There’s a lot to write about but for now I’ll stick with what I was talking about before, which is davenning. Jeremiah asked some really good questions about what kind of work I believe davenning takes and what exactly it is that I mean by davenning in the first place.

We’re actually studying davenning in school… That is to say that we’re learning masechet berachot in Talmud and hilchot tefillah (Mishneh Torah) in Halacha. The question of what actually constitutes davenning has been the focus of much class discussion, especially, it seems, over the past couple of days. The bottom line is that, when you come down to it, as far as Torah obligation is concerned, any praise, supplication, thanks combination communication with God constitutes the fulfillment of the obligation to pray. And, according to the strictest minimal Torah obligation, as long as you do this at least once a day, you’ve done what God commands as far as prayer is concerned. In that sense, it is never appropriate to say that a person does not know how to daven

That said, we as Jews do not live by the Torah. We live by the Rabbis. Unless you are a Karaite, if you are a Jew with any sort of practice tradition, you are a Rabbinic Jew. Our Judaism is entirely based upon how the Rabbis established their interpretations of scripture, and what they established that Jews ought to do practically in order to stay in line with what they understood to be God’s will for us. If it weren’t for these rabbis and sages, there would be no Judaism.

All this is by way of saying that we have forms and structures of davenning, and these forms, one can be good at or need practice with. I’ve met many who are quick to blame these structures for their problems with communal or organized davenning, or to blame the leadership of a particular synagogue or minyan for their boredom or lack of engagement. I’ve also known several who have felt this way initially, before they actually took the time to study and unpack the davenning structure as it exists in rabbinic law, as it is practiced by Jews throughout the world. There is a flow to it, a poetry, a rationale. The structure of our prayer service is carefully crafted to make communication with God easy and meaningful. We’d all like to think that we are artistic and poetic souls, that this need for structure doesn’t apply to us. But until you sit down and learn why the rabbis set the process of prayer as they did, until you take a minute to learn something of the elegance and poetry of the language of the service, and until you make an effort to actually use the structure, and do so uncynically, with a mind open to the possibilty that structure can be a help and not a hinderance, it is little more than hubris to think that you are above the use of the siddur.

There is, of course, more to this than just laziness and hubris. My words above are largely about principles rather than people. When it comes to people, I’m sympathetic. The prayer book is hard. Learning enough Hebrew to really appreciate it is hard. It takes time and work and I know very well the feeling that it is just too much. There is a very real fear and even shame about not knowing how to do what everyone around you seems to be doing effortlessly. That is why, when my rabbinical school class, during orientation, met in the synagogue to talk about prayer, I decided to make it known to the group that I still read a lot of the siddur in English. Everytime I daven I read through a section in Hebrew that I don’t yet have down, and sometimes that means I fall behind the congregation and don’t get to sing all of the out loud parts with everyone else. And sometimes it means that I have to skip over certain psalms or piyyutim. That is ok. Though it may not seem like it, everyone knows that there is a learning curve and no one will begrudge you the time which that learning process takes. And if they do, they’ve got their own problems.

Back to the singing. Singing, as I’ve said, has always been a very importand part of my life and a very significant and joyful experience for me, whether I understood the words I was singing or not. There is something to that. However, I came to a whole new understanding of singing as prayer when I came to a point where I did understand what it was that I was singing, when they were words that I could say meaningfully in prayer, quietly, by myself. At that point, taking those words and singing them out loud with a congregation became real davenning.

More to come, on this subject and others. Meantime, may we all be sealed in the book for a good life full of blessing, joy and meaning.

And for God’s sake be nice to each other!!!

(By the way, I wrote this entire thing on my iPod. How cool is that?)

While I’m restoring my iPod in an attempt to get it to be less annoying, I may as well write something.

There are some great things going on at my shul. Great people with great projects and great innovations and the like. All of the people in charge, I believe, are wonderful and well-intentioned and doing really good things that could be real positive contributions to the synagogue.

And I’m worried.

