What does it mean to take care?

An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Ki Teitze)

This week’s pre-Shabbat post returns to Perek 2.

There is no piece of advice that is given—or ignored—more frequently than the injunction: “Take care!”   From our earliest days as children, we hear these words from our parents and elders. When we grow up, the refrain is taken up by our partners and peers, and when we grow old we receive them from our children. It doesn’t matter what we are doing: going out in the rain, playing in the park, climbing a ladder, lifting a suitcase or descending the stairs. We are always told: “Be careful! Take care!” The most annoying thing about this instruction is that it usually comes without the information we really need to know about what care needs to be taken and how we should take it.

Given the prevalence of this unwanted advice, it is almost a disappointment to read Avot 2:18, where Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel teaches three lessons. The first two of them are clearly connected, since both address prayer, and they are at first sight no more than the usual caution to take care:

הֱוֵי זָהִיר בִּקְרִיאַת שְׁמַע וּבִתְפִלָּה. וּכְשֶׁאַתָּה מִתְפַּלֵּל, אַל תַּֽעַשׂ תְּפִלָּתְךָ קְבַע, אֶלָּא רַחֲמִים וְתַחֲנוּנִים לִפְנֵי הַמָּקוֹם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם הוּא, אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם וְרַב חֶֽסֶד, וְנִחָם עַל הָרָעָה

Be zahir (careful) in reciting the Shema and in tefillah (prayer). When you do pray, do not make your prayers routine, but [pleas for] mercy and supplication before the Almighty, as it says: “For He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in lovingkindness, and He has a gentle touch with the bad…”

Why does Rabbi Shimon take the trouble to tell us to be careful when we say Shema and when we pray? Is it not obvious that we should do so? And why should we take the trouble to study and internalise this message? If we are seriously committed to our religious practice, aren’t we doing it anyway? And, if we are not, this advice is hardly going to change us.

Rabbenu Yonah, the Bartenura and the commentary ascribed to Rashi explain that this mishnah addresses the need to say Shema at the right time. But since this is in any event a matter of halachah, Jewish law, we might wonder why it might be necessary to add a Mishnaic warning to take care. Perhaps sensing this, the Me’iri posits that the reason for taking care in reciting Shema and prayer is that it enhances one’s recognition of one’s Creator and one’s ability to become close to Him. The Chida (Ahavah beTa’anugim) sees it as being literally a wake-up call, since Shema and tefillah are the first two big events we have to deal with after we have dragged ourselves sluggishly out of bed. Another possibililty is that this mishnah is a corrective, since a person might be tempted to cut corners in saying Shema and tefillah in order to leave more time to learn Torah (R’ Chaim Pelagi, Einei Kol Chai; R’ Dovid Pardo, Shoshanim LeDavid).

The Shema and prayer aren’t by any means the only things our Sages tell us to take care over. For example, in the fourth perek Rabbi Yehudah tells us (Avot 4:16) to be zahir in our learning. There’s also another we find for being careful: in Avot 1:1 the Men of the Great Assembly warn us to be matunim badin (painstakingly careful in judgement). Again, I would have assumed that it was a no-brainer that judges should take care in deciding the cases before them, so why should there be any need for a warning?

I sometimes wonder if there isn’t some connection between these two mishnayot. Judges are told to be matunim, while people reciting Shema or praying are told to be zahir. Why aren’t judges told to be zehirim and why aren’t we supposed to be matunim?

With judges there is an extra element of taking care. This ideally involves hearing and discussing a case and then taking a break, sleeping on one’s reason for reaching a conclusion and then reassessing it afresh. That is the highest form of taking care since it not only demands a careful rethink but also allows a judge’s subconscious thoughts and perspectives to come to the forefront of his mind.  We want our judges to be matunim, to leave that space for mature reflection, rather than for them to be merely zehirim.

But when we recite Shema or pray, our care-taking is of a different order. Yes, we must be zehirim, we must say the words correctly, at the due time and with the necessary degree of thought and intention—but we may not be matunim and take a break in order to consider our performance of these commandments in greater depth.  We must complete the task of recitation or prayer in a single session,

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Middot at war 3: how do you pray?

“There are no atheists in foxholes” is a famous aphorism that has often been cited as a proposition that, at times of extreme fear or stress, even a person who does not believe in God in any conventional sense will find himself invoking the aid of a Higher Power.  The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are a fighting force comprised of those who are deeply pious, those who are conventionally religious and those who have no commitment to any religion at all. We can scarcely imagine what goes on in the minds of its combatants when they are in action. Whether they pray, what they pray and what thoughts lie in their hearts are not for us to inquire.

