class: the art and spirit of prayer leading

[cellio]

My afternoon class at NHC was "the art and spirit of prayer leading", taught by Julia Appel, a rabbinic student at Hebrew College. (I think she just finished her first year, so I hadn't met her before.) The class involved text study and discussion; this was not, as they say, a lab class.

I missed the first session but scored a copy of the handout. The first topic was "what is the purpose of prayer?", with sources ranging from Julius Greenstone (who?) (it's for you, not God) to Mordechai Kaplan (yearning, praise, affirmation is the goal) to Yeshayahu Leibowitz (it's about accepting the yoke of the commandments). This must have led to some interesting and lively discussion in this group of a dozen students, given what I saw of them in the days to follow.

Day two was "creating koved rosh", which is about focus, directing one's heart, and generally getting into that space that makes you a suitable agent of the congregation. I took from this class an excellent teaching that has been following me around to services since then:

Consider a triangle, with the corners representing God, the congregation (tzibbur), and the prayer leader (shaliach tzibbur). Which line in that triangle do we usually talk about? Bringing the congregation closer to God. And which is the one line in that triangle that we aren't connected to? Yeah, that. We think that's our job, but we can't do anything about it, really. Instead, she said, consider the indirect effects of working on our own relationships with God on the one hand and the congregation on the other. If we get that right, maybe that helps with the third line indirectly.

Recurring theme: what are you trying to do? If you don't know that, you're not ready to lead a service. And it's not always a "duh" response; sometimes you're trying to create an enriching spiritual experience, and sometimes you're trying to get through a reasonable weekday shacharit before people have to leave for work. Ask the question and know your answer. (Tied into this, and one of the lines on the triangle: what does the congregation need today? Did you notice?)

Texts for day two were assorted mishna and gemara from B'rachot (not surprising). There was a small-group exercise where we each took a problematic service scenario and tried to work through ways to address the issues. I wish we'd spent a little more time in the large group sharing what we'd come up with and, more importantly, why and how.

Day three was on balancing keva (the fixed liturgy) and kavanah (intentionality). We started with texts about keva -- gemara in B'rachot again on handling mistakes (when do you have to go back how far when you mess up?) and from Leibowitz on prayer as pure obligation. The first (B'rahcot 29b) says that if you notice the omission fairly soon you go back to right before where it should have been and then go on, but if you get to the end of the whole prayer and only then notice, you start over. Why the difference? My own thought: if you get all the way to the end before you notice, you were probably on auto-pilot the whole time, so it's all called into question, so you should go back and try again. I think that's what the rabbis are saying here.

On the kavanah side we had more in B'rachot and a reading by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the latter saying that we must set aside time each day for a private conversation with God -- all kavanah here, essentially. (Key term: "hitbodedut".) According to Rebbe Nachman, this is the pinacle. My thought: note that he doesn't say that this fixed time need occur during the liturgy; his kavanah is not at all inconsistent with the keva called for by others.

Day four was "the spirituality of being a shaliach tzibbur", and focused mainly on a longer reading from Rebbe Nachman that we didn't completely get through. I'm still digesting that, so don't have much to say yet. Maybe later.

This was, I think, one of the smaller classes (and one of the few that were available for transfer at all when I asked). I think the small group was an advantage, though, and I hope the folks evaluating classes don't assume that smaller = less worthy of future offerings. This would have been a lot harder with twenty people in the room.

Comments

[kyleri]

Consider a triangle...

This is _awesome_. Mind if I swipe it for a little written meditation of my own? Or at least to point it out to folks...

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

Consider a triangle, with the corners representing God, the congregation (tzibbur), and the prayer leader (shaliach tzibbur). Which line in that triangle do we usually talk about? Bringing the congregation closer to God. And which is the one line in that triangle that we aren't connected to? Yeah, that. We think that's our job, but we can't do anything about it, really. Instead, she said, consider the indirect effects of working on our own relationships with God on the one hand and the congregation on the other. If we get that right, maybe that helps with the third line indirectly.

Very thought-provoking. May I quote this elsewhere? It has relevance to leadership in any religion, I think. (I will attribute, of course.)