The Edible Torah

I arrived at the kollel, the house of study (literally – this was a house that had been emptied of everything, including interior walls, and re-purposed as a space for married men to come and study Talmud, Torah and other texts throughout the day) at 7:45pm, the usual time. I found one of the few English-Hebrew siddurs and opened it to the section for afternoon prayers and waited expectantly for the rest of the crowd to arrive.

It was all part of my routine since arriving in this neighborhood 4 months earlier. Thursday nights at the kollel: davening (praying) a quick mincha (afternoon) service and then sitting for an hour to study with my “learning partner” (a euphamism for “the incredibly patient young Rabbi who graciously volunteered to shepherd me through the painful first steps of rudimentary  Talmud study”).

7:55, the normal start time for Mincha, came and went but the room was still suspiciously empty. Another 5 minutes and 2 other men arrived, but didn’t have that rushed “I’m late to pray” look I would have expected. I began to suspect I had missed something. Screwing up my courage, I approached one of the guys, a solidly-built man wearing the standard white-shirt-black-suite uniform of the frum Jew, with a thick black beard and a kind face.

“Is Mincha downstairs today?” I asked, hoping I had made the easiest of all possible gaffes.

He paused, and I could see him working hard to understand the context of my question. Which caused my heart to sink further, since this was another clue that I had missed something bigger than just being on the wrong floor.

“Mincha?” he finally answered carefully. “We davened mincha this afternoon.”

I tried to make my voice sound both unperturbed and curious, hoping it wouldn’t betray the embarrassment and frustration that crushed down on me. “Oh really? What time was that?”

“1:30. Mincha is always 1:30 after the High Holidays.” while he spoke with nothing but kindness, my insecurity mentally overlaid a patronizing tone laced with derision.

I thanked the man for the information, choosing not to mention (to yet another person, for what seemed like the hundredth time) that it’s hard to know what “always” is when everything seems to be a “first” for me.

I  went back to the place where I had carefully laid out my siddur.
Closed it up.
Placed it back on the shelf.
Fought the urge to just ditch it all and leave.
Sat with myself and came to grips with the fact that I was going to miss mincha prayers entirely.
Waited patiently for my partner to arrive

What frustrates me most in these moments (and this was not the only example that led to my writing this post. Nor was it even the first. Nor, I’m afraid, will it be the last.) is not the mistake. What’s really hard for me to swallow is the feeling that there are instructions for these things, but I’m somehow not seeing them, or understanding them. I feel like an illiterate foreigner, sitting at a bus stop on a national holiday when service has been cancelled. Making matters worse, there’s a large sign next to me stating that fact but, being a stranger in a strange land, I can’t read the sign. I don’t even know the sign has anything to do with the bus service. So I wait, and wait, and wait. Until someone takes pity and tells me what’s going on.

The condition of being both uneducated and inexperienced, of having to figure out what’s going on based on “sideways clues” (the guy next to me turned a page. I better turn mine too.), of always having to put on the self-effacing humor and “oh golly shucks I messed up again” smile because pounding the table in frustration (which is what I feel like doing) will only make the situation more awkward, the effort of swimming upstream against my own ignorance is exhausting in a way I find hard to even describe.

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This essay has sat on my computer for some time, and I come back to it each time there is a new embarrassment, a new gaffe that leaves me feeling demoralized. I would work at the words like one might pull at the strings in  a knot, solving nothing and, in fact, only making the entire thing tighter and harder to unravel. But I kept thinking that if I could get this post just right, it would help me find a way out of the cycle.

In the end, my solution came from someone much more experienced in these matters. Not a Rabbi, not a Jewish studies professor, not a Hebrew tutor  and not even a been-orthodox-my-whole-life friend. It came from someone who knows a great deal about living with, and even embracing, this state of not-knowing.

As we were standing together one Shabbat morning, I looked up from my prayerbook where I had been painstakingly sounding out yet another prayer I didn’t know, to find my 8-year-old son looking up at me. “Are you done reading that already?” I whispered.

“Nope.” he answered nonchalantly. Then he confided, “I haven’t learned this one. So I pray by watching everyone else.”

There were so many things wrapped up in his small, simple answer. Faith that he would, one day, learn “this one”. Confidence that even if he didn’t learn how to say the words, he still had options. Trust that he could still connect to God in a way that was authentic and valid.

