כל העונה אמן יהא שמיה רבא בכל

Why I yell Yehay Shemay Rabba (at least I try to)

People often ask me why I say Yehay Shemay Rabba in the manner that I do. Here is an incomplete list of my reasons.

1. The Shulchan Aruch says that Yehay Shemay should be said in a loud voice (Orach Chayim, 56, paragraph 1).
2. Rabbi Yehoshua Levi says that one who recites Yehay Shemay with all of his might can rip up an evil decree (Talmud Bavli, Shabbat, 119b). From what I read about in the daily newspaper there are many evil decrees.
3. I use Yehay Shemay as a focal point for entering fully into the moment.
4. The screaming is good for my lungs (which could use the work-out).
5. My teacher, Rabbi Yitzhak Cohen, Shlita, of NYC yells Yehay Shemay.
6. It is a way to express my joy at being a Jew living in Eretz Yisrael.


Why not join me?

Five Reasons Why I Pray

I love praying. The energy. The rejuvenation. The uplift. The shaking of my soul, psyche, body, and brain. Beyond this connection with prayer, who needs more reasons to daven? Yet, recently I began listing why three times a day, I pick up a siddur, face East (or North since I now life in Southern Jerusalem), and connect with prayer. This is some of what I've come up with so far.

1. Prayer invites me to dream.

Despair is in the air.

Life, with all of its busy-ness, wears me down. The weariness of the daily struggle narrows my vision. All I see is that which lies directly in front. Dreams and plans beyond the immediate future recede behind mountains of exhaustion.

In short, I stop dreaming, becoming entranced in the routines of the day.

And that’s where davening comes in.

One can pray for anything. A convenient parking space or a cooling breeze on a hot day. Davening is also for bigger stuff: Love, money, or a good job. And the Siddur invites me to demand even more: an end to war, wisdom, healing, and the promised redemption.

No matter what it is that I ask for, prayer is an opportunity to set my eyes forward, to dream, to get out of the spirit-draining routinization of the day. Prayer reminds me that I can want so much more out of life.

And wanting something is the first step at attaining it.

2. Prayer helps me discover what it is I really want.

What should I do?
Who should I talk to?
Where should I go?
What kind of person should I be?
What kind of father should I be?

These are some of the high stakes questions of life. When I answer them correctly, a sense of deep sense of fulfillment is the reward. When the answers elude me, frustration and emptiness result.

But where do the answers come from?

We live in a time when no matter what my question or need is, someone has a ready answer. Billboards, Dr. Phil, the back of milk cartons, the guy on the radio…everyone knows what’s good for me. Smiling faces and the warm embraces all telling me what I should do, what I should be.

Yet, as compelling as advertisements and celebrities may be their guidance is lacking. Not because they are self serving or lacking in some way. It’s because of one universal truth: Any solution that doesn’t come from me is bound to fail. Others can make suggestions. Perhaps they can provide an approximate example. Bottom line though, it’s up to me to find my own way.

This brings me to prayer.

Prayer is a uniquely private activity. As much as the outside world tries to make it’s way into my head, prayer helps me shut the door on the din. Prayer invites me into a private, quiet space all my own. It is in this space that I can connect with the best, wisest, most powerful part of who I am. In this space I consider my plans, dreams, needs, desires, fears, and weaknesses. In this sacred space I can find encouragement and just enough energy and hope to continue the journey.



3. Praying helps me stay on course.

Lost. Again.

Starting my day with the best of intentions, I end up in places that I still have no idea how I got to. A bright mood often gives way to exhaustion. Subtle unnamed anxiety hems in my creativity. And of course the unpredictable nature of life often challenges my peace of mind in the most puzzling of ways. It’s a wonder that I ever get anything done.

And that’s where prayer comes in.

Regular breaks for prayer invite me back to sanity and purpose. Like a Global Positioning System that realigns itself with orbiting satellites every second, I must take the time to steer myself back on course towards optimism, tenacity of spirit, joy, and serenity. To pray is to reflect on one’s location in the universe. To ignore prayer is to invite loss of direction.

And who has the time for that?


