Derashah for Rosh HaShanah 5779: The Wounded Prayer

I haven't posted anything on here in ages, and I have no idea who is reading, but if anyone is, here is the derashah I intend to present on the second day of Rosh HaShanah:

Rav Schachter’s Tefillah

Berachos from tzaddikim are a dime a dozen in certain circles – but not generally in YU circles. In YU, the normal story is of the fellow who went to Rav Soloveitchik and asked him for a berachah, and Rav Soloveitchik responded, “What are you, an apple?” So that makes the following story,[1] which I will abbreviate somewhat, remarkable.

It was 2001, and Rav Herschel Schachter was in Israel with his son, Yummy, with whom I verified this story. On the night before they were leaving Israel, they forgot a suitcase in a taxi. They didn’t know what to do – but it worked out. A a later passenger recognized Rav Schachter’s name on the tag, and told the driver that Rav Schachter is “the Baba Sali of American Ashkenazim.” The driver contacted an Anglo he knew, who happened to be in the same Miluim unit as a relative of Rav Schachter, and so the bag came back. But that’s not the important part of the story.

When the driver brought the bag, he wanted a moment with Rav Schachter. The driver grabbed his hands and started crying; he said, “Rabbi, my wife and I have been married for 14 years and we have no children. Please give us a berachah for a child.” Rav Schachter holds the driver’s hands, cries with him, and says to him, “You are going to be blessed with a child within the next year.”

The driver leaves, and Yummy demands of his father: “How could you say that to him? You have no idea! They’ve been married for 14 years!” To which his father replies, “Yummy, we’re going to daven for him.”

About a year later, it’s Simchas Torah. During the dancing, Yummy sees a young man trying to approach his father. Yummy asks what he wants. The young man says he had just been in Israel, and on a cab ride the driver had heard him speaking English. The driver asked if he knew Rav Schachter, and when he said Yes, the driver asked him to pass along a message: He and his wife had just had a baby boy.

Yummy asks his father, “Did you daven for him?” And his father replied, with tears in his eyes, “Every day. Three times a day.”

I bring this story as neither prescription nor consolation; I am well aware that tefillos are not always answered positively, and that people who are experiencing difficulty having children will not necessarily find comfort in this event. I bring this story because I think it says something important about tefillah, and why and how we daven.

Chanah

Let’s go back more than 3000 years, to yesterday’s haftorah. Chanah, the outstandingly righteous[2] wife of Elkanah, has no children; her husband, Elkanah, marries a second wife, Penina.[3] Penina produces children, and torments Chanah for being unable to do the same. And every year, they go through the same routine: the family travels to the Mishkan, they bring korbanot, and Chanah sits at the family feast without an appetite.

But one year, the narrative changes. After the feast ends, Chanah davens – and it’s not your standard tefillah. As the gemara explains based on cues in the text, Chanah launches an aggressive assault on Gd. She calls Gd by the sacred name צבקות, Master of Multitudes - she is the first person in the Torah to do so![4] But in the talmudic read, she means “Master of Multitudes” not as an honour, but as an assault. She argues angrily, “Master of Multitudes! Of all of the multitudes of multitudes You created in Your world, why are You too stingy to give me just one child?”

And Chanah, with her aggressive, angry demand, succeeds; on Rosh HaShanah, Hashem remembers Chanah and grants her a child, Shemuel.

Choni

And a third story of unusual tefillah accepted, this one from 2100 years ago. It was a year of terrible drought; Succot came and went, as did Cheshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, Adar, and still there was no rain. The people sent for Choni haMe’agel – Choni the Circle-Drawer. He davened for rain, but nothing happened. Then he drew a circle and stood inside it, and swore by Gd’s Name that he would not leave the circle until Hashem displayed mercy. Rain began to drizzle, just enough to free him from his oath – but Choni remained in the circle, sayng, “That’s not what I asked for; I want rain that will fill cisterns.” The rain then poured down with destructive force, and Choni again complained, “That’s not what I asked for; I want rain of berachah.” And beneficial rain then fell – but to the point that it created dangerous flooding, and so Choni davened once more, “This is not the rain Your people need!” And the rain relented.[5] Like Chanah, Choni was answered with חן from Hashem.

Why are these tefillot answered?!

Three stories of accepted prayers, and I don’t understand: Why does Hashem listen to any of them?

·         Why does Hashem honour Rav Schachter’s guarantee?

·         Why does Hashem accept Chanah’s demand?

·         Why does Hashem go along with Choni’s very-specific tailorings of the rain he received?

I believe the answer lies in understanding what davening is all about. Why are all of us here, right now, beyond a sense of obligation – what are we doing when we daven?

