Holistic Prayer: a guide to Jewish spirituality (Weiss) – notes on the book

/ Notes on books, Prayer / T'fillah, Spirituality / By

These are my own gleanings from the book by Avraham Weiss, Holistic Prayer: a guide to Jewish spirituality (2014, Maggid Books). I hope they encourage you to buy the book. I have paraphrased in order to clarify my own understanding, but there are also direct quotations from the book. The notes in square brackets are my own thoughts and responses, rather than ideas gleaned from the book itself.

Preface

  • ix “while prayer is the most exhilarating of spiritual experiences, it is, in the same breath, most daunting.”
  • X “help inspire greater meaning in prayer”
  • X the siddur is a “guidebook to Judaism’s most fundamental concepts”
  • Xi “God is beyond gender.”
  • Xi “quest to feel God’s pr3esence”

Introduction: What is holistic prayer?

  • Xiii t’fillah involves mind, body, soul, heart
  • Xiii t’fillah and p’tillah are anagrams, meaning ‘prayer’ and ‘wrestling’. Rachel names her handmaid’s son Naphtali – “I have wrestled [naftulei] with God and prevailed [niftalti].”
  • Xiv Prayer “involves a complete entanglement of one’s whole self with another—with the Other.”
  • Xv Sfat Emet: “The more one’s soul is expanded, the more God is revealed to him, in every place.”

Part One: Goals of Prayer

  • 1 In Ps 27 “The one thing David asks is that he be able to feel the presence of God. This yearning constitutes the very essence of prayer.”

1. Responsibility

  • 3 “Two friends were discussing some of the more difficult issues of his life. One said, ‘Sometimes I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, famine, and injustice, when He could do something about it.’ The other replied, ‘Well, why don’t you ask Him?’ The response came quickly: ‘Because I am afraid that God might ask me the same question.’”

God’s image – tzelem elohim

  • 4 “if we look deeply into each other, we should see a little bit of God … ‘a portion of God from above’ (Job 31:2).”
  • 5-6 Sanhedrin 4:5 “Adam was created as a single entity, to create peace amongst humanity, lest one say, ‘My ancestor is greater than yours’ … And to demonstrate that if one destroys a single soul, it is as though he has destroyed an entire world. And it one saves a single soul, it is as if he has saved the entire world.”
  • [As the image of God, we look at God’s biography as in a mirror, and we see we can be vengeful and destructive, or wise and kind.]
  • [As slaves, we could still choose whether to fight amongst ourselves, or save our children’s lives and bring them up with you best values.]
  • [In adversity, we can be our best selves, or be like Pharoah with the plagues, and respond badly.]
  • 7 Nehama Leibowitz: “The phrase ‘it was good’ was omitted from man’s creation, because his good was dependent on his own free choice.” AW: “Ki tov—‘it was good’—is a more appropriate refrain after the human being has lived a wholesome life, after having made the proper choices.” Rashi (Gen 1:26): “In the word veyirdu there is the language of dominating and descending. If he [man] is worthy he dominates over the beasts and the cattle; if he is not worthy he will sink lower than htem, and the beast will rule over him.”
  • 7 Judaism’s call is to pull every human out of degradation.

Reaching in

  • [God makes us all, including our attributes. He hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but Pharaoh could have used his hardened heart to do good.]
  • 8 Kook: t’shuvah is returning from a general, rather than specific, estrangement from God.
  • 11 Based on Deut. 30:1-2, when blessing and curse befall you “and you take them to heart … and you will return to YHVH” – “t’shuvah contains two steps: the move inward, the return to one’s inner goodness and godliness, which then catapults him or her upward to God, to encounter Him.”
  • 11 Gen. 4:4 Hevel heivi gam hu “Abel also brought …” Sfat Emet interprets: “Abel brought himself [his inner I] with the sacrifice …” [i.e. Abel gave of himself, in contrast to Cain]
  • 12 “[Prayer] begins not be reaching up, but by reaching in.”
  • 12 Joseph Ibn Saddiq (HaOlam HaKatan): “By man knowing his own soul, he will know the spiritual world from which he can attain some knowledge of the Creator, as it is written, ‘From my flesh shall I perceive God’ [Job 19:26].”
  • 14 Heschel: God is the hub, and we are spokes on the wheel—we are not the centre! [And yet, because God is in each of us, the centre is also in each of us.]

