Understanding How to Daven an Amidah -- How to Pray from Your Heart

In the course of several shiurim I taught “For Women Only,” we studied concepts of Tefilah (Prayer) that seem worth sharing with men, too.

The Shacharit service in the Morning and Mincha in the Afternoon are Torah-based, time-centered commandments, while Maariv at Night was added later by our Sages. (That is why we do not conduct a formal “Cantor’s Repetition” – chazarat ha-Shatz -- of the Amidah during Maariv). For each Tefilah, the central components are: (i) the Sh’ma (although not at Mincha) and (ii) the Amidah. The Sh’ma is recited at Shacharit and Maariv in fulfillment of the Torah commandment to recite it b’shakhb’kha u-v’kumekha (“when you lie down and arise”). The Talmud teaches that those words are not understood literally but as a command to recite
Sh’ma during the time of day when most people typically prepare to lie down (evening) and the time of day when they typically arise (morning). So we recite every night and morning the two Sh'ma paragraphs that include the Torah obligation -- b’shakhb’kha u-v’kumekha. We add the third paragraph of the Sh’ma to fulfill the Torah mandate that we remember, every day of our lives, that Hashem took us out of Egypt.

(Indeed, there are Six Memorials that we must remember every day of our lives: (i) Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim – the Exodus from Egypt; (ii) our assemblage as a Nation at Har Sinai and what we saw, heard, and experienced at Matan Torah; (iii) Hashem’s gift of the Holy Day of Shabbat; (iv) what Amalek did to us as we were weak and tired; (v) the incident of the Golden Calf; and (vi) what Hashem did to Miriam in the Wilderness.)

We already are accustomed to reciting two blessings before eating bread (al n’tilat yadayim and ha-motzi). So it is not alien to learn that we recite two blessings before fulfilling the commandment to recite Sh'ma (at Shacharit: (i) Yotzer Or u-Voreh Choshekh and (ii) Ahavah Rabah) (at Maariv: (i) ha-Ma’ariv Aravim and (ii) Ahavat Olam). Similarly, just as we recite certain blessings after eating bread or other foods (e.g., Birkhat ha-Mazon; Bo-rei N’fashot ; al ha-Michyah), so we recite the blessing Ga’al Yisra’el after the Sh’ma. (In addition, at Maariv, we recite the blessing Hashkiveinu, and some add another.) This “package” of (i) blessings before Sh’ma, (ii) the three paragraphs of Sh’ma, and (iii) blessings after Sh’ma, then, is supposed to connect immediately with the “package” of blessings we call the Amidah.

Thus, the matrix of core elements of the formal Jewish Prayer Service are:

* 2 brakhot before Sh'ma:

• at Shacharit: (i) Yotzer Or u-Voreh Choshekh and (ii) Ahavah Rabah
• at Maariv: (i) ha-Ma’ariv Aravim and (ii) Ahavat Olam.

* Sh’ma in its three paragraphs

* The Ga’al Yisra’el brakhah after Sh'ma

* The Amidah

As we explore the 19-blessing daily Amidah itself (reduced to 7 blessings on Shabbat and Yom Tov days when we avoid petitioning Hashem), we first consider the opening three blessings of any Amidah and compare those expressions of love and closeness with the way we would approach anyone for help. When we come with a petition for assistance or just come to "ask for a break" (as in "please gimme a break") – whether seeking help from a politician or even at a job interview -- we initially grasp at some basis to open the discussion by seeking ways to associate on common ground with the person before whom we are supplicating – “Mr. Governor, I think you knew my father.” “Madame Senator, I think my father was in a foxhole in Europe with your father during the Second World War.” “Sir, I think we went to the same college.” (Cf. the “Game of Jewish Geography.”) Well, in like fashion, we begin the Amidah by seeking to create a place of common ground with Hashem by recalling to Him that we are the children of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, the descendants and heirs to Hashem’s blessing to Avraham: "V’nivr’khu b’kha" (B’reishit 12:3) – that Avraham’s name shall be invoked in blessing. And so we recall the lineage we share and end by invoking Avraham in blessing -- "Magen Avraham." In other words, "You knew my father, and You actually had promised him that, if his sons or daughters ever need something, they should not hesitate to come by your office and ask."

