Pray and Mean It #10
Cant...@aol.com
Please accept my apology for the long delay between postings. The
onset of Pesach and various local programs prevented me from posting
since #9 back in March. I figure you've probably been busy, too, so
you probably didn't miss it too much. In any case, here's the next
posting. . . with the hope that we will keep moving forward at the
rate promised in the past.
With appreciation -- Cantor Jack Chomsky
Pray and Mean It is an occasional listserv – every 1 to 2 weeks. Its
aim is to build an understanding of and connection to Jewish prayer
step by step. It is administered through googlegroups. (Your
inclusion in this group is confidential. I am the only person who has
access to the names and e-mail addresses on the list.) People who
wish to be added to the listserv may visit the googlegroups site or e-
mail me at Cant...@aol.com. All postings can be viewed with clear
legible Hebrew at my synagogue’s website, www.tiferethisrael.org You
are welcome to share this with others who might find it interesting or
valuable. Recipients will NOT be able to respond to the entire list,
but may correspond with me.
Thanks and best wishes – Cantor Jack Chomsky, Congregation Tifereth
Israel, Columbus Ohio
Pray and Mean It 10
This is the 10th installment in this series.
We now turn our attention to the middle of the Amidah. This is the
first passage that differs on weekdays from the liturgy of Shabbat.
(It is better to look at the Shabbat liturgy as that which varies from
the everyday -- why is this day different from all other days?)
The real core of daily prayer is found in the 13 b’rachot that begin
with אתה חונן. It is in the middle of the Amidah that we give voice
to our daily concerns -- to the things that worry us, the things we
need to work on, the things we need God to help us with. This has
always been my greatest concern about people who daven or come to
synagogue only on Shabbat: that they don’t get the payoff of this
intimate conversation.
On Shabbat, these 13 b’rachot are replaced with kedushat hayom --
sanctification of the day -- celebration of Shabbat. And because it’s
unseemly to approach God on God’s day off (and our day off) with
business and worldly concerns, a person who goes to schul on Shabbat
with a heavy heart finds a Siddur filled with prayers saying that God
is great, wonderful, exalted, incomparable, etc. -- but not much
opportunity to say “God, I need help with. . . .”
It’s a different matter during the week:
אַתָּה חוֹנֵן לְאָדָם דַּֽעַת, Atah
chonen l’adam da-
at,
וּמְלַמֵּד לֶאֱנוֹשׁ בִּינָה. um’lameid le-enosh
binah.
חָנֵּֽנוּ מֵאִתְּךָ דֵּעָה, בִּינָה וְהַשְׂכֵּל. Choneinu mei-itcha
deiah binah v’haskeil.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה', חוֹנֵן הַדָּעַת. Baruch Atah Adonai, Chonein hada-
at.
You favor humanity with knowledge,
and teach mortals understanding.
Favor us from You with knowledge, understanding and discernment.
Praised are You, Adonai gracious Giver of knowledge.
This b’rachah strikes at the heart of what I’m trying to accomplish
with this project: it’s one of those moments that has the potential
to be sufficient to affect our whole day positively. Asking for
knowledge, understanding and discernment -- and doing so as the first
of the 13 daily b’rachot -- strikes me as a uniquely Jewish act, as
well as an importantly Jewish act.
Why do I say this? Why have Jews flourished in any and every society
that has given them the opportunity to do so? Because learning is at
the heart of Jewish culture, and has been at the heart of that culture
at least as long as we’ve been a praying people (dating back
essentially to the destruction of the 2nd Temple).
For this first b’rachah, we could have asked for strength, for power,
for wealth, for messianic redemption, for victory over our foes. But
what we ask for is knowledge, understanding and discernment, showing
our understanding(!) of the power of the mind.
It is further amazing and inspiring that we don’t just ask to be
smart, but we ask for different aspects of learning and
understanding. 6 days out of 7, then, we begin our petitionary
prayers by concentrating on how we will be using our brains.
Deiah (knowledge) can be understood to mean raw information -- command
of the facts. It is the lowest level of knowledge and understanding,
but is critical to reaching the higher levels. We can interpret binah
to mean understanding -- to be able to organize our knowledge in
useful ways. But there is a higher level yet -- haskel takes us
toward wisdom. Of course this is the same root as the Yiddish word
seichel -- common sense. But what we seek here is something even
deeper than common sense -- a cosmic sense, as it were, of balancing
our facts and our understanding. What a great way to prepare for our
day -- to seek knowledge, and to simultaneously remember that we need
to organize that knowledge and then choose the ways to use it -- when
to speak up, when to remain silent. A great challenge perhaps, but
one that we are acknowledging in a deep yet brief way in this
b’rachah.
Beginning our petitionary prayers with this paragraph also helps to
remind us to keep our minds focused for the next few minutes as we
recite these prayers. I know that I often have difficulty “running
the mental gauntlet” of the 13 petitionary paragraphs of the Amidah,
and sometimes find myself somewhere deep in the Amidah not having
remembered saying some of the previous paragraphs. Starting the
prayer exercise with atah chonen is a good way to remind us “before we
enter” that we need to keep concentrating. And of course if it’s
difficult to keep our brains focused just during the recitation of the
Amidah, how much greater is the challenge for the entire day?!
May God indeed grant us knowledge, understanding and wisdom!
If you wish to respond, you may e-mail me at Cant...@aol.com.