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This week's question of the week is, I'm finding it very difficult recently to sit through davening. Davening has become more of a routine to me, and minyan is something I quote-unquote check off from my many things to do in a day. How do I inject more meaning into davening? This is an excellent question, and of course, a very, very common one. I want to start off by sharing a story from my Rosh Yeshiva, should have a refuah shalema, Rav Abba Braunspiegel. He always used to tell the boys that we should wish each other a good morning. And he said that very often people complained to him, and they said, it's so hard. to say good morning every single day to another person. Good morning, good morning, good morning. So he said, I have a tip for you boys. You should mean it. If you mean it when you say good morning, it's not a chore. It's an opportunity. It's something that brings a light to another person's day, and the truth is it illuminates yours. The same thing is true when it comes to davening. Part of the reason that davening has become by rote is because we don't mean it. You see, the greatest obstacle in davening today is the sitter. What I mean to say is as follows. When a great actor is playing his role, of course there's a script, but we're not conscious.
of the script. The script is like in the background, so to speak. And the fact is that if you're an okay actor, we can hear you saying the script. It sounds scripted. But if you're a great actor, it's almost like you're sucked into the movie because there's, no script. It's like he's just saying it. And the sitter is the same way. And when a couple comes to marriage counseling, for example, very often a marriage counselor will give them a script. They'll say, it makes me feel blank when you do blank, right? And so what happens is it at first sounds very stilted in the therapist's office as. each spouse says to the other, it makes me feel frustrated when you don't do the dishes, whatever the case is. The point is the script can get in the way of the actual conversation. Now, Hazal, in their infinite wisdom. understood that we were losing connection to our soul and they gave us a sitter in order to, recalibrate the words of our mouths with the words of our souls. However, that sitter is only meant to be a script. How we play the role, how we speak about the script that's happening underneath,
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how we connect to it, that is a din in our intention, our kavanah. The truth is that the word palel means to imagine, as in Yaakov Avinu said to Yosef when he saw him after 22 years, I was not palel that I would ever see you again, which means I would never imagine I would see you again. A chazen doesn't mean a leader. A chazen comes from a lesson of chazon, a visionary. It's important to know these words. A dear friend of mine, Rabbi Josh Grejauer, told over a story. that he was teaching a kid how to daven for his bar mitzvah. He was teaching him how to daven for the bar mitzvah. And as part of the process of teaching him to daven, he, was translating the words of the sitter and the boy said to him i know amain means kong but what does it really mean you see the boy his entire life was looking at amain looking at the other side and it said kong as in short for congregation so he never actually learned what amain meant it's the same thing when it comes to us if we don't know that palel means to imagine if we.
don't know that hazan comes from russian of hazone to envision then what are we doing when we daven generally we're just saying the words and it's very easy to slip back into that so what i would recommend doing is as follows take the opportunity to personalize your tefillah take the opportunity to really think about what it is that you want to say to Hakadosh and then here's the big tip, Wait and listen for an answer. See what comes up in your soul. Sometimes if you're quiet and you listen for an answer, God will give you an answer. And that doesn't mean that you're going to all of a sudden be given a power of Nivua and you're just going to know what happens in the future. But for example, if you say to God, I could really use your help. I feel like there's a lot of pressure and I'm working on the meat of patience. Very often you'll hear something inside of you say, you got this. And that voice, that godly voice that rises up inside makes all the difference when it comes to tefillah. It makes us feel warm, held, and embraced. And once you personalize your tefillah, you reclaim it. You're no longer just saying the script, you're acting out the part.
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