I’ll be blunt. Saying lamentations/selichot with Religious Zionists is like saying Hallel on Independence Day with the Haredim. Sometimes it feels like going to a silent movie. Many have discussed this at length, but I’m addressing it here from the qualitative angle: either you’ve got it or you don’t. Just as Talmud needs to be learned in an analytic yeshiva-style method, while dry academic study misses what this text offers you, so too prayer is a text that is supposed to activate you, move you, make you cry or scream or dance. That requires a tradition, and when you do find it, it exists among the Haredim. The Religious Zionists are intelligent people, and sometimes you stand there astonished at how much dryness and timidity they have when it comes to emotional expression in prayer. What a waste of time it is to go to prayer every day and timidly whisper that desolation. That’s what leads on the one hand to praying from within the iPhone, “rolling light away because of darkness,” and kissing it, and on the other hand to bizarre selichot ceremonies with a guitar, or Tzohar-style cuts and a mishmash of lamentations from all the rites. And as the Spanish blues singer said: “If you ain’t got the groove, why are you doing it?”

Gil, you’re just being condescending toward the public.

Very possible. “And his heart was lifted up in the ways of the Lord.” And still, that doesn’t negate the truth of what I’m saying. The political correctness you’re trying to establish here doesn’t allow discussion of quality. Just do a thought experiment: are all the parties in town equally successful? Is there no room for distinctions in cinema and music? Or if it’s easier for you, compare the depth of a Haredi film produced by Grovais to excellent French cinema. Broadly speaking, it’s obvious Haredim don’t know how to make films. And by the same token I’m telling you my opinion: Religious Zionists don’t know the craft of prayer in its various forms. If you don’t like that, then just say the opposite, or argue that everything is equal and one mustn’t generalize. Nu, fine.

There’s no political correctness here at all. I’m simply asking that you not announce that I’m not that thing. You want to say there are much better parties. Fine. But don’t tell me I’m not a party.

I accept that. Obviously any comparison comes only from a place of broad experience across a number of areas of life. And that has its price. Every person in every religion and culture experiences the full spectrum of emotions in various ways. I’m speaking as a tourist who receives from several places and compares, not as an insider. Still, I’m coming with two claims. A. From a place of sorrow over the blurring of prayer traditions. In my opinion this is a real threat. (Similarly, I’m sorry that the recitation of liturgical poems for the blessings before the Shema and many other ritual accessories no longer exists—they’ve all gone down the drain. Prof. Haviva Pedaya told me that many Hasidic meditation traditions that had been transmitted orally were exterminated in the Holocaust. If that’s true, that’s also very painful.) B. Following from that, I’m talking about this style of questions about cutting, shortening, skipping, thinning out, and diluting the prayers. These are questions that come from liberal directions which, to my regret, damage prayer traditions because of their blindness and lack of inner acquaintance with authenticity (with all the problems it admittedly has). In the end it harms Torah. I’ll just point to two sources: Susannah Heschel’s introduction to her father Abraham Joshua Heschel’s prayer book. He lamented prayer with the Modern Orthodox in the US. And see as well Rav Shagar’s article on Hanukkah, where he defines the Religious Zionists as penitents and explains. The idea rests on disconnection from tradition and the creation of a new religiosity. I don’t have a solution to this, because Haredi continuity too—which I don’t belong to—is not a solution at all.

Correction: as a tourist… the continuity… In any case, I’m sorry for the blunt style above, though I can’t promise I’ll weigh every word in my future comments. In my opinion this isn’t the right medium for that. But since you pointed it out—I absolutely apologize, and I also think you opened my eyes on that point. I’ll take it to heart.

With God’s help, the third night of selichot, 5778

To Gil—many greetings,

Indeed there are exceptional individuals who fulfill, “The moaning of our voice is heard on high, streaming tears of bitter weeping are shed” (from the selicha for Tuesday, “To You, O Lord, our eyes are lifted”), and they demand salvation from their God with force.

But even they recoil in shame before the weight of sin: “What can we offer and what can we present? Before You, we are clothed and reddened with shame; even if we choose our speech like a lily, our iniquity is before us, ancient and old,” and they find no opening for speech except through the help of the patriarchs: “Rise, you who lie in the double cave, support us in our cry” (ibid.).