4. Prayer works and it works outside the tyranny of statistics, odds, and probabilities.


Having read the paper today and listened to the news, I shouldn’t bother leaving my home. The statistics are daunting. Terrorists are lurking about unchecked. Global warming makes it unsafe to breathe the air. Driving a car is a sure fire recipe to get myself killed or maimed. The cells of my body are mutating as I type these words.

Prayer makes it safe to leave the house.

In it’s essential premise, prayer states that statistics are irrelevant. When doctors declare a situation as hopeless, prayer invites me to recall an often forgotten fact of life: no one knows anything. When some seeming immutable fact of life denies me a reason to even try, prayer reminds me that the experts are usually wrong and that numbers mean absolutely nothing (except to give people jobs).




5. Prayer gives me true political power.

Prayer is a intensely personal activity. What threat to the social order could there possibly be in opening a siddur? Yet, just recall how Communist Russia was terrified of the siddur! Anyone caught with even the most basic prayer book was branded as an enemy of the state and sent off to Siberia. Such was the power of prayer feared by one of the world's greatest super nuclear powers.

Why then is prayer so threatening?

On one level, prayer aligns one's wishes with infinite power. The power of prayer is inscrutable; it always will be so. Yet prayer works! Just ask those who've beaten the odds given them by medical doctors, political realities, military power, teachers, bank statements, their bad luck, or their own stupidity.

On a deeper level, however, prayer is the most powerful expression of the individual's political power. Prayer is the most unique expression of individuality. Individuality is political power. Physical tyrants may dominate me physically but as long as I can pray, I remain the boss of my heart and my dreams. Even art in all of its glorious ways can be co-opted and corrupted by the political order. Only prayer uttered in the privacy of one's heart remains truly liberating from repression.

And that’s the greatest power there is.

Praying From The Mind; Praying From The Heart

Praying From The Mind; Praying From The Heart


This morning’s prayers found me struggling with the connection to heaven. Somewhat frustrated, I found myself searching impatiently for that joyous, dial-in experience that I crave. As things go, I eventually stumbled upon the highly distracting racing thoughts in my mind. In short order, I then deployed a technique for stilling the mind. I was then up and running.

But was there something else?

Looking about, I noticed a gentleman appearing to struggle in his prayers. With posture held firmly at the wall and talis draped over his head, it seemed in my very inaccurate estimation that he was trying mightily to concentrate. Cerebral fellow he seemed. No shuckling. Straight and dry. He reminded me of some of the intellects that I’ve met over the years who have banished the energies in favor of the mind when it comes to God.

If I could have only led him to his heart.

I am troubled by the intellect. It seems so devoid of connection with the world outside of it. The intellect seems so reflective of the self and as we all know the self has a terrible habit of stumbling into the most horrible places. The self sees itself as the center of its universe when the reality is that, believe it or not, we are all part of someone else’s universe.

And try as one might to dismiss the feelings of the “less-intellectual” the heart and soul will never stop their beat. “I sleep but my heart remains awake,” (Shir HaShirim 5). The heart has a wisdom and an orientation all of its own. The wisdom of the universe is contained within the heart. When we live in the harmony with that heart then we are whole. When we trade the heart for the idolatry of self and it’s intellect then the dissonance makes us nuts. We may try harder and harder to distance ourselves from the rhythm but we can never fully silence it.

That’s because it’s the most powerful sound in the universe.

So young man, find your heart song. Daven from there and you’ll never have trouble reaching the divine.

Sucker God or Smart God

Somewhere in my childhood, I recall a scene from a mafia movie. A man enters a confessional of a church. He recounts his failings to the attentive priest. The priest then waves his hands and intones something that sounds now like, “go forth and sin no more”. The sinner is forgiven. We then see the penitent leaving the church and going to work where he kills people in cold blood.

While I have no idea if the Christian deity really does offer forgiveness in such cases, that story is not that different than comments that I used to hear from Jews about Yom Kippur. “Hey, I can do all the sins I want and then Yom Kippur comes and makes it right. What a great system!”

Huh?

Is God a sucker? Does He just forgive whenever we ask? What kind of god would do something so evidently stupid? Certainly not a god that could earn my respect.

In fact, in the Jewish view of God’s forgiveness, we must first make the necessary repair before we are forgiven. Such repair begins with a strong grasp of what needs to be done. This is why the prayer for wisdom precedes the prayer for forgiveness.

