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Between Keva and Kavanah R Between Keva and Kavanah R. Yonatan Cohen, Congregation Beth Israel 1. R. Abraham J. Heschel, The Spirit of Jewish Prayer, (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity), pp. 100‐101 Our services are conducted with pomp and precision. The rendition of the liturgy is smooth. Everything is present: decorum, voice, ceremony. But one thing is missing: life. One knows in advance what will ensue. There will be no surprise, no adventure of the soul; there will be no sudden burst of devotion. Nothing is going to happen to the soul. Nothing unpredictable must happen to the person who prays. He will attain no insight into the words he reads; he will attain no new perspective for the life he lives. Our motto is monotony. What was will be, and there is nothing new in the synagogue. The fire has gone out of our worship. It is cold, stiff, and dead. Inorganic Judaism. True, things are happening; of course, not within prayer, but within the administration of the synagogues. Do we not establish new edifices all over the country? Yes the edifices are growing. Yet worship is decaying. Has the synagogue become the graveyard where prayer is buried? Are we, the spiritual leaders of American Jewry, members of a burial society? There are many who labor in the vineyard of oratory; but who knows how to pray, or how to inspire other to pray? There are many who can execute and display magnificent fireworks. But who knows how to kindle a spark in the darkness of a soul? 2. R. Abraham J. Heschel, The Spirit of Jewish Prayer (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity), p. 111 There is a specific difficulty of Jewish prayer. There are laws: how to pray, when to pray, what to pray. There are fixed times, fixed ways, fixed text. On the other hand, prayer is worship of the heart, the outpouring of the soul, a matter of devotion. Thus, Jewish prayer is guided by two opposite principles: order and outburst, regularity and spontaneity, uniformity and individuality, law and freedom. These principles are the two poles about which Jewish prayer revolves. Since each of the two moves in the opposite direction, equilibrium can be maintained only if both are of equal force. However, the pole of regularity usually proves to be stronger than the pole of spontaneity, and as a result, there is a perpetual danger of prayer becoming a mere habit, a mechanical performance, an exercise in repetitiousness. The fixed pattern and regularity of our services tends to stifle the spontaneity of devotion. Our great problem, therefore, is how not to let the principle of regularity impair the power of devotion. It is a problem that concerns hot only prayer but het whole sphere of Jewish observance. He who is not aware of this central difficulty is a simpleton; he who offers a simple solution is a quack. 3. Joseph Tabory, The Conflict of Halakhah and Prayer, pp. 17 (Tradition, vol. 25, 1, 1989) It has been suggested that a central theme in many halahkot is the idea of a circumscription and definition; the law creates order out of chaos and keeps the Jew in the world of order and out of chaos. How different is the world of prayer! Prayer has been called by the rabbis “the service of the heart.” Prayer arises from the heart rather than from the mind, from a heart full of emotion which knows no rational restrictions. Jewish prayer has been described by a master of Jewish law, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, as arising from a heart which beats “rapidly and with an irregular rhythm,” a heart which is “wild, savage and primitive.” How can the world of halakhah, the world of such law and order, attempt to regular something which is by its very nature free and wild? It seems that such an attempt would tend to change the essence of prayer and transmute it into a “commandment of men, learned by rote” (Isaiah, 29:13) 4. Joseph Tabory, The Conflict of Halakhah and Prayer, pp. 17 (Tradition, vol. 25, 1, 1989) Nahmanides’ objections to counting prayer among the biblical commandments are technical and we feel that he himself was not fully convinced by them. He indeed suggested that Maimonides may have been correct in accepting the rabbinic statement at its face value but he suggested a new interpretation of that statement. According to Nahmanides, it should rather be explained as requiring a person who prays through his own volition, one who cannot help but call out from his anguish and suffering, to direct his call to God in the belief that He hears our prayers and helps us through prayer. We may suspect therefore that there is really some other or additional reason which underlies the rejection of the concept that God commands man to pray to Him. One may perhaps explain that the philosophical background to this is that prayer can not be demanded but can only come forth from the inner recognition of the true believer. It may even be said that prayer is the only true free‐offering which man has to give God and the negation of its freeness by a commandment to pray would deny its true value. 