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why do we pray?
We were talking about why people do or don't come to services, and more broadly, why we pray. That is, do we feel directly commanded to pray a certain liturgy three times a day, the way our traditional friends do? Do we feel that this is our only method of connecting with God? If yes (to either), where is everyone? (Mind, some of our traditional friends may ask the same question.) Why does the weeknight minyan so often consist of just my rabbi and me, and what would we be doing otherwise?
My rabbi believes, and I tend to agree, that people, by and large, come to our Friday-evening services for events, not for prayer. They come for a bar mitzvah, or a baby naming, or to hear a particular speaker. There is a dedicated core, people who come nearly every week as part of the community, but at any given service they are the minority.
Contrast this, I said, with our Saturday-morning service -- the real one, not the bar-mitzvah service. We have an established community; it's pretty much the same people every week, and we're there for the service and for each other, and not for external factors like on Friday night. I asserted that people who don't come for events come for community -- maybe also for prayer, but it's the community that dominates. (After all, you can pray at home.)
(Speaking for myself, I am there on Friday nights and weekdays for both prayer and community support. While I will seek out Shabbat services if I'm away from my own synagogue, I'm not diligent about weekdays. I mean, even in town, I don't go every day. If we were to declare our weekday evening service a failure and shut it down, I wouldn't start going elsewhere. But because we have one, I support it. Our Shabbat morning service, on the other hand, is something that really means a lot to me, and if something were to threaten its existence I'd be in for the fight.)
My rabbi believes that people -- by which I think he mainly means modern Reform Jews -- are looking for three things in a prayer experience: intimacy, intensity, and authenticity. Our Shabbat morning service certainly has all three characteristics, but I think that can only happen in a strong community. I don't think you'd get that at the bar-mitzvah service. While our service does get visitors who seem to fit right in to the community (it appears to me -- some may be reading this and I invite you to speak up), it's because there is a strong foundation of an established community. Friday night also has an established community, but it's not large enough to provide intimacy and intensity for everyone.
We ended up talking a little about the question I raised here a while back of how do rabbis pray?. He pointed out the irony -- that those who are most motivated end up being the least able to actually pray in a community. This is another reason our Shabbat morning service is so valuable -- while yes, the rabbi is in charge, the service can practically run itself, and he's much freer to be "just a congregant" there.
just one observation
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As part of our membership, we were asked what weekday(s) would be best for us to attend evening services, and how frequently we could attend. We go every 4th Tuesday. Coincidentally, this was the week. We arrived on time, but services were already in progress. This bothered me, but I'm still not entirely certain why. The services are short - it may be because it made me feel left out or that I missed something.
We are asked to attend weekday services for the people in our community who need a minyan in order to recite kaddish. This works just fine for me. I'm happy to go if for no other reason than that. I do try to reflect on the text and the prayers, but the service is quite quick, so I don't get a lot of reflection time. This doesn't bother me, since I'm really there to support those in the community who need my presence. I know that they will do the same for me, when the time comes.
Saturday services are a little different. I go because I want to hear the parasha and d'var for the week, to reflect on the texts and prayers, and to socialize. Services last about 2.5 hours or so, and we have an oneg for an hour or so.
I can match spoken hebrew to the text well enough that I can find my place in the siddur if I didn't already know where in the service we were. This is not entirely by rote, since I can do the same with the parasha if I know which page it started on. My actual hebrew vocabulary is poor. I can make the sounds, but I'm still working on understanding the words.
For me, there is an aspect of "communal spirituality" in the service that I like. I feel part of a greater whole, and I can be myself at the same time. I go because I want to go. When we're visiting my parents, I try to go to services - I know where the synagogue is, how long it takes to get there, and when the service starts. When we're elsewhere, I try to find the time to read the parasha when we return.
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I acknowledge the value of congregation as community. But on the other hand, I am somewhat intensively reclusive. The group discussions are a horror -- if I am expected to participate, that is.
Re: just one observation
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Thanks. I think I've definitely got something like that going on too, even if it manifests oddly at times. For example, I feel an obligation to the community to show up on Thursday mornings for shacharit, even though I don't go any other weekdays. But I think it's more than just community -- this has become part of my fixed practice of relating to God, so at this point it's also an obligation to God. Maybe someday I'll be more thorough and go every day, but at least keeping that weekly appointment is important. (Ok, more than weekly because there's the evening minyan, Shabbat, etc, but you know what I mean.)
Early on I was told by a friend that if I do something enough times in a row, it becomes an obligation. I don't know if that's actually true, but it feels right. (The context was Shabbat candles; I'd been lighting them for several weeks even though I wasn't really sure if I should be, and he said "you're stuck now, then".)
As part of our membership, we were asked what weekday(s) would be best for us to attend evening services, and how frequently we could attend.
