Month: March 2020

Taking a Step Forward after Three Hard Steps Back

It’s a tough time for worldwide Shul goers: no public shiurim, no social contact, no davening with a Tzibbur. However, there is a tremendous opportunity here to take a step to improve our davening. Let me share a practical idea.

Our spiritual purpose in life is to connect to Hashem and to His creations. The collective end point of that process is one world under G-d, with unity, love, peace and happiness for all. We connect to Hashem by thinking about Him, feeling emotionally connected to Him, and doing physical acts of spiritual connection.

Davening contains all three of these components, but the essence of davening is feeling emotionally connected, as we learn in the Gemora in Taanis, “Prayer is the Service of the Heart”. It’s also the hardest component. We can arrive at Shul, say the prayers, and because we are distracted, barely think about Him, much less feel emotionally connected.

The emotional connections that we are seeking to develop during davening are love of Hashem and awe of Hashem. Let’s look at love, which is the feeling of a deep connection. A foundational spiritual thought, and the first of the 6 constant mitzvos, is that there is one G-d who is the cause of all that exists. If we look at the wonderful things in our life, we can appreciate that Hashem caused it, with love for us. We can then start to reciprocally return that love to Him.

Every time we say the word Boruch, which is usually explained as Hashem being the source of blessing, we can appreciate the love that Hashem is showering on us with His gifts in this world. We can then try to direct our love right back at Him. There are 100 opportunities a day to feel this love, and we can try to connect at least once a day, when we say Boruch.

Spiritual growth is a step by step process. Today we have a tremendous opportunity to take one step forward, after having been propelled three hard steps back.

I Miss My Shuls

It’s only been four hours since the proclamation from the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah came out imploring that all public gatherings, including minyanim, be suspended due to the Coronavirus. We have also been directed to not leave the house, unless it’s absolutely necessary. And there is a half-day fast proclaimed for Thursday, March 19th, with the directive that we say the Tefillos for Yom Kippur Kattan (without reciting the 13 middos).

In the preceding weeks, in consultation with leading American Gedolim, we were running sparsely populated safe-distance minyanim, with a slew of precautions. It was definitely a safer space than the supermarket. Now we’ll all be davening Yechidus, with the added pressure to daven with more kavanna in these troublesome times.

I’m missing my two Shuls so much already. The daily contact with the Rav, the amazing people who populate the Shuls, the learning, the growth, the kindness, the unbounded love. Yes, we’ll WhatsApp more, and have Zoomed and Taped Shiurim to close some of the gap, but it’s hard – already.

To make the davening aspect a little easier, it has been suggested by friends to use set times to pace the davening. One consolation is that you can set the times according to your preferences. I’m going to start with the pace of my morning minyan which on March 19th is Brachos at 6:33, Baruch Sheamar at 6:39, Borechu at 6:51 and Shemoneh Esrai at Neitz at 6:59:27.

I miss my Shul, but perhaps Hashem wants us to concentrate more on connecting to Him through private prayer at this time. It’s certainly a worthwhile endeavor.

Making Your Shaloch Manos Count

In his sefer, “Getting to Know Your Soul”, Rav Itamar Schwartz discusses the thirteen faculties of the soul according to Rav Hai Gaon. The 7th of these faculties is Chessed or Kindness. Chessed is the physical act, but the goal of chessed is love. Yet feeling love is not the ultimate goal. It is a means of achieving something deeper – a sense of unity between the one who loves and the beloved.

We know the pasuk teaches “The world is built on kindness”. The simple meaning is that the the world cannot survive unless people help each other, which is certainly true. On a deeper level, we know Hashem created the world in order to bestow goodness on his creations. Thus, when we say that “the world is build on kindness”, we also mean that the world was created in order for the Creator to bestow kindness. On the other hand there is a pasuk that says “On that day, Hashem will be one and His name will be one”, implying that the goal of Creation is the revelation of Hashem’s oneness. Which is the goal – kindness or oneness? In fact, one complements the other. We are taught in sefarim, that Hashem’s ultimate kindness is identical with the revelation of His oneness.

For us, if chessed is only about giving, it’s a precious quality, but not the root of them all. The real power of chessed is its power of unifying the world into one cohesive entity.

On Purim, we have two mitzvos of kindness, Matanos L’evyonim and Shaloch Manos. When we give our Shaloch Manos, we can try to think about the connection we are making, and that it is a facet of the deep connection, which is love. The more we focus on the love inherit in our giving, the more we can do our part in building the unity that will herald the day when “Hashem will be one and His name will be one”. Chag Purim Samayach!