Likewise, in the refrain “Israel is saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation,” the poet says: “They knock at Your gates like paupers and the poor,” like poor people who are afraid of those pressuring them, who need to make it to work on time and get the children to kindergarten and school on time, and with all the time pressure they still add about 20 minutes of selichot each day, poured out quickly and in a whisper. And regarding this the poet asks: “Listen to their poured-out whisper, O God who dwells on high, for You abound in forgiveness and are master of mercy.”

Everyone looks for the path appropriate for him by which to pour out his speech before his Maker. One whose times are in his own hands manages to study and focus; one connects to the Sephardic melody or the Carlebach style; another holds by “better a little with intention”; and another keeps the custom of his fathers in hand, and “may You quickly accept their prayer willingly.” Each in his place and each in his way, and all together “bound in distress to pour out supplication” (from the refrain for Monday, “Angels of mercy, ministers on high”).

And regarding the joining of all of them together, we are confident, in the words of the poet: “In this I trust—in those who say ‘the Lord is One,’ and all draw together, from this side one and from that side one” (from the refrain “May the fast of Your people be accepted” for the eve of Yom Kippur).

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

And Rabbi Dr. Yosef Burg was once asked whether the main thing in “Religious-National” is the “religious” or the “national,” and he answered that it seemed to him that the main thing is the hyphen that connects them. And so too the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Uziel (today is the 65th anniversary of his passing), said in his inaugural address: “Know and understand your role: to join and not divide, to draw near and not distance, to cause the name of Heaven to be loved, and to make the public know Torah and keep its commandments.”

Thank you very much, rabbi-shatz.
Your words are pleasant and true, as usual. And at the same time, notice that stroking what already exists is a common trend, and people will always come out against the critic (like what I said, for example). But on the other hand, there’s no one who raises his voice against the contempt absorbed by the Orthodox prayer establishment from people who simply cannot testify, because they have never seen the lights in their lives. They get bored by the Sabbath pamphlets, the length of the selichot, and their lack of understanding drives them crazy (instead of making an effort to raise the bar and learn), and in general crying over lamentations about prayer from a phone screen doesn’t appeal to them. So I came to say that there is also room for conservatism and for lengthy prayer—but it has to be done in the form in which it was practiced throughout the generations, and learned people like you could provide abundant sources for the congruence of content and form in the past. And here I’ll note something from a similar field. I practiced in several vipassana retreats. Listen, all this bullshit about Jewish meditation and speech fasts with prayer melodies and a mishmash of sugary, whiplike New Age stuff does not reach the depths of traditional Goenka vipassana. Broadly speaking, etc. Why? Because that’s the source and this is a flimsy imitation. What’s so terrible about understanding that prayer too, like meditation, has more and less authentic forms? It’s obvious, for example, that prayer without believing it will be answered will not attract many practitioners—

“If God is unable to listen to us, then we are not sane in speaking to Him.” Abraham Joshua Heschel, Prayer, p. 127. And so there is presumably a way one prays. My arrows are aimed at those who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater (not at positions that do so because they don’t believe in providence, like Leibowitz and Michi; they will find themselves creative solutions to continue with this problem. And it is indeed a problem if they are right, and so on). The matter of the poor was just an illustration, and obviously in many ceremonies they have pride of place—Carlebach Kabbalat Shabbat, flag dances, Simchat Beit HaShoeva. Not so in lamentations and selichot and waving the lulav. It’s simply different, and poor and miserable. And if you brought proof for their existence from the selichot, I’ll bring you proof for Harediness already from the revelation at Mount Sinai, which our friend Y.D. likes so much: “And the whole mountain trembled violently.”

With God’s help, the third night of selichot, 5778

To Oren—many greetings,

On the contrary: when it seems that God has contracted His providence, and as it were “does not intervene” in what happens in the world, we must cry out and ask of God, “Where are Your former acts of kindness?” as we ask this morning in the piyyut “To You our eyes are lifted”: “Awaken the glory of His strength—why do You sleep? The hope of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.”

We desire closeness to God, as was said this morning in the piyyut “Your people Israel arrange supplication”: “I desire Your nearness above all that may come; hasten to them the salvations that were foretold; O Holy One, do with them a sign for good, strong and mighty is their Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts.”