Next, when supplicating before a person who wields power and influence, one typically transitions to praising the achievements of the person whom he is petitioning. “Thank you, Governor, for the changes you have made in your first term, the initatives you have launched. You have changed the climate of hope. You have confronted this social crisis, that economic dilemma, the litigation flood.” (The comparison can apply to any state or political party.) Well, it seems only natural that we similarly would thank Hashem as we inch towards bringing Him our petition: “Thank you, Hashem, for all You have done: With kindness, You sustain the whole world with livelihood; You revive the dead; You support the fallen; You heal the sick; You free those imprisoned.”

Makes perfect sense that a real person petitioning G-d would follow this rhythm.

To add extra meaningfulness to our words, we might do well to personalize this prayer, fighting the tendency to allow prayer to become rote from daily repetition, and think in our "minds’ eyes" of actual, personal examples we have experienced, witnessed, or lived through: “With kindness You sustain the whole world with livelihood” (thinking, as we say the words, of the time we got the job we sought, the promotion, the raise, closed the big deal, got the unexpected tax refund); “You support the fallen” (thinking, as we say the words, of the friend or relative who went into therapy, mired in deep depression, and has bounced back productively); “You heal the sick” (thinking, as we say the words, of the friend or relative whose examples of recovery from grave illness are striking); “You free those imprisoned” (thinking, as we say the words, of Soviet Jewry of the 1960s and 1970s, Ethiopian Jewry, and the Jews freed from Iran and from Arab Lands like Syria and Iraq in our own lifetimes).

From this foundation, we typically would conclude introducing ourselves by saying that the politician or job interviewer – whomever we are petitioning – really is someone who is well known, does so much, and is highly regarded by others. And that is how we conclude our Amidah introduction: You are Holy, and Your Name is Holy, and the holiest [entities] praise You every day!” This is not rote prayer – rather, this is the way that people really communicate with power when they come for help.

And then we begin our twelve paragraphs of petition and supplication.

This is the way of Jewish Prayer. The Amidah should be personalized every time we pray it. Be Waldo: Put yourself into the picture, and then look for yourself in the Siddur. Unknown to most, for example, the halakha expressly encourages us to add real personal prayers, in whatever language we can speak them, inserting them into the various paragraphs of the Amidah – preferably in the paragraphs most pertinent to the respective petitions. Thus, in the face of stress in earning livelihood, we insert the personal supplication into the “prayer for seasons” – M’varekh ha-Shanim. For health and recovery, we insert a personal petition into the R’fa’enu paragraph. And, if we are not certain which paragraph is appropriate for insertion, we may insert any prayer on any reasonable subject into the Sh’ma Koleinu paragraph.

By inserting such personal prayers, we indeed personalize Tefilah. Every Amidah is the same – yet becomes fresh and different. How can it be boring and rote when each prayer takes on new foci?

Yes, of course, we recite it three times every day. That is challenging. So it requires some perspective. What if your President, your Governor, your job interviewer is not inclined, for whatever the reason, to grant the entirety of your petition at the time you appear at your meeting? What do you do then?

You wait a while, and then you struggle and cajole to get another meeting, if only it would be possible, to follow up. Or maybe you donate $2,000 (or 5 or $10,000) to attend a soiree for a charity you do not really endorse but at which the politican will show up. You hope that maybe you can rub shoulders, just get in his or her face so that she remembers you, is reminded that you exist and are waiting to hear back.

That is the perspective of the thrice-daily prayer. We do not always get everything we have asked for, but we have an open door to return for a follow-up meeting, to ask again. And again. And again. And again.

At what point would it be rote, would it be boring, would it be too many meetings with the job interviewer, the CEO, the Congressional representative, the United States Senator, the President? Rote? Au contraire, mon frere -- it would great!

So that is what we get -- three audiences a day.

Not every prayer and petition and request is answered the way we seek. But, hey, it took two thousand years of Jewish prayers -- three times a day, millions of people, generation after generation -- before He permitted us to realize the actualization of the request to return to Jerusalem. So it takes time.

Jerusalem took approximately 1,800 or 1,900 years. But see that not only as two milliennia but alternatively as a third or a half of a People's lifetime -- because that was a People prayer. So maybe some prayers in your personal life will take a third or a half of a lifetime to realize. Maybe that's 20 years or 30 or 40.

Nu? So get started.

