Im off to bed but I'll leave with a moving 'Avinu Malkeinu' (Our Father, Our King):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9pTkqLzeVk
Avinu Malkeinu – Hewbrew Text and English Translation:
Avinu malkeinu sh’ma kolenu. Avinu malkeinu chatanu l’faneychaOur Father our King, hear our voice. Father our King, we have sinned before Thee
Avinu malkeinu chamol aleynu, Ve’al olaleynu vetapeinu
Our Father our King, have compassion for us, and also on our children
Avinu malkeinu Kaleh dever, vecherev vera’av mealeynu
Our Father our King, bring and end to pestilence, war and famine around us
Avinu malkeinu kaleh chol tsar Umastin mealeynu
Our Father our King, bring an end to all trouble and oppression around us.
Avinu malkeinu, Avinu malkeinu, Kat’veinu besefer chayim tovim
Our Father our King, Our Father our King, inscribe us in the book of life
Avinu malkeinu chadesh aleynu, Chadesh aleynu shanah tovah
Our Father our King, renew upon us, renew upon us a good year
Sh’ma kolenu, Sh’ma kolenu , Sh’ma kolenu
Hear our voice, hear our voice, hear our voice
Avinu malkeinu, Avinu malkeinu, Chadesh aleynu shanah tovah
Our Father our King, Our Father our King, renew upon us a good year
Avinu malkeinu, Sh’ma kolenu, Sh’ma kolenu, Sh’ma kolenu
Our Father our King, hear our voice, hear our voice, hear our voice
How about a 'musical interlude'? Here is a version of the prayer 'Sim Shalom' which Rabbi Ginsburg mentioned is one of the concluding prayers of the Amidah...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCob7AlN8rY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z51jTIhK8wM
Bestow peace, goodness and blessing, life, graciousness, kindness and mercy, upon us and upon all Your people Israel. Bless us, our Father, all of us as one, with the light of Your countenance. For by the light of Your countenance You gave us, L-rd our G‑d, the Torah of life and loving-kindness, righteousness, blessing, mercy, life and peace. May it be favorable in Your eyes to bless Your people Israel, at all times and at every moment, with Your peace.
Sim sha-lom to-va uv-ra-cha, cha-yim, chein va-che-sed v'ra-cha-mim, a-lei-nu v'al kol Yis-ra-eil a-me-cha. Ba-r'chei-nu a-vi-nu, ku-la-nu k'e-chad, b'or pa-ne-cha, ki v'or pa-ne-cha na-ta-ta la-nu, A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu, To-rat cha-yim v'a-ha-vat che-sed, utz-da-ka uv-ra-cha v'ra-cha-mim, v'cha-yim v'sha-lom, v'tov b'ei-ne-cha l'va-reich et a-m'cha Yis-ra-eil b'chol eit uv-chol sha-ah bish-lo-me-cha.
http://www.torah.org/advanced/nesivosshalom/howwedaven.html
Nesivos Shalom
How We Daven 1
By Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein
Rambam loses no time at the beginning of Hilchos Tefillah in placing davening in a mitzvah universe of its own. Unlike so many practical, activity-oriented mitzvos, prayer is “avodah,” a Divine “service,” albeit performed in the heart.
Rambam proceeds to dissect this unique mitzvah, but we are puzzled by some of the components. We find it difficult to understand why all of these pieces are so valuable in painting a spiritual canvas of davening. Why is the regularity so important – that we “pray and entreat each day?” Why is it essential that we “relate His praises?” And what is so spiritual and so essential about “asking for our needs…in requests and entreaties?” If and when a person needs something, let him simply go the One who can fill his request? Why do we elevate this practice into the very definition of what prayer is about?
The Ari z”l pithily observed that the holy intentions of davening bring about the union of HKBH and His Shechinah. At the heart of this mystical teaching stands the very down to earth central element of prayer. Ultimately, tefillah is about union. Davening unites us with Hashem. This devekus is so potent, that it spills over to the Upper Worlds, where it brings HKBH and the Shechinah together in a mystical union.
When this realization penetrates, we have little trouble understanding all the items that the Rambam includes. Each one plays a role in bringing us close to Hashem, in leading us to devekus.
First, Rambam tells us that a person should “pray and entreat each day.” He does not mean that we turn to Hashem for our needs – he mentions doing that at a later point. Rather, Rambam tells us that the essence of davening is pouring out our souls, from a heart full of love into the heart of the One we love. A more elevated subcategory of this emotional expression is pouring out our souls specifically about spiritual needs, whether they are born of intense longing for Hashem, or of the pain of feeling distant from Him, removed from the closeness we would like to feel.