And as we ask in “Hear our voice”: “Do not forsake us, Lord our God, and do not distance Yourself from us; do with us a sign for good… for You, Lord, are our help and comfort; for in You, Lord, have we hoped; You will answer, Lord our God.”

For hundreds of years it seemed that God had distanced Himself from us completely; we were in exile and servitude, and our enemies hammered into us morning and evening that God had abandoned us and despised us. In our generation, God has begun to reveal His drawing-near hand, and we have merited the beginning of the nation’s revival and its return to its land. There is still great hiding of the face, and much to pray and act for,

but after God has begun to reveal before our eyes His greatness and His strong hand (see Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s article “Kol Dodi Dofek”)—our hope and prayer should strengthen: that God will support us and bring things to completion for us.

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

The Kuzari already explained the virtue of communal prayer: what one person abbreviates, another makes up for with his intention. The essence of selichot is the recitation of the Thirteen Attributes, which can only be done in a congregation of ten Jews, among whom the Divine Presence rests. And Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov already taught us: nine Moshe Leibs are not a minyan; ten wagon-drivers are a proper minyan in which the Divine Presence dwells.

The virtue of simple Jews is in connecting faith and Torah to practical life, and the virtue of “the remnant whom the Lord shall call” lies in the dimension of depth in the service of God, and the joining of both creates wholeness.

And in practice too there is no contradiction. One who wants to pray with concentration and intention yet remain connected to the community can do so by praying in two minyanim: start with the first and finish with the second, and then both will be achieved—prayer with intention and feeling, and connection to Your people Israel, who hurry to their work.

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

And regarding “vipassana,” whether Goenka’s or the Lama’s 🙂
I make do with a daily trip to “India,” where I meditate in the “ashram of ‘Happy are those who dwell in Your house,’” where the “mantra,” the word “all,” returns 17 times, and your mnemonic is: “The Lord is good to all.”

The truth is that my difficulty with selichot grows out of a background of a general difficulty with prayer that starts even before the question of providence:

1. The text of the prayers/selichot is dictated and fixed in advance and doesn’t allow for my own personal appeal to the Holy One, blessed be He.
2. There’s the issue of repetitiveness, meaning you have to recite the text every X amount of time, so after a few cycles of recitation it starts to become exhausting and oppressive. As far as I’m concerned, the frequency of prayer / selichot could be reduced tenfold or more.
3. There is repetition of a limited number of ideas in many synonyms and different parables, with exhausting detail. For example, instead of asking forgiveness in a sentence or two for our sins, the text will repeat the matter of requesting forgiveness in a thousand different synonyms, illustrate the request with a thousand different parables, and detail our sins in a thousand different ways. As far as I’m concerned, it’s preferable to be concise and avoid unnecessary repetition.
4. In terms of “cost” versus “benefit,” I invest quite a lot of time in prayer and selichot even though it seems to me to be a pretty secondary thing in the service of God. Fine, if it were a Torah-level commandment, I’d understand, but selichot is a custom, and prayer is a rabbinic obligation that has become almost the center of religious life. That seems out of proportion to me.
5. And after all that, there still remains the issue that the formulators of the prayers assumed a certain concept of providence, and that influenced the wording they established. Personally, I agree with the Rabbi’s view, which disputes the accepted concept of providence. So it feels a bit like a mistaken transaction. If the composers of the prayers and selichot had been aware of a different concept of providence, the selichot and prayers would have been completely different, so it feels as though I’m bound by formal halakhic considerations to a text whose foundation is mistaken.
6. All this, of course, makes it hard to have intention in prayer and selichot, which only intensifies the problem further, because it may be that despite all the effort I make to overcome the difficulties above, in the end because of lack of intention this effort is of no benefit at all, since prayer/selichot without intention are worth nothing—which only intensifies the feeling of waste.

With God’s help, 24 Elul 5778

To Oren—many greetings,

Rabbi Michael Abraham is not arguing for a view that there is no providence in the world (like the Epicurean view that there is no providence at all, or like Aristotle’s view that providence is only over species and not individuals; see Guide of the Perplexed 3:17). In his view, in the past God intervened, as explained in the sacred writings, but today he gets the impression that God almost does not intervene. To that I said that this is specifically a reason to strengthen prayer. Since our current condition still requires much improvement, we should increase supplication and request that God not abandon us and not forsake us, but rather increase His help as He did in ancient days.