Tefillah as Demonstration of Emunah

Rambam[6] cast davening as an act of devotion; the Torah says we are to serve Hashem with our hearts, and this refers to prayer. So we humble ourselves before the Creator of the Universe, in sincere service. But within that view, the point is for me to express devotion, not to guarantee people success, or make aggressive demands, or stipulate exacting specifications on a wish list!

But there is another vision of why we are all here in this room. Ramban[7] argued that if tefillah is a biblical mitzvah at all, it is actually a mitzvah of expressing emunah. When we have trouble, when we experience a need, when we are in pain, we are summoned to faith, to the trust that Hashem has the capacity to help us, and to turn to Hashem for that assistance. Even though we all know of prayers that have not yet yielded berachah, tefillah is about having that emunah that Hashem can assist us.

This brand of tefillah is not a display of praise or requests, per se; this brand of tefillah is a demonstration of a profound relationship with Gd which sees through the world we observe with our eyes and finds inspiration in our heart’s awareness of our Creator.

·         This is what Rav Schachter expressed, with his guarantee; he channelled the certainty of Ramban that Hashem possesses the ability to help.

·         And this is what Choni did; his demands were remarkable, but they also rested on the bedrock of unshakable faith that Gd could help them in their state of need.

Chanah’s Aggressive Demand is also an act of Emunah

But one more step, because Chanah’s prayer requires additional explanation. How do anger and aggression express emunah? In a world of ahavah and yirah, of love and reverence for Gd, of shevach and hodaah – thanks and praise – where is there room for anger and aggression?

I think it depends on where the anger and aggression originate.

·         A tantrum, venting frustration with a universe that does not comply with our expectations, is not about emunah.

·         But anger that comes from wounded emunah, faith in a vision of Gd that is not visible in the world around us – that’s still faith.

When a Jew holds the Torah’s religious view of Hashem as the Gd of Justice and Mercy, and events around her do not meet the standard set for Gd by the Torah itself, then a sense of betrayal can set in. Where is the Gd who protected Yosef? Where is the Gd who took us through Yam Suf? Where is the Gd who led our ancestors into Eretz Yisrael? And then the Jew has two options: To reject and walk away, or to faithfully appeal to the Gd described by the Torah. [8]

I believe there is no contradiction between love of Gd, and anger when the Gd we love is not visible in our lives. I believe there is no contradiction between reverence for Gd, and an aggressive demand that Gd’s own values should be manifest in our world. Chanah’s ahavas Hashem and yiras Hashem are intact.

The proof of that ahavah and yirah is that Chanah chooses not to walk away; instead, she faithfully appeals to the Gd described by the Torah - a Gd who would want, who should want, to give her a child. She cries out צבקות! She recognizes Gd as not only the Master of multitudes, but the Creator of those multitudes. Axiomatically, from the start of Bereishit, Gd is on the side of life, generating it and perpetuating it. Chanah believes that it is inconceivable that Gd should deny her request to bring more life into this world to serve Gd. And so she leans in assertively because she knows Gd, and she knows what Gd should do to create life.

Us

This is why we are here – as Ramban said, as Rav Schachter and Choni displayed, we are here to express our emunah that Hashem can give us a good year ahead, that Hashem wants to give us a year of berachah ahead.

For some of us, life this past year has been good, full of simchah; we have every reason to believe, and we gratefully daven to a Gd who has met and exceeded our expectations. But for some, life has been hard; emunah in Gd has been pushed to its limit, and perhaps beyond. Then we face Chanah’s choice – do we walk away, or do we lean in? Gd’s feelings are not so easily bruised; let us coronate Hashem as befits this day, but let us also express our sense of pain and betrayal, even as we assert that we know Hashem can give us what we need.

Even on the day of Divine coronation, seemingly the least likely day for aggression to be acceptable, Hashem answered Chanah’s aggressive prayer positively,[9] and the same will be true for us – if our emotion is not simply a matter of venting frustration, but rather it bespeaks faith that our vision is in line with Hashem’s vision.

·         If we want parnasah in order to be able to feed our families and support the needy, causes which Hashem claims to endorse -

·         If we want health in order to be able to fulfill mitzvot and improve our world, causes which Hashem claims to endorse -

·         If we want friendships in order to be able to build community and create chesed, causes which Hashem claims to endorse -

Then we need not limit ourselves to a meek plea; we can make a demand. We can be aggressive. We can say, “This is what You want, too!”

The Shofar

We are about to blow the shofar. In Tanach, the shofar plays multiple roles, all related to our emunah:

·         ד' אלקיו עמו ותרועת מלך בו – It is the horn declaring Divine majesty and honour;

·         היתקע שופר בעיר ועם לא יחרדו – It is the siren making us tremble in fear as we are called to reckoning;

·         But it is also קוֹל שׁוֹפָר שָׁמַעַתְּ נַפְשִׁי תְּרוּעַת מִלְחָמָה, the trumpet of battle, summoning us to aggressive war.