Reaching out

  • 15 “As we yearn for God, God reaches for us”. “One wonders who takes the first step—God or the human being. In the end, there may be a simultaneous yearning—the human being and God come closer and closer, never ‘touching’, but in their approach toward one another, the encounter takes place.”
  • 16 Magen Avraham (17th century): “Before the morning service, one should accept the affirmative commandment of ‘love your fellow as yourself’.”
  • 17 End of Amidah, liturgy shows that “each angel steps back, declaring, ‘you go first’.”
  • [Like the angels, we pray with and alongside each other.]
  • 18 “When beseeching God, we speak not only for ourselves, but for the community.”
  • 19 Reach in to ourselves, up to God, and out to others.
  • 19 In shabbat, we honour God and interpersonal care.
  • 20 Deut. 11:13 l’ovdo b’chol l’vavchem can be la’avod oto ‘to serve Him’ or la’avod ito ‘to work with Him’. Talmud and Maimonides us this as source text for prayer.
  • [‘Serve / pray to God’ – can be an order, or just good advice.]
  • [Pray from personal needs and religious discipline (as Heschel reminded us) and for community of needs.]
  • 21 a) step back to evaluate, b) evaluate self, God-relationship, world relationship, c) use insights to improve our life.

Brit and personal responsibility

  • 22 ‘Good’ is meaningful only if its opposite exists. Perfection leaves no room for growth or engagement. Having no free will would take away our humanity.
  • 22 ‘Infant’ Israel needed a dominating ‘parent’ God.
  • 23 Ex. Rabbah 2:5 ‘there is no place devoid of God’
  • 25 Book of Esther – tradition says God acted through people.

Examples from the prayer service

  • 26 Basketball player Bill Walton, quoting coach John Wooden: “There is no way you can have a perfect day unless you do something to help someone.”
  • 27 Physical mitzvot: “honouring parents; acts of kindness; arriving early at the house of study morning and evening; hospitality to strangers; visiting the sick; helping the needy bride; attending to the dead; devotion in prayer; and bringing peace between people—but the study of Torah is equal to them all.”
  • 27 Ps. 146:7-9 morning psalms, what God does [God can do through us]: “He secures justice for the oppressed; He gives food to the hungry; YHVH sets captives free. YHVH gives sight to the blind; YHVH raises those bowed down. YHVH loves the righteous. YHVH protects the stranger; He gives courage to the orphan and widow; He thwarts the way of the wicked.”
  • 28 “in all the ‘request’ blessings, as we call out to God for relief we challenge ourselves to assume responsibility to join in this effort”
  • 29 Jewish mission to bring God into the world. Kaddish expresses this.
  • 29 Ezekiel prophesied God enlarging when Israel was diminished by the first Temple being destroyed. [We say Kaddish when we might be feeling diminished, or less sure of God, e.g. at the death of a loved one.]
  • 29 Y’hei sh’mei rabba … Elijah said this after the destruction of the second Temple. (Mal. 3:23-24)
  • 30 We do our share to bring God into the world.

2. Reliance

  • 33 Story of rabbi lost for words: sometimes we know what to pray, sometimes we just express our feelings, sometimes we ask God to take over because we are at a complete loss (so we might recite the alef-beit, and ask God to rearrange the letters to spell out what we should be asking for)

Fate and self-transformation

  • 34 Cry out: Maimonides lizok implies taking some responsibility; Nachmanides litzok implies handing over the God.
  • 35 We can evade harsh punishment through t’shuvah.
  • 36 Tshuvah makes us into a different person, one who does not merit punishment like the old person did. [Modern justice system gives milder sentence to a convicted person who shows remorse.]
  • 36 Our prayer for another person can affect that person’s persona.