The essence of what we today call “prayer” has two focal points:
(a) The Shema, which is a Torah-level positive commandment, to repeat to ourselves (and from that to our children) the foundations of faith: the unity of God (first paragraph), His providence in the world (second paragraph), and remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt, whose purpose is that we do God’s will (third paragraph), for which the Men of the Great Assembly instituted blessings of thanksgiving that God illuminates the world in the physical sense (the blessing “Who forms light”), illuminates the world in the spiritual sense through His Torah (the blessing of love), and through the freedom of the Jewish people (redemption).

For the completion of this redemption and its actualization, the Men of the Great Assembly instituted the prayer, whose blessings are the outlines of the process of repairing the world. The foundation of prayer is our aspiration to be like Abraham, cleaving to the attribute of his Creator, who sustains His world with kindness, all while preserving holiness, the constant bond with his God. That is the essence of the first three blessings.

The following blessings detail the process of repair. First the personal repair—knowledge, repentance, forgiveness, freedom, health, and livelihood. Then the national repair—the ingathering of exiles, the revival of spiritual leadership and kingship, and from within that, the creation of the spiritual bond between man and his Creator, the service of prayer, the Temple service, the ability to thank God, and the culmination—peace, between man and man and between man and himself.

The Men of the Great Assembly arranged the outlines for us, and we are invited to deepen and expand, to elaborate and renew, whether within the blessings, in “Who hears prayer,” or in the supplications after prayer. Prayer is rooted in “pilel”; “to hope,” and “to pray” means to make oneself full of hope, to charge oneself with hope.

Obviously this is not simple, but if we are “there,” we will be “there.” What helps us concentrate is the division into sections, into separate blessings each focusing on a specific topic. In the blessing of the Patriarchs we should think about the patriarchs and aspire to reach their deeds; in the blessing “Who revives the dead” we should think about God’s kindness in sustaining His world and consider what we can do in that direction. And so each blessing is an opening for reflection and for enlarging our aspirations in that area.

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

The center of selichot is the communal recitation of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, regarding which God said to Moses, “If you do this order, I forgive you.” And the expounders of hints were precise that it says “if you do,” meaning it is not enough merely to mention the attributes verbally; one must think about them with the aim of adopting them as a way of life—to think how we can strengthen ourselves in mercy and compassion, in kindness and truth, in patience and long-suffering, in non-grudgingness and seeing the good in others. And when we cleave to the attributes of mercy of our Creator, we will find favor and kindness before Him.

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

What are “formal halakhic considerations”? Either it is God’s will or it isn’t.

With God’s help, 24 Elul 5778

To Oren—many greetings,

Connecting to the selichot and understanding their content is easier when one prays in a Sephardic minyan, where the selichot are said at a moderate pace and with melody. When there is time to reflect—you understand and connect.

Best regards, the humble servant Samson Zvi Levi-Najar, may his Rock preserve him

Oren,

1. Agreed. But for many people this is easier. I’m not sure that if you had to formulate your prayer each time, you’d be able to do it properly.

2-3. Indeed. That too is a reason to shorten and reduce the frequency.

4. If indeed at every such moment you would be doing something more beneficial, then certainly one can give it up (I say this practically as well). In any case, this should be assessed according to the benefit, not according to the formal force of the commandment (Torah-level or custom).

5. Correct, with Shatz Levinger’s correction (one cannot be sure there is no involvement at all). And again, selichot are not formalism. There is no such obligation; it is a custom, and a custom is easy to cancel when there are proper considerations.

6. Indeed, the question of benefit is very important, and justifies both general change and personal decisions.

With God’s help, 24 Elul 5778

Rabbeinu Gershom too (in a selicha that, God willing, will be recited tomorrow) noticed the diminishing of divine intervention in the world. But he does not make peace with this “policy change,” and asks his Creator: “Where are all Your great and awesome wonders, O Lord of Hosts, of which our fathers told us?”

He describes how God saved Israel and brought them out of Egypt while judging their oppressors “measure for measure,” while redeeming Israel, bringing them out of Egypt, splitting the sea and the Jordan for them, “and in the wilderness You sustained them and they lacked nothing, and kingdoms and nations were delivered into their hands.”