If we believe our requests for the coming year are justified and faithful, then let us sound the trumpet of battle, putting forth our tefillah with forceful faith, and as He did for Chanah, perhaps Hashem will respond to us. May we be blessed with a כתיבה וחתימה טובה, for health, of blessing, of peace and security in Israel and the world over, of nachas and fulfillment and Torah and mitzvot, for the year to come and beyond.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5f-utADG1w

[2] See Rabbi Yaakov Zvi Mecklenburg on Bamidbar 28:4 for a particularly interesting note

[3] Malbim to Shemuel I 1

[4] Berachot 32

[5] Taanit 23a

[6] Sefer haMitzvot, Aseh 5

[7] Hasagah to Sefer haMitzvot, Aseh 5

[8] Consider Avraham debating Gd regarding Sdom, and shouting חלילה לך! It is a desecration for You! I have faith in You as the שופט כל הארץ, the Supreme Judge, how could You not carry out justice?

Consider Moshe, who blames Hashem for the Eigel, shouting, ודי זהב, You gave them the gold! I have faith in You as a fair Gd, how could You put the Jews in the position of sinning by abandoning them with the gold for six long weeks?

Or consider Iyov, who calls Gd, צרי, “My enemy”, and yet Gd says of Iyov that he is עבדי, “My loyal servant”. Why? Because all along Iyov kept faith in his vision of Gd as just; his cries of “enemy” came only from his sense of betrayal, that Gd was not living up to His own self-description.

And consider Choni. It’s not the circle that made it happen; it’s his tefillah: “רבש"ע! Master of the Universe! בניך שמו פניהם עלי, Your children have turned to me!” They are Your children – and I have faith in You to deal with them as a parent deals with children! And why have they turned to me for them? “שאני כבן בית לפניך, for I am like a child of Yours,” they have faith that You will deal with me as a parent deals with a child!

[9] For a variety of reasons within the story, it is unlikely that Chanah’s tefillah was voiced on Rosh HaShanah – but it was answered on Rosh HaShanah.

Cracking the Cold (Derashah for Rosh HaShanah 5778)

Yes, I've neglected this blog, but here is my current draft of a Rosh HaShanah derashah. Please let me know what you think.

Over a period of 16 years, from 1833 to 1849, Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a long poem in memory of his beloved friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. It’s called “In Memoriam A.H.H.[1]”. The best-known line from the poem is probably, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” But I want to focus on a different passage today. In describing his own faith in the face of this bereavement, Tennyson wrote:

Behold, we know not anything; 

         I can but trust that good shall fall 

         At last—far off—at last, to all, 

And every winter change to spring. 

So runs my dream: but what am I? 

         An infant crying in the night: 

         An infant crying for the light: 

And with no language but a cry.[2]

Tennyson describes his cry as that of an infant; he hears the voice of a baby in the emotions of a grown, worldly, sophisticated man grieving for his friend. Keep that image in mind, please, as we look at a very odd element of the mitzvah of shofar.

Shofar is a surprisingly vague mitzvah; the Torah describes the first day of the seventh month as יום תרועה, a day for trumpeting, but it doesn’t define what exactly a teruah is. How do we know what sound to make? The Talmud[3] deduces the nature of the shofar’s teruah based on the crying of a particular woman in Tanach.

More: We blow 100 shofar blasts each day of Rosh HaShanah, even though 60 should cover all of the possible permutations of sounds. Why 100? Tosafot[4] quotes the 10^th century sage, Rabbi Natan baal ha’Aruch, explaining that we want to match the cries of that same woman in Tanach. She cried 99 or 100 times, depending on your version of this idea, and we cry as she did.

So there you have it. How do we know that teruah is a crying sound? That crying woman in Tanach. Why do we blow 100 blasts? Same woman in Tanach. And my problem is this: That woman in Tanach ranks as one of the coldest, most heartless human beings in Jewish history. That woman was the mother of a Canaanite general named Sisera.

Go back in time about 3200 years. After the Jews left Egypt and entered Canaan, Yehoshua led them for 28 years. After he died, we were governed by a series of Shoftim/Judges for centuries, during an up-and-down period in which we were often under the thumb of local tribes. About 120 years into this period, the Canaanites come to dominate us; they have iron, horse-drawn chariots, and they force us up into the mountains. Their lead general is a man named Sisera.

To make a long story short, our shofet at the time is a woman named Devorah, and she leads us in rebellion against Canaan. Miraculously, the Canaanite chariots are routed. The soldiers flee east, to go home; their general, Sisera, deserts and heads west, looking for shelter. He is intercepted by a woman named Yael, who kills him. Devorah composes a poem about the victory, and at the end of the poem she describes the scene back at Canaanite headquarters, where Sisera’s mother anxiously awaits her son’s return. To quote:[5]

“At the window, the mother of Sisera gazes out and cries at an ornately decorated window. She cries, ‘Why is his chariot delayed in coming? Why are the hoofbeats of his chariots late?’ The wise noblewomen answer her, and she also gives this statement to herself, ‘Have they not found and distributed spoils, a womb, two wombs to every man, spoils of dyed [fabric] for Sisera, spoils of dyed embroidery, dyed embroidery around the neck of the despoiler?’”