The limits of prayer

  • 37 Prayer requests often [never?] not completely fulfilled in the Torah.
  • 38 Moses praised before petitioning.
  • 39 Mo’ed katan 28b: “Length of days, children, and prosperity depend not on merit, but on mazal (fate).”
  • 39 Yevamot 49b: good conduct can extend lifespan [but we don’t know what our lifespan would have been] [This contradicts the previous quotation.]
  • 40 Unataneh tokef: we can get the sting lessened and ‘get through’ adversity.
  • Does God hear us?
  • 41 Foundation of prayer is reaching out, bonding with God, not about requests being granted.
  • 41 A tzaddik can overrule God. Mo’ed Katan 16b: “The God of Israel said .. I rule Man. Who rules Me? The righteous one. For I make a decree and he [may] annul it.”
  • 42 Basis of prayer is deepening relationship, and the comfort that comes from that. [We don’t expect parents to fix]
  • 43ff Eliezer Berkovits 1969: “In its original form, prayer is not asking God for anything; it is not a request. It is a cry; an elementary outburst of woe, a spontaneous call in need; a hurt, a sorrow, given voice. It is the call of human helplessness directed to God. It is not asking, but coming with one’s burden before God. It is like the child’s running to the mother because it hurts. It is not the bandage that the child seeks instinctively but the nearness of the mother, to unburden his heart to the one of whose love he is certain. So the human being brings his sorrow before God: Look, O God, what has been done to me, consider what has become of me. This is the essence of prayer. Only children can pray like this, or tzaddikim—the men [and all people] of great faith, who in the depth of their piety have gained a new childlike trust in God … To pout out one’s heart before God means simply to tell God about one’s troubles. To pray means to make God the confidant of one’s sorrow and need. The asking and begging are natural enough, but they are of secondary importance. Decisive is the pouring of the heart because one has to; the pouring out of the heart before God because He is the nearest, because He is the closest, because He is the natural confidant of the human soul.”

Examples from the prayer service

  • [‘Prayer as reliance’ is not dependence on God’s intervention in favour of the solution we unilaterally define, but on God’s presence and witness to us in this moment and our current situation, including how we feel and what it means to us. God is a deep listener and empathiser.]

3. Feeling God’s Presence

Assertive prayer

  • [Dependence – reliance on God can lead to our engaging in, or disengaging from, action.]
  • 50 Feeling God’s presence can lead to empowerment or
  • 51 Prophets speak for God but also for people.
  • 51 Golden Calf incident, God decrees the annihilation of the people. “The language of His decree seems to invite challenge … ‘Now leave Me … to make an end of them.’ (Ex. 32:10) According to the Midrash, God’s bid to let Him be in order that He might unleash his anger was a clear hint to Moses that he should intervene and thereby appease Him: ‘Don’t let Me be. Don’t let me off the hook. Be open and honest with your feelings, and demands that I, the Rulers of rulers, nullify the decree.’”
  • 52 Vayechal – Moses ‘implores’, from word meaning profanation, implying that God would commit profanity by going ahead. Confront God
  • 53 Confrontational prayer examples
  • 54 Jer. Ber. 4:4 Prayer leader is told to ‘come and k’rav’, which can mean ‘fight our wars’ – “draw close to God in order to challenge Him”
  • 55 “The language of the service itself underscores the inherent assertiveness of Jewish prayer”
  • 55 Close relationship has enough trust to include rebuke.
  • 56 Folklore of making demands of, and rebuking, God.

The differences between prayer and tefilla

  • 56 T’filah – nafal – fall – fall down before God
  • 57 Examples of falling on face: Moses & Aaron, Joshua.
  • 57 Abraham can be assertive or submissive, always in God’s Presence.

Bracketing

  • 60 2nd person ‘you’ is intimate. 3rd person ‘he’ implies God’s distance. [Explore when our God-connection is ‘you’ or ‘he’.]
  • 60 Kaddish is 3rd Amidah is 2nd person.
  • 61 “In the time of intimate conversation with God, we focus on His beneficence.”
  • [Amidah à intimate, love relationship.]
  • 62 In study, we doubt and question. In prayer, we affirm love and hope. [Really? In prayer challenges, we doubt and question God.]

Coping

  • 63 AW: “To what can death be compared? To a person who enters a darkened room for the first time and trips over the furniture. Each time he enters the room, he learns more and more whre the furniture stands. In time, he becomes familiar with the room, and despite the darkness knows how to get around. So, too, death. There is darkness in death that cannot be chased away. But it is possible to learn how to go on living despite the darkness that forever remains.”
  • 64 Ps 27:10 “God is there not necessarily to solve problems, but to cuddle us, to hug us, to gather us in by helping us cope with the situation at hand.”
  • Teffilah and the Jewish mission
  • 65 Yisrael – shur Eil – see God.
  • 67 Looking for a teacher / Rabbi, AW always looks for “someone who sees God as his fortress and rock”.
  • 68 “To have faith means to live and encounter God at all times, in all places, walking in His ways.”
  • 68 Prayer is a) a call to responsibility, b) recognition of reliance / dependence, c) feeling God’s presence.

Part Two: Why Set Tefilla?

  • 71 Mazal-fate = makom-place + z’man-time + la’asot-do (action) à doing our part at the right time at the right place.
  • 71 Bring holiness and God into this place in this moment.
  • [Each things we ask God to do, we must also do, and do for others and the world.]

