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an awareness burst through, lighting up the spiritual infrastructure of a service in a way
that must have been like when fluoroscopy was first invented. It became clear to me how
each major step of a Jewish prayer service combines with the next for a thorough
revitalizing of the soul. I like to think of this as fulfilling one of the blessings found
in services, "mechayah ha metim," reviving the dead (that's where the Yiddish expression "it's a
mechayah" come from). What
follows is a guided process which can lead to your establishing or enhancing your Jewish
morning practice at home or as a basic guide for leading or understanding a morning
service in community. Week or Month One: Consider awakening each day and finding a number of things to praise about creation. You might do this from your bed, or walking about your living space or perhaps garden or neighborhood. A verse from the traditional awakening prayer works well for this purpose: Modeh ani (masculine form) modah ani (feminine form) (I am praising) l’fanekha (into your face) melekh (king/organizing principle......some like to use ruakh/breath of life) instead of melekh when praying) khai (of life) v’kayam (which sustains all) Try chanting the sacred phrase
over and over while allowing praises to come into your mind: At the end of the week notice if waking up has a different quality to it - how is the morning looking to you now? Melekh means king in Hebrew, my mystical interpretation of this is as "The Organizing Principle" of chai (life) v’kayam (which is sustaining all). Some like to substitute "ruakh" (breath or spirit of life) for melekh. Another option is to stand
comfortably, reach toward the earth chanting: Aretz (earth). Reach toward
the sky chanting shamayim (heavens), touch your heart with both hands and
chant "ba lev". Feel your roots shooting down into the earth,
draw up nutrients - chant aretz as you stoop down, scoot yourself up onto
your toes and bring down energy from above - chant shamayim, now center
yourself, feel your heart expand, let your shoulders open and touch your heart, ba-lev.
Heaven and earth - all is one, feel your place in the universe, touch your heart
place. Continue this as long as you can. When you are full of energy and connection, walk
around the room gently noticing little sweet things you hadn’t before. Week or Month Two: Praying
local. The Jewish morning practice that follows the Modah ani is a prayer for the
amazing structure of the body and the power of healing which is inherent in creation. Each
day this week try reciting this prayer about the body in addition to the Modah ani.
Alternatively, make up your own prayer for the body each day. We bless the beauty, the intricacy, the softness and hardness, The creative, life-sustaining powers of our bodies. We bless the intricate design of the openings and channels of our bodies, through which our life force is nourished. We bless the beauty, the silkiness, the curly coarseness of the hair We bless the beauty, the round soft fullness, the muscular hardness, the simple lines of our bellies our hips, our thighs. We bless the beauty, the life-sustaining and symbolic powers of our breasts. We bless the awesome cycle of life coursing through our bodies, moving us through time. If even one channel becomes blocked, how much harder it becomes to sing praises. Bless this body, the house of my soul. Adapted from work of Rabbi Miriam Senturia N’varekh et m’kor HaKhayyim, rofeh kol basar, u’maflee la-asote. Week or Month Three: Judaism is a tradition of mind-body-spirit integration. The next stage of prayer is to take notice of the soul. Jews don’t carry any sense of original sin on us. We pray with the awareness that any shmutz that gets onto our soul is of our own doing, that each day can be lived from the place of a refreshed pure white page in the Torah of our lives. This chant also helps if anyone has hurt you at the level of soul and you would like to cleanse yourself of the impact of that encounter. Consider adding this chant to your morning practice: Elohai (God) neshama (the soul) sheh na-ta-ta bi (that has been placed in me) t’hora hi. (she is pure) Day or Month Four: While we awoke praising the parts of creation that were immediately apparent to us, we now utter the "birchot ha schachar", blessings of the dawn, which help us be aware and delight in life by blessing the active workings of Creation. Traditional blessings in this prayer start with the formula with which we have become familiar - Barukh ata (bending our knees into a pool of blessings towards You) Adonai Eloheynu Melekh/Ruakh ha olam (at the threshold of the Organizing Principle of the world) asher (which/Who): .....raises up those who are bowed down. ....causes the rooster to crow. ....clothes the naked. ....add our own (I'm thinking: "is creating new planets and solar systems throughout the cosmos") ....releases those who are bound. ....add our own ( I sometimes add is "that is within every discovery and invention and intention") ....made me a human. (or made me a man, made me a woman) ....made me a Jew. ...guides our footsteps. For many years my personal practice only comfortably went up to this step. You may want to continue your practice up to here for years or a day, or you may be ready to continue. Week or Month Five: Having blessed body and felt the flow of daily blessings, bring the intellect into your prayer sequence, blessing the ability to study and learn through which we increase the experience of holiness in our lives. Sometimes when I pray this I realize how great it is to occupy myself with knowing gains as a conscious break from growing pains. Baruch Atah Adonai, (Blessed is This Threshold) Eloheynu Melech Ha olam, (Our God-sense, organizing principle of the Universe) asher (which) kidshanu (makes us holy) b’mitzvotav (through its mitzvah system - i.e., engaging in sacred acts of consciousness) v’tzivanu (and guides us) la-asoke (to be occupied) b’divrei (in matters of - words of) Torah. (conscious learning.) The tradition offers texts about
generosity to study at this point in services. You might look those up in a prayerbook, or
save up some verses or a reading you have wanted to study for this moment. Entering the
day in a spirit of awareness of issues of generosity is a significant morning mind shift.