This is the mother of Sisera – a woman who comforts herself with the thought that her son is assaulting women and stealing spoils. And her language – a womb, two wombs to every man – it’s vulgar, obscene! How grotesque! What a mockery of maternity! Sisera’s mother may have cried for her son, but why in the world would I want to model my shofar on Rosh HaShanah on the grief of the most abominably cold-hearted human being imaginable?!

I’m not the only one with this question. Rav Eliyahu Ki-Tov asked this question in Sefer haTodaah, and decided that we are not looking at her villany, but at our own goodness. We are contrasting ourselves with Sisera’s mother. She wept with cruelty; we weep with humanity. There is a logic to this, certainly.

Another answer is to look past her cold villainy, and see her as a bereaved mother. As Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider wrote in a column on the OU website last year,[6] “[S]o great is the grief of any parent for the loss of a child, that we all are left completely bereft. The universality and commonality of suffering over the loss of a child transcends names and identities.” Rabbi Goldscheider knows what he is talking about; he lost a child. And I accept his point. But I don’t understand – do we really need to demonstrate our compassion for a bereaved parent by invoking this particular bereaved parent? Do we not have enough bereaved parents in our history, on whom shofar could have been modeled?[7]

I would suggest that the answer is not to ignore her villainy, but to embrace it, to understand that her lack of a heart is precisely the point. We invoke her because she is so unsympathetically heartless. This merciless human being, who reassures herself that all is well by imagining her son viciously violating prisoners – even she can crack.  And that unadorned cracking of the cold, yielding sincere emotion below, is what matters in shofar.

Rav Yehudah Amital[8] also emphasized the sincere cry, in an essay regarding Akeidat Yitzchak. He quoted a manuscript of the midrashic Avot d'Rabbi Natan[9] which describes the fateful scene on the mountain. In contrast to the classic image of the stoic father and son, pure in their devotion to Gd, in this version Avraham says to himself, “I am old, and he is young, perhaps Yitzchak could escape!” And Yitzchak says to himself, “Who will save me from my father? I have no aid other than Hashem!” Rav Amital explained, Avraham was no malach, and Yitzchak was no seraph; neither of them wanted to go through with this, and they were looking for something, pleading with Hashem, to prevent Yitzchak’s death. They cracked - and as we say in our Selichot, Hashem answered Avraham. It’s true that Hashem never wanted Yitzchak to die, but even had Hashem wanted Yitzchak to die, He would have halted the akeidah because of Avraham’s plea for Yitzchak’s life – because the most valuable prayer to Hashem is that simple, sincere cry, like that of Avraham, for that which we love the most.

This is what shofar is about – expressing the sincere cry. Returning to the beginning, I think this is what Tennyson described in his own grief for his beloved friend: “An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.” Simple. Sincere. Lacking artifice and style, and all the more beautiful for it. Even Sisera’s mother, at her moment of crisis, releases this pure voice from inside of her.

We may not like to admit it, but we nurture within ourselves the seeds of the cold brutality of Sisera’s mother - and for good reason. A soul open to every emotion, a heart with strings that can be plucked by every circumstance, would drown in a sea of passion. We would suffer depression at every hurricane and shooting and car accident and famine. We would ride a roller coaster of joy with every birth and marriage and success we saw on Facebook or Linkedin. We would spend our last pennies on helping people around the world in need. We would overload in reaction to every news headline and private conversation, and we would be left gasping for air, for emotional space, for survival.

So we develop a necessary shell, but we pay a price in doing it. I become much more at ease snapping my fingers to an upbeat tune than contemplating loss. I become more comfortable reading a book of intellectual essays about Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur than intensely contemplating what I did for the past year, and why I did it. I would rather go home to a delicious lunch than remain here asking, a la Tennyson, whether spring will truly follow winter for me, for my family, for my friends.

But on Rosh HaShanah, with the shofar, we are meant to penetrate to just those fears that inhabit the pit of our stomach. To imagine what it would mean to lose that which we love and treasure more than anything on earth – and to cry like Tennyson’s infant. Toward that end we summon the image of the coldest, crudest human being imaginable, Sisera’s awful mother, cracking, and we know that if she can, then so can we. And our cry, at the moment when our cold is cracked, is gorgeous in its purity, in its simplicity, in its sincerity.