Many of those of us who remain at home are also praying. We pray for the wellbeing of friends and family at the front, for their safe return, for the full recovery of those injured and for the comfort of those bereaved.

At Avot 2:18 Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel opens with two prayer-related teachings:

הֱוֵי זָהִיר בִּקְרִיאַת שְׁמַע וּבִתְפִלָּה. וּכְשֶׁאַתָּה מִתְפַּלֵּל, אַל תַּֽעַשׂ תְּפִלָּתְךָ קְבַע, אֶלָּא רַחֲמִים וְתַחֲנוּנִים לִפְנֵי הַמָּקוֹם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם הוּא, אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם וְרַב חֶֽסֶד, וְנִחָם עַל הָרָעָה

[Translation] Be careful when you recite the Shema and with prayer. When you pray, do not make your prayers routine, but rather [an entreaty for] mercy and a supplication before the Almighty, as it states (Joel 2:13): ``For He is benevolent and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, and relenting of the evil decree'' …

This is the only explicit reference to prayer in the whole tractate of Avot. The concept of prayer has however been read into various other contexts. Thus in Avot 1:2, avodah (“service”)—the usual word for the bringing of offerings to the Temple—is sometimes applied to prayer, the form of service we adopted when the bringing of sacrifices was no longer feasible (as Rambam explains in the first perek of Hilchot Tefillah). Later, in Avot 6:6, we see a list of 48 means of acquiring Torah wisdom, but this list does not mention prayer either. 

At times of war many people, regardless of their religious, philosophical or political opinions, experience an urge to pray to a higher authority of one sort or another. For the observant practising Jew there is a standard set of prayers that cover, among other things, God’s responsibility for delivering salvation, justice and peace as well as relief from illness, pain and suffering. These standard prayers can be, and often are, augmented by additional prayers which may be quite spontaneous.

Using a regular formula for daily prayer offers the advantage of familiarity and fluency: you don’t have to ponder about what to say and you are less likely to stumble over the words when you recite it. But familiarity has a downside too: it’s easy to switch one’s focus from prayer to other thoughts. Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel warns of this but there is no easy way to prevent it. We humans are created with minds that effortlessly associate one idea with another and, once the chain reaction begins, it can be difficult to end.

Those of us who use a regular prayer formula may have another problem to face. Sometimes our hearts and minds can be so preoccupied with our objective that we do not even notice when we reach the relevant part of our template and sail straight past it. This has happened to me on numerous occasions, particularly when recalling or re-living an event for which I was grateful so vividly that I did not notice that I had prayed my way through the prayer of gratitude, Modim anachnu lach. To my embarrassment I have had similar experiences when praying for the well-being or speedy recovery of family and friends.

The Kozhnitzer Maggid (Avot Yisrael) alludes to the difficulty of focusing on one’s prayer when one’s mind is full of other things when he explains the final mishnah in the fifth perek (5:26). There, Ben He He teaches “According to the effort [or ‘pain’, ‘distress’], so is the reward”. For him, the effort comes from the task of keeping one’s mind clear when praying when so many thoughts and ideas persist in trying to enter it.

None of us can bend God to our will, and the words of our prayers—whether “set piece” entreaties or spontaneous utterances from the heart—are not a process for magically getting what we want. However, if we do keep our mind on our prayers we can at least say that we have truly recognized that there are things we want that we cannot achieve for or by ourselves, and that we concede that there exists a greater power in our lives than even our own.

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Body, soul and a torn-up prayer

In Gemara Berachot (5b) we learn a principle from Abba Binyamin that had obvious practical relevance in times when places of prayer were located outside areas of Jewish residence and there were neither street lights nor police patrols:

When two people enter [a synagogue] to pray, and one of them finishes his prayer first and does not wait for the other but leaves, his prayer is torn up in his face.

Since I am usually one of the last to finish my communal prayers, this teaching means a lot to me. I can imagine a person struggling to keep his mind on his prayer while resisting the constant urge to speed up and make sure he has someone else to walk home with, mindful of the possible dangers of walking home alone.

The Kerem Chemed of Rabbi Yehudah Rabinovitz brings an entirely different explanation of this Gemara, which he heard from Rabbi Yitzchak Yaakov Weiss ztz”l.

Abba Binyamin’s teaching is by way of allegory. The two “people” who go off to pray together are really a person’s body and soul (effectively the mind). Ideally, body and mind should be united in the act of prayer. However, sometimes one’s mind goes home first, as it were, leaving the body to carry on praying without thought or proper attention. Prayer such as this is of no great value to the person praying and may as well be torn up. There is a popular rhyming jingle that reflects this explanation: tefillah belo kavanah keguf beli neshamah (“prayer without meaning is like a body without a soul”).

