose. The problem is that prayer really is devoid of meaning and value in our day (and it is not merely that I don’t connect to it). As I wrote, if this were just plain weakness, I could rebuke myself and tell myself to overcome my weaknesses. But as I understand it, this is a real problem and not our weakness. Therefore I argue that the solution is not our bending before the religious obligation, but the opposite: a courageous change in prayer itself. It is the problem, not us.
Discussion on Answer
I just saw Yoav Sorek’s nice response to Ilai:
Rabbi Ilai Ofran lamented here in a post that received many responses the state of communal prayer today—the thing for which, in a more properly ordered reality, people supposedly rise early and stay late for the synagogue. I would like to put down here something a little longer than a short comment.
The main significance of communal prayer is not standing before God, but connecting to the Israeli-Jewish story—placing myself as part of a great story, whose beginning is the Exodus from Egypt and whose end is the future redemption, a story at whose center stand covenant and obligation and commandments and Torah.
This is an important distinction, because people often get it wrong.
In education we emphasize very strongly the element of standing before God, the dialogue with the Creator, as the most basic foundation of prayer. And that is true regarding the theoretical concept of prayer: that is its essence. And it is relevant to theological questions such as whether God hears prayer and answers it, and from what stance a person ought to pray, and more and more—questions dealt with in books of faith and Hasidic thought.
But when we come to actual prayer, the one in the synagogue, we are really talking about something else. Under the heading “prayer” there comes a whole ritual, a whole order of sayings and actions, within which the Amidah (the “prayer” within all this) is embedded between accepting the yoke of the kingdom of heaven in the Shema, taking out a Torah scroll and reading from it, the “Kedushah of the Order,” and mentioning special days with Hallel and the Song of the Day, and so on and so on. And even the prayer within all that, the Amidah, is the prayer of the community and not of the individual—which to a great extent instills in us the desired ideals, reminds us of the processes of the world’s future redemption, far, far more than it serves as a natural channel for pouring out our souls before the Creator. Therefore, of course, whoever placed actual prayer at the center as a dialogue or monologue directed heavenward sent us to meditate alone in the forests and not to the synagogue. It is simply an entirely different matter.
And this is important. Because when people are educated toward one thing and encounter another, it is no wonder that the education for one is not relevant to the other. Contradictions and frustrations arise.
*
So I return to the basic point. What is happening to prayer, and why is it becoming less popular or self-evident in communities of Jews committed to Torah and commandments? Well, as stated above, daily prayer—or perhaps daily synagogue attendance and participation in what goes on there—strengthens the Jew’s connection to his Judaism, to his people, to his identity, to the great story of which he is part. It is the day’s mezuzah, where before turning to his unique occupations as an individual, he grounds his attachment to being a Jew, a member of the Jewish people.
And here, in the very strength of the synagogue, also lies the source of its problem all too often: overload. An Israeli abroad will be happy to frequent a synagogue—if he is not a stranger to synagogue life—and will even feel a homey warmth there. Here is a kind of ’embassy’ of my identity. But that same Israeli may feel here in the Land of Israel that it is already too much. That he is surrounded by the Jewish story all the time anyway. Just as the Talmud tells of some of the Sages, who shortened their prayers or made do with a verse of the Shema because they were immersed in the enterprise all the time—so many people in Israel sometimes feel that this is an alarm clock that keeps beeping all the time, when I am already awake.
This is also about the length of the prayer service. It is also about the three-times-a-day rhythm. And above all, that all this is done when there is not always a need for so much scaffolding. Our very life here reminds us in every news broadcast who we are. Even our political arguments are what they once would have called Torah—a discussion of what is most right for the Jewish people, in both value terms and practical terms.
True, in the past too they ‘nagged’ with long daily prayer. But the world outside was non-Jewish. It was different. And there was more justification for that balance. (Or alternatively—as happened in the Hasidic world—they sometimes turned prayer into content in itself, the ‘service of prayer,’ something for which a person gets up in the morning; that is, the house itself and not the mezuzah. But that is already another discussion—in my opinion it is a beautiful model of spiritual practice, but it has no connection whatsoever to the communal prayer our Sages instituted for us.) In the reality we experience here, it is difficult to preserve that urgency to rise early and stay late for synagogues. There are those who are devoted to attending synagogue every day, morning and evening. There are those for whom the Sabbath is enough. There are those for whom putting on tefillin is enough. Kissing the mezuzah. Reciting the Shema, short and to the point. Grace after meals. Prayer from time to time.
Well, I do not agree at all. As is his way, Yoav Sorek connects religion to nationhood and empties it of its “religious” content. Basically he is doing what everyone does: taking prayer, which really does not fit and does not speak to people, and finding in it something that will manage to keep it relevant. And now he turns that into an ideal and into a lack of understanding on the part of those struggling with it (what, they don’t understand that prayer is for the nation and not for the Holy One, blessed be He?). This is exactly what I wrote in the columns on the site about the functionaries who appear in every community and every synagogue: the kugel-cutters and table-setters and candy-distributors to the children, and all the other community functionaries (it’s a perfect solution for everyone with attention and concentration problems, who in the middle of prayer cut kugel and hand out candy to children). In my eyes it is a brilliant, funny, and beautiful communal solution, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with prayer.
I wonder whether among Sephardim it is different.
That thought crossed my mind.
And yes, that difference is clear.