26. Davening
A case study with a few practical takeaways
It is hard to overstate how much we struggle with tefillah. Young, old, formal settings, informal settings — tefillah is very rarely experienced as a rarefied encounter with God. Take Shabbos — there’s a buzz of talking from the back, the gabbai’s making hurry-up signals to the chazzan to ensure that things keep moving, kids drift in and out waiting for the ordeal to finally be over. Sadly, someone actually connecting almost sticks out as an anomaly. Even in shuls where the decorum is better, tefillah still often feels formulaic and “commanded,” rather than “communicative.”
To a certain extent, this is an old problem. The Yerushalmi records Rabbi Chiya as saying he never managed to concentrate for a full tefillah; on one occasion, he attempted to maintain his kavanah, but found himself wondering about an intricacy of Persian politics. Rabbi Matanya quipped that he must give thanks to his head for bowing of its own accord upon reaching Modim.1 Is there anything that can be done to make tefillah a more emotional, meaningful religious experience?
Case Study: “Tefillah Training”
One initiative, created by Coby Melkin, that generated promising results in a yeshiva setting took a different tack than many attempts I’ve heard of in the past. Rather than tackling the meaning of the words, the philosophy of prayer, or the structure of prayer, this initiative tried to create space for an emotional reaction and connection. Every day, a short message — just a sentence or two — was sent to a WhatsApp group of 60+ guys describing the essence of one part of davening, starting with the berachah of Yotzer Ohr. During davening, each person was meant to try and reflect on that one idea while reciting the relevant berachah. Practically, this meant pausing in the middle or toward the end of the berachah, reading the line, and thinking about it for a minute or two, or longer. Soon after davening, the group convened for ten minutes and shared what came to mind while reflecting. This created a community of people trying to connect emotionally to the content of tefillah and to Hashem as the One to whom they were davening.
The brevity of the message encouraged participants to actually attempt to reflect on its content. Its open-endedness meant that people had to actually generate their own ideas relating to the berachah — they were taking their cues from Chazal and reflecting on how those ideas were relevant to their own lives. Many participants reported that they felt themselves connecting in ways they hadn’t felt until then.
This approach is principally based on Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s understanding of tefillah as a reflection/self-judgement/recalibration of values and principles in Hashem’s presence,2 in addition to an opportunity to talk directly to Hashem. (I recently had the thought that these two aspects of davening seem to correspond to tefillah k’neged korbanos and tefillah k’neged avos, respectively; I’d be curious if anyone has any thoughts on that to share).
In yeshiva, around 20-30 guys participated consistently and reported that they felt this significantly enhanced their davening. In fact, that summer, three participants who were serving as camp counselors adapted the program and used it with their campers, and reported that their campers reported actual interest in tefillah — some for the first time.
Project Ideas
An actual Battalion project built around this would be to develop these 1-3 line summaries for all different parts of davening and putting them together as a booklet. In fact, I think it would enhance the content if each one was paired with some sort of abstract illustration/picture related to the content as an additional jumping-off point for reflection. This could even be a self-guided learning project in school — students can work together to learn through a berachah or section in davening, boil down different perspectives or elements into 1-3 line summaries, and then make or choose an image to go along with it.
Berachos 2:4.
See his Commentary to the Torah, Bereishis 48:11.