So how does one avoid this danger? Once again we cite Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel’s teaching at Avot 2:18: “don’t make your prayer fixed [i.e. routine or without feeling], but rather [think about] mercy and supplication”.

Incidentally, situations in which the mind leaves one’s prayer while the body is still engaged in it crop up surprisingly often. One is at weddings, when the maariv prayer has been called for after dinner, but the band strikes up with a thumpingly loud dance number right in the middle of one’s silent meditations. Another is when an impromptu minyan gets together to pray during the half-time interval of a particularly exciting football match. One is often faced with a choice between not praying at all, waiting to pray at a later and more propitious time (if there is one), or praying with a quorum but recognizing that one faces an uphill struggle to do much more than articulate the words.

 

Coming adrift on the Sea of Prayer

While the most widely discussed bits of Pirkei Avot address social (and antisocial) relations between humans, its content extends beyond the social realm and considers the individual’s relationship with God.  One teaching from Avot that touches on this very personal area is brought in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel, who opens his mishnah (Avot 2:18) with this advice:

Be meticulous in reciting the Shema and in prayer. And when you do pray, do not make your prayers keva (routine, by rote), but pleas for mercy and supplications before God…

This is an unexceptional and uncontroversial teaching, and discussion of it tends to stress the importance of understanding one’s words and saying them in the knowledge that one is addressing an omnipotent and ineffable entity who knows one’s every thoughts and upon whom one’s very existence depends. However important the text of the Shema and the template of the daily prayers may be, and however great might be the cosmic impact of their recitation even by rote, this teaching in Avot reminds us that we are supposed to be seeking to create and development a meaningful relationship with God – something best done with sincerity and deep comprehension.

I have recently been pondering the meaning of Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel’s words in the context of my own personal situation.

Last week I underwent surgery which, thank God, was successful, but which entails a long and painful period of convalescence. To this end, I have been prescribed a course of painkillers which include a powerful opioid drug. The efficacy of this drug in providing pain relief is beyond doubt, but it has a number of side effects. Thus, while faced with the prospect of daily prayer and recitation of the Shema, I find myself contending with spells of sudden drowsiness and a marked inability to concentrate reliably on what I am doing.

This morning, waking pain-free and with what felt like a clear mind, I attempted my regular morning prayers. This attempt took over an hour and a quarter, in the course of which I found that I had involuntarily lapsed into sleep three times. Even when awake, I found that I was not fully in control of my thoughts. Vivid images flashed through my mind, a good example being an unexpected recall of a lavishly illustrated colour picture of the splitting of the Reed Sea that I had seen many years ago in a children’s book, and when I recited ‘compilation’ passages in which verses from various sources are gathered together, I was connecting some of those verses with the passages in Tanach from which they originated.

My situation might be described like this: I felt as if I was sailing on a sea of prayer, trying to row back towards the fixed text of the Shema, its attendant blessings and the template of the Amidah, while all the time my mind was pulling me out to sea. I wanted the security of that which was keva, since that was the firm basis of my daily audition with God, but I had to recognise the power of the mind to pull away from it and to celebrate the jumble of images, words and experiences that together make me what I am.

I wonder if any members of this group have had similar experiences. If so, I’d like to know how you coped with them and whether you found them ultimately disturbing or beneficial.

Having a care for another's prayer

 One of the less-discussed provisions of Pirkei Avot is the first of Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel's three teachings at Avot 2:18:

Be careful in recitation of the Shema and tefillah (prayer).

The three paragraphs of the Shema are a fundamental element of Jewish belief. Among other things, they affirm the existence and the unity of God, the principle of rewarding adherence to His commandments and punishing disobedience to them and His instrumental role in bringing the Jewish people out of Egypt so that He could be their God. As for tefillah, this word is the mishnaic shorthand for the standard template of the morning, afternoon and evening prayers.

What does this teaching actually teach?

Why should Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel take the trouble to teach us to take care over these recitations, given their universally acknowledged importance in the Jewish world? And what use is this teaching if it tells us to be careful but doesn't tell us how? Is it not a bit like telling someone to be careful how they cross the road -- something we should all do and which is so obvious -- but without giving any hints or guidance as to how best to do this?

Many commentators struggle to find anything exciting to say about this part of the mishnah. Indeed the Rambam, Alshich, Chida and Rabbi Chaim Volozhin are among those who say nothing at all.