Along the same lines, the Talmud Yerushalmi[10] says we blow an animal horn because our own cry on Rosh HaShanah is that of an animal. The shofar has no words, only an animal, or perhaps infantile, sound that emerges with our breath, from our core. May we crack, and find that cry inside of ourselves this morning, for just a little while. May we call out to Hashem sincerely, for the sake of our parents, our siblings, our spouses, our friends, our children. And may Hashem respond to us, as HaShem responded to Avraham, with a verdict for a חתימה טובה, to be inscribed and sealed for a year of berachah and shalom.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A.H.H.

[2] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45341/in-memoriam-a-h-h-obiit-mdcccxxxiii-54

[3] Rosh HaShanah 33b-34a

[4] Ibid.

[5] End of Shoftim 5

[6] https://www.ou.org/holidays/rosh-hashanah/shofar-mothers-cry/

[7] I.e. Sarah and Yaakov, when they believe their children dead. Of course, there are other answers, such as noting that R’ Akiva was her descendant, and invoking mystical ideas. Rav Soloveitchik has a particularly moving idea found in Pninei haRav pg. 158 and “Before Hashem you will be purified” pg. 10. See http://www.yna.edu/emails/newsletter/5771/Haazeinu/03_Shofar-_Recognizing_the_Emes-1.doc)

[8] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fN2QQl3BbWsJ:asif.co.il/download/kitvey-et/alon-shvot-bog/alon-shv-bo-16/bn15_sheyare.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca and http://www.etzion.org.il/he/06-%D7%95%D7%98%D7%94%D7%A8-%D7%9C%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%95-%D7%9C%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%93%D7%9A-%D7%91%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%AA

[9] Cited in Torah Sheleimah Bereishit 22 #92

[10] Yerushalmi Taanit 2:1

Modern davening, in one sentence

The weakness of a significant chunk of modern Judaism is reflected in one sentence I overheard after a Shacharit minyan several days ago:

Person speaking to Chazan: That was quick.

Chazan: I have things to do today!

[My point is not the speed; I didn't find the davening that day to be any faster or slower than the norm at that minyan. Rather, my point is the philosophy.]

Tehillim Fatigue

I've been thinking a lot about Tehillim Fatigue - the way that our prayers for our kidnapped boys, Gilad, Eyal and Naftali, lose their strength and intensity over time. It's not out of a lack of feeling for them and their families, Gd forbid; it's just a product of emotional overload, of a creeping feeling of hopelessness due to the lack of positive news, and perhaps of the general doubt as to whether Gd listens to our prayers.

Last week, in a different forum, I wrote about visualizing the joy of their return, but after a week of numbing updates about arrests and searches that have not yielded visible fruit, that joy is becoming harder to imagine. As we approach this coming Shabbat, though, I am reminded of two important points regarding light and hope.

This Shabbat is Rosh Chodesh, the New Moon. The Moon has a special resonance for Jews; our tradition compares our nation to the Moon, with its waxing and waning, and it compares Gd to the Sun, the provider of our light. Here are two relevant lessons of the New Moon, in particular:

1. As illustrated well in the series of pictures above (courtesy of Wikipedia), at the New Moon's time of apparent darkness, the Moon actually is experiencing its most direct, fullest sunlight! The Moon is positioned between the Earth and the Sun, so that the side of the Moon facing away from Earth is maximally lit up - we just can't see it, because of where we are. Often, when things look darkest, the light is full and strong. It's just behind the scenes.

2. The source of the Moon's light is still there at the New Moon; the side of the Moon that faces us is dark only because the Moon has moved, leaving us looking at its shaded side. Once the alignment of Moon and Earth shifts a little bit, the Moon's visible illumination will be restored. The same is true for us: Sometimes we can't see light, but it's because we have let ourselves get out of the proper alignment. Some people might say, then, that all they need to do is wait, and the universe will shift and the alignment will change. But perhaps at a New Moon we ought to ask ourselves: what do I need to do to shift the alignment myself, in order to enter the light?

Let us shift the alignment, and enter the light. Let us continue to give a few minutes of our time, each day, for Tehillim with concentration. Let us continue to add an extra act of kindness for another, or an extra dollar for tzedakah. Let us dedicate a few minutes of extra Torah study. Let us send the families of Gilad, Eyal and Naftali letters of support. And may we celebrate the light of their return very soon!

Carlebach Tyranny [a rant]

The following is not a rant against Carlebach Minyanim. I dance (well, shuffle) at them. I have led them. I instituted them occasionally when I was a shul rabbi.

This is also not a rant against minyanim that run overtime, as Carlebach Minyanim do. In the name of spirituality and fervor, I am more than happy to offer up the ten or fifteen minutes of my time that these take.

This is a rant against Carlebach tunes.

When I hear recordings of R' Shlomo Carlebach singing, I hear energy and life, fervor and inspiration. All too often, though, when I hear shuls sing Kabbolas Shabbos to Carlebach tunes I hear dirges [as well as chazanim who aren't sure when to go to the high part, and minyanim that split between high and low].

