Synagogues Today Rely on ‘Minyanaires’

Prayer shawl (photo courtesy Jonathan Cohen, Flickr)

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” Bruce Lee

“Rabbi Tarfon would say: The day is short, the work is much, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the Master is pressing.” –Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers)

A lot of my time is spent davening (in prayer). If I log a perfect week at minyans –7 a.m./7 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. on weekends and holidays — I’ll have been in davening for about 13 hours. Thirteen hours is a significant chunk of my week, about 8 percent of my total time. If I’m spending all that precious time praying, it better be worth something.

Prayer is an aspect of Judaism that is struggling for relevance across the religious spectrum. Minyans are hurting at many synagogues, and even in shuls with flourishing minyans, I wonder if many people go purely out of a sense of religious obligation. Not that religious obligation (chiyuv in Hebrew) is a small thing. At its core, that’s what prayer is.

Maimonides writes in the Mishna Torah: “It is a commandment from the Torah to pray every day, as it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God with all your heart.’ What is worship from the heart? It is prayer.”

Seeing prayer as an obligation is powerful if you truly believe you are obligated or if you feel you have a responsibility to God. But even looking at the population that prays out of a sense of obligation, I wonder if for many of them that feeling of obligation is to their community and thus social in nature. Is peer pressure and conformity a worthy religious motivator?

For the vast majority of Jews, a sense of religious responsibility or obligation isn’t powerful enough to move them from their warm beds early on a cold winter morning. And yet, every synagogue with daily prayer services counts (pun intended) on “minyanaires,” men and women who make regular minyan attendance a part of their lives. These holy Jews allow the synagogue to maintain its dignity and provide the ongoing institution of minyan for the rest of us to show up once in a while to say a yarzeit kaddish for a loved one or to pray during difficult times. A similar phenomenon occurs for the first hour or so of prayers on any given Shabbat morning. A core group of devoted minyanaires assemble and allow the initial prayers to take place.

I look to the minyanaires for inspiration. What are the forces that move them to come? So often, it is easier to understand other people’s motivations than to understand our own.

Some minyanaires come to say kaddish for a relative or friend. Jewish tradition requires a child to say the Mourner’s Kaddish for 11 months following their parent’s death. On first glance, this may seem like another version of “religious obligation,” but it is not. There is no obligation to say kaddish for a friend, and yet I see so many people who do. The motivation is obligation to another person. In this category as well would be people who come to pray for the health of another.

Some minyanaires come for purely altruistic reasons. “I don’t want anybody who needs to say kaddish not to have a minyan.” They may not enjoy or even be fluent in prayer, but the motivation which could be called “responsibility to their community” is enough to make prayer attendance a meaningful part of their lives.

Some minyanaires come because they truly enjoy the experience. Some enjoy the act of praying. It gives them a sense of tradition or connection with their ancestors. Perhaps it brings back good memories of sitting in shul next to a grandparent or parent. There is also a soothing and relaxing aspect to prayer. The serenity and “being in the moment” that comes with the peaceful chanting is valuable for many people. Others enjoy the social aspect of davening — the joking around and kibbitzing.

What motivates me most is the possibility — almost a promise — that prayer holds opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth. It is the fantastic thought that we could reach out and talk to God, be heard and possibly be answered. From my perspective, this is the most alluring as well as the most challenging and hard-to-attain aspect of prayer. It is my quixotic dream to someday attain the level of prayer that I could say with all my heart, “Every minute I spent in prayer this week was worth it.”

Rabbi Yerachmiel ShapiroRabbi Yerachmiel Shapiro is spiritual leader of Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Greengate Jewish Center.

 

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