My "Demands"

The headline of the ad on the back page of Hamodia Magazine read: Gedolim and Rabbonim Demand: Turn off your cell phones before davening.
Demand!
The first vision that entered my mind was of visiting my grandparents when I was a child and accompanying my grandfather to shul. If someone spoke during Krias HaTorah  the Rov would walk up to the bimah bang his hand loudly and shout at those who were speaking to quiet down. I can picture him standing there, his facing burning with righteous indignation, his large round eyes giving a piercingly angry look at the transgressors. I was certainly terrified to speak there.
But as my thoughts turned to the present and the issue at hand I realized that what troubled me was: Why is the ad focusing on a symptom instead of worrying about the core issue?
I would encourage you to read the introductory section to Rav Kook's Olas R'Iyah on Tefillah. See how he poetically describes over and over again that Tefillah, being an Avodah She'Ba'Lev, is meant to be an expression of one's pining desire for a relationship with Hashem. As we awake in the morning we are wanting to connect to Him before we go out into the world and engage in our mundane pursuits. As we conclude our workday and are returning home, we desperately desire to reconnect with Hashem to share with Him all the emotions and struggles that we contended with during the day. As we are about to go to sleep we once again want to take leave of Him before we lay down to sleep. If people would come to shul desperately wanting to utilize the time to enhance their relationship with Hashem would they be taking out their cell phones in the middle of davening?!
Imagine a husband and wife who love each other who have had to be apart for a period of time. Finally, they are able to arrange to spend a weekend in a hotel together. Will anyone need to demand of them to hang the do-not-disturb sign on their door?
But when davening is a Halachic obligation that one must fulfill, or one is davening out of a sense of needing to do it in order to get what he or she wants, and one is lacking that thirst to connect to Hashem, is there any wonder that the result is people speaking on their cell phones? There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way Tefillah is being taught to children as well as to adults. Here are my "demands" to that end:

• I "demand" that children not be taught to daven until they are old enough to understand what they are saying. (By the way, this is what Chazal teach as well.)
• I "demand" that the emphasis on Tefillah education be moved from a Halachic based model to one that emphasizes and models the meaning of Avodah She'Ba'Lev. Even teaching the meaning of the words of davening, vital as that is, needs to be subordinated to the very foundation of Tefillah itself.
• I "demand" that the concept of Tov me'at b'kavanah, that it is better to cover less ground in the siddur and to do so with a real connection to Hashem, rather than getting through the prescribed daily Tefillah but lacking any relationship with Hashem, be emphasized in all schools and shuls.

As one of the first steps for the Exodus from Egypt, the Torah says that the King of Mitzryaim died and the Children of Israel sighed from the work and they cried out to Hashem. Mitzrayim  is frequently understood to be a metaphor for being in a constricted place. It is only when we remove the constrictions that bind us, when we let out a sigh of relief from the freedom of seeing Tefillah as work, as a chore that must be done, rather than as something we are chalishing  to do, that we will truly be able to cry out to Hashem and be free.

Connecting the Heart

For years I have tried to figure out how to properly daven (pray). Most of those efforts were focused externally. I have purchased countless seforim (books) each one offering its own approach to proper prayer. I read Yesod V'Shoresh HaAvodah 25 years ago or so, and found it to be a very intense workout. I am not sure if I got much more than intensity from it, as well as an attempt to direct my mood during davening according to the dictates of the sefer.

Since that time I have had books from a German perspective, from a Chasidic perspective, from a Lithuanian perspective, anthologies, halachic based works, and Kabbalistic works. Nothing has really done the trick for me long term.

Eventually I learned where my error lay. I was approaching davening with my head and it is meant to be approached by the heart. My pursuit of understanding was rooted in the same type of intellectual endeavors I devoted to Torah study. But to succeed in this arena I need to put my logic on the back burner and move my emotions to the front.

I saw this point brought out beautifully in Yam HaChochmah as he discusses people who invest davening energy into complex Kabbalistic kavanos. He points out that the point of these exercises is to enhance ones experience; to enable their hearts to cleave to God even more. But if they are causing him to lose his heart and engage his brain, he is better off sticking to the simple explanation of the davening.

Although I am not one who is into Kabbalistic Names of God during my davening, this admonition opened me up to realizing the error of my emphasis. Now, if I could only engage my heart properly...