I hear people singing this tune because it's the tune they are supposed to sing, not because they feel anything.

I hear some people naively trying to match the tune with the words and phrases of Tehillim, and others giving up and just going with the flow.

I hear people mumbling their way through because they have been drafted into this service unwillingly.

And I hear loads of voices not singing as well, because hearing the same tune, week after week, is anything but inspiring. [If Kol Nidrei was a weekly experience, people wouldn't find that traditional tune moving, either.]

This is not true of all shuls, of course, or of all chazanim. But it is true of enough of them that I am writing this. [It is NOT true of any chazanim I have heard in the past several weeks – I've been sitting on this post for quite a while, and it was triggered by an experience that was not in the shul I normally attend.]

So here is my recommendation, for chazanim who want to motivate their communities: Sing! Sing just the ends of the paragraphs or sing the entire paragraphs, sing solo or lead a conga line! But please, please – sing a different tune, not a Carlebach tune. Sing the lively tune you heard at a wedding. Sing something relevant to that time of year. Sing a tune you've made up yourself [but clue people in first, perhaps] – but please, please, when the urge comes upon you to impose Carlebach tyranny upon the tzibbur, ask yourself: Is this the most inspiring way I can lead my community?

Thank you.

Open Thread: Going on vacation to a place without a minyan

I have many contradictory thoughts on the subject in the title of this post, including:

1. Rav Moshe Feinstein wrote that who is distracted by the way his local minyan is conducted is still obligated to attend, unless he cannot even concentrate on the basic meaning of the words;

2. In the days of the gemara, many sages often davened without a minyan;

3. Rav Moshe permits missing certain mitzvos, such as sitting in a succah, for the sake of touring in special locations;

4. The Rambam (Hilchos Tefilah 8:1, and see Kesef Mishneh's sources there) writes that the prayer of the community is always heard before Gd, and so one must never miss davening with the community;

5. Certain rites - the Torah reading, kaddish, emulating of the angelic kedushah - may be performed only in a community;

6. I know Rabbis I respect who will take vacations in places without minyanim.

Much more could be said on this, but I'm curious what others will write. What do you think of this?

Entertain us!

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

I've written quite a bit about the phenomenon of talking in shul - two of my favorite posts were in the summer of 2008, here and here - but a few weeks back, a two-second tableau gave me a new thought.

A child, somewhere around 10 years old, had just finished watching a video in a child-oriented, game-filled public facility (situation anonymized to protect child and parents), and he instantly declared to his parents, "I'm bored!"

The kid was surrounded by things to do, and people to do them with.

He hadn't tried to engage himself in anything. He hadn't worked at anything.

He just wanted to be entertained, and when the entertainment stopped, he was bored.

Watching this, I wondered: Is this the shul problem? Is it as simple as the fact that we anticipate, and feel entitled to, entertainment, so that the moment we are not entertained, we turn to others in the hope that they will fill our need?

We keep multiple windows open in our browsers while at work, so that we can take frequent breaks for entertainment.

We have Ipods and Iphones, as well as the old stand-by books and radio and tv, to fill in every moment with chatter and comedy.

We eschew privacy and quiet personal time, in favor of screens populated by those who will make us laugh or cry. How many people are left who just sit and think for any period of time?

Nirvana said it - "Here we are now, entertain us!"

I've blamed the shul decorum problem on a whole host of other factors - long davening exacerbated by a multiplicity of mi shebeirachs, synagogue layouts that place people in close proximity for hours at a time, lack of education on the power of silent tefillah, lack of a nucleus of silent daveners, distaste for intensity, lack of depth in the approach to mechanistic ritual, and so on. And all of these are true and real.

But at its core: Are like that pre-adolescent kid, seeking entertainment? Is it that simple?

I feel stupid when I pray

[Post I'm looking at now: Modern Uberdox on his kids' chutzpah]

Well, I don’t actually feel stupid when I pray – but I understand why someone would. I understand why someone would feel foolish, impotent, and superstitious for throwing his words heavenward in pursuit of reward, ritual satisfaction or salvation.

This past week the world watched a horrific forest fire in the Carmel Forest outside Haifa in Israel, a devastating catastrophe that cost forty lives of rescuers, burned many more, and made who knows how many people homeless – right in the middle of a Jewish holiday that celebrates fire, with prayers and songs commemorating flames that, miraculously, would not be extinguished. And beyond that bitter irony, the fire came on the heels of a day of international fasting and prayer for rain due to the water shortage Israel is experiencing.

Worse than unanswered prayers are prayers thrown back in our faces. If prayer is intercession, an attempt to persuade Gd to act in a certain way, then how could we not feel stupid when we pray? How could we not feel like whatever deity is out there is not moved by our words, however meaningful and important our goals?