But above all, he was unconcerned about not measuring up. To extend a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln, he intuitively knew that his legs were long enough to reach the ground, and that his soul was tall enough to reach heaven.

I began to study how he experienced the world, and discovered a seemingly endless series of things he didn’t know, which he dealt with daily. I saw the way faith and trust and a sublime acceptance of the each moment -asking it to be nothing more or less than what it was – how all of that was a natural part of his responses. I realized that, in growing up and getting all sorts of amazing skills and tricks and knowledge, I lost the very thing that allowed me to acquire all those things in the first place.

That disconnect, more than anything, was my actual problem. I’m now working to fix this deficiency.

The other day, I found myself in that situation again. Asked to open the ark (twice – once when the Torah came out and again when it was being returned) I found that I had no idea about the mechanics of the job.

I didn’t know when to go up. I didn’t know when to open the doors. The leader waited (it seemed to me) until the last possible second to come up and actually get the Torah, and I stood in pure terror wondering if I was supposed to bring it to him. Instead of escorting the Torah around the entire sanctuary, I (practically) ran back to my seat and stayed there (only to be immediately informed by a well-meaning elder of the congregation of my gaff). Later, when the Torah was put back, I closed the ark too early.

But you know what?

A friend told me when to go up. The president of the congregation (who sits up front) clued me when open the ark. The gabbai, seeing my panicked expression, gave me the “it’s ok” sign so I knew to sit tight and wait for the leader. And when I started to close the ark at the end, the leader was up there and explained I was too early.  I re-opened it, and we kept going.

We all make mistakes, and as much as my lack of functional knowledge frustrates me, it’s also to be expected. It is understandable for someone in my position. It is forgiven by everyone in this community, many of whom have stood where I stand. If we are brave enough to start at all, we will all have to start somewhere, and some-when for that matter. And after that moment of beginning, it’s a sure thing that there will be mistakes. The scientific term for this, I believe, is “learning”.

I got back to my seat after closing the ark (this time at the correct point in the service). My son was waiting to shake my hand. It was clear that, as far as he was concerned, it had all gone off without a hitch.

And he was right.

In a traditional Yom Kippur service, there are a few basic sections:

• Shakarit, or the morning service, which runs non-stop from around 8:30am until around 2:00pm (or longer. I heard about services that went until 3:30).
• Mincha, or the afternoon service, which starts at about 4:30pm or 5:00 and goes until 6:30-ish.
• Neilah, literally “closing the gate”, or the official end of Yom Kippur, which goes until about 7:00 or so
• Ma’ariv, or the evening service, which runs until the end of the fast

(if you want more details, this is a great place to start)

Neilah is the culmination of the day, the emotional and liturgical apex. The blessings are louder, longer, and stronger. As the people in the room sense the gates of heaven are closing, their declarations – the same ones they muttered or whispered at 9am – are now fervent shouts, as if volume will increase the velocity of their prayer and speed it through the gap before the doors completely shut.

The final kaddish arrives with the force of a tsunami, an unstoppable wave that overwhelms everyone in the room, washing over them even as they cry out “Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam u-l’almei almaya!!!” (“May His great name be praised to all eternity”). The energy in the room is frenzied in a way I’ve never seen it before. If I can’t quite bring myself to believe that we are all angels, at least I am convinced that everyone in the room thinks they are angels, if only for this moment in time. And then…

It’s a room full of people. Everyone is taking off their tallit (one of the only days of the year when it’s worn after morning services), switching out High Holiday machzors for regular siddurs, shuffling pages to get to the regular evening service.

The change in the room is, for me, disorienting. And disconcerting. Where is the fervor that was there seconds before? Where is the unabashed emotion? The sense that people were completely open, willing to bare their soul for the world (and heaven) to see?

Later that night, I wrote in my journal:

“In the seconds between Neila and Mincha, along with the rustle of tallitot sliding off shoulders, you could hear the flutter of the wings as The Shechinah departed from our midst.”

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how – if you are going to only going to attend shul infrequently – Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are possibly the two worst choices for your visits (Twice a Year).