Rambam then speaks about declaring Hashem’s praise. This, too, is difficult to grasp at first. Of what value are the praises of puny, uncomprehending Man, who cannot begin to understand the greatness of his Creator? Whatever words he offers actually diminish Hashem’s honor, rather than add to it, because he so completely understates – no matter how hard he tries – Hashem’s greatness. (The gemara [2] actually mocks the person who is lavish in his praise of Hashem: “Have you completely accounted for all His praises?”)
We can find an analogy to the value of declaring His praises in the singing of shirah. Shirah is the expression of the devekus we feel for Hashem. Its source is the longing for Him, the thirst for closeness that cannot be slaked.
Maharal explains even more. Shirah, he says, is appropriate to the Jewish people, because they are described as Hashem’s children. This is turn means that in them we sense the complete dependence of one for the other; we can see in their existence no other source other than the Divine. There is no pretense of being able to make it on their own.
Jews can be described as the “effects” gravitating to their Cause. Maharal takes up this theme to explain the medrash that at the crossing of the Sea, a nursing child turned away from its mother when it saw the Shechinah, and it, too, recited the Song of the Sea. Ordinarily, the bond between baby and mother is that of effect and cause. The child is completely dependent upon and linked to the mother that both gave birth to it and continues to supply it with all of it needs. When the Shechinah manifested itself at the Sea, however, the child discovered its more fundamental Cause, and turned towards it in declaration of that dependence. This thought gives voice to the mode of address of Klal Yisroel to HKBH in singing shirah: a declaration of full and absolute dependence.
The statement of connection and dependence is not limited to joyous declaration through shirah. In truth, it applies to the opposite as well. Feelings of pain and suffering can also be a kind of shirah, in that they too can express profound longing for Hashem. A person can sense Hashem’s love for him in the midst of, or more accurately because of, the suffering he endures. He can sense that Hashem afflicts him only to lovingly guide him in a different direction.
Succinctly put, a person cannot sing any kind of shirah with stunted, suppressed feelings, nor with a closed-up mind and heart. Shirah can only come from emotions whose restraints have loosened, so that they are developed and magnified.
When our emotions are set free in this way, the possibilities for shirah multiply. We then participate in shirah not only through expansiveness, but even in our travail. To be sure, we recite a from of shirah when we properly read from pesukei de-zimrah, the selections of praise in Tehillim in the morning prayer: “Praise Hashem from the heavens. Praise Him in the heights….Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all bright stars…Praise Hashem from the earth, sea giants and all watery depths. Fire and hail, snow and vapor, raging wind fulfilling His word.” [3] There is a form of shirah, however, implicit as well in our heartfelt plea to Him: “Hashem, do not rebuke me in Your anger, nor chastise me in Your rage. Favor me, Hashem, for I am feeble.” [4] “How long, Hashem, will you endlessly forget me? How long will You hide Your face from me?” [5] is part of a section of Tehillim called mizmor, not lamentation. Even “O G-d, the nations have entered into Your inheritance. They have defiled the Sanctuary of Your holiness” [6] is part of a mizmor. For those who composed these lines, all was shirah. Dovid found himself in the wilderness, a far from the precincts of kedushah, and through it expressed his longing for Hashem: “O G-d, You are my G-d. I seek You. My soul thirsts for You. My flesh longs for You.” [7]
On Shabbos, we elevate this mode of davening to a position of exclusivity. We eliminate all the requests and petitions from the middle section of Shemonah Esrei, and instead wax lyical about the specialness of Shabbos! During the week, our prayer combines goals and means of achieving them. We spend ample time expressing our vulnerabilities, our wants and desires, and directly beseech Hashem for solutions. We also seek closeness to Hashem through the shirah of praising Him. On Shabbos, when we taste of the experience of olam habo, we elect only the more elevated of the two modes, and shift entirely to giving voice to our longing and desire for Him. We act similarly on Yom Tov, where the musaf speaks of our longing for Him in the midst of our galus, exiled without the closeness of the Beis Ha- Mikdosh. On the Yamim Noraim, we are even more focused. We spend an enormous amount of time in shirah – all of it effectively connected to one theme: our intense desire to see Hashem’s malchus fully reign over the entire world.
