Tefillah Journal Entry #6

After staying up very late to talk with my good friend Gella about Plato’s Phaedrus, I simply could not resurrect myself from bed this morning.  The modeh ani did not happen.  I did not rise like a lion to the service of my Creator, but I will tomorrow morning.  The alarm alarmed at 6:30 but I didn’t get out of bed for good and all until about 10:00.  There were a few snoozes and alarms in between.  O, how I hate snooze alarms!  Snoozing is nice, but the constantly alarming interruptions of that snoozing send papercuts into my soul with lemon juice.

Plato is still deep deep deep in my psyche.  Socrates’ radical passion for truth and his radical love of love – his belief that the philosophical search for truth is the path of love – still guide me and push me to identify myself as more Platonist than Jew in my deepest values.  A Jew’s deepest values, as far as I can tell, are loving HaShem by living and studying His mitzvoth.  How do Platonic and Jewish values intersect?  I think I really need to take a class on Rambam this semester, and if I can’t then I’ll have to read some books about him in my spare time.

Today I davened shacharit by myself at home between 10:20 and 11:10.  There’s really a lot between Pesukei d’Zimrah (songs of praise meant to help the davener to focus) and Kriat Shema that I still don’t understand.  I just don’t know what the Hebrew means.  I need to learn the meaning of the Hebrew.  I think I might discontinue my blogging on the siddur and study the Hebrew in the siddur instead until I feel a lot more comfortable with it.

There was no minchah for me today.  I organized a brainstorming session for a few rabbinical school applicants to help them with their application essays.  That took up about two hours.  How else did I spend my time?

I davened maariv after seeing Journey to the Center of the Earth with Gella and Tad.  It was an awesome movie, even if it only had one allosaurus in it and even if that allosaurus didn’t get much screen time.  Now I really want to read Verne’s novel.

Tomorrow morning: Misrad Hapnim (The Office of Faces) to make an appointment to request a student visa.  Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Shacharit (Morning Service): Morning Blessings: Blessings of the Torah

THE TEXT: Blessed are You, Hashem, our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and has commanded us to engross ourselves in the words of Torah.  Please, Hashem, our God, sweeten the words of Your Torah in our mouth and in the mouth of Your people, the family of Israel.  May we and our offspring and the offspring of Your people, the House of Israel – all of us – know Your Name and study your Torah for its own sake.  Blessed are You, Hashem, Who teaches Torah to His people Israel.

ARTSCROLL COMMENTARY: It is forbidden to study or recite Torah passages before reciting the following blessings.  Since the commandment to study Torah is in effect all day long, these blessings need not be repeated if one studies at various times of the day.  Although many siddurim begin a new paragraph at והערב נה [Please...sweeten], according to the vast majority of commentators the first blessing does not end until לעמו ישראל [to his people Israel].

DWF COMMENTARY: This prayer contains three petitions (bakashot).  First, we ask that God “sweeten the words of Your Torah in our mouth and in the mouth of Your people, the family of Israel.”  Then, we ask that we the family of Israel should know God’s name and study His Torah for its own sake.  A few questions.  What is the significance of the phrase “our mouth”?  Do the Jewish people share a common mouth?  The singularity of the word “mouth” indicates that a metaphor is at play here.  The mouth is an organ of speech and also an organ of taste.  Also, “Your people, the family of Israel” has one mouth.  The Hebrew word for taste (ta’am) can also mean “reason” or “explanation.”  Maybe sweetening the words of Torah in the mouth of Israel is a metaphor for making the reasons and explanations for difficult-to-understand laws (hukkim) clearer in the collective understanding of Israel.

Jay, this is for you.  Once again, I ask, why might we want to know God’s name?

What does it mean to study Torah for its own sake?  What is this motivation: for the sake of Torah?  Is it for the sake of knowing how to live according to God’s instruction, to love Him?

Tefillah Journal Entry #5

I returned to Jerusalem from Carmiel yesterday at about 1pm, blogged and read in the beit midrash, and at 7pm my new roommate Hillary cooked up three varieties of French toast, kosher chicken sausages, Israeli salad and Tapuzina mimosas (Tapuzina is something like Orangina in the States).  This was one of the most successful attempts at buttering me up that anyone has ever launched.  Props to you, Hillary.  You scored.  I had been feeling iffy about having another third roommate.  Having invested a lot in the previous two roommates, both of whom only stayed with us for 3 weeks, I had gotten used to women crashing in my apartment for three weeks at a time without really laying anchor.  But Hillary laid anchor.  First of all, she and Benjamin already knew each other, and it made me feel left out when they talked about how much fun they had when they met last summer.  Hillary’s comforter announced clearly that she had come to stay.  What more can I say about this blanket?  You don’t bring a fluffy cushy pink comforter to Jerusalem in August unless you’re planning on staying for a while, right?  Right.  Plus, she was cooking, and the vegetable knife had been moved, and I “borrowed” one of her Q-tips without asking on her first day here and that made me feel a little guilty.