Parsha - B'ha'a'lot'kha

Not many people – yet – among Irvine’s pedestrians and shoppers wear yarmulkas. The city’s Orthodox Jewish community indeed has expanded in recent years to four Orthodox congregations – including our own Young Israel, two Chabad congregations, and a fourth where I previously served – as well as an Eruv and a forthcoming Community Mikvah. Even so, not many of us wear yarmulkas outdoors. Therefore, wherever I meander, people assume that I am a rabbi – a pretty good guess.

The thing about wearing a yarmulka is that you not only become the involuntary emissary of the Jewish people (as, for example, when someone at the supermarket asks: “Excuse me, are you a rabbi – and, if so, do you know where I can find borscht?”). More curiously, you become a prize candidate to be converted. It seems there are “extra points” to be garnered in certain circles for “witnessing the Good News” to a guy with a kippah. Recently, while sipping at a Coffee Bean – if only they sold sandwiches here! – two women approached and asked whether I was open to accept their Messiah into my heart. I demurred politely, but they continued: “Don’t you see that you never can get forgiveness from God without a Temple sacrifice? Prayer is not enough. G-d does not forgive unless there is blood, a sacrifice at the Temple. And that is why He sent his only . . . .”

Which brought that discussion and this week’s Parsha analysis to five words that Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses our Teacher) cried out to the Master of the World after Miriam was smitten with Biblical leprosy for speaking lashon hora (deprecatory speech) about her brother. Miriam had initiated a brief discussion with her other brother, Aaron, concerning Moshe’s relationship with Tziporah, the woman he had married. (Numbers 12:1-3) And then suddenly – not even allowing time for them to purify themselves properly before appearing in the Divine Presence – Hashem came down among them, explaining Moshe’s unique role as His Prophet and as His ever-ready Servant. (12:4-6) “How dare you speak that way about My Servant, about [My] Moshe?” And Miriam was smitten with a Biblical leprosy that compelled her into a humiliating exile outside the Jewish encampment.

The Torah records that Moshe wasted no time, crying out: “Kel, na, R’fa na lah” – “G-d, please, heal her, please” (12:13) In only five words, Moshe pleaded with earth-shaking force for Miriam. There was no sacrifice of animal. No blood. Just the exhorting lips of Moshe, crying out to the Creator: “G-d, please, heal her, please.” And she was healed.

Prayer is a powerful vehicle. Our lips substitute for bulls. (Hosea 14:3) Long before the first Tabernacle was erected, Cain had pleaded to Hashem in prayer that the punishment for murdering his brother was too heavy to bear – and the Creator responded by placing a mark on him to protect him. (Genesis 4:13-15). Avraham prayed for the safety of the righteous who might be residing in Sodom and Gomorra – and Hashem was moved to change His plan. (Gen. 18:23-33) Avraham awoke early in the morning, praying in his usual place, on the day he set forth with Yitzchak for Mount Moriah. (Gen. 22:3) Yitzchak was conversing with Hashem – praying – in his field during late afternoon on the day he met Rivkah. (Gen. 24:63) Yaakov prayed at night. (Gen. 28) When Hashem spoke of wiping a nation out of history, Moshe prayed and pleaded for their forgiveness until He said: “I have forgiven, consonant with your words.” (Numbers 14: 20; cf. Exodus 32:14)

Prayer is powerful. Joshua prayed, and the world’s sun stood still on a Friday afternoon so that Israel’s enemies would be dispatched before the Shabbat. (Joshua 10:12-14) Samson, blind and bound as a spectacle for the Philistines, prayed and was answered. (Judges 16:28-29) As evidenced throughout so much of Psalms, David prayed – as he stood before Goliath, later as he fled from Saul’s pursuers and into Avimelech’s kingdom, and ultimately as King of Israel.

Prayer is not only powerful for Biblical figures. Through 2,000 years of Exile, tens of millions of the meekest and least historically prominent individuals in the Jewish nation prayed three times daily for a return to Jerusalem and the restoration of Zion. They prayed for centuries despite no possible rational basis to believe their prayers would be answered. But prayer is not only about empirical data, and – paradoxically – faith tests one’s faith. Prayer is about submitting oneself to a greater Power, a more omnipresent and omniscient Authority. Prayer tests our resolve – can we continue praying long after our prayers ostensibly have not yet been answered? Prayer forces us to search within and to judge ourselves: can we distinguish between the substantive needs that justify our passions and the vanities that are passing fancies? Prayer directs our hearts and teaches us humbly to acknowledge our own limits.

