I have a rebbe who prefers to call himself a “chavrusa” who wrote me a critique of this series. It made me realize that the idea I was intending for it wasn’t coming across. Or perhaps, the full depth of his critique didn’t reach me.

You may have noticed I changed the name of this series, retroactively, from “Tefillah Thoughts” to “Tefillah Meanings”. This was in response to what my “chavrusa” wrote me. He was concerned that I am stepping away from davening before G-d to turn it into a mental exercise about thinking about the davening. But the important part of Tefillah is experiential, “It, not about it!” (to borrow R Belkin’s description of YU’s relationship to teaching Torah.)

First, I am not sure how far to take this. After all, this is liturgical prayer, not personal expression in my own words. Anshei Keneses haGedolah, Chazal, the Geonim, etc… gave me words. Things I ought to be expressing. Lehispallel, the usual verb for prayer, is in the reflexive. I have to bring myself to davening, and asses (\פלל\ the gap between where my priorities are and what things our Sages put on the itinerary for me meeting with G-d.

Second, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan taught a meditational approach to tefillah. One that is both experiential and relating to the Divine and yet also mentally focused and complex. A means of internalizing that gap and the means to close it.

But more to the point, I didn’t intend these to be yet more of Micha’s philosophical ponderings using the Siddur as a text to darshen. That project is valid — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt”l called the Siddur “Mesechtes Emunah” because it is an effective manual of our faith. But my point here was not to have you think about davening, but to share what the words, sentences and paragraphs mean to me as I am saying them. In hopes that someone else finds them meaningful.

When I say “Elokei Avraham” I am thinking about my standing before the Creator Who “Wants” me to emulate His example. Elokei Yitzchaq — standing before the Yedid Nefesh. Elokei Yaaqov — I am talking to the One Whose Plan I seek to understand and internalize through His Torah. I ask Him to not only provide the Ge’ulah, but to make His Presence known through it, to “come with” and bring it.

In short, as per the current naming for the section…

I am hoping to share potential ways to see the meanings of the words, at least at some times in your life, on some days. Not thoughts about them.

(Picture credit: Woman at the Wall, Miriam Karp.)