But after the french toast and the chicken sausages and the mimosas, I started to feel better about Hillary.  And then Benjamin and Hillary and I went out for drinks and told our life stories.  And I felt even better.  After 5 or 6 hours of sleep, we trundled down to Moreshet Yisrael, a Conservative shul about 5 minutes from our apartment.  We davened Shaharit with a minyan, Benjamin read Torah (and so did my friend Gella), Hillary gave a talk about the question, “What makes Jewish music Jewish?”, and then Benjamin, Hillary, Gella and I went back to the apartment, ate breakfast and talked for the next three-and-a-half hours about music, feminism, how to respond to a kid in a Hebrew school classroom who asks if he can refuse to get in the car on Saturdays because it’s Shabbos when his mother wants to bring him along to the supermarket, and how to deal with “Uncle Shlomo” the Shoah survivor who tearfully asks you the rabbi if he can lead the graveside Kaddish, the only Jewish prayer he knows, even though you don’t have a minyan.

I showered, came to the beit midrash for a while to check my email, davened minchah, called Mom to talk about car insurance and her upcoming Sukkoth visit, called my old car insurance company, ordered local organic vegetables to be delivered to my apartment every Wednesday at 4pm, caught some dinner with Gella and Franklin, ran into cousin Naava and her daughter Bathsheba at a bookstore, studied Talmud Tractate Berachot with my orthodox hevruta and high school band compatriot Daniel Finfer, and now…maariv?

Shacharit (Morning Service): Upon Arising: modeh ani

THE TEXT: “I acknowledge your gift and I thank you for it, living and eternal King, for You have returned my soul to me compassionately – abundant is your faithfulness.”

ARTSCROLL COMMENTARY: “A Jew should wake up with gratitude to God for having restored his faculties and with a lionlike resolve to serve his Creator.  Before getting off the bed or commencing any other conversation or activity, he declares his gratitude” (3).

DWF COMMENTARY: I’m reminded of something my high school band teacher Mr. Williams used to tell me about practicing a musical excerpt: Some people think that they know the music when they can play all the notes without looking at the score.  Others know that it’s not the same piece of music unless you get all of the rhythms right.  Still others realize that one mustn’t underestimate the importance of tempo, dynamics, and proper tuning.  The real test of whether someone knows a musical excerpt or not is first thing in the morning.  If the person can play the excerpt perfectly immediately after waking up in the morning, before he even uses the bathroom, with the proper notes, rhythms, tempo, dynamics, and tuning, then and only then can he say that he knows the music.

I’m at least as sensitive to corny analogies as the next guy, but I’d be foolish to deny that I’m making one.  I guess this just really doesn’t seem corny to me.  According to Mr. Williams’ lesson, the disciplined musician practices his most challenging orchestral excerpt first thing in the morning in order to measure how well he really knows that music.  I contend that the disciplined religious person practices his most challening religious exercise first thing in the morning, and that by doing so he enables himself to measure how well he really performs that exercise.  As the Artscroll Siddur says, the Modeh Ani exercises gratitude.

But how does one measure the quality of one’s gratitude? Something in me dislikes this question.  Measure gratitude?  Isn’t it ungrateful to measure gratitude?

Gratitude is not as meaningful as it might be when it isn’t preceded by acknowledgment.  When someone gives a gift that they labored to find or to make, the receiver’s gratitude doesn’t mean as much if he thanks the giver before he’s even acknowledged and appreciated what he’s been given.  And yet, what if someone gives you a gift that you don’t want?  What if the giver is notoriously inconsiderate in his gift selection?  Wouldn’t it be better to thank him for giving you something, regardless of the gifts exact nature?  It’s the thought that counts, right?

“It’s the thought that counts.”  What does that cliche actually mean, anyway?  Does it mean that what counts is the thought required to get some sort of gift for someone, or does it mean that what counts is the thought required to find a suitable gift for a particular individual?  Arrggghh…

The reciter of the Modeh Ani thanks God (living and eternal King) for returning his soul to him.  What is a soul?  Is this gratitude equivalent to thanking God for giving us this life?

