I asked someone what time his morning minyan begins. "We start at 7 A.M.," he replied. "Barechu is at 7:11, and shemone esrei is at 7:18. We finish at 7:35, except for Monday and Thursday when we finish at 7:45."
While I appreciated the detailed response, it reminded me of one of the disconcerting facts of shul life: there are few minyanim in the world where the times of barechu, shema and the amida are not predictable up to the split second. On one level this is quite natural. We are creatures of time, and schedules and responsibilities are part of our daily routine. After all, we are not of the spiritual quality of the chasidim harishonim who would spend one hour preparing for tefilla (the amida), then recite it for one hour, and after praying would wait another hour to come down from the summit (Ber. 32b). We do not even comprehend such concepts, much less practice them. We who have not reached such rarefied height are fortunate if in our daily davening we are able to attain an occasional moment of kavanna.
But even on our ordinary level it is mildly incongruous that tefilla, the quintessential attempt to connect with God-avoda shebalev-should be quantifiable. Can one know in advance how long it will take to establish such a connection? Can a stop watch be placed on the service of the heart? One keeps thinking of the fascinating episode in Berachos 34a.: A certain disciple led the prayers before R. Eliezer, and drew out the prayers to great length. The disciples said to him: Master, what a drawer-out (archan) is this one! He said to them: Is he drawing out (maarich) any more than Moshe Rabbeinu of whom it is written, "The forty days and forty nights that I prayed. . . ." (Deut. 9:25).
In another incident, a disciple led the prayers before R. Eliezer and was very brief. The disciples said to him: Master, how brief (katzran) is this one! He replied to them: Is he any briefer than Moshe Rabbeinu, who prayed (only five words, as is written: "el na, refa na la / God, I beseech, heal her now." (Num. 12:13). There are many layers of meaning within this episode, but one key point is clear: no one could ever predict with precision the exact moment when the minyan of R. Eliezer would be reciting the shema. Some days it was later; some days it was earlier. This might have played havoc with their personal schedules, but it was good prayer. For good prayer means to lose one's self in God's presence, to become as one with Him. (See Rashi at Bereishit 30:8 where the root of tefilla-pll, which bears the same root as the name Naftali -is translated as "intertwine," or "bond," or "connect." See also Ta'lum Onkelos ad loc.)
Ideally, we enter another realm where time has no dominion over our lives. Time, after all, is a this worldly thing, a reminder of mortality. The rhythmic pulse beat of the human heart is a reminder that we are alive-and also that we wil not always be. But during tefilla we can catch intimations of eternity and immortality, and at such moments the clock becomes irrelevant. Further, do all the members of a minyan approach God in the identical way, with the same feelings and emotions, on every single day of the year? There must be some mornings when the pull of a certain phrase in pesukei dezimra tugs at the heart and calls for a momentary reflection; surely there is a word in the shema or the amida that resonates differently on some days than on others. But no member of the minyan dares pause or meditate or ponder. (I know: occasionally 1 attend such minyanim here in Jerusalem.)
All aboooard! The train is pulling out of the station, and he who hesitates will miss the barechu stop, and then he will certainly not arrive at the other stops together with his fellow passengers. All aboard! No lingering. We must arrive at the shemone esrei station promptly at 7:18. No pious Jew wants to daven shemone esrei without the minyan. So it is with most minyanim in the world, and, I suppose, so must it be. The individual in a minyan loses his individuality and becomes as one with the community. And though he is part of that newly created minyan community, he has no control over it. The community is a separate entity with a life of its own. One's personal desire to proceed at his own pace must yield to the right of the community to impose its own discipline on the participants. No minyan can long endure half spontaneous and half scheduled. Communal prayer requires order and regularity, and while each individual retains the right to personal expressions of spontaneity during the tefilla, the needs of the community to proceed with its prayers take precedence. Obviously, this mitigates against sustained emotional peaks.
