This Shabbat is also known as Shabbat Nahamu, the Sabbath of comfort, whose name is taken from the Beginning of this week’s Haftarah portion.
1. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
2. Speak comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry to her, that her fighting is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. [Is 40:1-2]
This Shabbat always happens the Shabbat after Tisha B’Av. I quoted a story last week which works as a great metaphor for Tisha B’Av:
R. Ashi made a marriage feast for his son. He saw that the Rabbis were growing very merry, so he brought a cup of white crystal and broke it before them and they became serious. [Brachot 30b-31a]
Our world is shattered on the Ninth of Av, much like the crystal goblet. We are all in pieces. Yet in the theme of comfort there are six little words
Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad!
4. Hear, O Israel; The Lord is our God the Lord is One! [Deut 6:4]
When our souls are still recovering from being in a thousand broken pieces, were are told that God is One. The Socino translation gives a common version that this means one god, a statement of monotheism. In a more mystical and universal bent, I take this as more than that. God is a unity of all things. God is transcendent – God is Life, the Universe and Everything – and then some. Shattering a glass seems to be a loss, yet in the unity of the ONE there is no such thing as loss or gain, just change. It was not a complete catastrophe on the Ninth of Av. Things will regenerate says the prophet Isaiah in the Haftarah.
But what do we do to get to such regeneration? How do we do it? Deuteronomy continues:
5. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6. And these words, which I command you this day, shall be in your heart; 7. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. [Deuteronomy 6:5-8]
This is such a profound idea we must keep it close to us and not only think of it intellectually, but live it. Abraham Joshua Heschel, in Quest for God writes:
He who loves with all his heart with all his soul with all his might does not love symbolically…When a person is appointed honorary president or honorary secretary of an organization he is serving symbolically and is not required to carry out any functions. Yet there are others who actually serve an organization or a cause.
What was it that the prophets sought to achieve? To purge the minds of the notion that God desired symbols. The service of God is an extremely concrete, and extremely real, literal and factual affair. We do not have to employ symbols to make Him understand what we mean. We worship Him not by employing figures of speech but by shaping our actual lives according to His pattern. [Heschel 1954, 132]
The Shema is not a symbolic thing but something that is to be lived, to be done. The Torah requires us to recite these words twice a day in all of our being, heart soul and might. This means we are required to recite them with deep concentration according to the Talmud:
Our Rabbis taught: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Up to this point concentration is required. So says R. Meir. Raba said: The halacha is as stated by R. Meir. [Brachot 13b]
To say the words Hear Oh Israel we must do so with an incredible sense of attention, one the Talmud literally calls Kavvanat Ha- Lev, an intention of the heart. The rabbis spend much of the second chapter of the Talmud Tractate Brachot discussing this issue of Intention. The Mishnah that starts this section reads:
If one was reading in the Torah [the section of the Shema’] when the time for its recital arrived, if he had the intention he has performed his obligation. [Brachot 13a]
This seems like an odd occurrence, how often does one happen to be reading Deuteronomy 6 at the time one is supposed to be praying? But the Mishnah is here making an important distinction. Reading something and giving something attention with intention are two different things according to the rabbis. There are two Hebrew terms used to distinguish between these two: Keva, the regular structure of the prayer, and Kavvanah the intention of prayer. Abraham Joshua Heschel described the problem with these two:
THERE IS a specific difficulty of Jewish prayer. There are laws: how to pray, when to pray, what to pray. There are fixed times, fixed ways, fixed texts. On the other hand, prayer is worship of the heart, the outpouring of the soul, a matter of devotion. Thus, Jewish prayer is guided by two opposite principles: order and outburst, regularity and spontaneity, uniformity and individuality, law and freedom. These principles are the two poles about which Jewish prayer revolves. Since each of the two moves in the opposite direction, equilibrium can be maintained only if both are of equal force, However, the pole of regularity usually proves to be stronger than the pole of spontaneity, and as a result, there is a perpetual danger of prayer becoming a mere habit, a mechanical performance, an exercise in repetitiousness. The fixed pattern and regularity of our services tends to stifle the spontaneity of devotion. Our great problem, therefore, is how not to let the principle of regularity impair the power of devotion. [Heschel 1953]
Prayer need both. Without the regularity and structural support of keva we soon lose energy to pray spontaneously, and stop praying. The uniformity of Jewish prayer, the prayers we find in the prayerbook, is the Keva. The personal passion that we pray with is the kavvanah. The keva of six words is rather simple; it is the kavvanah of those words which the rabbis of the Talmud were insistent concerning the Shema.
Yet even they had problems defining what that intention should be:
Our Rabbis taught: The Shema’ must be recited as it is written. [i.e. in Hebrew] So Rabbi. The Sages, however, say that it may be recited in any language. What is Rabbi's reason? — Scripture says: and they shall be, implying, as they are they shall remain. What is the reason of the Rabbis? — Scripture says ‘hear’, implying, in any language that you understand. [Brachot 13a]
Such debates of course continue about what language the prayers should be written in, and the same two positions remain. The thing about Kavvanah is that it is personal. There is no right answer for a congregation. When the answer becomes a congregational answer or a movement’s answer, it is no longer Kavvanah but Keva. Rabbi and the Sages debate other points as well, such as should things be said out loud or silently. But most interesting is the idea of greeting someone while saying the Shema. One must pray with enough attention that under normal circumstance while reading, you will not greet anyone. If there is a danger or there is the need to greet someone due to the high amount of respect afforded that person, then one may stop reading. But only between paragraphs can some stop and greet someone.
While rabbis could argue at this incessantly, the question remains how do we as individuals find our own sense of Kavvanah? How do we in a sense connect spiritually and with intention? Many of the traditions, such as not only closing your eyes, but shield your eyes with your hand, are traditions which are there as ways of enhancing our own way of finding intention. But there are some things that are more personal. When the kavvanah is right for a person it is something that they never forget.
Shlomo Carlebach in his early years purportedly “raided” Hindu ashrams looking for wayward Jews to return to their birth faith. Often he would sing the Shema in the middle of the ashram, and noted who looked up. Most Jews who leave Judaism for Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, and even the odd label Spiritual but not religious don’t forget the Shema. Indeed many I believe leave because as Heschel pointed out, the Keva got in the way of the kavvanah. They are looking East or elsewhere for the Judaism of the Shema, which was lost in the Keva of the modern synagogue service.
So what is the proper Kavvanah for the Shema? This is one of those posts where I have no answer. I know what works for me, but that might not necessarily work for you. It’s nice, however to share ideas, to find out how someone else thinks about how to do the liberating spontaneous Kavvanah. This works better in discussion, and that discussion I will have in my Torah Study session during Kahal services at Beth Emet in Evanston this Saturday. You are welcome to attend.
No comments:
Post a Comment