Prayer teaches us to harmonize with the Creation, to hear His response. When prayer is not answered, sometimes – as the country singer Garth Brooks poetically has observed – one reflects, stunned, and suddenly realizes that some of G-d’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. Sometimes, it takes 2,000 years and millions of tear-soaked prayers to receive the beginnings of an answer. And sometimes it only takes five words.

Or, as I explained respectfully to those two lovely women, sometimes the only sacrifice G-d demands of us is not someone else’s tragic death but the service of our hearts, the passion of our lips, and the unabashed exposing of our souls.

To Pray, To Daven, To Feel: So Where's the Fire?

When I was a boy in yeshivah k’tanah, I davened with kavanah – although I cannot mean that I actually knew what I was saying. One day, someone took me aside, in Shul on Shabbat, a religious person who meant well for me, and told me that I daven too slowly. He kindly taught me how to daven faster, to keep pace with everyone else. He explained that I should move my lips, make a soft buzzing sound, and try reading the words with my eyes. Thus, I learned how to daven. . . .

In most shuls, good shuls with sincere balabatim, it is hard to daven with kavanah. Let’s do some math. In my Artscroll, Mizmor Shir Chanukat Habayit is on page 54. The Shir shel Yom is on p. 162 ff. That’s 108 pages to cover each morning, divided by 2 = 54 pages. We do not say everything – no hotza’at ha-Torah on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. No "long tachanun" on those days either. But it is still, what, 40 pages? And add another 5-10 pages for the birkhot ha-shachar and maybe some reduced korbanot. How long does it take to read 40-50 pages of Hemingway – or even Dave Barry?

The best of our people, in the sphere of tefilah, are those who come to daily minyan. They need some sleep so most minyanim start, what, 6:00 a.m., 6:30 a.m., a bit later? And they have to get to work, so they need to be out by, what, 7:30 a.m.? So there are 45 minutes to read 40-50 pages. How many of us read that quickly, merely by eyes, at that clip, even Dave Barry? That would be 53-67 pages an hour.

Now, imagine you are reading the same 53-67-page chapter every weekday of your week, of your life, and you are exhausted and just waking up. You see? We begin confronting our dilemma with an inherent difficulty. We are training people, our most committed daveners, to daven wrongly. The need for speed.

Comes Mincha and Maariv during the week. The best are the ones who make the effort, no matter what, to come to minyan. But they have had an exhausting day, so they do want to get home. That speeds them up. They want to see their kids, their wives. Eat dinner. Yes, they make the time for davening b’tzibur, and yet their minds are in other places. So, again, there is the sense of “let’s get the show on the road” – even among those who never have produced theatrical productions for a national touring audience.

There is an expression in the Navy, I am told: “A convoy can travel only as fast as its slowest ship.” One might say in davening: a minyan travels only at the speed of its fastest shaliach tzibur. Comes the Shacharit and the Mincha Shmoneh Esrai – how long will the tzibur wait for the slowest davener to finish before it begins chazarat ha-Shatz? So there is pressure to daven fast.

The daily davening act is dulled for many because they do not understand the peirush ha-milim. That is one reason that I am not much concerned how Koren Publishing's commentaries compare to those of Artscroll because, after you read a commentary once, that’s it. People barely have time to look at the peirush ha-milim, hence Artscroll’s fascinating effort to publish interlinears. Some have a deep bitachon within their kishkas, a deep connection with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and daven nevertheless with a deep and utterly sincere kavanah, even though they have no clue what they are saying, sort-of-like the stories of the person who recites the Aleph-Bet and asks HaKadosh Baruch Hu kindly to form the words for him. But for most people it is a challenge.

So we have mishigass from the FFB world that helpfully teaches young people how to daven faster, to keep up with Evelyn Woods even though she is not counted in the minyan, and we have ba’alei teshuvah who sometimes come in with the best inculcation and sometimes with mishigass of their own.

For me, it was in high school one day that I learned, for the first time, that you are allowed to insert your own private requests into the Amidah. I always thought that was “mafsik.” Who knew from Orach Chaim and Mishneh Brurah? We were too good for that in fifth grade. So we learned Gemara. For me, that revelation – that you may add your own private prayer – was my first breakthrough. So, if someone was sick, I suddenly was going to start inserting a request at R’fa’einu. So, now, I suddenly wanted to understand that paragraph more. I got very involved in Soviet Jewry, and I started to add a personal prayer at “[t]ka’ b’shofar gadol . . . v’kabtzeinu yachad mei-arba’ kanfot ha’aretz.” Well, I needed to understand that paragraph better, if only to craft my own insertion.

