I had a remarkable experience last week, unlike anything I have ever encountered. It was positive and I hope I never have to repeat it.
On each morning of Rosh Hashanah, I completed my own tefilot together with the early parking-lot minyan, and then I made the rounds of the other tefilah locations that our shul convened. I stopped by the JCC gym. Sunlight filtered through the windows into a familiar room that had been transformed into a prayer-space where forty members of our community could daven and hear Torah reading and shofar. I went into our main shul where our shul office had assigned each of 50 worshippers to his or her own distanced seat. Even though 50 occupied seats in a room that can fit 600 leaves many empty seats, they were spaced out in such a way that – for the first time in six months, the shul looked somewhat full which is how it should look. I then circled the block and came to a townhouse backyard that had been transformed into a bucolic outdoor shul. I then returned to shul, where the second parking lot minyan was well underway and heard a second chazzan and congregation chanting the prayers I had recited just an hour earlier.
It was a beautiful and inspiring morning. I wish there had been some way to record how our community’s prayers burst forth from the walls of our shul and filled adjacent spaces for hour after hour on Rosh Hashanah morning. I imagined the prayers from all of these micro-congregations and the sounds of the shofar blasts from each of these gatherings mingling on their way to heaven.
I loved seeing all of these different minyan spread across our neighborhood. But then I thought about everyone else. Whose prayers were invisible to me? Whose voices did I not hear? I had no way to see those of you who stayed home on Rosh Hashanah and I have no way to see those of you who will be home on Yom Kippur out of concern for your health. And I had no way to listen to the prayers that we had to omit on Rosh Hashanah and I have no way to listen to the prayers we will omit on Yom Kippur in order to accommodate our unique circumstances. . Those of you who have not been in shul in deference to medical advice are my heroes. And so too are those of you who have kept returning this summer to our distanced and minimized shul despite the absence of many of the elements that made shul compelling for you in the past.
This is the best of times and the worst of times for our ability to pray and our capacity to pray and our access to prayer. The worst of times is obvious and does not need to be repeated. But I want to share with you why I think, ultimately, this can be the best of times.
The Torah says we should serve God with all of our hearts. How can one serve God with our hearts, the Talmudic rabbis asked, other than through prayer. Rambam, Maimonides, takes this rabbinic tradition at face value and claims that there is a biblical obligation, a mitzvat aseh, to pray each day. In his understanding, the talmudic rabbis then codified and defined that obligation and the result are the words that we find in the siddurim and machzorim that we use today.
Ramban, Nachmanides, disagreed. The biblical model of prayer is entirely spontaneous. That is, almost exclusively, the form of prayer that we find in Scripture. Instead, he wrote, the Torah only commands us to pray in very specific circumstances:
וְכִֽי־תָבֹ֨אוּ מִלְחָמָ֜ה בְּאַרְצְכֶ֗ם עַל־הַצַּר֙ הַצֹּרֵ֣ר אֶתְכֶ֔ם וַהֲרֵעֹתֶ֖ם בַּחֲצֹצְר֑וֹת וֲנִזְכַּרְתֶּ֗ם לִפְנֵי֙ ה׳ אֱ-לֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם וְנוֹשַׁעְתֶּ֖ם מֵאֹיְבֵיכֶֽם׃
In Numbers 10:9 the Torah says that we should blow teru’ah blasts as we go to battle and in this way God shall remember us and we will be saved וֲנִזְכַּרְתֶּ֗ם לִפְנֵי֙ ה׳ אֱ-לֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם וְנוֹשַׁעְתֶּ֖ם. Ramban extrapolates from this verse and concludes that in times of distress עַל־הַצַּר֙ הַצֹּרֵ֣ר אֶתְכֶ֔ם a foreign enemy or any other danger, there is an obligation to turn to God in prayer. The mitzvah that we perform with a siddur three times each day, is an entirely rabbinic mitzvah.
There is a substantial body of literature analyzing the positions of Rambam and Ramban and the proof that supports each of their positions and the evidence that undermines each of their positions. I doubt you will be surprised to learn that there is compelling evidence on both sides.
But, in the last generation, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik attempted to reconcile the two positions. Fundamentally, he asserted, there is no dispute whatsoever between Rambam and Ramban. Prayer is only a biblical obligation at a time of distress, as Ramban and all of his evidence supports, but Rambam understood that to be a human being, is to experience distress. In Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ reformulation, prayer is “a sustained tutorial in emotional literacy. It is a way of learning how to feel as a Jew living within the world.”
