Finding My Place
A crab emerging from the sea was foraging on some beach. A starving fox, when he caught sight of the crab, ran up and seized him. The crab, on the verge of being gobbled up, said, “I deserve my misfortune, because, though a sea creature, I wished to become a land animal.”Thus those people who leave their own customary pursuits and set their hands to matters alien to themselves usually suffer disaster.
- Aesop, Fables 118
Shall I enter synagogue for my prayers as one who is entering a different world, or as one who brings his world with him? If the world of the synagogue is a world alien to me, am I apt to suffer disaster? If I regularly pray, but have been taught that I must pray with more intention and passion, unfamiliar practices for me, shall I step onto the foreign terrain?
Should I desire to change and grow so that I can become familiar with new worlds? Shall I pray as I am, without risking the pretense of being someone I am not?
Someone described, in hindsight, his previous Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur experiences as not much better than the crab. He wanted to pray the way he saw his rabbi pray. He emerged from the sea to pray as a new person, but was devoured by the experience. It swallowed him up, and when he stepped out of the Days of Awe, he looked back at himself only to see a stranger.
I commented that there is a significant difference between striving to become someone else and reaching to become a higher version of myself.
The Sages teach that Peninah purposely provoked Chana in order to motivate the childless woman to pray harder. If Chana wasn’t praying harder, perhaps she didn’t feel desperate. Did Peninah want Chana to become desperate, just so that she would pray? Ironically, her magisterial prayer was instigated by Elkanah’s opposite approach: “Why are you sad? Am I not better for you than ten sons?”
Peninah’s desperation was ineffective. Elkanah’s strategy of, “My love for you is enough,” instigated one of the most powerful prayers in the Bible.
Peninah wanted Chana to become someone she was not. Peninah felt that her co-wife should be desperate to become a mother. There must be something wrong with her if she is not desperate. Chanah was sad, but not desperate.
Elkanah challenged her with a question; “Are you happy as you are, or, do you want more? You receive more love than most women. You receive portions and gifts that are larger than those of everyone else in the family. If you aren’t happy with what you have, what do you want?”
The objective is not to pry as well as someone else, or to become a different person. It is to identify our strengths and use them in our prayers. The former will be the crab on the land. The latter will flourish in his own environment.
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Probably 16 years ago, I heard a very insightful story from Rav Menacem Goldberger in Baltimore.
When he started his shul,it operated out of a house and there were not (as yet) many members.Also, many of the members were just coming closer to observance. In order to maintain a daily morning minyan, he had different members committing to coming on different days so that for any given day of the workweek he had at least 15 ‘minyanaires’ signed up.Of course, that didn’t mean that everyone showed up in a timely fashion,which meant that Rav Goldberger many times found himself out on the sidewalk scrounging for a tenth man.
Fortunately for him, the Agudah minyan was just across the street, so there were possibilities to complete the minyan.
One blustery fall morning,he was just not having any luck getting that tenth man.Finally, after a half-hour had elapsed, Rav Goldberger saw someone spproaching the Agudah building across the street (that minyan was already hopping).”Would you possibly care to join us-we desparately need a 10th man for the minyan!”The man stopped briefly to deliberate. Rav Goldberger then added “However, in all fairness, I’d like to apprise you that we daven somewhat slower because many of our congregants are newer to observance and take somewhat longer in their davenning.”
Upon hearing that, the man turned towards the Agudah building and recused himself from joining Rav Goldberger’s minyan”I can’t daven like that” =( !!!
Rav Goldberger’s observation has stuck with me since “So, what was that man saying? Basically, he was saying that his davenning was more important than 9 other men’s, that he wouldn’t join with, to make a minyan.”
The Kozhnitzer Maggid was 80 years old and too weak to immerse anymore in a mikvah. He called his gabbai and enjoined him to gather 10 yidn to his chambers.They assembled in his chambers and before davenning, he remarked “I am immersing in a mikvah of yidn”!.
So, when we are praying,we can amplify the effectiveness of our own individual,special wavelength by realizing it is just one part of the great orchestration of Ahm Yisrael’s prayers and the resonance of our prayers vis=a=vis our fellows’ prayers, Mikveh Yisrael, in turn strums the
prayer rhythm of the higher worlds up to The Throne of Glory.