The Meiri and the Maharal take it as an introduction to the second teaching in this mishnah, that one's tefillah should not be recited by rote but should be said with passion and feeling. The Rashba, Sforno and Rabbi S. R. Hirsch read it as a wake-up call, to remind us of God's greatness, thereby enhancing feelings of gratitude and fear of sin.

The Bartenura, the commentary ascribed to Rashi and the Anaf Yosef take it to mean that these two recitations should be made at the right time for doing so. According to the Me'am Lo'ez, this means ringfencing one's time for these recitations so that not even one's Torah studies will encroach upon them.

Still on the theme of time, some rabbis had a slightly different text before them, as Tosafot Yom Tov observes. Rabbenu Yona's text stated that one should be more careful when reciting the Shema, since the window of time for its optimal recitation is shorter than that for tefillah.

A novel explanation

Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel's words are susceptible of a wider interpretation. This is because, while they urge us to take care in the recitation of the Shema and tefillah, they do not specify whose Shema and tefillah they mean. They need not be limited to one's own devotion. What does this mean?

Two days ago, while I was reciting my own Shema in a local synagogue, a charity collector was working his way round the congregation to solicit funds. His stated aim (which will itself be the subject of a later post) was laudable: he was soliciting funds for the relief of Ukrainian refugees who are currently pouring into Israel (by mid-March the figure had topped 12,000, of whom the majority are not Jews). The collector's enthusiasm was so great that he pushed a printed notice bearing details of his cause right into my face and brought my recitation to a halt. Had he noticed that I, together with the rest of the congregation, was reciting the Shema, he might have held off for a few moments until we had finished. As it was, my normally adequate focus on the Shema was lost; I had involuntarily replaced it with a review of Avot 1:6 and the need to judge other people in accordance with their merits.

So much for taking care of other people's Shema. The need to take care of other people's tefillah is far more frequently relevant. Anyone who prays in a synagogue these days will know how often one's silent prayer is punctuated by the sound of ringtones of phones left unmuted by their owners, by the impatient drumming of fingers against the furniture by those who, having finished their own prayers quickly, are impatient to progress to the next part of the service, and by congregants who imagine that, if they drift to the back of the prayer hall, their conversations cannot be heard by those at the front.

Within the literature of our sages I have yet to find any support for such a wide application of Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel's words. I do however take comfort from the fact that neither have I found anything to challenge it. In the meantime, if anyone has found a sure way of being able to retain their focus on their tefillah when their thoughts must compete with the stirring sound of a bugle call from a nearby smartphone, can they please let me know.

Praying for peace: not so easy

Many of us are praying for peace in Ukraine today, whether in general terms for the country as a whole or for friends, relations and Jewish communities who live there. Does Pirkei Avot have any guidance for us in this regard?

Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel (Avot 2:18) gives the apparently obvious and unnecessary advice to be careful when praying. He adds that, when we do pray our prayers should not be routine. Rather, they should be made with feelings and with compassion. Isn't this what prayer is supposed to be, so why bother saying this at all?

For people whose prayers are spontaneous and are not tied to any specific verbal format, this advice is relatively easy to implement. It is much more of a challenge, though, for the Jew who prays daily in accordance with the ancient, well-tried formula of the Amidah, a set of standard blessings and requests that goes back to the early days of the Second Temple period.

The Amidah contains a standard prayer for peace which is its final blessing (the last of 19 on regular weekdays, 7 on Shabbat and most festivals). It is also possible to insert personal prayers at certain points within the template and immediately after its conclusion. The challenge is to have the right thoughts in one's head and the right feelings in one's heart when saying the words provided and of remembering to add one's own prayers when one gets to the places provided for doing so.

By way of example, in the middle of the Amidah there is a prayer for the healing of those who are ill. A special provision exists for mentioning an ailing person by name. Many of us -- particularly since the onset of Covid -- have our own lists of names to pray for. Because this prayer is recited three times daily, it is easy to go on to autopilot and recite this blessing in its entirety before remembering to add a new name to those already prayed for. Later, one becomes practised in adding that name so it is no longer forgotten. Eventually, the mention of that name has become such a deeply ingrained habit that it is hard to remember NOT to pray for that person's recovery once they have either recovered or passed away.

Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel recognises this tendency, which is why he cautions us to pray with compassion, not to mention passion. This requires a degree of awareness of what we say and what we pray for that surpasses the average degree of attention to the things we say and do in the course of the day.

I have added my own prayer for the safely and well-being of everyone in Ukraine, and I am keeping in mind my understanding of its Jewish inhabitants, their anxieties and their state of mind at this time. The challenge for me will be to keep my thoughts fresh and focused on them both during the current conflict and beyond it.

May God grant them safety, security and peace of mind.