Rambam continues with a third element of tefillah, one we mentioned above in passing. We ask Hashem for all we need. We might think that this is self-centered and unholy. [8] Maharal [9] explains that the opposite is true. By turning to Hashem for every need, large and small, we negate our self-sufficiency and self- importance. Instead, we realize that we are utterly dependent upon Him – and therefore inexorably attached to him, as surely as a tree is attached to the ground.
The daily schedule of tefillah allows us to refine this idea of complete dependence, to experience it with all parts of our being.
In the first moments of consciousness, our basic physicality resists any suggestion of disturbing the sweetness and tranquility of sleep, or lying dormant and inactive. Rising to daven shacharis, we submit ourselves physically to His service.
Sometime at the height of our frenetic activity to wring as much productivity out of our working time as possible, we pause for mincha. In so doing, we attach our monetary interests entirely to Him.
After dark, when we contend with work-induced exhaustion, it is natural that we should want nothing more than calm, solitude, and rest. We disturb the stillness and serenity that we seek in our spirits by interrupting once more, and turning to Hashem at maariv. We thus subjugate our spirits to Him as well.
Between the different daily tefillos, then, we emphasize our complete reliance upon Him, to the point that we hold back none of the different parts of ourselves – physical, monetary, spiritual. In everything we are, we are really only Him. This understanding is what we call Elokus – His serving as the recognized, perceived power behind all of us and everything.
It is natural to look out for ourselves, to satisfy our ordinary wants and desires. Each of us is at the center of our own universe. Nothing is as real to us as our own experience, because everything we think or know or sense exists within our own experience. According to this passage in Maharal, in our quest to look out for ourselves, we come to realize that we are not so real, and not so central. We gradually understand that the ultimate reality, and the only ultimate existence, is Hashem Himself.
Paradoxically, it is the part of prayer that seems most us-centered – our laundry list of needs and wants – that leads us to the conclusion that it is not about us at all.
1. Based on Nesivos Shalom, vol. 1 pgs. 181-185
2. Berachos 33B
3. Tehillim 148
4. Tehillim 6
5. Tehillim 13
6. Tehillim 79:1
7. Tehillim 63:1-2
8. Indeed, people outside the observant community who begin to study traditional Judaism often voice their discomfort with attaching so much spiritual significance to what seems to be a shopping spree in a Heavenly supermarket
9. Nesiv He-Avodah, chap. 3
http://www.torah.org/advanced/nesivosshalom/avodahprimer.html
Nesivos Shalom
Avodah: A Primer 1
The Gemara’s depiction[2] of the oveid Hashem does not give us much cause for celebration. Most of us will have to concede that we haven’t passed the litmus test very often.
Here is what the Gemara says: “‘You will return and see the difference between a righteous person and a wicked person, between one who serves G-d and one who does not serve Him.’ [3]…There is no comparison between one who studies his passage one hundred times, and one who studies his passage one hundred and one times.” Why should there be so much importance attached to the difference between those two numbers? How many of us can say we passed the test?
Upon reflection, however, we realize that the Gemara actually provides a compelling and useful definition. We cannot imagine ourselves getting too excited about the hundred and first round of studying anything at all. The novelty, the sense of discovery would have disappeared long before, leaving mostly tedium in their wake. That is precisely the point. Avodas Hashem means, first and foremost, serving Hashem for the sole purpose of fulfilling His Will, even when unaccompanied by any pleasure or positive feeling. The Gemara provides a hypothetical illustration, regarding someone who might still squeeze some surprise and enjoyment from his one hundredth attempt at a piece of text, but gets none at all from the one that follows. He makes that last attempt only to satisfy His expectation. This makes him an Oveid Hashem; the time before may yield him much reward, but it does not earn him that distinction.
We reach the level of Oveid Hashem only through the expenditure of extraordinary effort in fulfilling His Will, even when unattended by any other satisfaction. We find this most pointedly in regard to Moshe Rabbenu. He is described in ways that are not shared by any other human being: speaking “mouth to mouth…beholding the image of Hashem;” [4] “Never again has there arisen in Israel a prophet like Moshe, whom Hashem had known face to face.” [5]Yet it is neither of these extraordinary descriptions that capture his uniqueness and specialness, but a much simpler one. When summing him up in an economy of words, the Torah calls him simply, “Moshe, the servant of Hashem.” [6] This title underscores his love for Hashem, which allows him to do His bidding in the manner of a faithful servant.