Even when they sinned and “their oppressors pursued them,” the punishment was temporary: “They sinned and were exiled, and You punished them for seventy [years],” and therefore Rabbeinu Gershom wonders why in the second destruction “they went out from their land and the end of their return was hidden,” and not only that, but the situation worsens from day to day: “From time to time my distress increases; the coming day is harder than the one that passed.”

Rabbeinu Gershom raises the possibility that our prayer is not answered because we are unworthy, but he does not make peace with that, and he cries out: “If transgressions have multiplied between me and You to separate, if the curtain has been locked before prayer, O Rock enthroned in Your seat of glory, tunnel a forgiveness; let my cry come before You to be accepted.”

The 900 years that had passed since the destruction without any positive sign did not weaken Rabbeinu Gershom. Another 900 years would pass after him, until “light at the end of the tunnel” would appear and the process of the nation’s return to its land would begin.

Our eyes see the beginning of God’s response to Rabbeinu Gershom’s request: “Repair the breach of the fallen sukkah, raise up the city cast down to the dust, comfort the captive with double consolation”—and with renewed strength we continue to ask for the completion of the realization of his vision: “Build Your city as in days of old, heal Your altar, sanctuary, and hall; Judah and Israel shall all serve You there, and Your name shall be magnified forever.” Amen, may it be so speedily in our days.

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

Although in selichot an important place is occupied by the request for forgiveness of sins and for the redemption of the people from exile and servitude, they open with a system of about 50 “verses of mercy,” all of which are a hymn of praise to the greatness of the Creator, who rules the powers of nature and is revered even “in the great council of the holy ones,” and who “sits upon the cherubim,” and a prayer that all who enter the world shall come to Him, bow to Him in holy splendor, thank His name, and recognize the power of His kingship.

Selichot are an introduction to the prayers of Rosh Hashanah, in which we crown God not only over ourselves, but aspire that all the inhabitants of the world “recognize the power of Your kingship… and accept Your kingship upon themselves.” from within that great expectation, and from within recognition of our role as “a heart among the nations” in hastening it, we can ask of Him, blessed be He: “Act for the sake of Your name and sanctify Your name through those who sanctify Your name, for the sake of Your honored name, revered and sanctified.”

With the blessing, “May it be a year of good for the world,” Shatz Levinger

Gil,
I love the language of Ashkenazic liturgical poetry, the allusions to midrash, and so on. But for several hundred years now the Ashkenazim have been in a process of shaking off the Ashkenazic tradition. First through Hasidism and the Enlightenment. After that through Zionism and the abandonment of Ashkenazic pronunciation. Today even the most conservative elements have cut the liturgical poems. What you see as tradition isn’t really tradition. The one who noticed this most strongly was S.Y. Agnon in his book A Guest for the Night. There he describes how he returned to Buczacz after the First World War and discovered how the tradition had lost its life-force and all his efforts to restore it failed. The book ends with the circumcision of the child of pioneers who were brought back to Buczacz. And so S.Y. Agnon tells us that although the decree has been passed on tradition, the covenant is still kept among the pioneers who are going and building the Land of Israel.

Rabbi Shatz Levinger, greetings!
Seemingly, even according to your view there isn’t much room for ordinary daily private requests (health, rain, etc.), but only for general requests focused on the desire for redemption and peace, on the desire that God return and answer us, and that the hiding of the face cease. What do you think?

With God’s help, 24 Elul 5778

And in several cases in selichot, there are liturgical poems that were pushed aside in the custom of the community in which they were composed, but earned a place of honor in the rite of another community.

Thus the Akedah poem “If the nest’s quarter has vanished” by Rabbi Ephraim of Regensburg, which in the Ashkenazic custom is said in a rapid mumble on the fourth day of the Ten Days of Repentance, merited in the Sephardic custom to be said day after day with a captivating melody.

And on the other side, poems by the poets of Sepharad that were forgotten in the Sephardic rite but occupy a central place among the Ashkenazim—for example: “At the morning watch I called to You, O praised God” by Rabbi Isaac Ibn Giat, recited as a refrain on the fourth day of selichot; “At dawn I arose to thank You, O God of my praise” by Rabbi Solomon Ibn Gabirol, recited as a refrain on the fifth day of selichot.