Does my questioning reveal that I’m ungrateful?  As long as I continue saying the Modeh Ani every morning, I believe the answer is no.  But I feel very certain about this: until I can articulate exactly what it is that I’m thanking God for when I say the Modeh Ani, I won’t be practicing the highest possible form of gratitude.  In order to be deeply grateful for God’s gifts, I have to know exactly what those gifts are and I have to understand their significance.

Then again, maybe I should consider the possibility that God is a notoriously inconsiderate gift-giver, and maybe I should consider the possiblity that I’m not thanking God for the quality of the life that He returns to me in the morning, but rather for the very fact that He gives me some kind of life, that He is thoughtful enough to give some kind of gift, even though he might not have given me a gift that I would consider suitable to my particular temperament.

The Artscroll Siddur says that in the Modeh Ani, the Jew expresses “gratitude to his Creator for having restored his faculties…before getting off the bed.”  Look.  I’m not just getting scatologocial for kicks.  But if I’m supposed to say the Modeh Ani before I go to the bathroom, then how can I know that God has in fact restored my faculties to me?  Shouldn’t I test out my faculties to see if they’re still functioning before I thank God for restoring them?  I wouldn’t thank God for enabling me shoot lasers out of my eyeballs because so far I can’t seem to do that.  Why should I thank God for restoring a faculty when I’m not sure that that faculty has in fact been restored.  If I’m still in bed, then I don’t even know if I can still walk.  I think the Artscroll must be misguided somehow.  The Modeh Ani can’t be about thanking God for restoring our faculties to us.

Hmm.  Just talked to Malakhel about my Modeh Ani question, “What does the Modeh Ani mean?” in the beit midrash.  He said that there are two great mysteries in Talmudic discussions about the Modeh Ani.  One is the meaning of the word shuv, a verb meaning return and about one thousand other things depending on context.  The other is the word neshamah, meaning soul or breath.  But, finally, according to Malakhel, the Modeh Ani is about thanking God for restoring to us our ability to perform mitzvot.  It is impossible for a person to perform mitzvot (to love God and follow in his ways) during sleep.  So we thank God first thing in the morning for restoring to us our faculty of loving God.

Tefillah Journal Entry #4

All things being equal, I prefer my regular davening places and times to exotic prayer adventures.  However, since all things are clearly not equal…nah.  I still prefer my regular davening places and times.  But wait.  I don’t have reguar davening times yet.  But I’d like to!

Tefillah Journal Entry #3

2 Sephardic shuls in Carmiel, which is in the Galilee.  I was in Carmiel visiting my mother’s friends Elie and Leah.  Friday night: this was the first time I’ve seen Indian Jews in a shul.  Strange seeing central Asian faces under fedoras dressed in black with long beards.  There were also numerous African Jews and East Asian Jews (Filipinos?).  Friday night’s shul was the most culturally diverse shul I’ve ever davened in.  Spiritual popcorn?  Perhaps.  What about the feature presentation: the davening?  Most of the time I was lost.  I didn’t bring my siddur because I thought I would find an acceptable one in the shul.  And I did.  The siddur i found was perfect for someone who reads Hebrew like it’s second nature.  But I read Hebrew like it’s a second language.  Furthermore, the nusach (liturgical texts) were Sephardic at this shul, and that meant that I was seeing several texts I hadn’t seen much before.  On top of that, while Ashkenazic congregants let the cantor do a lot of the singing for them, Sephardic congregants (Jews from Moslem countries) sing every word of their nusach in unison, and I’m not so familiar with the tunes.  As a consequence of all this, I was disoriented, winded, and had little idea what the people around me were saying some of the time.  My most disoriented moment was when everyone chanted Song of Songs.  The whole thing.  I had almost no idea what they were singing. At the end of the service, a few people approached me to wish me a Shabbat Shalom.  Sephardim have a tradition of shaking your hand and kissing the outer edge of their own index finger.  Where did this tradition come from?  I don’t know.  But I like it.  I bet that they kiss their own finger to signify the sacredness of friendliness and of human communication.

