Study Texts

Text #1. Where can I escape from Your spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I take wing with the dawn to come to rest on the western horizon, even there Your hand will be guiding me, Your right hand will be holding me. (Psalm 138: 7, 9)

Text #2. Blessed are You, Hashem our God, Ruler of the Universe, Who has … created within (man) many openings and many cavities…if but one of them were to be ruptured or…blocked it would be impossible to survive… (Traditional morning blessing)

Text #3. (In context of giving the Laws of Kashrut) For I the Lord am He Who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God: you shall be holy, for I am holy. (Leviticus 11: 45)

Text #4. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…And God created man in His image…male and female He created them (Genesis 1)

Text #5: My Lord said, Because that people has approached (Me) with its mouth and honored Me with its lips, but has kept its heart far from Me, and its worship of Me has been a commandment of men, learned by rote – Truly I shall baffle that people with bafflement upon bafflement… (Isaiah 29: 13-14)

Text #6

Torah: How to Make Beautiful Prayer

What are the things that make a prayer experience beautiful?

This week in the Torah, parshat Terumah, we read about the gifts that the Israelites are asked to bring for the construction of the Mishkan, their portable tent-Temple.

The Torah tells us: every person should bring as their heart moves them.

We all say we want a beautiful worship experience. But, as is said in Latin, "de gustibus non est disputandum," "in matters of taste, there can be no disputing." That is: people have their own tastes, and no one can change them.

What do we do about the fact that everybody approaches worship - something inherently communal - with different taste? Personally, I can tell you that there are people who want more English, and people who want less, people who want a shorter sermon, and people who want a longer one. There is no accounting for taste, but what is more, there is no way to satisfy every taste at once.

Everyone comes to shul with what is in their heart. In their head. In their personal taste. Every person is different, and there is no way to flatten out a synagogue experience that is right for all at once.

But the Torah provides a solution to this. "Every person should bring as their heart moves them" is the ethos. That is: you are, yourself, the solution to this. It is what you bring with you to synagogue that will determine your experience. What feelings are you carrying with you? What tastes? What experiences? What needs? The Torah here suggests that you need to pay attention to what you bring with you, and it is only by looking inward that you'll be able to appreciate the beauty of worship.

The answer to what makes a prayer experience beautiful is: you. You, in all of your complexity, bringing that complexity into prayer, is where meaning and connection occur. The work of prayer isn't something external - something that happens to you done by a rabbi or a cantor - but is something internal that you do, that allows you to be open to real beauty.

Because real beauty is complex, multihued, and variegated. Real beauty is about difference and distinction, about diversity and about all the ways that we are not simple.

Be present for that. Be present for it during the week. Be present for it during Shabbat. And be present for it during your prayers.

Rabbi Eric S. Woodward