Having prayed for many years, I must say it is something I do enjoy. Yes, I know that it is the same text day after day, but somehow the time dedicated to prayer sets the day on the right track, and the time spent talking to G-d creates a solid foundation to build on. With that said, I must admit it took me years to make some real sense out of the order of prayers that we say in the morning. After learning a discourse by the Rebbe, zt’l, the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place, and I would like to share what I see now.
In the discourse, the Rebbe explains that there are four ways to praise Hashem.
- How Hashem is good for me
- How great Hashem is that He created this amazing world
- How incredible it is that Hashem created all the higher spiritual realms as well
- Direct to the Essence of Hashem, higher than any of His creations.
After learning this, I realized that the morning prayers follow a similar pattern. It is a ladder that takes us up the rungs, step by step. The prayers in a Nusach Ari or Sephardic Siddur start with Hodu, where “we thank Hashem and call His Name.” Hodu concludes: “I will sing to Hashem, because of what He has done for me.” Yes, there are other praises of Hashem in between, but they are surrounded by this theme.
Then we begin Pesukei d’Zimra, praising Hashem as the Creator of the universe. The prayers continue with a variety of ways to show how the world itself praises its Creator. The Hallelukahs embody this type of praise, showing how the world is simply a beautiful creation of G-d. There are many adjectives the Siddur has for Hashem during this section. By the end of Pesukei d’Zimra we affirm that Hashem comes into this world to be close to the Jewish people and in particular to the leaders of the generation, Avraham and Moshe. Then we read about one of the greatest events of G-d’s impact on the world in a revealed way — the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. This shows us how the world is so nullified to Hashem that its very nature can be bent in fulfillment of His Will, and how the Jews then recognized this fact and sang in gratitude. We conclude by praising Hashem in Yishtabach, preceded on Shabbos by a longer personal praise, “Nishmas kol chai.”
After Borchu, we start to praise Hashem on the third level, for His creation of the angels and the heavenly illuminators. We talk about how even on this high level they also praise Hashem and give recognition to His Great Name. Hashem renews this whole creation every day and every moment, and His feats are unmatched in the higher and lower worlds.
After the first blessing following Borchu, we prepare for the reciting of the Shema, which represents the fourth level — connecting to Hashem as He exists in and of Himself, as a total Oneness. But as we approach that proclamation, we take an interesting step in a new direction. We talk about how with all this great creation, Hashem connects to us Jews more than all the heavenly bodies, and the Siddur talks about G-d’s love for us and, in turn, elicits our love for G-d. In fact, the word “love” is mentioned in some form seven times in this blessing. As we climb the ladder of prayer to make the ultimate statement about Hashem’s being, we are not meant to do it as an intellectual belief. It is supposed to permeate the heart so that we make this proclamation of faith in a manner that truly pierces our inner being, so that once we say the Shema, we can then be prepared to “Love the L-rd your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” This is when we connect to Hashem as Hashem is on His own — one total, united, all-consuming and all-encompassing Being.
So if this is the fourth and highest level, why doesn’t the ladder end here? Why do we continue to the Shemoneh Esrei? Is this the fifth level of prayer?
Perhaps we can take a hint by the fact that the word “emes,” or truth, is mentioned eight times in the blessing before the Amidah. Emes is composed of the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It represents the fact that Hashem is not just in the higher realms; for truth to be true, it has to come down into the lowest of the low as well. To show how Hashem’s dominion is not just on high but is omnipresent, our requests to Hashem in the Shemoneh Esrei show that we believe that Hashem’s Oneness is very much part of our lives — not just our spiritual lives, but our very mundane lives as well.
Thus, when we stand at attention without any distractions and testify to this fact by asking Our Father, Our King to bless us, we are drawing down the Oneness we experience in the Shema to a level that truly actualizes the truth of Hashem’s existence and His total involvement in this world which He creates constantly.
Once we reach that fifth level and then complete the Amidah, we are first prepared to ask Hashem for forgiveness for anything we may have done wrong since our last prayer. Before this, we would not be sensitive enough to realize the full extent of what we need to do teshuvah (repent) for. So Tachanun really binds the relationship in a tight knot and prepares us to go into the rest of the day, stronger than we were before we started praying.
Just as we climb the rungs of the ladder, so we must go down the ladder, rung by rung, to ensure that we bring the prayer experience into our lives in a settled manner. The first step down takes us back to the angels saying “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh,” and so on, until Aleinu, which deals with our personal obligation to “fix the world in G-d’s sovereignty.”
I do hope that some of the insights here will give you a little more fuel to help your davening reach its proper destination. Have a fruitful and Torah-filled summer. Be’H, I will be returning in the fall as we prepare for the New Year.
Rabbi Tuvia Teldon is the regional director of Chabad Lubavitch of Long Island. He can be reached at rabbi@chabadli.org. For more information and inspiration, visit www.chabadli.org or Facebook.com/RabbiTeldon to view his weekly broadcasts.
Thank you
Excellent piece on Tefilla