When the contractor who was building my home in the new American neighborhood in Karnei Shomron went bankrupt with my life’s savings, I started adding a prayer in “Bareikh Aleinu.” So I needed better to understand that brakhah – and what does wind and rain have to do with my finances? As I grew more, evolved more – and it takes many decades in my narrative – and started recovering from the hubris of my teens and college years and my 30s and a chunk of my 40s, realizing ways in which I had messed up my life, I started adding prayers to “S’lach Lanu.” People in my extended family veered from the derekh, people in my shul community would come to me crying about this or that personal tragedy, and I would pray for them in “Hashiveinu Avinu l’Toratekha.” So I wanted to know – and to feel – that paragraph better.

My life took many hard turns, very hard setbacks. Yet, each time that I felt like I was mamash bound on my akeidah, there would be some miracle to turn my life around. In time, I found that even the non-petitional prayers of hoda’ah compelled me to pause for greater clarity to say thanks to HaKadosh Barukh Hu for miracles that are with us every day -- evening and morning and afternoon. I thought of the evening when I received a phone call at 12 midnight, notifying me that I had been selected Chief Articles Editor of Law Review, something that would positively change my life in many ways short-term and long-term. I thought of the morning car crash, the most freakish accident imaginable, that should have killed me and those in my car according the derekh ha-teva’ back in 1992. (The police had made a terrible, terrible mistake, waving me forward into a death trap; yet my children and I escaped with nary a scratch.) I thought to the afternoon miracles I had experienced from one career to the next -- miracles that once again led to a series of toggles that changed my life for the better in ways I cannot describe.

By now, my only “problem” was the first part of the Amidah, which I still raced through in order to get to “the good stuff.” And one day it hit me like a ton of . . . light. M’khalkel chaim b’chesed. I picked a time in my life, when that builder went bankrupt and nearly bankrupted me, and thought of how HaKadosh Baruch Hu miraculously got me through, how he got me through years of yeshiva tuition while I was going to law school in my late 30s, and so many stories I have heard from balabatim who privately have told me their miracles of how they were sustained by miracles that they could not fathom. Someikh Noflim. Each Amidah I would pick another time He had raised me from the brink of real disaster. Rofeih Cholim – the time my Dad was expected to die from his leukemia. I was only age seven at the time. Had he died then, I barely would know who he was. Miraculously, he lived seven more years, and those seven years gave me a booster-rocket impact that has lived with me for a lifetime. The ten years extra that my Mother lived, despite contracting illnesses that, by natural expectations, should have brought her to a physical end a decade ago, and the impact those extra ten years had. Matir Asurim: I have seen it all – Soviet Jewry, Syrian Jewry, Iranian Jewry, Iraqi Jewry, Ethiopian Jewry. We all have experienced it.

Thus, the beginnings of my own rehabiliation in prayer. I started making an effort to understand every single word in the davening, no matter how poetically florid and esoteric. One day, a balabos came to me with a revelation: “Rabbi, do you know which commercial breakfast cereal the Siddur endorses?” Without a blink I responded: “Cheilev chittim yasbi’eikh.” He replied “I don’t know what that means, but look at this thing about Cream of Wheat, rabbi.” I knew I had started making my davening what it should have been forty years earlier.

Thus the beginnings. We do not teach people to personalize the davening, to remember their personal health miracle, their personal parnassah miracle, the miracle that literally unfolded before the eyes of a generation as He was matir millions upon millions of asurim before our eyes this past quarter century. Nor do many of us really urge people to take a minute and to pray for a relative off the derekh, to devote an extra minute to “Bareikh aleinu” and petition for a helping hand from above.

I think books about davening are great, but the beginnings come with understanding that, like the “Twilight Zone” episode about the guy who mentally-thinks-himself into a painting on the wall, we need to think-ourselves into the prayer. We need to see our faces in that Siddur, our personal problems and needs in those words. That helps make it relevant to today. It is relevant, and it is sensible. It is personal.

But, somehow, some way, we are fighting the time element. The convoy that goes no slower than its fastest ship. The fire truck of tefilah racing through traffic. That is a challenge. Time preys on us. Can we pray through time?