To these one may add “Lift up, prisoner who was delivered into the hand of Babylon and Seir” by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gabirol, recited in the Ashkenazic rite as a refrain for the Seventeenth of Tammuz, and “Zion, will you not ask” by Rabbi Judah Halevi, recited by Ashkenazim on the Ninth of Av, which became especially beloved to them, to the point that they composed poems modeled after it.

In short, the workshop of the earth is one: both these and those absorbed into their rite from the best works of the other communities.

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

With God’s help, 25 Elul 5778

To Simcha—many greetings.

In the first three blessings, which are praise, and in the last three, which are thanksgiving—indeed it is said in the Talmud that an individual should not ask for his personal needs. (And the halakhic authorities discuss how one can add requests during the Ten Days of Repentance in those blessings, and explain that these are communal needs.) But in the middle blessings of request, it is explained in the Talmud and the halakhic authorities that a person may attach private requests relevant to the subject of the blessing, and in “Who hears prayer” and “My God, guard my tongue” on any subject.

One of the pieces of advice given in the Talmud so that prayer will not be “fixed routine” is “to introduce something new into it.” indeed it is mentioned there that they were concerned this innovation might distract him in prayer, and therefore as a permanent practice there is a problem with it; but when a specific need arises, it is indeed explained that one may ask a private request (and nowadays, when we have prayer books, the concern about distraction is smaller).

In communal prayer there is another problem, that it is hard to lengthen personal requests so as not to miss saying Amen, Kedushah, and the like with the congregation. Therefore many are accustomed to ask their personal requests after the prayer when going to kiss the Ark, or while reciting Psalms, or by practicing hitbodedut—when there is no pressure to keep up with the congregation, it is easier to concentrate on the personal request.

In any case, the prayer of an individual is answered more when he includes in his prayer the needs of the community as well, as when one asks for the healing of a sick person “among the other sick of Israel.” There is an aspect of audacity in a person’s asking God to change His decree (as explained in Nefesh HaChaim), but when a person internalizes that he is not asking only for himself, but that his salvation is part of the salvation of the community, and that when he has health and livelihood it will be easier for him to contribute to the whole community—then he can say, “Remember us for life… for Your sake, living God.”

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

Rabbi Shatz Levinger, hello.
It seems to me that either you didn’t understand what I meant, or I didn’t understand what you meant.
What appears from your words is that you too think that God does not answer most requests, except that you say one must still keep asking because in the very end He does answer, and also that one is supposed to ask about this very matter itself: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
On that I asked: what then is the place for requests concerning things I need right now, such as health and the like?

With God’s help, 25 Elul 5778

To Simcha—many greetings,

One should ask for everything: for the needs of the community and the needs of the individual, for immediate needs and for long-range needs. Obviously the Holy One, blessed be He, knows what is truly good for us, and sometimes He says “no,” but we need to ask in order to internalize that we truly want and need the thing.

When good is given to us without our feeling a need for it, we do not enjoy it—it is “trivial,” and what is novel about it? When we have felt the lack of the thing, acted and exerted ourselves to attain it, and in parallel prayed and asked God to help us—the practical and spiritual investment brings us to a deep recognition of the good we have merited.

Through prayer and request we clarify how necessary the matter is to us, and accordingly we are aroused to practical action in that direction, while God decides in His wisdom and justice whether to fulfill our wish or defer it.

Just as in our engagement with Torah we try to align our intellect with divine wisdom, so in prayer we try to align our will with the divine will. Will is the foundation of success, but even if, for reasons of the Great Counselor, the time has not yet come to realize it, the very deepening of the will has already done a great deal toward its realization in the long term. The good energy released in our prayer does not cease to act!

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

.

I have no reason whatsoever to assume the proposition you attributed to me, that “God does not answer most prayers.” I was referring to the view of Rabbi Michael Abraham, who wrote that in our day God refrains from intervening, an opinion that does not seem correct to me. And to that I said that if, Heaven forbid, his words are true, then that itself is reason to cry out and ask that the “iron partition” that, according to Rabbi Michael Abraham, God has placed between Himself and us be removed. But his actual argument itself requires proof, and that is enough.

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

With God’s help, 25 Elul 5778

The need for prayer and request in order to receive divine abundance also follows from what Maimonides explained (in chapter 9 of the laws of repentance), that divine abundance in this world is not the main reward for a person’s deeds, but the granting of improved “service conditions” to the doer of good—conditions that will make it easier for him to reach spiritual perfection and purification of the soul, which are the true and eternal reward for his deeds.