4. Time

Actions shape character

  • [Love deepens as we give more deeply, and receive more deeply.]
  • 75 Erich Fromm: “Love is primarily giving, not receiving.”
  • 76 Love is a decision.
  • 77 “We make a decision to pray. [A commitment to make time to love.]
  • 77 “ritual is a form of behavioural psychology”. We will do and [only then] we will listen.
  • 78 “Action involves identifying a need. But there are several levels of needs. There is an active need; for exsmple, a person feels hungry and eats. And then there is a latent need. Even if a persona doesn’t feel hungry, he or she knows that eating regularly is important. Hence, one eats even if the need is hidden. Finally, there is the unknown need. That is, a person is unaware of the existence of the need. For some, t’fillah is an active need. For others it is latent. And for others still, it is unknown. The goal of mandatory t’fillah is to inspire feelings that may be latent or unknown, feelings that can surface if stirred. Every human being has a divine spark. Formal t’fillah is the igniting of that spark, a spark that awakens our connection with God.”

Three times daily

  • 79 Shacharit: thanks & renewal. Mincha: reflection at the busiest part of the day. Ma’ariv: hope.
  • [Consider each prayer concept in relation to individual and collective experience and need.]
  • 81 Judah HaLevi (Book of Kuzari) “Prayer is for the soul what nourishment is for the body.”

Decoding the daily prayer service

Shacharit – the morning service (p.82)

    • Birchot hashachar – morning blessings – rebirth of body and soul
    • P’sukei d’zimra – verses of praise – recreation of nature
    • Birchot sh’ma – blessings of the sh’ma – re-energising Israel as a people
    • Sh’ma – Reaffirmation of principles of faith
    • Amidah – Silent meditation – recommitment to personal and convenantal relationship
    • Ashrei, Uva L’tzion, Aleinu – concluding prayers – reinvigoration of redemptive hope

Birchot hashachar – morning blessings

    • 83 Wash hands – birthing waters
    • 84 Renewal & functionality of body
    • 84 La’asot = [code word] our responsibility in physical world, including healing
    • 84 Elohai – 3 verbs for spiritually creating us (bara, yatzar, nafach)
    • [4 worlds = bara-create, yatzar-form, n’fach-breah, m’shamrah-guard]
    • 85 Body and soul need each other.
    • 85 Torah gives body & soul purpose.
    • 86 La’asok – engage à we involve ourselves with what we are given.
    • 86 Three major types of blessing: commandment; pleasure activity; thanks.
    • 87 Priestly blessing – each line has a blessing and prayer to avoid the pitfalls of that blessing: bless with abundance, but protect from its dangers; shine knowledge on us, but ensure it makes us gracious and not corrupt; receive God’s favour, but use that power for peaceful ends.
    • [Body blessings p,88 – beautiful! Also metaphorical. Also can be a call to action to help others.]
    • [Reframe identity blessings – made me Jewish, free, my gender, my sexuality.]
    • 91 Diagram: renewal (wash hands); soul renewal (Elohai n’shamah) & body renewal (asher yatzar); torah as pathway to sanctifying the body and soul (blessings of Torah); thanking God for each stage of wakefulness (understanding, seeing, standing, walking).

P’sukei d’zimra – verses of praise

    • [God can transform darkness to light.]
    • 90 Service begins and ends with emphasising the power of words.
    • 92 “just as well-used words have the power to create, so can words misused destroy”
    • 92 Characters in the Torah reserve ‘thank you’ for God.
    • 93 Reverse ani modeh to become modeh ani, to start with thanks, rather than ‘I’.
    • 93 Ashrei – open Your hand, satisfy every living being
    • 96 Noting supernatural miracles can awaken us to the everyday miracle of Creation
    • 98 Diagram: 1) Natural realms – constant recreation of the world (baruch she’amar); offering thanks; God’s sustaining of the world (Ashrei); Hallelujah (Ps 148 re-enacting Genesis, Ps 150 all join in song). 2) Supernatural realms – celebrating God’s supernatural powers (Az Yashir). 3) praising God (Yishtabach) in natural and supernatural realms