I know that some explain prayer as self-assessment (the classic agrammatical homiletic on להתפלל), or an attempt to build up our merit so that we will be worthy of Divine response to our needs. Rav Chaim of Volozhin has his own deep take in Nefesh haChaim. Accepted and understood, and I made some of those points here. Some of those approaches may help explain why prayer does not necessarily lead to results.

Here's another approach, though. We might look at prayer as a steering wheel pointing us toward Gd, and our lives as the cars being driven in that direction. The steering wheel itself has no value, and the car is useless - and dangerous - without the steering wheel.

My car could go in any direction. Certainly, I spend much of my time in activities which could be termed mitzvot. I learn, I teach, I try to help other people, and I try to educate my children; that's pretty much my day. But what's my motivation, what makes me do these things? Could be ego. Could be the pursuit of financial reward; I get paid, of course. Could be a feeling of satisfaction. What makes these activities into mitzvos?

It's tefilah (prayer), the steering wheel pointing me toward Gd.

Davening (praying), turning to Gd and pledging my service, coming to Gd with my requests, making Gd the center of the things I do, is what identifies the behaviors of my day as mitzvot. Without sincere prayer, these could be self-serving behaviors. With sincere prayer, they are Divine-serving activities. (Which is one reason why talking during prayer irks me; it evicts Gd from prayer. But that's a topic for another time. See my sidebar link here.)

So I can't look to prayer to bring me results. If anything will yield me results - and we have no guarantees in that area, either - it will be the things I do with my non-prayer time.

Note: I am certainly not linking the fire to anyone's actions or inaction, casting blame on people who prayed but didn't perform mitzvot, or anything remotely like that.

All I'm doing is suggesting that prayer isn't really meant to get results, on its own. Prayer is only powerful when it has a car to steer.

Prayer, beyond the Siddur

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here!]

What's on my mind this evening: Thinking Outside the Siddur.

I'm teaching a class Thursday night, How we pray, but it has almost nothing to do with the siddur. Rather, I want to look at some of the non-siddur ways we pray. I'm still at the beginning of developing this class, but I like the ideas I'm formulating, so I thought I might share some of the concepts here for thought and feedback.

For the purpose of this discussion, I will define "prayer" not as speaking with Gd, but more broadly: communicating with Gd, verbally and otherwise.

The Torah provides types of prayer that bear little resemblance to the siddur style of davening (although some of them do influence the siddur):

We find korban, a generous act, giving of ourselves. (From Kayin/Hevel to Noach to Avraham to Har Sinai to the Mishkan)

We find song, an artistic act, creating expressions of lyrical and/or musical beauty. (From songs of thanks to the service-tied song of the Leviyyim to King David's reflective Tehillim)

We find monuments, a public act, visibly demonstrating loyalty to Gd. (These are most controversial, because the Avot create them, but then HaShem later prohibits them.)

We find meditation, an internal act, less about prayer and more about developing awareness. (The most commonly cited example is ויצא יצחק לשוח בשדה, but I am not convinced this is actually meditation. R' Aryeh Kaplan, of course, has much on this.)

And we find siguf and fasting, self-denial which aids us in returning to Gd. (Ninveh, Esther. Perhaps Kayin's fate of נע ונד תהיה בארץ as well, if we take the view that he tried to return to Gd?)

Some of these have changed their forms over time, but they still exist within our religious lives. Here are some examples (you'll need to come to the class for more):

Korban - Tzedakah, Hiddur Mitzvah, Hakdashat Zman;
Song - Piyyutim, Zmirot Shabbat;
Monuments - Building a shul, Mezuzah;
Meditation - Hitboninut, Hitbodidut;
Siguf/Fasting - Taanit, pre-Yom Kippur practices of teshuvah and kapparah.

It's dangerous for us to limit our concept of prayer to the siddur; there are so many more ways we communicate with Gd. I hope this class will help sensitize people to some of those ways.

"Rabbi, give me a berachah (blessing)"

Every once in a while, someone asks me to give him a berachah.

Inevitably, my mind jumps to the story told about Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, in which a student approached him and asked him for a berachah. As the story goes, he looked at the student quizzically and asked, “What are you – an apple?”

[I wonder if that story must be taken as a sign of the Rav's skepticism regarding giving a berachah; perhaps it was simply a safek berachos situation?]

There is ample precedent for rabbinic berachot, but by nature and by training, I am inclined to be skeptical about my own ability to give a berachah:

- Why should my tefillah on X’s behalf be more effective than anyone else’s tefillah on his behalf? If anything, it should be less effective! If I am more righteous [as some people bizarrely expect] then Gd judges me more closely than Gd judges others, and if I am less righteous [which I know, in my heart of hearts, is the reality] then I have used up all of my merit in various ways over the years.

