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A
Jewish Renewal Approach to Prayer
Rabbi David Zaslow
How
many of us are saddened that in our childhoods we learned
the words to our Jewish prayers, but we rarely knew what we
were saying? And today how many of us feel left out of services
because we simply can't read the Hebrew words quickly enough,
or at all? Early in our Jewish educations we learn to pronounce
the Divine Name as Adonai. In these times, when talking
about the Lord many Jews prefer to use gender neutral names
like Hashem (which literally means “The Name”),
the Eternal, or the Holy One. The ineffable Name of God is
called the Tetragrammaton (the Four Letter Name) and contains
both masculine and feminine attributes of the Holy One. It
is sometimes mistransliterated as “Jehovah” and
translated in the masculine as “Lord.” The Holy
Name is spelled with the Hebrew letters yod, hey, vav,
and hey. Yet very few of us have ever been taught the
inner meaning of this Name in relation to the structure of
our services. Further, what does it mean when we repeatedly
read in the siddur about God's Name alone being exalted and
praised?
The
kabbalists of the sixteenth-century who lived in Safed used
the image of Jacob's ladder to describe the order of prayers
in the siddur. Further, they helped us identify the psycho-spiritual
reasons for this order, and it is a joyous endeavor to learn
about it. They taught that each of the four letters of God's
ineffable Name represent the four rungs of life: body, emotion,
intellect, and spirit. In turn, the order of prayers in the
siddur follow these organic levels, and the petitioner is
like one who climbs a ladder from earth to heaven. All siddurim
follow a very similar pattern and order of prayers. Siddurim
also include the innovations of these same kabbalists who
created the Kaballat Shabbat and the Havdallah
services, and who are responsible for some of the most beautiful
liturgy in the siddur.
In
the weekday morning service, for example, we wake up and begin
with the rung of prayers concerning the body known as the
B’rachot HaShachar, thanking the Holy One for
permitting us to awaken, and for the proper functioning of
our various body parts, including breath. This represents
the lower hey of the Name representing the bodily level of
life. Next, we move from acknowledgment to emotion-filled
praise. This second rung in the service is known as the P'sukei
D'Zimra, and many of the psalms are located there. This
section represents the vav in Hashem's Name and represents
the emotional level of life. The third rung of the service
is the Kriat Shema, which begins with the Barachu and
continues with the blessings surrounding the Shema.
On this level we move from praise to declaration. When the
Shema is recited we declare that Adonai, whose Name mirrors
the four levels of our lives, is an indivisible unity. This
third section stands for the upper hey representing the intellect.
The
fourth rung in the service is called by several names: the
Amidah, Shemonah Esray, T'fillah, or just simply the
Prayer. Our rabbis teach that if we climb the first
three rungs of the ladder with concentration and joy we now
can enter the gates where we can truly pray (i.e. ask the
Creator to attend to our personal needs as sentient beings).
This fourth rung corresponds to the yod of the Divine Name
and represents soul level of life.
Through
an inspired series of 18 benedictions we can actually feel
what has been described as oneness or cleaving (d'vaykut)
to the Holy One. A careful study of each level of the service
reveals an exquisite internal four-rung ladder within each
individual rung. In fact, each major prayer within each rung
contains its own mini four-rung ladder. The effect of this
knowledge during prayer can be kaleidoscopic, and is an emotionally
thrilling experience. Prayer then becomes like a journey inside
of a crystal, only this crystal is the essence of God's own
Being in whose image we are continually being created.
The
image of Jacob's ladder is not the only metaphor that has
been used to describe the deep infrastructure of the prayerbook.
In his Meta Siddur, Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank writes,
“The dynamic metaphor of climbing a ladder conveys that
the davvenen is intended to facilitate a symphony of prayer
states. Another possible metaphor (considered by Rabbi Yaakov
Emden, and that I heard from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi)
is that of entering the Temple, visiting the Holy of Holies,
and exiting the Temple. One may, nowadays, consider the recapitulation
of the stages of evolution. I like to imagine blending all
three metaphors: as one ascends the rungs of the ladder and
enters ever deeper into the Temple, one finds oneself changing
into a more and more evolved, complicated being.”
The
relationship between the petitioner and the Holy One is traditionally
compared to that of a parent and child, or between King and
servant. Our sages ask us to think of the prayer service in
the same way we think of a child needing something from his
or her parent. The clever child doesn't just ask for what
he or she needs. First the child acknowledges how good it
is to be alive, and to be in such a wonderfully designed body
(Birkat HaShachar). Next, the child lavishes praises
upon the father or mother (P'sukei D'Zimra). The loving
parent now suspects that the child wants something, but is
deeply flattered since the child is so sincere. Secretly,
the parent wants the child to have what he or she needs, but
also realizes how important it is for the child's inner development
to go through this process.
The
child then makes the ultimate declaration that his or her
parent is the only father or mother he will ever have (K’riat
Shema). The father or mother joyously and humorously asks,
“Okay, so what do you want? How much is it going to cost?”
This, of course, invites the child to be direct in his or
her petition. The child feels so at one with the parent, and
the parent feels so at one with the child, that the asking
and the receiving becomes the natural expression of their
deep love for one another. So, it is with us as petitioners
before the Living God. When we finally reach the point of
asking (in the Amidah) our sages suggest that we should sincerely
feel that we are as deeply connected to our Heavenly Father
as we are our earthly parents.
Today,
even as less masculine or hierarchical comparisons are being
explored, the four-level infrastructure of the prayer service
itself remains unchallenged. As a ladder for entry into the
Heavenly realm each rung, and the rungs within each rung,
have organic function. The rote recitation of prayers with
congregants standing and sitting like actors taking cues is
not what the sages of the Talmud ever expected from us as
we talk to the Creator of the Universe. Prayer, they all taught,
must have intention, or kavannah. The words must be
said slowly enough to be both understood and felt, and may
even be said in the vernacular if that makes comprehension
easier.
From
the introduction to “Ivdu et Hashem b’Simcha”
a prayerbook for Renewal edited by Rabbi David Zaslow (shalomrav@aol.com)
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