March 4th: Pekuday
THIS WEEK IN THE TORH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
One of the challenges in teaching Bar/Bat Mitzvah students is helping them to understand how the many details they have to master can combine to make a moment of holiness and Kavannah—connection with the Eternal. There is a lot for these children to master: Hebrew prayers and their various tunes, a Torah portion read without vowels, English prayers with a specialized vocabulary, posture in front of the congregation, enunciation, volume, remembering which parts are whose, and, of course, not being distracted by potentially giggling friends in the congregation. Another issue is the tallit: keeping it on the shoulders can be a challenge. So, in the midst of all these details, there is a tendency to focus on them—rather than on the greater goal of connecting with God.
I like to think that we help B’nai Mitzvah experience this greater purpose. And, I like to think that we can help all of our worshippers make this connection whenever they join us in worship. There are details to be sure, and the fact is that the details make a difference. Mispronounced Hebrew words, tunes that wander off key, poorly worded sermons, bad sound systems, and various distractions can impede the spiritual experience. We need to focus on skills and proprieties and Tradition. However, they are not the ultimate worship experience. The ultimate comes when we use these in our personal and communal relationships with God.
The Torah portion this week highlights this interesting dynamic. The bulk of the three chapters is basically the ledger book and employment records of the Mishkan: the income in materials, the work assignments and their execution, the delivery of the completed items to Moses, and the assembling of the elaborate “tent temple” where our ancestors encountered God in a formal way. This is pretty much the third time we have heard all this. (It is like the Torah predicted Aristotle’s advice on giving a speech: tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them, then tell them what you told them.) Starting in Exodus 25, we hear God’s instructions to Moses, then Moses’ repetition of them to the people, then the narrative of the people following God’s instructions, and now this review. Thorough, yes. Riveting or inspiring, maybe not so much.
Then, however, we get to the point of it all. When Moses finishes all the work of assembling the tent and the enclosure and the altar and the Ark and putting all of the furniture and utensils in their places, “the cloud (of the Lord) covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of the Lord filled the Mishkan/Tabernacle.” (Exodus 40.34) The Israelites attend to all of the details with great diligence, and they ultimately achieve their mission. As they were charged at the beginning of the process, “Let them make be a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” (Exodus 25.8) They do their work, and God comes to dwell in their midst.
In the long history of Jewish worship—from the Mishkan in the wilderness and the Temple in Jerusalem, to the synagogue system in its thousands of places, there has been an interesting balance between Keva and Kavannah, between fixed prayer formulas and the improvisational and intuitive prayerfulness that springs from the heart. We are instructed by Tradition in the finer details of worship, but we are also counseled in Pirke Avot (2.18), “When you pray, let not your prayer become fixed routine, but let it be a sincere supplication for God’s mercy.” There is form and structure, Keva, and there is Kavannah, the intensity and concentration and improvisational spontaneity that brings worship alive.
We do not know when the specific formulas of the traditional Siddur arose. Legends say that the words of the Shemonah Esreh (the nineteen-blessing main or standing prayer) were revealed by God to the Anshay K’nesset Hag’dolah, the Men of the Great Assembly, around 200 BCE, but this is improbable. Throughout the Rabbinic Period (200 BCE – 200 CE), there seems to have been a pattern of themes in the worship service upon which the prayer leader would improvise. When he finished his improvised prayer, he would conclude with a chatimah, a summary statement of the prayer’s theme, and the other worshippers would respond “Amen,” indicating their agreement—“okaying” the prayer as their own.
The first complete written prayer book ever found comes from much later, the 9th Century. With so many written texts of the Rabbinic and Talmudic periods, it is curious that there are no prayer book examples, a fact which leads many scholars to think that established and written prayers were a much later addition to Jewish Tradition. Then, even as written prayer books proliferated, there was a significant amount of variety and innovation. Consider poems like Adon Olam, Yigdal, Ayn Kelohaynu, and Lecha Dodi, newly composed in the 10th-15th Centuries, but eventually becoming “traditional:” There were also regional and subregional variations of the liturgy. And, as Hassidism was created and crafted in the early 18th Century, the Hassidim used a prayer book different from the more standard Ashkenazic and Sephardic Siddurim. Their Nusach Sefarad, with its mystical enhancements, was both “cutting edge” and controversial.
In other words, even the most “Orthodox” or “traditional” of Siddurim are results of a long tradition of liturgical creativity and adaptation. While Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism have made worship creativity much more active, they are part of the same continuum of following Keva/tradition while embracing Kavannah-enhancing changes.
This larger and historical dynamic frames the sensibilities we bring to our worship. We each feel a connection to Keva, Jewish Tradition and its various liturgical, linguistic, choreographic, and customary forms. These details are an important part of our familial connection to God and to Judaism. That being said, there is also the need for each individual Jewish soul to connect to the Divine—or to rise to an awareness of the Divine. That is where Kavannah enters the mix, where we work with the traditional forms to make worship into a personal spiritual connection with the Eternal One.
A modern Midrashic take on a verse from Mah Tovu can express this important connection. The verse from Psalm 69.14 reads, “Va’ani tefilati-lecha Adonai et ratzon / As for me, may my prayer to You, O Lord come at a moment of favor.” However, one could look only at the first two words, “Va’ani tefilati,” and read them, “May I be my prayer.”
Just as the ancient specifics of the Mishkan/Tabernacle set the stage for an encounter with the Divine Presence, so may our attention to both detail and Kavannah help us in our relationships with God.