Birchot Sh’ma – The Sh’ma blessings

    • 99 How Israel recognises relationship with God
    • 99 Blessing 1 universal
    • 100 Blessing 2 particular to Israel
    • 100 Blessing 2 starts and ends with ahavah-love
    • 101 Sh’ma moves from the particular to the universal
    • 102 Jacob’s sons affirm God as One
    • 102 Sh’ma – people respond to God’s love from blessing 2
    • 103 V’hayah = anagram of YHVH – mitzvot come from God.
    • 103 Techelet (on tzitzit) is blue. Tachlit = ultimate purpose.
    • 104 Sh’ma then mitzvot: accept God as King, then do what is commanded.
    • 104 Through mitzvot, we can come to believe.
    • [Continuous loop: sh’ma, listen then do; or, sh’ma God is King, then listen.]
    • 106 God continues to be our Redeemer from moment to moment.
    • Amidah – the silent meditation
    • 106 Sh’ma + blessings = love of God, Amidah = awe of God.
    • 107 1-3 Praise – avot, g’vurah, kedushah. 1) Power in the past, 2) power in the present, 3) Holiness.
    • 108 4) Grant understanding [through self knowledge] 5) lead to repentance
    • 109 4-6 Personal process: recognise wrong, repent, forgiveness. 6) Forgive us, 7) Redeem from affliction.
    • 110 8) Heal, 9) Bring prosperity
    • 111 [10 Gather exiles], 11) mission of righteousness and justice
    • 112 10-15 mission, people, land, Messiah: [12 destroy baddies] 13) Bless the righteous who carry out the mission, 14) Restore Jerusalem [think of this metaphorically]
    • 113 [15 Bring Messiah] 16) Listen to our prayers. “The human-God relationship thrives when each listens to the voice of the other.”
    • 114 Diagram: A) Individual blessings: self evaluation (Recognition; repentance; forgiveness), personal wellbeing (emotional stability; health; prosperity). B) Communal blessings: covenant (intro call; mission; people; people; place; realisation of redemption). C) Closing blessing: culmination (shema koleinu).
    • 115 17) Accept our prayers. 18) Thanks – includes ‘admission’ that we can go it alone.
    • 116 19) Peace.
    • 116 Torah = pathway for life.

Concluding prayers

    • 118 Aleinu

Mincha – the afternoon service

    • 120 Mincha reflective moment: Ashrei, Amidah, Aleinu

Ma’ariv – the evening service

    • 121 Hashkiveinu – the ‘long redemption’
    • 122 Prayer as love encounter – feeling the beauty of the other.
    • 123-4 “On the one hand, it is prudent to step back, to watch from afar and gain perspective. Coming too close might reveal the conflicts that are an inevitable part of every relationship. So it is important to love from a distance. On the other hand, love is in the details. The test of love is how one deals with smaller issues, the seemingly insignificant ones that measure the quality of a relationship. It is therefore important to love up close.

5. Place

‘A walking Sinai’

  • 126 Creation – God of time
  • 127 God hears prayer wherever we are in that moment. Gen.21:17 “because God heeded the cry of the boy [Ishmael, Hagar’s son] where he is”
  • 128 Umberto Cassuto (1967): Mishkan is a “walking Sinai”
  • 129 Pray alone where the community normal prays (ie. .synagogue)

As holy as we make them

  • 130 Mishkan and synagogues are symbols pointing beyond themselves to God.
  • 130 “God minus the world equals God … the world minus God equals nothing.”
  • [We experience God living amongst us only when we are actually engaged in making space and time for God.]
  • 131 Moses shattered the tables to show God was not in the Tablets, and God approved.
  • 132 “holy objects are only as holy as people make them. The Tablets made by God were broken, teaching that event a God-made object is not automatically holy.” A God-made object isn’t holy; humans make things holy.
  • 132 Symbols should be modest, so that we don’t fixate on them.
  • 135 “In sum, kedusha, holiness, can be initiated only by the human being.”
  • [Israel, or anywhere, is holy only to the degree that people take actions that make it so.]
  • [This leads to an open question of what exactly do we need to do, and how much of it, to make something holy, and to sustain its holiness?]
  • 136 Our holiness as a people “must be earned”.
  • 137 a) we need a space, b) the spaces is a symbol, c) holiness depends on us.
  • 138 Protect and manifest the idea of Jerusalem.

6. Text

  • 141 Story / metaphor: lump of coal loses its heat when separated from others.

Prayer as equaliser and unifier

  • [Origin story of Amidah being created when Jewish children in mixed-language environments: This reads as post-rationalisation, and thinly veiled racism, nationalist and separatism. People can express themselves in any language, even mixed languages. Anyway, this is an argument of contingency for then, and doesn’t hold good now.]
  • 144 Ber. 17a “One may do much or one may do little; it is all one, provided he directs his heart to heaven.”
  • 145 Story: unlike people, God will always
  • 147 Ancient tunes can be out of touch with contemporary times.
  • 147 Set prayer unites us with each other across space, and also to lineage.