In Yiddish they say, “shver tsu zayn a Yid It’s hard to be a Jew.”Well, it’s also hard to be a human being. Shver tsu zayn a Mentsch. This was always true but we don’t need to be reminded this year. Never before in my life has planning our family Shabbos menu had to take into account the personal risk I would take on by an extra trip to the supermarket. There are members of our community who have not had a steady and reliable source of income in six months. There are members of our community who will be forced to give up their jobs if schools cannot stay open for in-person instruction and there are teachers in our community who fear being with our children for in-person instruction. There are members of our community who have pre-existing conditions that place them at extremely high risk for covid, and there are members of our community at relatively low personal risk but who are the sole caregivers for aging parents.
Being a human being always entails risk. This is an unavoidable element of even the most blessed and privileged life. The rabbinic obligation to recite Shacharit and Mincha and Maariv each day fulfills a biblical mandate to turn to God for solace from the depths of our distress. The very words that we say, our asking God for things that we need, are de-facto acknowledgements that we have needs. We have needs for health, for food and shelter, and also for redemption, for a world of justice and peace – and those needs cannot be met entirely through our own agency.
Rabbi Soloveitchik, teaching and writing in the 1960s returned again and again to remind his audience of the fundamental vulnerability of human existence because he feared that his audience would forget. We can’t forget When we feel distress our obligation to pray is certainly a mitzvah d’oraita, a Torah level mitzvah, which is an obligation but also an opportunity.
We each have personal fears and anxieties and were we to share each and every one I am convinced that we share many of them in common. But I also have worries as someone with a leadership position in this congregation. There has been a lot of angst among rabbis and among the synagogue leadership of all of the North American Jewish denominations surrounding the question of whether or not Jews will return to the synagogue when it becomes safe to do so in large numbers and crowded together as before. I understand why that angst exists and I share it too.
But, I think it’s a secondary question. Public prayer and shuls are a means to an end, and that end is the ability of a human being to learn how to feel as a Jew in the world and to connect to other Jews trying to learn that same thing. We can do this on our own for the time being if we remember to pray.It is so hard to acknowledge that threats exist which we cannot defeat on our own. But it is so rewarding to know that the Torah views this distress as an invitation to turn towards God.
So, in the world of prayer, it has been the best of times and the worst of times. It has been the worst of times for having access to the building that housed our prayers and having recourse to the rousing melodies that stirred our souls for years and years. But God is never limited by a building and access to God is not dependent on any group activity. No matter where you find yourself on Yom Kippur and in the weeks that follow, davven as though you have never prayed before.
In 1942 Moshe Borochowitz found himself in a bunker outside the Polish village of Zelichov where his wife and children and sisters and their children had been murdered. He alone from his family survived. He alone survived from all the Jews of Zelichov. As far as Moshe Borochowitz knew, he was the only Jew left in the world. Just as the shuls and batei medresh of Zelichov had been destroyed, Moshe Borochowitz assumed that all of the shuls and all of the sefarim, all of the Torah scrolls and holy books in the world had been destroyed.
What did he do in the bunker? He wrote a siddur. The world could not exist without a siddur. And so day by day he wrote out by hand, using the same calligraphy used to write Torah scrolls, Moshe Borochowitz wrote a siddur. But he did not only write out the words of the siddur by heart in that bunker. He also wrote the names of his martyred family and neighbors in between the prayers and even in the midst of the prayers. “Ashrei Yoshvei Veitecha – Shmuel ben Yosef….Od Yehallelucha Selah…Rivka bat Moshe Dovid…”
Moshe and his siddur survived the war and the siddur is on display at the Ghetto Fighters Museum in Israel. We have not suffered in the ways that our grandparents’ generation suffered. But their example can give us courage and the grit and inspiration to rise to the lesser, but very real, challenges that we do face. In deep and tragic isolation, Moshe Borochowitz knew that the world needed prayer. And when forced to pray alone, he brought his family and his community with him in his prayer.
Many of us will be forced to pray alone this Yom Kippur, and all of us who attend an in-person minyan will be forced to pray on Yom Kippur without some beloved piyutim that we will omit in the name of time and safety. Weave the missed prayers back into your day. As you care for your children, say their Hebrew names and treat them with compassion in prayerful hope that God will treat us as אב הרחמים a compassionate parent. As you walk home from a distanced and shortened tefilah, sing the words of HaAderet veHa’Emunah, or some other prayer we cannot say together this year.
I look forward to seeing many of you in person over the course of Yom Kippur. I look forward with even greater anticipation to seeing all of you in person, under happy and healthy circumstances as soon as that becomes safe, please God, in 5781. But until then, davven well. Whether you spend the entire day huddled over the machzor, or only say a few prayers in between feeding children and other parenting responsibilities, daven well. וֲנִזְכַּרְתֶּ֗ם לִפְנֵי֙ ה׳ אֱ-לֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם וְנוֹשַׁעְתֶּ֖ם may we all be remembered before the Lord our God and be saved.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 