See what adding this feels like at the end of a week (or a month per each new practice,
there is no rush.) Here is one of the generosity texts: Week or Month Six Now, if you are at home, you might feel full of practices and want to drop one of these or we can continue together into the next stage of a Jewish morning practice, raising your spiritual energy through the drama of the psalms. The psalms are rich in varied emotions - joy, loss, rage, abandonment, hope, seeking shelter, finding wonder, everything. Center in on one psalm, or even one verse that deeply attracts your consciousness. Let it shift you even deeper or higher in feeling. We are heading towards the part of morning practice which is finding the prayer of your heart, the psalms are one of the stages of preparation for this. Here are a few verses from diverse psalms which you might consider, Rabbi Shefa Gold has turned many of these into chants which I have come to love and use daily. Ba-erev yalin beki, v’la boker rina (In the evening one goes to sleep crying and in the morning is joyful) Psalm 30 Ashrei yoshvei vey-the-kha (Happy are those who dwell in Your house) Ps 145 Ya Elohai B’kha akhasiti (Ya, my God in you I take refuge) Ma gadlu ma’asekha
Yah, m’od amku mach’sh’votekha Week or Month Seven In a community morning service we
would now do a "borchu," a blessing which recognizes that a sense of the
numinous, shimmering, pulsation of creation, the presence of All Being, of Everything has
entered the place where you are now standing. The service leader calls out: Borchu (from the root B-R-KH....bow, knee, pool, blessing, bend your knees into the pool of blessings) et Adonai (toward the Threshold) Ha M’vorach. (Which is being blessed.) You respond: Baruch Adonai Ha M’vorach l’olam va’ed. (for eternity, forever.) This prayer is done in community, the meaning and power of Presence changes and amplifies when we gather. Other blessings follow this, leading into the ahavah rabba, a prayer about love, the rich- flowing -connecting -ever-soothing kind of love. If you are at home, recall how you would give love to someone who really needs it, someone who longs for the nourishment of a true outpouring of love. Now reach into the Cosmos and draw this kind of love to you, feel love running to you and let it out through you, send it to that special someone and feel the love radiate back, send your overflow love out as a wave of warm heart light into Creation. Chant or recite again and again as you do this: Ahava (love) rabbah (which is multiplying) Ahavtanu (this is how we are loved) Ahava rabbah ah-hav-tah-nu. Week or Month Eight: Add the shema into your morning prayer. It is no accident that the central prayer of Judaism is bracketed by prayers about love. To listen and hear the oneness of everything, this can only be done in a context of love. Anger and fear often break the meaning of oneness. We enter into Oneness through choosing love and speaking about it with our children, keeping it like a stereoscopic vision between our eyes, and on virtually every doorpost of lives we try to have a mezuzah to remind us - go across this threshold loving and listening. Shema (Do
deep listening - HEAR!) Week or Month Nine: As Jews and individuals there is the pressure of one’s historical patterns with which to deal. Next, the tradition has a blessing for "geulah", redemption. My student Rabbi Robert Freedman has described geulah as a prayer for "freedom from our history". Feel the weight of your history on your shoulders. Imagine a great Shechinah bird (the eagle is a symbol for the Shechinah) coming and lifting this huge weight from your back so that you are free to move forward, unencumbered by your history. Try adding these words to your prayers this time: Barukh Atah Adonai Ga-al Yisrael (redeemer of Israel.) Week or Month Ten. Having accomplished an Integrated awakening, body, soul, mind, clear about our feelings, we move into finding the prayer of our hearts in a prayer sequence known as the amidah. There are nineteen blessings in the traditional amidah, each designed to serve as a springboard of awareness for us. (A guide to these exceeds the purview of this introduction to daily prayer.) One method to attain the prayer
of your heart is to speak your thoughts and feelings like an endless waterfall, out loud
as though a Source is listening. Go for it, make even nonsense sounds to help you keep
going, loosen a flood of the unspoken, the hopeful, the happy, the angry, the unspeakable.