The covenant of family

  • 148 Jewish mission: be a blessing to the families of the world.
  • 149 Jewish mission: bring holiness to the world.
  • 149 Genesis precedes Exodus because family is the best model for a nation. Standardised prayer brings ‘family’ together.
  • 150 Jewish people are a metaphysical entity.
  • [I’ve never been convinced by the argument that communal prayer ensures a prayer has been said, because we make up for each other’s lapses. My concern is that can give the inattentive or uncommitted a free pass.]

Personal expression in t’fillah

  • 151 Soloveitchik (1978): “Lonely man is profound: he creates, he is original.”
  • 152-3 Abraham ‘standing’ prayer; Isaac ‘meditating’; Jacob – encounter.
  • 154 Abraham = trail blazer & ‘stands up’ for principles
  • 154 Isaac: contemplation, introspection, self-evaluation (see David)
  • 155 Jacob: ‘bump into’, encounter
  • 156 Ezer kenegdo à help communal prayer community and be an individual
  • [Ezer kenegdo à God must support and challenge us, and we must support and challenge God!]
  • 158 Permitted and encouraged to add personal elements to any standard blessing.
  • 158 Avoda Zara 8a “one has the right to make a request in any of the blessing according to its theme.”
  • 159 Structured prayer should inspire spontaneous prayer.

The higher-octave Amidah

  • 160 Silent Amidah is private and personal. Leader’s repetition is communal.
  • 161 God and we call out to each other with yearning, but embrace silently when we meet. [Aaron’s sone die, and he silently communes with God.]

Part Three: Spirituality

  • 167 Spirituality à Halachah. Heaven à Soul à Body. Each enables the physical to soar.
  • 168 ‘Observant’ = follower of ritual, especially in relation to God. ‘Religious’ = attentive to interpersonal ethics. ‘Spiritual’ = feeling the present of God in all one does. ‘Halachic’ = the goal is to all three.

7. Kavanah

Understanding the words

  • 170 Prayer kavanah #1: understanding and connecting to the words [and committing to them] – perush hamilot.

To fulfil the mitzvah

  • 172 Prayer kavanah #2: Have the intention to fulfil the mitzvah of saying prayers.
  • 172 Remember prayer is service to God [although we do pray to God to serve our needs as well …]

In the presence of God

  • 174 Prayer kavanah #3: Know you are in the presence of God.

8. Pathway

Consciousness of moment

  • 178 “Spirituality means having consciousness of the moment while recognising God’s role [centrality] in that moment.”
  • 179 Jewish focus is in this world, where we can make a difference.
  • 179 Hayom – tday, now, choose life and blessing.
  • 182 Ayeka – Where are you? [A wake up call – are you fully present, here, & now? Come back!]
  • 182 Beware spiritual narcissism – feeling all the love in the world somehow emanating from / through oneself.
  • 183 Spirituality doesn’t negate the self; it helps it blossom.
  • 185 Make life-cycle moments reservoirs of love that people can draw from in later years.
  • [Let each moment go, returning it to God, who loaned that moment to us.]

Kedushah: letting God in

  • 187 Rashi: separate from the forbidden. Ramban: separate from the permissible. Weiss: sanctify the permissible.
  • 188 An infinitesimal moment helps us sense the infinite endlessness of God.
  • 189 Infinite God can be compressed into a finite moment
  • 190 Ex. 24:12 Aleih eilai haharah veheyeh [VHYH]. Come up to Me, to the mountain, and be (Anagram of YHVH) “God is saying to Moses, ‘Be there, really there, while fully feeling My presence.’”

Spirituality in marriage and mourning

  • 191 Lifecycle events: participants, family, friends share what the experience means for them; make time stand still to ponder significance; bride and groom write and read out blessings for each other.
  • 192 Chuppah à Hamakom à God is ever-present and contains us, and gives us space to be ourselves.

