All Prayer is Inadequate

If the purpose of prayer is to accurately and adequately praise God, or even describe God, then we must admit that it will always fail. There is a paradox to all spiritual practice and to all prayer practice. we try to describe God - infinite and pervasive - in words made for our own finite and limited human experience. Just as an artist must paint an image from the three dimensional world in a two dimensional frame, so too the spiritual seeker must try to describe something profoundly true in an artificial frame. Even sculpture, though it has the benefit of three dimensions, can only capture a moment, frozen in isolation amidst the ever-unfolding reality that we inhabit.

Perhaps then, the goal of prayer is not to describe God, but to discover ourselves. What we explore is not the vastness of God Out There, but the intimacy of God Inside. As we become more adept, we are able to more convincingly approach and realize what is truly real in our life.

Every word of prayer is inadequate to describe the experience of God. Every painting and sculpture is inadequate to describe and communicate the reality around us. "Praised are You...", "Merciful One....", "God is good...". None of these are True with a capital T. But ironically they can, with practice allow us to begin to understand the nature of mercy, praise, and goodness.

The more we know, the more we realize that each word, meant to symbolize an aspect of our experiences, and each ritual act and each quiet meditation pales in comparison with the emotions and imaginations that they seek to reveal, provoke or describe.

Our recitations, repetitions, and exercises all reveal our limits even as they invite us deeper. The process of refinement and investment in these brush strokes liberates them from the shortcomings of habit and routine. We can invest each move and each word with meaning so that these inadequate words trigger the neurological jump to Davenology/Prayercraft, and in that they become powerful ways to enhance and expand our capacity for creativity.

It is in that creativity that we truly experience and encounter what we call . . . God.

Learning To Pray

 “I have the conviction that a few weeks in a well-organized summer camp may be of more value educationally than a whole year of formal school work.”

-Charles Eliot, Former President, Harvard University.

Each Sunday morning I get to shul early to prepare for the Machaneh Shai kids and their parents. The teachers start to arrive around 8:30 and the early folks who come to our regular morning shacharit begin to come at quarter to nine. So I have a few minutes to tune up the guitar and warm up in the sanctuary. It’s the perfect time; the building is quiet, the peak sound of the full size room gives my voice and acoustic guitar a resonance that I feel makes me sound better than I actually am.

Machaneh Shai is the Shearith Israel Family Learning Program, and it means Camp Shearith Israel. “Shai” is a Hebrew play on words that means gift and is also the initials for our synagogue’s name – Shin for Shearith and Yod for Yisrael together spells shai. The name reflects the dual ideas that motivate me as a Rabbi and a Jewish educator. First, that learning is a gift. Torah is a gift. Tefillah and Jewish customs for holy days and every days are gifts. These gifts have been protected and transmitted with love and sacrifice from ancient generations, and is to be cherished through use and development. These gifts are to be shared joyfully lest they tarnish and lie unused in the dining room breakfront. That is the second idea – that Jewish learning should be immersive and experiential like summer camp (machaneh means camp), and that it should be fun and engaging through many senses and experiences. That adults and young students should live these Jewish experiences together, learning together, sharing them outside of the synagogue as much as inside, and that all of our educational program should help develop the transportable Jewish spiritual skills and resources that last as we take them with us.

At Machaneh Shai, one of the ways we practice this approach to learning our spiritual heritage, is in our Sunday morning learners service – called z’man ruchani – spiritual time. Machaneh Shai begins every week with a half hour spiritual practice that I lead in the sanctuary. Children and parents together sing an abbreviated prayer service, and I teach a short d’var tefillah – meditation lesson.

The points that I emphasize are important. We sing every prayer. This is not a session to learn how to daven the whispering style of the weekday morning minyanaires. At Machaneh Shai, we are engaging the senses and the prayers are learned with our ears, in much the same way as we originally learned how to speak before we could read. The guitar and the musical nature of tefillah are a big part of the message.

We say the same prayers almost every time. The goal is to establish a prayer discipline and ritual practice over time, and to provide positive experience in an age appropriate setting. After only a few weeks of singing together, students of all ages and of all Hebrew reading levels can participate and pray together and experience that sense of confidence that comes from a service that fits and gently pushes you forward. We pray together. Every age student and parents and sometimes grandparents all share the experience together. This is not meant to be a place to drop off your kid for a private lesson. They learn from every other kid, and from their parents when they stay. Older kids set an example and provide for the younger students a vision of what success in the effort looks like.

When I speak to the families each week, I don’t speak a lot about the history or the structure of the prayer service. I usually try to emphasize how tefillah helps us grow in awareness and spiritual focus. I do not think this topic is beyond the comprehension of even the youngest Machaneh Shai learner. Machaneh Shai teaches that tefillah and singing God’s praise are a natural practice. Together students learn a love of the music and rhythms, and enjoy the great feeling of community that cannot be taught in a classroom or a lecture.

If you add up all of the time we spend each program year in this well-organized tefillah camp, it equals about ten or twelve hours. I do not consider this to be a lot of time, but I do believe that more substantive tefillah is taught in this setting than a hundred hours in the classroom. In each session, I provide a few quiet moments of silent, awareness meditation. After singing a rousing Mi Chamocha, we have our own quiet amidah prayer consciously breathing and practicing the silent reflection that is the heart of nearly every spiritual tradition. Still, mostly, the tefillah is sung, and though I like a little variety in my own tefillot, we sing the same upbeat memorable melodies each time. I watch pretty carefully, and I see the children and their parents singing along. Often they are not even looking at the words. They have surpassed the surface reading level and are voicing the ancient phrases with a memorized comfort and familiarity.