The good in this world is essentially the allocation of a “line of credit” to a person, by means of which he can invest and cultivate his spiritual abilities so as to produce “profits” of elevation of the soul. And as is known, credit is not given just like that. The one requesting credit is required to present a “business plan” that will persuade the investor that the recipient will use the tools he received with full seriousness and efficiency in order to produce the maximum profit from them.

Therefore it is not enough to ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for “children, life, and sustenance”; one must be aware that these are tools for achieving man’s purpose in his world, and promise the Giver that the tools will be used efficiently and with constant awareness of their exalted purpose; one must be aware of the defects that have appeared in the person’s past functioning, and from this clarify how he intends to correct and improve his “output.”

As the Hasidim say: “Happy is the man who listens to Your commandments and places Your Torah and Your word upon his heart” 🙂

With the blessing, “May it be a year of good business,” Shatz Levinger

And in short:

Divine abundance is given to a person in this world as a tool that helps him act toward perfection. Therefore it is not enough to ask for one’s own private personal need; one must develop an aspiration for a complete and inclusive repair of the world.

One whose aspirations do not remain in the egoistic sphere, and whose life is goal-directed toward the physical and spiritual elevation of the whole world—one may expect him to use the tools he receives in the most efficient way possible!

Therefore the person praying is required to “open his mouth wide” and ask for the good of the community!

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

Y.D., thanks for the response. What you describe is heartbreaking, and I hope it isn’t true. And if it is, then apparently that’s the nature of the world. The place I’m speaking from comes from searching and intimate familiarity with classical places of prayer that preserve, in my opinion, in a wonderful way, that same “tradition” I was talking about. That was also my point about the unity of content and form—the content arouses weeping, so that’s what you actually see happening; it arouses crying out—same thing. That is how it exists in the Hebrew Bible too, where everyone gathers again and again and “cries out to the Lord and weeps.” What is unbearable to me is the lack of congruence between the text and its realization. That’s why dry selichot/lamentations look to me like a silent movie and a waste of time. However—and here I think your answer doesn’t touch the issue—this phenomenon exists in all the prayers of the year as well. You go into standard synagogues and the whole business is sleepy and drowsy. That is not the case in (very specific) Haredi communities—there you see that this is a matter of tradition, because we are not talking about spiritualist yeshivot or a handful of seekers of God—those you’ll find in every sector gathering to create meaning—but about an entire community of children and adults of all kinds, where the overall sum of the prayer arising from among them—even on an ordinary weekday, but especially on festivals—intermediate days of Sukkot: tremendous enthusiasm in Hallel, and so on in Hanukkah, or counting the Omer with great feeling, Sabbaths, the High Holidays, etc. It simply exists there. Think what would happen if a delegation of Buddhist masters came to see the spiritual praxis of Jewish prayer. Can you imagine the absurdity you’d feel when they walked into yet another standard synagogue?! And there have indeed been such things. Likewise all those stories about Rosenzweig, who entered the Ne’ilah prayer and it changed his life, or Rudolf Otto’s amazing descriptions of the numinous revealed in the High Holiday prayers (from his own personal experience), or Benamozegh, and a few more like these. Or the testimony of an elderly friend, now deceased, who used to pray with Yehezkel Kaufmann in Haredi synagogues on the High Holidays—because, he said, all year long he was a Bible scholar, but when he came to pray he dropped the critical stance and went to the source… and many more like that. All of these illustrate, without any attempt at condescension, that there was—and I hope still is—a way in which one prays, and it exists because of a tradition that was not changed too much. Maybe there’s a way to bring it back to center stage specifically by first recognizing its reality, and only afterwards considering musical selichot and ever-shorter abridgments of sacred rites. It doesn’t really matter to me whether this is convincing or not. I’m genuinely speaking from a place of personal experience and not as an attempt to present an argument. I have experienced, and still experience, many styles of prayer, and I am privileged to pray on each festival in the setting distinguished by the form of prayer appropriate to it. I’ll be on the High Holidays in a certain Lithuanian minyan, and in Sukkot, by contrast, in a certain Hasidic minyan, and each has its special quality. And yes, I am saturated with Religious Zionist Torah, and the world of research and intellect that only they could generate—not only is it not foreign to me, it is my entire Torah world. I do not belittle them in the least, nor their humanity and finer character traits. I’m in favor of a full combination of Torah and worldly culture, Torah and research. But on the matter of prayer—as someone who also prayed for years in yeshiva minyanim of hesder yeshivot (specific ones, of course)—I see no room for comparison. And this is important to know in order to try to combine the worlds: the religious Torah world together with the Haredi praxis. Each sector has something to give the other, and something to remove and pare away, of course. The prevailing norm is to vilify the benighted Haredim as much as possible, and as Micah Goodman said, “It’s the only sector you can hate and remain humane,” and in my opinion many of the contemptuous questions about prayer and its form are valid only—or also—because of a lack of inner and prolonged acquaintance with alternative prayer worlds that still exist in the Haredi world, and can be met, hypothetically if not practically, by the side of the road. Once Rabbi Michi replied that he was not impressed in that way when he was in Haredi society—and to that I can only say that apparently he didn’t look for it. He himself testifies so. But someone occupied with this and interested in it won’t need to travel far to some remote hesder yeshiva at the edge of the country to experience numinous experiences, because serious and ecstatic minyanim (in the accepted traditional manner through the generations) are found in every large city in Israel. A good year.

