An old Jewish man is riding the train in Manhattan one morning and sees a young Jew standing near him listening to his ipod. His eyes are closed and he's mouthing words just slightly. After a while the younger man opens his eyes and the older man asks him what he’s singing along with. "Actually, I’m not singing, I was davening shacharis (the morning prayer service). I got nine of my friends together and we recorded ourselves doing the service, so now I can always have a minyan of voices with me wherever I go."
A minyan is the mandatory minimum of 10 required to recite certain services of the Jewish liturgy. If you can’t get 10 people together to pray, you can’t say those prayers. The clever young man seemed to feel he had used his modern technology to overcome obstacles of modern living that make it increasingly difficult to gather a minyan for daily prayers, e.g. differing work schedules, trouble stopping at the synagogue before the morning commute, etc. He believed his recorded service provided the perfect take-along solution, the portable devotional.
I suppose in some ways it’s better than giving up on prayer altogether, but he kinda missed the point. Judaism emphasizes the significance of communal prayer out of a recognition of the interconnectedness of the people, and the importance of preserving it. We are commanded to say certain prayers at certain times, but forbidden to do so in isolation, and in this way, HaShem compels us to remain part of our community. It’s actually a lot easier to pray alone. We can achieve better concentration and move through prayers at our own pace, including any additional petitions or devotions we wish.
But HaShem's requirement of a minyan reminds us that the connection to Him is achieved, in part, through our connection to other people. The sages tell us that whenever 10 pray together in shul the Shechinah is present. (Interesting, that, because the Shechinah, or Divine indwelling, is regarded as the female aspect of God, but women, of course, were not to be counted in a minyan. You could have 100 chicks, but if there were only nine men, you couldn’t do the prayers. Go figure.)
We cannot flourish as Jews in isolation. For Rosh Hashanah, I always get ahead of myself and start thinking about the confessional of Yom Kippur, ten days away. Most of the confessional liturgy is written in the first person, plural. "For the sin WE have sinned against you, forgive us, pardon us…" There's a collective notion of responsibility that makes all sins easier to bear.
Similarly, all hopes are bolstered by the similar hopes of others. In the most logical way, hope precedes intention. It must. And action without intention can’t really amount to much, which is why, I suppose, depressed people become more and more ineffective until they give up doing anything. They're hopeless. I've never been a big fan of hope. It always seems kind of pollyannish to me, but when viewed in this light, it makes much better sense.
So we get a fresh start at Rosh Hashana. We seek to be better people, and if our actions are infused with spiritual intention, with kavanah, we stand a much better chance of delivering on our own hopes and intentions.
That’s my sermon to myself. Get off the computer. Go to shul. Be with your people. Pray in community with other Jews, and quit stalking Jesus.
Happy New Year.
I thought Jesus was stalking you...?
Posted by: Lara at September 23, 2006 7:54 PM
Yes, I suppose there's something to that. I mean, the dreams weren't something I solicited, by any means. I don't know what their significance was.
Mustard. Jesus likes mustard.
And like any nice Jewish boy, he probably puts it with corned beef on rye.
I guess the concept of mustard seems antithetical to the paradigm of awakening that seems to be the norm with these things. For most people I know, they get "the moment" and then they go about doing the mustard afterwards, putting some effort into investigating what it is their moment brought them to.