Personalising t’fillah

  • 194 Steinsaltz: “Speech is the garment of thought, expressing the thought even as it veils its deeper dimensions.”
  • 194 Hasidic observation: aleph marks beginning of articulation of speech. Followed by three letters that spell bagad (betrayal), so speech cannot fully express thoughts. Beged is clothing; speech can also ‘veil’ thoughts.
  • 195 Work through the liturgy to understand it.
  • 195 Personalise prayer: relate the text to yourself.
  • 196 Sh’ma blessing #1 (Creation): appreciate natural world.
  • 197 Sh’ma blessing #2 (Revelation): appreciate Torah moment you’ve experienced. Sh’ma blessing #3 (Redemption): think of redemptive moment, feeling the hand of God.
  • 198 Goal of spirituality: ‘kedushify’ the body.
  • 199 Berkowitz: prayer should be human, not angelic
  • 199 Pray in nature
  • 200 Nachman: natural world strengthens prayer when we pray in nature

Preparing for t’fillah

  • 201 Conscious intent to fulfil a mitzvah precedes doing the act.
  • 201 Waiting an hour before prayer sets intent
  • 202 P’sukei d’zimra = verses of ‘pruning’ à strip away what is unnecessary so I can grow well in the prayer that follows.
  • 202 “Before I pray, I pray that when I pray, I’ll pray.”
  • [Anon: Kind hearts are the garden; kind thoughts are the roots; kind words are the blossom; kind deeds are the fruits.]
  • 204 Kalonymous: sleep-like meditative state quietens the mind for prayer.
  • 205 Sfat Emet: Song of the Sea à liberate from what holds us back, in preparation for the Sh’ma.
  • 207 R. Jacob of Polonoye: knowing that God is concealed, and therefore present, even in our distractions, means that God is no longer concealed!
  • 209 Soloveitchik: “There is no holiness without preparation.”

Standing before God

  • 209 Prophecy = God to human. Prayer = human to God.
  • 212 The gateway to know the other is in revealing oneself.
  • 212 God reveals Godself with whatever face we show God.
  • 213 When love is deep, we trust that, even when there is a falling out.
  • 214 Sukkah 5a: we and God reach for each other. God never quite arrives on earth, humans never quite arrive in heaven.
  • 214 Liminal space is where prayer takes place.

Offering farewell

  • 215 Give thanks for being placed in the study hall.
  • [Amidah: has entry point, climb, peak and exit point.]
  • 216 R’tzeih / find favour in our prayer + modim / thanks.
  • [Don’t say goodbye to God! Stay in the Presence! Turn to activity other than prayer, and stay God-connected.]
  • 217 Like meals, each prayer time should sustain us until the next.
  • [Walk away backward from a special time and place.]
  • [Tzeitchem l’shalom – What say goodbye so soon? Don’t hold on to angel moments, don’t hinder the free movement. Like Blake, kiss joy as it flies.]
  • 219-20 Matt Fenster (died very young from cancer) personal response to Ps 23.

9. Synagogue

Synagogue as a family

  • 222 Respond to people’s yearning by sharing spirituality
  • 224 Model of Jewish relationships with each other and with God is of family and home
  • 224 Genesis ends with family unity at Jacob’s deathbed. Exodus begins with nationhood.
  • Beit t’fillah
  • [Deut. 4:29 You will find God if only you seek with all your heart and soul.]
  • 225 Deut 4:39 Know today and take to heart that God is
  • 225 Know the God of your ancestors. When I can say ‘this is my God’, I can beautify Him. When I say ‘God of my ancestors’, God is more distant. So do the work to know God personally.

Kavanah – setting the spiritual tone

  • 226 Identify a personal kavanah for a prayer
  • Eikut hat’fillah – the quality of prayer
  • 226 Awareness of each word
  • 227 Better to say less, with greater kavanah

Shira – song

  • 227 Song connects us to self, others and God [n’shamah]

Hitbodedut – meditation

  • 227 silence [when shaped]

Tenua verikkud – movement and dance

Tziurim – illustrations

  • 229 visualisation

Chamimut hamakom – warmth of place

Beit midrash

  • 230 Teaching Torah values – that might conflict with contemporary culture – it’s part of spirituality
  • 230 Make people comfortable and uncomfortable

Beit Knesset

  • 231 Care for each other in community = spirituality. Transcend self, embrace others.
  • 231 All can do acts of lovingkindness
  • 231 Even the rich need to receive kindness.
  • 232 Synagogue to aid and repair souls – accept and support broken parts and weaker members

The physically and mentally challenged

  • Weiss (2008) Spiritual activism: a Jewish guide to leadership and repairing the world
  • [Equality of resources à unequal accessibility. Equity = tools to equalise access.]
  • 233 including the most needy completes us all
  • 233 God is the Maker of the need and different Other

