Prayer and The Sound of Silence: Views on Contemporary Shuls during the Yamim Noraim.

Prayer can be a very difficult exercise. Distractions, tiredness and an inability to concentrate for long periods of time can mean that as we enter the period of Rosh ha Shana and Yom Kippur we can feel helplessly unprepared. Many siddurim have been produced in the last few years to help the individual understand and focus on the words in front of them. Whilst this is obviously a good thing, I couldn’t help but think that to me it just added to the distractions. I look at an interlinear siddur and am somewhat repelled by the sheer number of words on the page. It just seems sort of confusing and lacks something fundamental, but I couldn’t always place what that was.

Similarly, in Shul during Rosh ha Shana I also noticed an interesting trend amongst Ashkenazi synagogues that I have attended in recent years, whereby upbeat tunes are used for many areas of the davening where they do not really belong. I have nothing against ‘happy’ davening (some of my best friends etc...) but I feel that this is one time during the year where solemnity should be encouraged, for once.

This impression is thrown into sharper relief when I listen to the Yamim Noraim CD produced by the Spanish and Portuguese congregation that my family have been associated with all my life. I love listening to those tunes as a few of them really soar in their religious feeling, sense of awe, solemnity and haunting beauty without ever descending into the realms of the merely depressing.

Davening is widely considered the most neglected area of Jewish study and many of the solutions presented are unerringly systematic: we are told to focus on the words more closely, highlight the meaningful parts and with time, concentration and kavanna will grow. This may definitely work for some people but for me it comes down to something else. When I think of my best moments of prayer I turn to very specific memories which I think may be of use in unlocking what I think is the essential component of prayer: silence.

For example, I remember childhood and the pre-adolescent devotion which I am ashamed to say greatly trumps my more mature attempts. I think of particular times in Yeshiva, but not, as some might think, the Ruach of the beis ha midrash but rather a stillness and tranquillity when davening with everyone together. I also think of standing davening Mincha once in countryside which seemed to stretch for miles. There was something about quiet serenity that could make me focus on the words far more than any explanations ever could.

Which takes me onto the pesukim from Tehillim which I think most effectively and poignantly describes the religious experience of prayer (I think it first struck me after hearing ‘Ka Echsof’ on a Friday night):

Like a deer thirsts for a brook of water, so my soul thirsts for you. My soul thirsts for the living God, when will I appear before my God.  (Psalms 42:2-3).

In these lines, King David captures the essence of the heartfelt prayer: the longing of the individual to achieve a relationship with his creator, the searching and the craving for transcendence. But to begin to even want to feel this sort of sensation is something that requires that ingredient that I keep emphasising: silence. For only in silence, I would suggest, can we achieve the required concentration and introspection to experience this most sublime of religious sensations.

But surely, I ask myself, it is usually silent during the Amidah, what is lacking? I remember one of the Rabbis in Yeshiva using this as the analysis for the similarly powerful image of the ‘kol demama daka’ which features several times during Rosh ha Shana and Yom Kippur, or in Rabbi Sacks' translation: The sound of a thin silence.

We are told based on the interaction between G-d and the prophet Eliyahu that finding Him would not be found in the howling wind, earthquakes or fire but in that very soft, nearly inaudible inner voice, the ‘Kol Demama Daka’. In the context of the prayers on the Yamim Noraim, it is only in this thin silence that the sound and message of the shofar is heard. 

I think the image speaks for itself. It made an enormous impression on me and is something I try to concentrate on as a means of accessing prayer during this period, which brings me onto the importance of appropriate music.

Whilst the main reason I include as many lines from old rock classics in my posts is for the shtick factor, something our Rabbi said a few weeks ago about why Parashat Ha’azinu is referred to as a ‘Shira’ rung very true. When you hear a song it takes you back to a particular moment in time and helps to re-live the experience. And it rarely fades. It is this, I realise, when I think about themes in my experiences, that makes me turn so often to what might seem to some to be trivial sources.

For example, in one of Dylan’s most poignant love songs he records a striking line: “Some speak of the future, my Love speaks softly”. In the context of the song, this line stands out as a powerful testament to the fact that it is often by focusing on the way things are done rather than attempting to scale the lofty unknown peaks that has the most permanent value, regardless of the ideal itself. I would link this idea to prayer in the sense that sometimes overthinking it can be counter-productive. 

Yes I know I sound like a member of a Kiddush committee moaning about how the shmaltz herring isn't like it used to be, but the dignified solemnity and the tunes associated with the ‘old-school’ strikes me as something that could really conjure the state of mind necessary to have a meaningful Rosh ha Shana and Yom Kippur. 

I thought it was worth quoting the following in full: 

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said “The words of the prophets
Are written on subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence."