“And the Lord said: Because this people has drawn near,
honoring Me with their mouth and lips
while distancing their heart from Me,
and their fear of Me is commandment of men learned by rote …”
[Yeshayahu 29:13]
In this biting critique, the prophet protests against one of man’s most common missteps made during prayer. In Jewish tradition, the art of prayer carries a paradoxical demand, which by now has resulted in a religious crisis. There is the need to carefully follow the words of the prayer book and never deviate from them, while at the same time praying with great devotion. For most of us it has become almost impossible to follow these texts without it becoming tedious. It may well be true that the earlier Sages had remarkable insight into the human soul and were able to compose words of prayer that could touch each human being in a unique way. Based on that, they determined what combinations of words were best suited to produce the prayer book.
But who can live up to this today? The repetition of words can easily become rote, causing them to eventually lose meaning and inspiration, thereby turning prayer into a mechanical performance. Martin Buber, who was not an observant Jew but was nevertheless a keen reader of the religious mind, called this der fluch der gelaeufigkeit, the curse of fluency.
Indeed this has never been an easy matter, not even for the most pious. All of us frequently succumb to the danger of prayer by rote, which can easily lead to other serious problems. The worshippers may be so arrogantly satisfied with themselves that they completely forget in front of Whom they stand while praying. They no longer speak or listen to God, but rather to themselves. Their prayer becomes a performance in which they themselves are the audience. Other times it may lead to a situation in which the worshipper doesn’t even hear himself since his mind is somewhere else altogether. In that case, there is no audience at all and the prayers end up in no man’s land. It is not uncommon to have a situation where an element of competitiveness sets in and a worshipper tries to outdo his neighbor. This may result in a game in which the objective is who can pray longer (or shorter). One no longer thinks of God but of one’s neighbor. We may call this an atheistic prayer. Some people seem to believe that God is deaf and begin to pray more loudly, almost yelling.
Besides the need for the worshipper to use all available techniques to overcome and fight this problem – careful study of the prayers, meditation and singing, to name a few – it is also the task of the chazzan to save his congregation from these pitfalls. He is to provide a living commentary on the prayer book while leading his congregants through the service. The intonation of his voice, his emotional connection to the prayers, his body language, and even his facial expressions should give new meaning to the services and transport his congregation to a different state of mind and heart. He must try to create a revolution in the souls of his fellow Jews.
It is not only prayer that is often the object of this curse of fluency, but also the reading of the Torah in synagogue. Some ba’alei korei (those who read the Torah before the congregation) have become such fluent readers that they run through the Torah text with great ease, at an amazing pace, and making no mistakes. You get the impression that they are skating over smooth ice while their minds are in a faraway world. Often the ba’al korei’s reading is done without the slightest show of emotion, or connection with the text, and you may sometimes wonder when he will actually fall asleep right on top of the Torah scroll, since he seems to be totally bored.
A Torah text must be rendered as a poem, read with all the intonations and vibrations as indicated in the trope (the traditional chanting of the readings, as notated by special signs or marks in the printed text but absent in the Torah scroll). The ba’al korei, like the chazzan, must totally throw himself into the text and experience it as if he has never read it before. He must feel involved, accompanying Yosef in Pharaoh’s prison and traveling with the Israelites when they find themselves in the desert on their way to Mount Sinai. The Torah text must hit him so that he walks away from it in a state of exaltation, overwhelmed by its message and implication. Only then has he actually read it as it was meant to be read. In fact, the reading should have such an impact on him that it may necessitate his stopping in the middle just to calm down from the emotions evoked by the text, and to ensure that he does not lose consciousness upon being struck by the divinity of its words.
It is the task of every chazzan and ba’al korei to educate himself and discover ways in which he can inspire himself and the congregation so as not to get trapped in this curse of fluency. Praying and Torah reading should be experiences never to be forgotten.
Religious leaders and thinkers today may have to seriously consider shortening the prayers, and even the Torah reading. In our times, when secularity has penetrated every facet of our lives, earlier standards of religious devotion are becoming more and more difficult to maintain. The quality of our prayers may have to take precedence over the quantity, and some of them may no longer work for us. They may be too exalted, or too emotionally distant from the minds and hearts of most worshippers for whom the services are long and often tiresome.
Praying to God can be risky.
We must make sure that we are not guilty of religious plagiarism and imitation. Even of ourselves.
