In the Talmud on Sukkah, Rebbi Eliezer and the Sages (the unnamed majority opinion) argue about how exactly to behave in your sukkah (that funky shack we live in for a week every fall). There's a line in the Torah encouraging us to dwell in the sukkah in the same way we dwell in our own home. Says Rebbi Eliezer, "Since I eat two meals a day at home(they weren't so big on breakfast), I must also eat two meals a day in the sukkah, but if I miss one of those meals, I can make it up." "Au contraire," chime in the Sages, "when I'm in my house, I'm free to eat as I please; sometimes, I'll have two square meals a day, and sometimes I won't… so in my sukkah I can also eat as I please. But if I fail to eat in my sukkah on the first night of the holiday, it's as if I didn't eat in my sukkah at all!" Later in the Gemara, Rebbi Eliezer modifies his opinion to agree that the only essential meal is on the first evening of Sukkot. After all the dust settles, the real difference in the two opinions lies in their approach to the specific moment. For the Sages, once that first night of Sukkot has gone by and you didn't have you're meal, game's over… sorry. But for Rebbi Eliezer, you can make up that meal on the last night of Sukkot; he sees a way for you to bring that moment back.
The laws of tefillah (prayer) teach that if I miss one of the prayer services (say Maariv, the evening prayer), I can make it up by adding-on to my morning prayers. But how can that be? The morning is a COMPLETELY different time than the night. My mood is different, my thoughts are different, the world as a whole is a different place. No matter. With respect to tefillah, the Sages (a different group than in the previous Talmud) felt that rachamim (mercy) was the deciding factor. At its root, prayer is about me seeking mercy from God. It is a completely personal, internal endeavor that goes beyond the external reality of where the sun is right now. Sure, we are intimately connected to the natural world, thus it won't be so easy to make up for that missed Maariv, but if I push, I can reconnect to where I was that evening and channel that energy into the present moment… it's all up to me.
But prayer is such a fixed ritual! This week, Rav Dov Linzer from Riverdale spoke to us about the origins of tefillah. There's a clear tension between the need to formalize the ritual of tefillah and the desire for individual spiritual expression. This tension comes from the two progenitors of prayer: our forefathers, and the daily offerings in the Temple. On the one hand is the individual's expression of what they need/feel/desire right now, and on the other is a strictly-codified commandment that makes no excuses for how its performer "feels." Despite this latter (and later) influence on prayer, there is an incredible sensitivity to our need to say what we feel (in our own language or in Hebrew).
Prayer is at once the most rigid and most flexible of the mitzvot (rules for living). Perhaps that's why it is the medium for our relationship with God. God embodies that same tension: the ALL POWERFUL RULER, and the feeling I get when I hold a newborn baby. Rebbe Nachman teaches that if we key-in to the "specific moment" we're in, we'll know what aspect of God is being revealed to us, and we'll hear what our heart is telling us to do in order to be fully alive in that moment. All of life is made up of moments. Each one has a message just for me.
Rebbi Eliezer's first opinion saw the way we relate to God as defined by externalities (i.e. you must have set times to focus on God). If it were left up to the individual, we'd shirk our responsibilities and miss our opportunities to connect. But then something changed for him. Suddenly, he felt that we could, indeed, sense those specific moments that are more externally opportune for bringing Godliness into our life. And even if we missed one of them, our internal ability to connect to God will always trump an external difficulty of unideal timing.
Shacharit (morning) - all my dreams and ambitions are laid out in front of me as I wake to a new day of endless possibility. Mincha (afternoon) - pushing through the day, I'm challenged to sustain my connection. Ma'ariv (evening) - darkness. Even when things are bleak, I need to remember that every time I fall, I can rise even higher. The structure is there, three times every day, to remind us of those "external opportunities." They each contain distinct moments that are beckoning to us, challenging us to embrace them as the person we are right now, and to use them to become the person we really want to be.
Jerry Silverman
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Jerry Silverman is a former student of Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He is working in new media, designing and managing media projects. He lives in Riverdale, NY with his wife Sarah and their two children. |