The incident of R. Akiva in Berakhot 31a is telling: when he was in private, R. Akiva would daven with ecstatic and fiery emotion, but when he was part of the minyan he would follow the norms of the community. All true. But one nagging thought keeps recurring: it is only when worship is disconnected from feelings and emotions, and consists simply of reciting a set amount of words at a certain rate of speed, that it is possible to know in advance how long the entire drill will last. Such an exercise can strip prayer of soul and spirit and transform it into mechanical rate, a chore that takes 32.5 mumbling minutes out of our time every morning before we get it over with. To be sure, even davening without kavanna-as happens to all of us frequently-has value. Vehayu hadevarim ha-eile... al levavecha, states the shema. "Let these words be on (at) your heart . . . ." Why "on your heart"? Would not "in your heart" be more appropriate? No, explains a great Hasidic sage, for we cannot always attain the high level of having the holy words enter our hearts. Shall we, then, not ever pray? Not at all. Be not discouraged, let the words be recited, and let them rest temporarily on the outside of the heart, at levavecha. Ultimately, at certain moments of divine favor, the heart wil open up and those words wil then slip inside the heart. In brief, it would be an error to pray only spontaneously, when the spirit moves us, and to disregard the set order and liturgy of prayer. There is a seder ha-tefila, and we may not edit or streamline according to our whims of the moment. In addition, relationship with God requires constancy and steadiness, and we are required to daven whether or not we are in the mood. There is room for spontaneity in tefilla, certainly, but there is also a precise liturgy that must be followed. In public prayer, the individual heart cannot be allowed to run away with itself, lest chaos result. Furthermore, while there must be order to public prayer, the set liturgy, far from stultifying our spirits, helps lift them. The liturgy is a spiritual symphony that speaks to the soul. Beneath every phrase, within the order and the uniformity, there lie infinite possibilities for the flashes of illumination and cognition that enable us to reach out to the Object of our prayer.
This is eminently doable as long as we remember that the object of our prayer is not to reach shemone esrei by 7:18, but to reach our God at any time. Nor is it a solution to our dilemma to abandon the minyan in favor of solitary and isolated prayer. It is a special mitsva to daven with the minyan, and this mitsva and its long-term benefits are so significant that it must be attended to even at cost to one's personal intensity and kavanna. Ideally, of course, public prayer engages each Jew as a lonely individual and also as a member of the minyan community. We stand alone before our God, but we stand alone together with the minyan community, each member of which also stands alone. So we are faced with a perplexing dilemma. On the one hand, the need for the set liturgy and the minyan; on the other hand, our craving for individual spontaneity and personal reflection. . . .
While it may not be possible for a minyan to accommodate the spiritual needs of each individual member, all members can be accommodated their occasional need to reflect by instituting a very simple procedure: the addition of another few minutes to the normal davening time. The allocation of, say, only one or two extra minutes to pesukei dezimra, another minute or two to the shema, and another minute or two to the shemone esrei-a net addition of some five minutes-could have a powerful effect on kavanna. And if there is a practical need to conclude by a certain time, one can always begin the davening five minutes earlier. The express can become a local, giving even the most seasoned commuter a chance to appreciate the scenery. And in this case, the local may reach God faster than the express. Even if we are not spiritually constituted to spend three hours in a weekday shacharit, and even if circumstances prevent us from kicking the habits of rate, it is valuable to bear in mind that the habits we are engaged in are far from ideal. That we may be incapable of scaling the peaks of the spiritual Mount Everest is no reason to lose sight of the fact that the summit exists, and that some rare souls attain it.
Yes, I realize that time and prayer cannot be totally separated from one another, and that time is an integral element in our reaching out to God. We must recite the shema by the third hour, the amida by the fourth hour, musaf before the seventh hour, minha between the sixth hour and sunset, the evening shema before midnight, and those who daven "vatikin" must calculate their davening precisely to the minute every single day.
But despite the relentless power of the halakhic clock, I still find myself waiting for the day after the Messiah comes, when conversations such as this will take place: "What time does your Shul daven in the mornings?"
"At seven."
"And what time do you finish davening?"
"I can't answer that. Sometimes we end at 7:45, sometimes at 8.00. It all depends."
"Depends on what?"
"Depends on how the spirit moves us, on how well we fit into the mood of davening. Sometimes it takes less time, sometimes more. We never know for sure." Come to think of it, even before Messiah comes I'd like to find a shul like that.