5. תלמוד בבלי מסכת ברכות דף מ: BT Berachoth 40b .5 רבי יוסי אומר :כל המשנה ממטבע According to Rabbi Yose, “He who alters the form of benedictions שטבעו חכמים בברכות - לא יצא ידי fixed by the wise has failed to fulfill his obligations.” חובתו. 6. תלמוד בבלי מסכת מנחות דף מג BT Menahoth 43b .6 עמוד ב Rabbi Meir declares it to be the duty of everyone to say one תניא, היה רבי מאיר אומר: חייב אדם לברך מאה ברכות בכל יום .hundred benedictions daily 7. משנה מסכת אבות, פרק שני (משנה Mishnah Avot, 2:18 .7 יח) רבי שמעון אומר: Rabbi Shimon said: Be meticulous in reciting the Shema and the א] הוי זהיר בקריאת שמע ובתפילה. ,Amida] prayer. When you pray, do not do so as a fixed routine] ב] וכשאתה מתפלל אל תעש תפילתך but as a plea for mercy and grace before God, as it is said, “For He קבע אלא רחמים ותחנונים לפני המקום ברוך הוא, שנאמר (יואל ב): "כי א-לחנון is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in ורחום הוא, ארך אפים ורב חסד, ונחם ”.kindness, and renouncing punishment על הרעה." 8. משנה מסכת ברכות פרק ד Mishnah Berachot 4:3‐4 .8 משנה ג Rabban Gamaliel says, One must say every day the Eighteen [3] [ג] רבן גמליאל אומר בכל יום מתפלל אדם שמונה עשרה רבי יהושע אומר Benedictions. R. Joshua says, An abbreviated form of the Eighteen מעין שמונה עשרה ר' עקיבא אומר אם Benedictions. R. Akiba says, If one can read his Prayer(s) fluently he שגורה תפלתו בפיו יתפלל שמונה עשרה must say the Eighteen Benedictions but if not then the abbreviated ואם לאו מעין י"ח: .form of the Eighteen Benedictions משנה ד [ד] רבי אליעזר אומר העושה תפלתו ,(Rabbi Eliezer said: He who makes his prayer a fixed thing (keva [4] קבע אין תפלתו תחנונים .his prayer is not an act of grace 9. תלמוד בבלי, מסכת ברכות (דף כ"ט BT Brachot 29b .9 ע"ב) Our Mishnah said: He who makes his prayers fixed etc. [The "רבי אליעזר אומר: העושה תפילתו קבע" כו'–מאי "קבע"? ?”Gemara inquires:] What is the meaning of “fixed [א] אמר רבי יעקב בר אידי, אמר רבי R. Yaakov bar Idi said in the name of R. Oshaya: Anyone whose אושעיא: כל שתפילתו דומה עליו .prayer is like a burden on him כמשוי. And the Rabbis say: Anyone who does not recite [his prayer] in a [ב] ורבנן אמרי: כל מי שאינו אומרה בלשון תחנונים. .supplicatory manner [ג] רבה ורב יוסף דאמרי תרוייהו: כל Rabbah and Rav Yosef both say: [This refers to] anyone who is שאינו יכול לחדש בה דבר. אמר רבי unable to innovate something [in his prayer]. R. Zeira said: I am זירא: אנא יכילנא לחדושי בה מילתא, able to innovate something in [my prayer], but I am afraid to do so ומסתפינא דלמא מטרידנא. .lest I become confused [ד] אביי בר אבין ורבי חנינא בר אבין, דאמרי תרוייהו: כל שאין מתפלל Abaya bar Avin and R. Chanina bar Avin both say: Anyone who עם דמדומי חמה. דאמר רבי חייא בר does not pray during the redness of the sun. As R. Chiya bar Abba אבא אמר רבי יוחנן: מצוה להתפלל עם said in the name of R. Yochanan: It is a mitzvah to pray during the דמדומי חמה. ואמר רבי זירא: מאי redness of the sun. And R. Zeira said: What is the verse, i.e. the קראה? "ייראוך עם שמש, ולפני ירח דור דורים" (תהלים source for R. Yochanan’s ruling in Scripture? They will fear You with ע"ב). לייטי עלה במערבא אמאן the rising of] the sun and before the moon [comes up], for] דמצלי עם דמדומי חמה. מאי טעמא? דילמא מיטרפא ליה שעתא. .generations upon generations 10. תלמוד בבלי, מסכת מגילה, דף כ"ה BT Megillah 25a .10 ע"א One who says, We give thanks, we give thanks, he is silenced . אמר רבי זירא: האומר "שמע שמע" כאומר "מודים מודים" דמי... Said Rabbi Pappa in Abaye: But perhaps [this is because] the אמר ליה רב פפא לרבא: ודילמא person is not concentrating at first on what he is praying, but is מעיקרא לא כיון דעתיה והשתא כיון concentrating the second time? He replied, Can one behave דעתיה אמר ליה: חברותא כלפי שמיא?! familiarly with heaven? If he did not pray with concentration from אי לא מכוין דעתיה – מחינא ליה בארזפתא דנפחא עד דמכוין דעתיה! .the outset, we hit him with a smith’s hammer until he does 11.
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