This morning, the day after what is arguably the longest and hardest day of the year to be Jewish, I realized that the Rabbis of old weren’t dumb. They saw that after the prayer marathon that is Yom Kippur, we might be so drained, so completely put-off, that we’d be tempted to skip it all together.

So they organized things so that  it’s one of the shortest services of the year. Entire chunks of the service – even things we normally say – are omitted during this break between Yom Kippur and Sukkot. It’s a service which is over in the blink of an eye, especially as compared to the previous days’ marathon.

The brevity left me disoriented. It left me almost hungry for more.

It made me wish, once again, that everyone who left services yesterday muttering “Thank goodness I’m not coming back to that for another year” would have gotten their dates mixed up by just 24 hours, so they could experience the contrast for themselves.

I recently posted about my frustrations regarding my Hebrew reading skills, how my shortcomings were thrown into sharp relief because of the group of guys I pray with, and how it frustrated me even as I realized I am improving.

In the spirit of this month of forgiveness, I decided that today, I’m going to forgive myself and give myself the room to grow.

I recently read a quote by someone (I can’t remember who. If it was you, please comment below!) that was a nice variation of the popular

“Don’t let ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘good’ “

It went something like this:

“Don’t let the fact that you aren’t ‘good’ yet (in fact, you might really stink) blind you from the reality that you are getting better. Sometimes, that’s even better than magically being ‘good’ because it means you are becoming ’good’.

Courtesy of ufoadministration.blogspot.com

Most weekday mornings I hang out with a great bunch of guys. They are down to earth, come-as-you-are, non-judgemental and yet also passionate about and committed to their Judaism. They appreciate differences. They accept people for where they are in the Jewish spectrum.

They also pray like a heavy machinery auctioneer hopped up on a combination of Jolt Cola and 4 shots of triple-espresso.

By contrast (at least at this stage of my Jewish growth), my prayer is thoughtful and heartfelt. It is also halting, clumsy and slow.

Praying with these guys is an exercise in creative editing. I’ve learned that there are parts of the service I can skip. I’ve been told I can meditate on the theme of each bracha with intense kavannah, sending the avodah (work) of my heart heavenward like the sacrifices of old. And of course God speaks English, so I shouldn’t feel ashamed to do so as well.

Are you buying any of this? Cause I’m not. In real life, those sincerely-offered instructions equate to some prayers only half-said (because I have to jump ahead lest I become irrevocably lost), some prayed in jarringly-out-of-sync English, and moments when my “mediating on the theme” leaves me feel disconnected from the group, from myself and from God.

When you are surrounded by people all praying with confidence, fluency and familiarity  – in Hebrew – it’s very very (did I mention “VERY”?) frustrating to be doing anything but.

I confided this to a Rabbi recently. “God knows what’s in your heart,” came the answer. “and no matter how insufficient you feel it is, you have to believe that it is cherished for what it is, coming from the person you are today.”

His words were less than comforting. I feel – quite acutely at times – that I am standing before my Creator, pouring out the best I have to offer, and it is an incomprehensible babble of half-uttered thoughts and disconnected ideas. I feel that God has asked for the intricate tapestry of my prayers, and I’ve shown up with a potholder.

I get it. I honestly do. My kids all made potholders at various grades in school (it must be part of the art curriculum). Each one is uniquely cute, funny and adorable. They were given with great ceremony and enthusiasm. They are cherished.

They are also useless, even as potholders. They are knotted, uneven, garish and full of holes. Very much, I fear, like my prayers.

My wife likes to knit. She makes  intricate, useful and extremely gorgeous things. We’re talking people-on-the-street-offer-$200-for-the-sweater-off-my-back kind of gorgeous. I want my prayers to be like that.

I know that prayer – like life – is a process. It’s not a single product nor is it a race or a contest. I know that I’ll look back in a month or even just a week and realize that I have, in fact, improved. In my less whiny moments I recognize that it’s happened already, and (God willing) will continue.

I also have had chances to glimpse the journey of others, and take comfort in the knowledge that they weren’t simply born with a talent I lacked. Like me, they started learning on a particular day in their life, and that learning continued.

The other day, as we continued the (seemingly endless) work of unpacking ourselves into the new house, my wife pulled out a ratty, pinkish, mis-shapen square.

“It’s a potholder.” she explained. “I made it the day Grandma Hetti taught how me to knit.”

There may be hope for me yet.