Saturday morning I went to another Sephardic shul about twenty minutes by foot from the other shul.  While they didn’t sing Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs) and they weren’t as culturally diverse as the other shul, this shul had one clear advantage for me over the other.  A man in the pews helped me out and made me feel at home.  When I first walked into the sanctuary, I did a little 5-second fake, dodge, parry, and double-take, sub-consciously signifying that I had no idea where I was or what I was supposed to do next.  Also, I stood out a bit because I was taller, gingier, whiter than nearly everyone else, and I was the only one wearing shorts.  This last difference was the result of poor planning and decades of forgetting to bring important articles of clothing on short excursions.  First, my man in the pews pointed to where the tallitim (prayer shawls) were.  After I had taken one, he gestured towards the seat next to him, into which I promptly plopped.  Be-tallised and beseated, I looked to my left to find that my man in the pews was offering me a copy of Tehillim (Psalms) and Torah.  He took in hand the siddur I had brought with me and stashed it in the cubby in front of me.  There was a bar mitzvah and young whippersnapper read very well.  Have you seen Sephardic cases for the Sefer Torah (Torah scroll)?  They’re something like beautifully adorned euphonium cases with elaborately designed crowns.  Hmmm.  No.  They’re not really like euphonium cases , but they might be approximately the same length as euphonium cases.  They really aren’t similar to euphonium cases in any other way though.  You’ve probably never seen a euphonium case anyway, or if you had you wouldn’t necessarily know what they look like, so my comparison is perhaps not so wonderful.  Hrmphh.  The sefer Torah stands inside these euphonium cases and the leyner (Torah reader) can look straight ahead when he leyns .  Ashkenazic Sifrei Torah get laid down flat so that the leyner has to bend over to read them.  I bet it’s good for your back to be a Sephard.  Since it was a bar mitzvah, the men got pelted with candy from above: women getting their revenge on a tradition that forbids them from approaching the sacred text or even seeing it clearly during services.  A well-wrapped morsel of strawberry hard candy hurled by a female with a good arm made a 4-hour crater in my right cheek.  The crater was still there when I got back to Elie and Leah’s house a few hours later, but no permanent damage.  No harm; no foul.  The Torah reading went very well.  I had studied the Torah portion thoroughly during the train rides I took to Carmiel on Friday morning, reading each Hebrew verse twice and its English translation once.  I was pleased to find myself comprehending the Hebrew more than ever before when it was read in the shul.  After the service was over, my man in the pews wished me a Shabbat Shalom, shook my hand, kissed his finger, and asked me where I was from (in Hebrew).  I told him that I was from Chicago, that I was living in Jerusalem and that I was visiting friends in Carmiel for the weekend (in Hebrew).  He invited me to return for afternoon prayer at 6pm and to join him for the bar mitzvah party outside.  A very kind fellow.  I felt a bit bad when I walked straight out of the shul, onto the street, down the steps, left at the mailboxes, and right down the second street back to Elie and Leah’s house.  But I was really too tired to party.  I slept from 11 am to 2pm, when Leah served lunch.  I didn’t return to my man in the pews and his shul for minchah.  Instead I davened minchah solo, and maariv, and the next morning’s shacharit.

Tefillah Journal Entry #2

Davened shacharit solo at 11am.  Davened minchah on the home balcony at 6ish.  Haven’t davened maariv yet. 0 minyans attended.  Home davening felt good all the way through, pretty decent kavvana in my opinion – I felt emotionally present – even though I was keenly aware of my need to study certain prayers so that I know what I’m actually saying when I read that Hebrew.  Today’s holiness rating (10 is Moses’ rating; 1 means that I worshipped salt or herring or play-doh):

3

Tomorrow morning I leave bright and early for shacharit at moreshet.  Then I leave Jerusalem for Akko where Mom’s friend Leah will pick me up and whisk me away to her home in Carmiel where I’ll be spending Shabbat.  More on that later…

Tefillah Journal Entry #1

Today I woke up at 10:30 am.  Wasn’t feeling so well.  Did not manage to say Modeh Ani with kavvana.  Davened shacharit by myself at home.  Davened minchah with a minyan at the Yeshiva at 2:30.  The shaliach tsibur rushed through Ashrei so that I didn’t even get to read half of it.  Later, at 7pm at Ohei Rivka, I stood in the pews with all the other Jews (including Dan, my high school drum major) while they davened late minchah.  Since I wasn’t davening, I thought on this question: ‘Why should we want to know God’s name?’  It’s a question that I found myself caring about a few days ago when I was studying the blessing before Torah reading.  It says, “May we and our offspring and the offspring of Your people, the House of Israel – all of us – know Your Name and study your Torah for its own sake [ונהיה אנחנו וצאצאינו וצאצאי עמך בית ישראל, כולנו יודעי שמך ולומדי תורתך לשמה[ .  Wow.  Inserting a line of Hebrew into English text is very confusing.