Oh wow. I haven't heard of that approach before, but it sounds like a good idea. Just this morning the folks at breakfast were bemoaning the frequent absence of a minyan; they've asked for people to volunteer for particular nights without as much success as they'd like, but I'll bet they haven't tried putting it right there on the membership application/renewal form. I may pass this idea on to them.
We arrived on time, but services were already in progress. This bothered me, but I'm still not entirely certain why.
Perhaps because they have asked you to make a commitment to them, but they have not kept their commitment to you? Starting early says "we don't value the people who come on time". It says they only care about getting ten people, not about getting the people who want to be there and know the service starts at 7:30 (or whatever). You should thwap them about this if it's a regular occurrence.
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My biggest beef against Gates of Prayer, the current siddur, is that sometimes they have replaced translations with these "creative" readings. I think a siddur always owes the reader the Hebrew and a near-literal translation; you may also include transliteration and other readings if you like, preferably in that order of priority. But don't dump the translation in favor of fluff; people reading the Hebrew must be able to look at what they're saying easily. I find the GOP approach insulting; it says that either I won't care or that I can be fooled into thinking this English is actually related to that Hebrew.
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1) The Mishna in Brochos tells us "do not make your prayer 'keva', but make it 'tachanunim'": that is, do not just do the prayer by rote, in a fixed form, but make it pleading, put yourself into the prayer, make it mean things to yourself, put in additions in places where there is room for it (at the end of Shmoneh Esreh, for example), meditate on the meaning of what you're saying and how it applies to different aspects of your life or different approaches to God and Judaism. One thing I've been thinking about lately when davening the Amidah is the correspondence of the parts of the amidah to the Seven Shepherds:
First bracha (God's greatness): Avraham, finding God.
Second (God's might): Yitzchak, fear of God.
Third (Atah Kadosh): Yaakov, who saw God as Nora Vekadosh (as in our High Holidays version of Kedushah, or the Geniza version).
Central (13 brachot, or 1 in other services): Moshe
Antepenultimate (Retzeh): Aharon, priesthood, Temple service
Penultimate (Modim): David, psalms, thanksgiving
Ultimate (Shalom): Shlomo, perfect king, over Israel in brief peaceful period.
Thanks to R' Reuven Cohn of Newton, MA, for pointing this out.
2) There are places for "creative" services as well. For instance, I generally do the "hakamat matzevah" (unveiling) services in our family. There are several versions, which seem to reflect the inclinations of the various rabbis who put them together. They consiste of various psalms and verses that would speak well of the deceased. I take that variance as license to add and delete parts that reflect on the good attributes of the deceased.
In my most recent version, for my Uncle Max, who was really into forestry and gardening, I put in lots of plant references from Psalms and other places, and gave a little dvar torah about the place of plant life, and of our stewardship of the earth, in Judaism. I left out the stuff about the reward for those who devote themselves to Torah, because Uncle Max was not particularly religious.
So there is a place for creativity, and there is a necessity to vary one's intentions with even the fixed prayer texts.
Come to think of it, I may put this on my own LJ, expanded a bit.
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It's speaking here of your own prayer, not prayer on behalf of the congregation, right? For example, in the chazan's repetition of the Amidah you would expect to find the fixed text. A lot of Reform services (and a fair number of Conservative, in my limited experience) involve the congregation reading together, or the service leader reading on behalf of the congregation. Personal kavanah, of necessity, takes a back seat when that happens (which is why the service must also provide "personal" time).
I don't believe that we are irretrievably wedded to a particular text in personal prayer; in fact, I've argued against that viewpoint. However, at the congregational level there is an expectation that you won't stray too far from the norm. Also, you said "put in additions in places where there is room for it" -- that "where there is room for it" is sometimes violated in favor of just doing it willy-nilly. For example, using Mishkan T'filah you could end up with the congregation together reciting a piece of alternate poetry where you expected "Avot" to be. I'd be bothered by that.
When it's just you and God, though, I think it is important to meditate on the meanings, and if an alternate text helps you do that, go for it.
correspondence of the parts of the amidah to the Seven Shepherds:
Thanks for sharing this! That's interesting, and I need to think more about it.
2) There are places for "creative" services as well.
This is a good point. I hadn't been thinking of things like unveilings, britim (boy does that word look funny), weddings, and so on. A characteristic that these have in common, and that regular weekday or shabbat or holiday davening lacks, is that it's focused on a particular family. When the service is oriented toward a specific group I would expect customization to make it more suitable to that group, like what you did.
one other thing
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Perhaps because they have asked you to make a commitment to them, but they have not kept their commitment to you? Starting early says "we don't value the people who come on time". It says they only care about getting ten people, not about getting the people who want to be there and know the service starts at 7:30 (or whatever). You should thwap them about this if it's a regular occurrence.
This is a good point. Especially since the time for this service was pushed back half an hour to adjust for the later summer sunsets. If it happens next time, I might say something.
Re: just one observation