Understanding however is not enough. How many times have I intellectually understood the necessity of some action but failed to do anything with it. This is why we ask God for help in strengthening our commitment before getting around to forgiveness.

Once we get around to asking for His forgiveness, He goes well beyond that which we request. The prayer describes God as, “Gracious, and forgives in great measure”. Why is great measure needed? The answer is simple: as much as we may assume that we know why we sin, the more we learn about the human mind, the more we know how mysterious our thoughts are. The simple action of drinking a cup of water, for example, is not just about quenching thirst. There is often deeper story behind such a seemingly trivial activity. And when it comes to sin and forgiveness, it is the unstated motivations and needs that God, in His kindness and belief in us, for which we receive His abundant forgiveness.

Sim Shalom: Accepting Life On Life's Terms

We end every Shemona Esray with Sim Shalom or Shalom Rav. While the authors of the Shemona Esray had their own reasons for inserting the prayer for peace at the end, I relate to it as a way to come to terms with life as it is. Prayer seems so much about changing life. I put my order in and wait see what I get. Change is at the opposite end of acceptance and the embrace of the here and now. So after I’ve asked for all sorts of changes in my life, I now ask to be complete with life as it is. I asked for more money and now I ask for help with making peace with my financial situation as it is.

That’s the wisdom of Sim Shalom and its placement.

In the remaining days before Tisha B’Av, it seemed appropriate to visit the grave of Rachel, the wife of Jacob. The Midrash says that when the Temple was destroyed and the Jews lead into captivity, Rachel wept bitterly. Indeed her grief was so intense that made a special promise to her that eventually repair would be made and the Jews would return home.

The association between Rachel and geula is intriguing. It is Rachel’s supreme act of kindness to her sister that according to the Midrash is most beloved to God. In that incident, Rachel, on her wedding night, gave a secret code to her sister Leah that would allow Leah to become married to Jacob. In the days prior to their wedding, Jacob and Rachel worried that the devious Laban would try to trick Jacob to marry another bride and withhold the hand of Rachel so as to extract more from Jacob. They thought that in the darkness of the marital chamber, Jacob would not know with whom he was consummating the marriage. Thus the couple agreed on a secret code that would allow them to verify their identities.

Unbeknownst to Jacob, however, another loyalty was at work. Rachel and Leah were twins. Both knew prophetically that each was destined to marry a son of Issac. It seemed logical that the younger of the two, Rachel would go to Issac’s youngest son, Jacob, and that Leah would marry Esau, the oldest. This would have been fine had it not been that Esau was the epitome of human evil. Leah understandably spent her days grieving for a life that she would never merit see.

Rachel saw this. She wept with her sister. And when an opportunity to save Leah from Esau, Rachel jumped at it. She would slip Leah into the marital tent and trick Jacob into marrying Leah.

Such actions are astounding. Was Rachel sure that Jacob, finding Leah in the marital bed, going to then turn around and marry her? She was in fact risking her future. What about Jacob’s feelings? The Torah makes it clear that Jacob loved Rachel very much. Finding that he had been duped must have been a heart breaking moment.

Yet from Yiddishkeit’s relationship to Rachel’s actions, it is clear that she did the right thing. She willingly gave up her future so that her sister would have one. That she would be married to Esau and forever be despised by Jacob was something that Rachel could handle.

Such willingness to give up one’s own private agenda in order to rescue Leah is a value that carries a spiritual power that it can force God’s hand. Hundreds of years later, the Jews self destructed in the most gruesome of ways. As a result they were swept out the land and people hood for a most uncertain future. Would they rise again? Their actions didn’t leave much room for hope. The Midrash describes the drama as each of the great characters of Jewish history made their case only for Heaven to dismiss them.

And then came Rachel. Evidently, that wedding night kindness to Leah cast quite a shadow. Even Heaven was stumped. God himself was coerced, as it were, by the enormity of Rachel to overlook the implications of the Jews’ corruption.

And it is the power of Rachel’s willingness to give up love and future that gives us the hope that sustains us to this day. As I prayed there today I reflected on what I must do to be a part of that hope. Greater willingness to make the other's agenda my agenda is the direction to my salvation and to the salvation of all of us.