The image is further amplified in a medrash. [7] A king decides to test the devotion of his children and servants. He wishes to distinguish between those who both fear and love him, and those who only fear him, but do not love him. He readies a narrow alley of four amos by four amos. Inside it, he constructs a courtyard of only four tefachim on a side; it in turn contains an extremely narrow doorway. The king’s children and servants stand within the alley and courtyard. He understands that only those who truly love him will push themselves through the doorway, will force themselves through with great exertion, and thereby encounter the king on the other side.
Chazal had this in mind when they declared, “‘I toiled and succeeded’ – believe him; ‘I did not toil and succeeded’ – do not believe him.” [8] A person who attempts to apprehend HKBH using his natural gifts and talents will not succeed, even if those gifts of intelligence and insight usually afford him penetrating insight and understanding. In reaching out across the abyss of incomprehension to HKBH Himself, only toil and effort meet with success.
This, then, is the requisite first step in avodas Hashem: becoming a willing soldier in faithfully manning his assigned, holy station, and working with great effort. He is consistent in his performance, acting with the same alacrity during the dark times of his life as during the bright ones. Even when times seem oppressive to him – whether because he bears the load of weighty yitzrei ra, or because his spirit is so darkened and uninspired, that he feels that his entire facility for spiritual responsiveness has rotted away from within – he does not relent in fulfilling his obligations. He tells himself that if it is the Creator’s Will that he live a spiritually darkened experience, then he will respond to that Will with joy and happiness.
Acquiring this first step has prerequisites of its own. Chief among them is developing utter and complete confidence that victory is his if he wants it. He must know that if he struggles mightily and pushes himself through the narrow doorway, Hashem will help him achieve his goal. He must understand that HKBH does not come after people cunningly. [9] If He challenges a person with extraordinary tests, He also gives that person extraordinary tools and talents to be able to pass those tests. He must keep in mind that all the effort he is required to expend pales in comparison to what he will achieve, and that of all the pleasures in this world, nothing holds a candle to the feeling of being close to Hashem. Nothing could be a more worthwhile and profitable endeavor. There are no close competitors. He must hold to a steady course, never wavering, remembering the image of the menorah, literally monolithic, one continuous piece of pure gold, hammered into shape. Such must be his avodah – continuous and uninterrupted, knowing that any small break will weaken the entire enterprise.
You will come across people who have spent decades in pursuit of ruchniyus, and are bitter and disappointed. Despite many years of trying, their achievement still comes up short. These people are often victims of their own enthusiasm. They have given valiantly of themselves – but skimped on the essential preparation. Working on ruchniyus without first preparing oneself in avodas Hashem simply does not work. It is the equivalent of spending lavishly on a tall building, but doing an inadequate job on the underground foundation. A building will never last without a strong foundation. There is some natural resistance to spending freely on the foundation. No one ever sees it. Such a policy is, of course, foolish and counterproductive. Yet people do the same, jumping into the work of the seemingly more rewarding parts of the pursuit of ruchniyus, without doing due diligence to the very first and most important step – the acquisition of a strong commitment to avodas Hashem.
“Counterproductive” is not too strong a word. Chazal tell us [10] that whosever wisdom exceeds his positive activities, his wisdom will not last. Would it not have been more accurate to talk about someone whose actions don’t keep up with his wisdom? The problem cannot be his excess of knowledge, so much as his deficiency of mitzvos!
Yet this is the point. The Rebbe of Ruzhyn offered the analogy of a fruit. Hashem prepared the skin to protect the delicate tissue. If the tissue bulged and extended outside of the skin, many hazards would compromise its integrity. Wisdom requires the protection of significant mitzvos. Those mitzvos protect the integrity of the wisdom, of Torah learning and spiritual insight. Without protection, the wisdom itself is subject to attack by many waiting spiritual detriments, which can bring great spiritual illness to a person.
It takes a bit of insight to realize how important avodas Hashem is as the ground floor in spiritual progress. It takes some more insight to sustain the task of building that sense of avodah, of accepting the responsibility of fulfilling Hashem’s Will regardless of how much or how little fulfillment it may initially provide us. As in many areas of life, however, there are no shortcuts.
1. Based on Nesivos Shalom, vol. 1, pgs. 235-238
2. Chagigah 9B
3. Malachi 3:18
4. Bamidbar 12:8
5. Devarim 34:10
6. Yehoshuah 1:1
7. Tanna d’vei Eliyahu 16
8. Megillah 6B
9. Avodah Zarah 3A
10. Avos 3:12
Text Copyright © 2009 by Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein and Torah.org