- Further, does not the pursuit of berachot indicate a level of superstition?

- And still further, does not the pursuit of berachot indicate this person’s unwillingness to take responsibility for himself?

And so on with several more furthers I don’t have time to articulate at the moment.

But I do find that, on those rare occasions when I am asked to give a berachah, it’s a remarkably moving experience, at least on my end. Maybe that’s because people only request such berachot if they are sincere, but I feel a real connection to the mitbarech (the person requesting the berachah). And I feel an expectation, within myself, that I should make myself worthy of delivering a berachah.

Which leads to the next question: What sort of berachah should I offer?

We actually use the term “berachah” pretty loosely and flippantly – as in the conclusion to a chuppah speech, “My berachah to you is that you should…” [I dislike chuppah speeches, but that’s a topic for another time.] How do you compose a rabbinic berachah?

Our ancestors provided a clue, in the way they designed our prayers and blessings:

- HaShem told Moshe (Sh’mot 3:15), “When you mention My Name, say that I am the Gd of Avraham, the Gd of Yitzchak and the Gd of Yaakov.” And so, our Shemoneh Esreih begins with an appeal to the Divine protection of the Gd of Avraham, the Gd of Yitzchak and the Gd of Yaakov. [Sorry – Gd didn’t mention any matriarchs there. But that’s a topic for another time.]

- And each blessing in Shemoneh Esreih is modeled on specific biblical passages which relate to its theme.

- And for Tefilat haDerech, the Wayfarer’s Prayer, the sages instituted that we should close the blessing by reading pesukim about HaShem’s protection of Yaakov during his travels.

- And when a woman is about to be married, her parents offer her the biblical blessing which Rivkah’s family offered her when she was to marry Yitzchak.

So I opt for a similar approach: Based on the person and his circumstance, I choose a specific pasuk biblical passage, and express it as a prayer. That way it’s personal, while remaining loyal to an existing, holy text.

And I try to be solemn about it… but every once in a while I do wonder what would happen if I would say “Borei Pri haEitz” [the blessing recited before eating an apple].

Minyan Curbs Creativity

Stipulation: Judaism endorses and nurtures the creative spirit.

Certainly, Rav Soloveitchik and others pointed out that the biblical instruction to walk in Gd's ways includes a mandate to be creative, just as Gd is creative. Whether producing and nurturing children, or bringing food from the earth, we are creating. The Talmud considers אומנות, craftsmanship, a fine way to earn one's living.

My problem, though, is with davening – specifically, the practical issue of attending minyan, as well as the challenge of conforming to halachic זמנים (time constraints), which require the morning shacharit to center around sunrise, and which make the most practical minchah/maariv a sunset minyan. The result of these factors is that I never watch the sun climb into the sky or descend below the horizon.

Technically, one may recite the morning Shacharit for a few hours after sunrise – but (a) this is not ideal, and (b) in terms of practicality, it is hard to assemble a minyan that late into the working morning.

Sunset? Technically, one may/should daven minchah in the early afternoon, and it is ideal to daven maariv after the stars emerge – but, again, minyan practicality makes that difficult in a community with 8,000 Jews.

The result is that I rarely witness a sunrise or a sunset. On an early Friday night I can catch sunset while walking home from shul. On the mornings when sunrise is earliest, if I rise at 5:00 I can catch sunrise before Shacharit. But these occasions are rare.

I was reminded of this beauty I am missing a couple of weeks ago, when I drove into New York for a morning meeting. Heading east on I-78 to catch minyan in New Jersey, I was floored to watch the sun rise directly in front of me. The horizon glowed with ever-lightening shades of black, purple, violet, blue, before bands of citrusy reds and oranges and yellows made their entrance. Finally, the sun itself, an incredible shining ball, backlit distant skyscrapers and illuminated shreds of cloud before taking its dominating position in the sky.

I won't pretend that I wasn't annoyed by driving into the glare, not to mention contending with the slow-down of thousands of other drivers facing the same visibility challenge... but it was worth seeing that incredible, מה רבו מעשיך! grandeur. The experience lit up the rest of my day, sparking new ideas and energy.

Of course, people who are exposed to sunrise/sunset regularly are desensitized to this celestial theater, and I would be likewise benumbed if I witnessed this daily. But seeing it occasionally, people monthly, would be something special.

Some might suggest that we could blend this majestic view with inspired prayer. Of course, there are shuls with lots of windows (and some authorities even recommend a specific number and orientation of windows for a shul), but, in truth, I could not focus on feeling the siddur's words and appreciating the beauty of nature simultaneously. I wouldn't exactly end up praying to the sun, but I would likely not end up praying to Gd, either.

So if I ever live in a place where they have an early minchah / late maariv option, I'll have to work my schedule to allow for that. Then I'll sit with a sefer at sunset, and admire this incredible world we have been given.