With God’s help, 26 Elul 5778

To Gil—many greetings,

Have you been with Sephardim or Yemenites on the High Holidays? It seems to me that our forefathers in the biblical and Talmudic periods were Easterners (and in my humble opinion most of them were also “Mizrahniks”—farmers or simple craftsmen)

Best regards, Shatz Levinger

Adam, the first man, was perhaps Lithuanian, since it was said to him: “Cursed is the ground because of you” 🙂

You needn’t look, Shatz Levinger, for a hint to Lithuanians in the Sages, because already in the Torah, in the list of the eight creeping creatures, it says: “and the lizard.”
As for the matter itself, it’s best not to open an ethnic Pandora’s box here. I haven’t prayed with the Eastern communities, but I know the Yemenite lamentations very well, and they shake the foundations with their intensity. In general, consider the following difference: the Sephardim say the same selichot for forty days, and those same selichot are also said at Ne’ilah. The Ashkenazim, by contrast, change to a different selicha every day, and in each one is inscribed a whole piece of history of pogroms and supreme self-sacrifice, as well as martyrdom for the sanctification of God’s name. To the best of my knowledge (and I don’t know enough), the terrible hardening of exile was not as intense among the Eastern communities in Asia and Morocco, but mainly in Europe. This changed the entire character of the prayers beyond recognition.

Still, one cannot leave it at nothing, because if the objectionable thought enters your mind that the Sephardim, the “Mizrahniks” in your terms, were “simple craftsmen” and therefore said the selichot in a rush of “twenty minutes and off to work” (as you roughly wrote above), then all you need to do is hear the beautiful, deeply intentional prayer of the main cantor Rabbi Avraham Nissan, only a few decades ago, which is an example by no means exceptional in what was then common in the “tradition”:

Pay attention to the pace, to the duration of time.

Gil,

Doesn’t an “Ashamnu, Bagadnu” of the following kind also manage, to the same degree, to shake the foundations for you?

With God’s help, the eve of Rosh Hashanah 5779

To Gil and Copenhagen—many greetings,

Both of you assume that the prayer of the High Holidays should be an intense experience that “shakes the foundations,” an experience dependent to a large extent on the musical backdrop that will launch us to heights.

In my humble opinion, the meaningful contribution of prayer in general, and of High Holiday prayer in particular, is reflection on the words of the prayer. To pay attention to what the composers of the prayers are aspiring to, and against that to reflect on where we stand, what is already on the way to fulfillment, and in what there is need of strengthening and improvement. To see what requires improvement and think what we can do to improve it.

Prayer is a kind of “test” for us and for the world. Prayer is the “specification sheet” according to whose points and clauses we examine the system, clarifying what can be checked off and what requires work of repair and improvement. Rosh Hashanah is the head that plans the coming year in light of the lessons of the past year.

With the blessing, “May it be a year that passes the test,” Shatz Levinger

Shatz Levinger, more power to you. A deep point for thought. With the blessing: may it be a year of the Trump era.