A friend who is a rabbinical student sent me this quote from the Sefer Hasidim - and I feel seen!
"There were once two synagogues in a city and the hakham went . . sometimes to one and sometimes to the other. Then he prayed only in the smaller one. They asked him, “Why have you left the larger synagogue where both the many and the prominent pray?” He replied, 'In the large synagogue they hasten [the recitation of] the morning blessings and the Psalms ... but not so in the smaller synagogue. There they recite the morning blessings and Psalms slowly and I gain in this that, while I recite [the Psalm] slowly, I count on my fingers how many alephs there are [in each Psalm], how many bets, and similarly for each letter, and upon my return home I attempt to find a reason for each sum.'"
I was raised in a non-liturgical evangelical Christian tradition without liturgy, other than hymns. I even heard a Pentecostal classmate in high school say that the fact that there are two versions of the Lord's Prayer in different gospels is a sign that we aren't supposed to have written-out prayers, but should only pray extemporaneously from the heart.
However, my prayer personality is such that I need liturgy, fixed words, to be able to pray - for me, the extemporaneous prayer can only arise after praying the liturgy. And I find that praying the same liturgical texts day after day and week after week, getting to know them intimately, deepens my experience of prayer. Getting to know the prayer on the level of the letters makes complete sense to me. I love finding biblical passages from which phrases or even words from the liturgy are taken (and the Jewish liturgy is chock-full of them!) - it deepens my exeprience of the liturgy. I haven't necessarily gotten to the point of counting letters and learning the meanings - although gematria I have learned about particular prayers is illuminating for me and I have incorporated it into how I pray! - but maybe I will.
I love this passage so much!
No comments:
Post a Comment