Often, I will use familiar analogies as part of my lesson, comparing tefillah and Jewish spiritual practice with other disciplines that might be more a part of my students every day cultures and norms. I use athletics, art, music, and martial arts as parallel experiences that can focus the techniques that are required to grow more masterful in our tefillah discipline. One thing that all of these disciplines teach in common regarding how we learn and then develop our skill is that the best learning happens when we learn by doing.

It is very Jewish to praise book learning, and I have many “how-to” books about tefillah on my bookshelf. I also have a growing shelf of books on how to play music, books on how to master Tae Kwon Do, books on art and craftsmanship, but none of these can teach me mastery of their respective domains unless I actually strum the strings, throw the punch, and thread the needle. Machaneh Shai, when it works best, is effective at teaching tefillah because it is taught by actually davening together. This must, of course be reinforced, ever anew, with sources and resources and even more formal learning.

I know that after singing together for nine months, as our students and families go their own summer ways, that when we return in the fall, and I strum the first few lines, that the memories will return easily. I know that the tefillot we learned together will not be lost to the typical summer slip backwards that undermines so much school-style learning. The melodies will continue to resonate, even outside the sanctuary where we gather. In their homes, travels, and summer camps, these familiar memories will be whistled and supplemented with new ones that only serve to deepen the connections and associations that reinforce our learning. 

A Shabbat Deficiency

When I was in middle school, I learned about the various explorers and adventurers who crossed the oceans to discover what they considered the new world. Like most students, I was shocked by the hardships and difficulties they endured and encountered as they set off beyond the horizon and made their way into uncharted territory. That was when I learned about scurvy. The terrible disease that results from a dietary deficiency of vitamin C. We all grimaced as the teacher explained that the historic sailors would bring lemons and other citrus to prevent the lethargy, gum disease, jaundice and fever that were the devastating symptoms of this deficiency. You don’t hear a lot about scurvy these days. I do not know anyone personally who has ever suffered from it, though I am sure there are cases among the population who suffers from malnourishment. You don’t hear a lot about it, because even on the high seas of old the vitamin deficiency was easily alleviated by simply adding more vitamin C. When the sailors ate lemons, their teeth did not fall out any more.

This got me thinking. There are other deficiencies with which we are all familiar. There are moral deficiencies also. Not only might we be deficient in a particular nutrient, we might also be deficient in a particular moral or ethical dimension. Certainly you have met someone who you would describe as suffering from a deficiency of generosity, a person whose moral compass does not allow for self-sacrifice and giving until it hurts. There are people who hold on to compliments like they were silver dollars, and who give to tzedakah grudgingly and insufficiently if they give at all. They withhold love and affection from those closest to them and never give the benefit of the doubt to anyone.

What interests me here is not WHY they became that way. Just as I am not interested in what caused the scurvy, but much more interested in the simple solution brought to counter it. How do you counter a vitamin deficiency? It’s simple - you take more of that vitamin. If you don’t have enough, get more. How do you counter an exercise deficiency? Exercise more.

How do you counter a generosity deficiency? I believe it is the same as with exercise or nutrients. If a person is morally deficient, they can be “cured” of this condition only by the simple palliative measure of consciously adding more of that moral dimension to their life and actions. If you are not generous, then to address that imbalance, you must simply be more generous. If you suffer from a scurvy of giving, you have to give more. More affection, more money, more time, more kindness, more assumption of innocence.

I don’t know a lot of people who are malnourished, and I don’t know a lot of people who are generosity deficient. Maybe it’s the kind of people with whom I work and socialize, but most people I encounter are well fed and inclined to generosity. But I believe there is a third kind of deficiency from which almost everyone I know suffers. I call it a Shabbat deficiency, and it is practically universal.

In our culture, obsessed as it is with work and achievement, I rarely meet anyone who has enough rest and quiet appreciation. Just the opposite is true. When given an opportunity to stay home from work and enjoy a restful and meditative holiday or Sabbath, it seems that most people feel guilty, or worse, lazy for simply taking enough time to slow down, turn off, and enjoy things as they are without having to make it better or go to the mall. We work, shop, volunteer, study, pursue, invest, prepare, and travel. When do we rest?

We all know, deep down, that if you never rest then you will become slowly less and less efficient and successful and eventually will walk the line with serious burnout and illness. We seem incapable of recognizing the deficiency itself (another symptom of this insipid disorder) and actually scorn anyone who suggests that we slow down and stop. We seem afraid that the world can not go on if we are not at work, and instead of making up for the deficiency we redouble our efforts, put our nose to the grindstone and grind, grind, grind. We initiate our children into the cult of achievement by over scheduling them and demanding that they attend every practice, recital, and school day. And while we are at it, we insist that everyone around us share in our embrace of this horrible lack, or we ridicule them as lazy, uncommitted, or selfish.

There is only one cure for this universal distress, one prescription to alleviate the Shabbat deficiency. Just as a lack of vitamin C can only be cured by more vitamin C and just as too little generosity can only be cured by more generosity, so too our Shabbat deficiency can only be cured by more Shabbat.

Fortunately, for Jews especially, but certainly not exclusively, Shabbat comes every week. And while it takes a bit of preparation to enjoy Shabbat, it is not hard to do. Cook a luxurious meal (it need not be expensive, just extra yummy and a little indulgent), eat it slowly, stay home from work and keep your kids home from their many activities. Go to synagogue or church or to the park in the afternoon. Take a nap. Not a short 10 minute nap, but a long and revitalizing one. Make love, slowly. Take a stroll, not a run. Meditate, appreciate and contemplate the best and deepest things of life. Turn off your electronics and put them in the drawer. You do not need them, and the world will be okay even when you are unplugged for a day.

Suffering from the Shabbat deficiency? Doctor’s orders – more Shabbat.