After thinking about why I might want to know God’s name while Dan was davening minchah, Dan and I studied some of the Talmud, Tractate Berachot.  He calls it Berachos because he reads Hebrew the Ashkenaz way.  Dan and I have studied several times for about 15 minutes in between minchah and maariv, and it’s always been a blast.  He’s really enthusiastic about Talmud and Torah, and he’s got a very good mind.  I like Dan.  He’s a friendly bloke.  I’m glad that he and I have the opportunity to catch up with one another.  Before I saw him last week, I hadn’t seen him in 10 years.

not a good time for blogging

Soon the Wednesday Lunch and Learn will be under way.  Interrupted by a friend across the beit midrash.  She wants to tell me about a friend who has invited her over for Shabbat.  Several friends are staring at me as I write.  And now they are slowly fading away behind a pillar.  Perhaps this isn’t the best moment to be writing a blog entry.  Then again…  What kind of pants does Mario wear?  Denim denim denim. 

This is not a good time for blogging.

the rebbe’s last shabbat in jerusalem

I’ve had one full week of vacation here in Jerusalem and there’s still 2+ weeks to go before the Yeshiva’s year program begins.  Benjamin and I had a Shabbat guest Thursday night and Friday night.  Her name is Lisa, and she’s a very nice undergraduate biology major at Harvard.  Shabbat was very very nice.  We had plans to go to a friend’s house for Shabbat dinner, but we got uninvited on Friday morning.  Fortunately, cousin Naava (Yitzhak and Ora’s 3rd child) invited us to her house and I accepted.  The food was delicious and the company outstanding.  Yitz and Ora were there.

Yitz told 2 stories.

One was about a desert hike he took recently with Naava’s husband, Yisrael and Yisrael’s son Ya’ir.  Yitz thought that the hike would be 13 km long, but it ended up being 17 km.  He found that he couldn’t go any further when he reached 15 km, so he sought out the shade of a tree (there aren’t many in the Negev) and sent his son-in-law and grandson in search of a hospitable homeowner in the nearby yishuv.  The first door Yisrael knocked on was the door of Avraham HaLevi, a frum music teacher from Jerusalem who retreats to the Negev when the world of Jerusalem is too much with him.  This man thanked Yitz and Yisrael profusely for providing him with the opportunity of fulfilling the mitzvah of offering hospitality, in the desert no less, where he hardly ever sees anyone.  Avraham HaLevi’s wife and daughter played cards on the other side of the room while Avraham, Yitz, Yisrael and Yair refreshed themselves and talked.

The other story was about Yitz’s Jerusalem bus stop project.  He enrolled two of his grandsons in a plot to move a bus stop 10m down the road.  He did it in broad daylight under a tembal hat with two ladders and a bag full of workman’s tools.  Yitzhak was so unintentionally hilarious while telling this story, that Yisrael was crying with glee.  It was a real Finkelstein family moment.  Whenever someone laughs so hard that they cry and whine, that’s what I call a Finkelstein moment.

Benjamin and Lisa (our Shabbat guest) were enormously amused.

On Saturday, we squoze 12 people around our dining room table for Shabbos lunch.  My friend Ari Hirsch the Manhattan doorman, actor, model, and singer (aka “The Rebbe”)  came dressed in a streiml, fake peyos, and traditional talit katan (the tzitzit shirt’s Hebrew name).  Also present were Ari’s wife Leslie, Benjamin, Lisa (our Shabbos guest, in case you haven’t yet caught on), Lisa’s friend Steven, Franklin the Reform-Conservative hybrid construction worker and Hillel employee, Paul the Maine waiter and potter, Gella the Perfect Candidate for JTS, Dina the very curly-haired yoga-teaching 3rd year JTS rabbinical student, David the ex-college English professor, and Isak the Norwegian Yeshiva bokher.  A fine time was had by all.  I napped for a few hours while the others drank and rejoiced in the Sabbath.  Then at 6:00, Benjamin, Lisa and I walked to Yitz and Ora’s house for Seuda Shlishit (the 3rd Shabbos meal, also known as Saturday night light dinner).  It was delightful.  Yitz took us to his shul for ma’ariv.  After the meal, during our 10 minute walk home, Benjamin decided to stop being an anti-Zionist once and for all.