The elderly

  • 233 integrate the old – honour them; they’ll teach you
  • 234 Heschel (1961, White House): “May I suggest that man’s potential for change and growth is much greater than we are willing to admit and that old age be regarded not as the age of stagnation, but as the age of opportunities for inner growth. The years of old age may enable us to attain the high values we have failed to sense, the insights we have missed, the wisdom we have ignored. They are indeed formative years, rich in possibilities to unlearn the follies of a lifetime, to see through inbred self-deceptions, to deepen understanding and compassion, to widen the horizon of honesty, to refine the sense of fairness.”
  • 19:32 “rise before the aged”
  • 234 Hasidic: God is the oldest entity in the universe, so takes special and personal interest in the elderly!
  • 235 Genesis Rabba 65:9 “Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon said: Abraham demanded aging. He said before Him: ‘Master of the universe, a man and his son enter a place and no one knows which of them to honor. Because you adorn him with aging, a person knows whom to honor.’ The Holy One blessed be He said to him: ‘As you live, you have demanded a good thing, and it will begin with you.’ From the beginning of the book until that point, aging is not written. When Abraham stood, He granted him aging – “Abraham was old” (Genesis 24:1).”
  • 235 Include the elderly; honour them; look after them.
  • 46:4 “When you grow old, I will still be the same (Ani Hu); when your hair turns gray, I will still carry you (esbol); I made you, I will bear you; I will carry you, and I will rescue / deliver you.” V’ad ziknah Ani Hu; v’ad sheinah Ani esbol; Ani asiti va’Ani essa; v’Ani esbol va’amaleit.

The unaffiliated

  • [Don’t judge who should be welcomed. Welcome everyone.]
  • 237 When the study hall was opened to all, unresolved problems were resolved.
  • 237 Not ‘outreach’ but ‘encounter’ – the benefit and learning are mutual

Beleaguered Jewry

  • 238 Leaders can move into and sit with the congregation
  • 239 Make others’ pain our pain, and work to alleviate it.

The family of humankind

  • [Acknowledge and grapple with our relationship to the State of Israel.]
  • 240 Rav Kook’s ‘fourfold song’: individual, community, humanity, God’s song

Beit Elohim

  • 241 Heschel” What is diverse is One; God is shalom where there is discord; no one is alone; the moment is infinite.
  • 242 “spirituality is the discovery of the open in the closed, the infinite in the finite, the wide in the narrow.”
  • 242 God takes us to expanse from the smallest opening: (Songs Rabba 5:2) “Open for Me an opening the size of the point of a needle, and I will open for you an opening as wide as can be.” [Compare with Ps 118:5-6 Min hameitzar …]
  • 242 Torah / beit midrash; Avodah / beit t’fillah; G’milut chasadim / beit knesset.

Meshing T’fillah with Torah

  • 243 Torah passages integral to davenen.
  • 243 Psalms are Divine revelation and human prayers. [NB Ps 51 ‘God open my lips’]

Meshing t’fillah with communal responsibility

  • 244 Heschel: “Prayer is … an intense dreaming for God … To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision His holy visions.”
  • 244 Ber. 31a Pray in a place that has windows.
  • 245 Pray 3 times a day – our needs change depending on the moment.
  • 245 Prayer is a call to change.

Mission and Beit Elohim

  • 246 “The Big B’s”: birth, brit [shalom!], betrothal, burial
  • 246 Synagogue can add mission beyond necessary maintenance. A ‘functional’ synagogue has afocus on current programmes, and serves the ‘I’, with a sense of entitlement to ‘take’. A mission-oriented synagogue asks how I [and we] can serve others, with a focus on contribution, giving, and how to evolve.

Becoming your prayer: the t’fillah of Torah and good deeds

  • 247 Silence from awe and God-connection (mission orientation), rather than through following convention (functional observance).
  • 247 Search for a praying community rather than a rule-following one.
  • 248 Soloveitchik: Torah = God singing. Torah study = singing to God. Torah can lead to prayer [and action].
  • [A d’var is part of prayer, not time-out from it.]
  • 250 All action relates to values, and therefore Torah learning.
  • 251 Ps. 109:4 I am my prayer. i.e. all I do and say must be prayer.

Creating a spiritual culture

  • [Everyone has 4-worlds needs. Everyone has a soul. All these are part of the community. Look-listen-feel for what these are in each person we encounter.]

10. Conclusion

  • 259 “[T’fillah] is reaching inward to stir our soul, outward to embrace our fellow human being, and upward to encounter God.”
  • 259 Reaching for, but never touching, God. [But in the reaching is the touching.]
  • 259 Wait for others to finish their prayers. (Ber. 6a)
  • 260 Yehuda Halevi (trans. Nina Salaman): “I have sought Your nearness, / With all my heart have I called You, / And going out to meet You / I found You coming toward me.”