Called hitbodedut, this is one route to letting your prayer have power and
meaning. Here is another method for finding the prayer of your heart, based upon intentions within the original nineteen blessings of the amidah: Moving in from the fringes of awareness to the prayers of one's heart:
Week or Month Eleven . The sages say to be careful what you say to someone else upon awakening, because with each word you create a world which conditions the entire day for someone else. So it is that at the end of the amidah we pray for help with our speech, one the hardest gifts for a human to handle. Often I feel it is only through some miracle of support from beyond myself that these hopeful lips can get wise and tight. Elohai n'tzor l'shoni
mey-ra Week or Month Twelve Now we have covered our own issues and achieved the momentum necessary to pray for peace. I like the emerging new tradition, adopted over the last five years by most denominations, to pray not only for peace for Israel, but to add a verse for "all residents of the planet." Oseh (Maker of) Shalom (peace) Bimromav (in the heights - beyond us) Hu Yaaseh (which makes) Shalom (peace - completeness) Aleynu (for us) v’al kal (and for all of) Yisrael (Israel, the Jewish people and the new phrase:) v’al kal (and for all of) yoshvei (those that live on) teiveyl (this globe.) Oseh shalom bimromahv hu ya-asseh shalom aleynu, v’al kol yisrael, v’al kol yoshvei teyvel. It is easy to image a day when we have spread or residency to other planets and will need to expand this prayer even further. When praying in community, on Shabbat, as well as Mondays and Thursdays we would next read the Torah portion of the week aloud. Week/Month Thirteen. Also in community the next prayer is called the aleynu. It has strong elements of chosen people language and hierarchy built into the original version. Some parts of the spectrum have taken those phrases out with a sense that every people bears a special destiny in the great puzzle of creation. Regardless of which version you prefer, this prayer has a very important complementary function to all the prayer nutrients we've taken in so far in our morning practice. Aleynu (meaning, "it's incumbent upon us") reminds us that all the praying is to strengthen us, nourish us, center us, rebirth us into action, that we might have the energy to recommit to engaged living. This is the prayer of tikkun olam - repair of the world - where we not only are blessed, we are also active in creating the experience of blessing for all, while there is much more to the formal prayer, a key verse for me is: Aleynu
l'sha-bey-akh l'Ah-don ha kol l’tahkeyn (to renew, repair) olam (a world/cosmos/eternity) b’malchut (under the domain of, via the organizing principles of) Shadai. (The nurturing One...Shadai is a name for God meaning hills or breasts.) And when we are all doing that, Mazel Tov! We have prayed through the major steps of a morning practice leading up to doing our first post-prayer mizvah, that of caring for our mourners, by supporting them in the act of gradually transforming the trauma of loss into the mitzvah called: "zachor," sacred memory. As we remember those whose souls have gone on to the next level of being, sometimes Jewish sages have suggested this helps to speed those souls on their journey and gives them "nakhas" - pleasure, at our effort of doing such a mitzvah. (See the section on "Life Cycle Spirituality" for mystical meanings of the Kaddish and support in exploring a Jewish mourning process.) And many conclude with a poem like the Adon Olam, Threshold of Eternity, a prayer of sheer awe at the construction of creation and our trust in Its ultimate integrity. (Some communities begin with this prayer. ) I like to wear a tallit (fringed prayer shawl) and tephillin (leather meditation tool) when I pray in the morning. It may be your local community doesn’t allow enough time that your necessary comfort level can be achieved for experiencing each these stages of prayer. I understand, you may choose to have a private at home morning practice composed of some of these levels, or to pray before you go to pray in community. There is much to be gained from both. With love and blessings from my heart to yours, Reb Goldie |
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