I’m worried about what I’m hearing from other congregants. I’m worried about certain attitudes I feel brewing around these innovations, approvals and disapprovals and divisions and personality cults etc.

So I’m going to discuss principles rather than people, because I’ve not yet had conversations with the people involved, and I’m trying not to engage in Lashon HaRa here.

I love to sing. I mean I really, really love to sing. There is very little else in this world that makes me happier. Singing is up there with Really Good Learning and sex on my enjoyment meter. So I can easily see why people call the experience of singing “spiritual.” And indeed, I do find that singing and harmonizing and clapping and dancing can enhance my davenning experience.

But there is a difference between a singing experience and a davenning experience. I might feel the same visceral thrill singing Eddie From Ohio or Great Big Sea songs with my friends as I do singing Havu L’Adonai at Kabbalat Shabbat. The difference is in the content. The difference is the singing as the experience itself, versus the singing as an extra set of wings to elevate the davenning.

Getting the content, folks, takes work. I’m really sorry, but there’s no getting around that.

Now, the problem arises when you’ve got two minyanim, one which is, shall we say, “traditional” in the sense that it follows more or less a certain established pattern, shaliach tzibbur, a standard nusach, a sanctuary of a certain size with immobile pews, etc. The second is, shall we say, “neo-Chassidische” in the sense that it intentionally utilizes a smaller, less formal-appearing space, leadership is shared (people stand around the sha”tz and kind of co-sha”tz together), upbeat catchy niggunim are used to encourage harmonizing, hand-clapping and the like, etc.

It is not the existence of these two minyanim that is the problem. On the contrary, I think it is wonderful. When I was living in Jerusalem over the past two years I loved the fact that I had the option to go to a relatively standard traditional Conservative service, a Chassidische Carlebach service, a quasi-egal Carlebach-y service, a standard Orthodox service, a young hip non-denominational egal niggun-heavy service, etc. you get the idea. Options are good. Having the ability, the resources, to switch things up is good. Exposing yourself to different davenning experiences is good. Being able to pray effectively in different communal models is good.

Competition, however, is very very bad.

I wish to reiterate, it seems to me that it is not the leaders who are fostering the competitive attitude I am sensing. It is those who make presumptive statements about one service or the other’s lack of “authenticity” or “neshama” or “kavannah.” It seems to always boil down to something political, something that becomes personal, something that is insulting or imposing or lacking…

Personally, I think there needs to be some re-education going on here. We need to start talking about what it means to daven in a community, as part of a community. Perhaps we need to back it up further and teach people what it means to daven, period.

Davenning is less about you and your experience than you think it is. I think someone needs to be brave enough to say that out loud to our population of middle class American Conservative Jews.

Holy updates Batman! An… um… update?

My life is made of midrash. This is how I usually look at things, midrash is kind of my obsession. What this means, basically, is that I seem to very intuitively see connections, echoes, reflections, patterns in my life that make the whole look cohesive and somewhat understandable… manageable… drashable. This may have been why, when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer and a poet. Now it is how I approach my rabbinical education and career.

Yeah that’s right. I’m in rabbinical school. I’m actually, finally, really, in rabbinical school.

And right now, the echoes in my midrash are pretty darn deafening.

I’m a student at JTS, the Jewish Theological Seminary. I went to Hebrew school here through junior high and high school. I live in the dorms and when I look out the window in the morning I see the courtyard where I used to toss a frisbee with my sister and friends on sunny sunday afternoons during bagel break. I’m in the place where my Judaism originated… my mother studied here for her conversion. I live in a room 4 floors below the office of my first Rabbi, who was at my naming. It is a new year. I am moving forward with new beginnings… very new things happening and a bright clean shiny future all laid out in front of me.

And what it is is my past. Nothing here is actually new. It is my whole life come together, polished, rearranged, and set before me as it was gearing up to do this whole time.

This is why my life is Midrash. Everything leads to everything else. It makes it a story. And it makes it beautiful.