Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Chocolate Chip Pizza



Even though our Beit Midrash publishes a weekly dvar torah bulletin, which we make as interest-grabbing as we can with a range of special features, nonetheless, I am against learning Torah, reading parshah sheets and otherwise engaging in study during davening. During the breaks between aliyot, perhaps [for what is kriat haTorah if not communal Torah study], but not during davening.

This is not about halachic issues related to learning Torah during the repetition of the amidah; my point is spiritual, not technical, and it's about the entirety of davening, from Modeh Ani to Adon Olam.

The other day, I found the following metaphor to explain this to my children:

Imagine that you are a chef, and you prepare dough for pizza, and you slather on tomato sauce.

Then you decide that it would be wonderful to have chocolate chip cookies, and so you add chocolate chips.

Then, reverting to pizza-making mode, you put on cheese, but then you add the vanilla needed for cookies, and you mix it all together.

Then you cut it into small balls and put it on trays in the oven.

The result: Chocolate Chip Pizza. And while I love pizza, and I love chocolate chip cookies, I'm not having any chocolate chip pizza.

The same is true during davening. Davening to HaShem is great. Learning Torah is great. But mixing them together is self-destructive; the davening lacks emotional commitment, and the learning lacks focus and concentration. Neither is successful; the result is trash, a waste of time and resources.

I admit that I will look to learn something if the chazan is dragging on for so long that I cannot focus on davening anyway. Absent that, though, learning plus davening equals Chocolate Chip Pizza, and I'm not interested.

10 comments:

  1. I totally agree, but what would you do regarding the Yamim Noraim, especially the very long repetition of the Mussaf amidah on Yom Kippur? However hard it is to maintain kavanah during those long prayers, it's even harder when I'm not actually davening, but just listening to the chazan! Perhaps reading commentary on that count can be seen as engaging with the davening rather than studying Torah?

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    1. Maybe the whole concept of chazaras hashatz is flawed, in a day and age when everyone is literate and many are learned.

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  2. I would agree with Daniel's sentiment and offer another. For some not everyone segments avodas Hashem into the buckets you've described. I'm not davening to daven any more than I'm learning to learn. I'm serving God. If that includes cracking open a sefer during a long mi'shebeirach mah tov u'mah naim.

    In you analogy I would suppose such a person was starving for Godliness. If the only way he can get it is through some chocolate chip pizza let him eat his fill.

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  3. Daniel, Anonymous-
    As I noted re: the chazan dragging on, it all depends on what the alternative is. But I would push for kavvanah first.

    Anonymous 2:06 PM-
    Is it true that "davening not to daven" is davening? Or that learning without recall is learning?

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  4. At this point, I'd be willing to allow learning during davening in place of the current state of affairs on Shabbos. I don't about over there across the ocean, but here in Israel, at least in the dati leumi world, "parsha sheets" are not really "parsha sheets," but magazines. The actual Torah content is "batel be'shishim" to everything else. And while a lot of that "everything else" might be worthwhile and interesting, it is not talmud Torah. And yet, astonishingly, hundreds of people sit in shul reading these magazines. In light of this, I'd be thrilled to see people with their heads in a Gemara, instead.

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  5. Y'know a chocolate chip pizza might actually taste good, if all you did was to add the chips to the usual topping!

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  6. I take strong issue with your rhetorically stated assertion that learning without recall is not learning.Yes the torah demands as an ideal that divrei torah should be mechudadin beficha but I would venture to say that MOST people do not retain (to the point of recall) MOST of there learning. It's just a very difficult thing to do. Those who are at a high level of learning may be boros she’ aynom ma’abdim tipa but the regular balabus struggles frustratingly to hold onto the concepts he has studied for further use all the while understanding that it’s the ideal.
    I have experienced this myself and the thought has bothered me tremendously. When we go up to shamayim (and much before then [even a couple months time from now when our head is in a different gemara]) are those of us who can never seem to recall (so as to repeat to someone else with clarity) the shakla vitarya, rishonim or acharonim that we have covered really going to feel estranged in the yeshiva shel muy’ la? I don't see how this can even be. What if one is afflicted with Alzheimer’s? He will then have nothing to bring with him. Less extreme than that, many elderly people lose there sharp memory. So how would this work? What level of accountability is there in memory retention in learning.(Obviously hashem expects from every person kfi yicholto but it just seems like recall is a overwhlemingly difficult ideal for most people [even highly intelligent analytical people] whose brains simply aren't fashioned to retrieve intricate discussions in torah learned long ago, despite the use of chazaros) Personally, to disagree with your definition of learning, I think learning (defined as comprehending torah arguments and laws even without retention to the point of recall) has a lot of merit in and of itself.

    Also, mima nafshach, even following your argument that learning is only learning if it can be recalled, certainly you would have to agree that one cannot memorize or recall something they haven't yet understood. The first step to any level of retention is breaking down the content. That being said, if this "breaking the ice" is what one is doing during their short bouts of davening learning how can you contend that that is not learning?

    On a different note, assuming you conceded to the notion that davening learning is in some way a form of learning and disregarding any halachic or hashkafic qualms with it, I disagree with the notion that this form of learning suffers as the proverbial chocolate chips tainted with the taste of pizza. This learning is merely found time. Frosting on the cake! Would you say that the extra minutes that one chaps learning a couple mishnayos at the bus stop suffers from what it could be. No! It’s about using all the time you could to get more Torah in, sometimes with more focus and other times by force with less.

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    1. Anonymous 9:42 PM-

      Please excuse my brevity:
      1. I base my definition on Rashi Berachos 6b. R' Zeira says that the reward for going to a shiur comes from running to the shiur. Rashi explains: "The essential reward received by those who run to hear the derashah from the sage is the reward for running, because most of them do not understand it enough to maintain the text, and to repeat the lesson from their teacher after time has passed, such that they would receive reward for learning."

      2. What leads you to read into my words the suggestion that one who does not fulfill talmud torah would feel estranged in yeshiva shel maalah?

      3. How is this "found time"? Why is it not time stolen from tefillah?

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  7. The above post was in response to the following comment (and its a different anonymous than the original poster to whom you responded):

    Anonymous 2:06 PM-
    Is it true that "davening not to daven" is davening? Or that learning without recall is learning?

    ReplyDelete