The Light Lab Podcast Episode 12: Prayer is Not So Linear (with Rabbi Steve Sager)

9:53PM Jan 25, 2022

Speakers:

Eliana Light

Steve Sager

Keywords:

prayer

rabbi

liturgy

people

community

daven

thinking

means

pray

conversation

shul

part

child

talking

world

sager

baruch

book

rabbis

morning

Shalom, my friends, Eliana Light here. So glad that you have joined us once again for the Light Lab Podcast. And today I'm really excited to bring you an interview that I did a few weeks ago with Rabbi Steve Sager. Even just saying Rabbi Sager's name fills me with a little more calm and a little more lightness and a little more love. I met Rabbi Sager here in Durham, North Carolina, as he is the rabbi emeritus of Beth El synagogue where I've been doing some part time work, singing with the children and leading some T'fillah. And getting to learn from talk with and pray with Rabbi Sager has definitely been one of the highlights being in Durham. And so when we started the podcast, I knew, I knew that as soon as possible, I would want to have some holy conversations with Rabbi Sager, as conversations are one of the ways that he teaches and learns and engages with Jewish text. In fact, he is the director of Sicha, which means conversation in Hebrew. And they promote the ongoing dialogue between classical Jewish texts and lived experience, helping leaders and communities enlist the Jewish past in the service of the Jewish future. It's just such a beautiful mission statement. And Rabbi Sager really takes that to heart he was the rabbi at Beth El synagogue here in Durham for 32 years. He's a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He has a PhD in rabbinic literature from Duke University. And he's been a mentor for students and rabbis, from all different rabbinical schools, all different walks of life. I love on my travels, when I tell people I'm from Durham, North Carolina, and a particular kind of person will say, Oh, Rabbi Sager. Wow, he has meant so much to me. I love him so much. And it just, it fills me with joy. He's also served as the president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, and of the Greater Carolina's Association of Rabbis. He has done interfaith work. His writing has been published in all sorts of different periodicals. And he also is a scholar of poetry, which I think comes to bear on our conversation about tefillah. So we recorded this live in his office. So the audio might not be as sharp as you're used to. But I think the conversation I mean, I call it a conversation, but really, I just let Rabbi Sager talk and expound and share and it was just such an honor to listen to him. This is part one of a two part conversation we couldn't leave it at that and hopefully, Holy One willing, there will be more. So thank you once again for being here to listen and now let's hear my conversation slash interview with Rabbi Steve Sager.

Shalom, Rabbi Sager. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.

Well, Shalom Shalom Eliana, thank you for the invitation. A chance that we have to talk together about prayer, something in which we both have a deep and a high interest at the same time. Is this wonderful?

I've learned so much about t'fillah from you, not just by talking with you about it, but by being in shared prayer spaces with you. I think it's been incredibly powerful. And I'm wondering if we could just start there, say tefillah, what does it mean to you? What does it evoke for you? What is the power that is in that word?

Hmm. Well, I actually think I'd like to back up a little bit to what you had to say at the beginning, so graciously about learning for me just in the shared prayer space, which I think is where we learn most of what we learn about T'fillah. About how to be a Ba'alat T'fillah, how to be a Ba'al T'fillah for not only a shaliach tzibur, but a ba'al or ba'alat t'fillah, by which I mean, one who has some mastery of the idea of T'fillah. Because T'fillah is more than just what's in the prayer book, the prayer book is only the part that's scored, for the mouth. If you think about looking at a musical score, it's only the part that scored for the mouth. But this part that scored for the seichel, or the part that scored for the neshamah, or the nefesh, is not written in the prayer book. That's the scratch and sniff stuff that you have to get in other kinds of ways. You get it from me, by which I am greatly honored, I get it from you. We get it from the group that we share, we modulate our voices, we get energy, we get affect from all of the people who share the space with us and who make us better. Pray-ers, if I could, can say it that way. Two of my greatest prayer teachers, are teachers, to whom I only listened. They never taught me a single word of the T'fillah. Not grammatically, not syntactically, not the phrasing of it, or the pronunciation of it. One of them was Zalman Schachter, alav hashalom, who had a voice that was like the cello, when he sang. And he had the ability to have the conversation with G?d and a conversation deep within himself, that will lead us to talk about what tefillah is in a more technical way. But I would, I would daven with him. He was part of the minyan of the Germantown Jewish Center in Philadelphia, where I spent a lot of years in Rabbinical School. And one of his good friends and another minyaner was Rabbi Art Greene, who taught me a tremendous amount about prayer. But unlike Zalman couldn't sing. Art has, sheyichiyeh, he should live and be well, Art has no ability to carry a tune. But to listen to him and to look at him is to get the prayer experience. This is not recitation. This is not something memorized to be recited, like you before your sixth grade teacher, or whatever it was, when you last had to actually memorize Daniel Webster's prayer to the Virginia House of Commons or whatever, the introduction to The Canterbury Tales, or whatever. Art, Art was conversing. So these two great masters of prayer, one was a great voice, and one without the voice. But without a voice, you would focus on what the conversation actually was. And you would learn to converse. And you'd learn that there's something that you want to say. And if you add the voice and his affect, and you add the conversation in a deep way, then you end up getting more than just the part that scored for the mouth. That's just on the page. But the rest of it you get because you have breathed it in because you've experienced it because you've been moved by it because you cry over it, and so on. What I started to say, and speaking I think about Zalman, talking about the inner prayer and the outer prayer, as being perhaps a lead into a more technical understanding or foundational technical understanding of prayer. I would say it this way that the Hebrew the Hebrew verb, for which the word prayer originates, palal, palal, bey lamed lamed, means two weigh, to judge, to adjudge something, to balance it out in your two hands to say, well, there's this and then there is that. Rau panecha lo pilati. Jacob says to his son Joseph at the end of his life before he blesses the grandchildren. He looks to his son and he says, I never reckoned on seeing you again. Lo pilalti. I never a judge that it was a possibility in the world. A technical and less poetic use of the word pallal would be in Exodus where the two men have been fighting and they knock into a woman who tragically loses her pregnancy because of it, and the one who's responsible for the accident is supposed to noten biflilin, which is to say, let's judge how, how far along her pregnancy was. What had she endured with? What had she lived? And so on. What was her what was the the growth, the ripening, emotionally and physically, and so on. So, palal, no need to go into more details. But if you if you think about T'fillah, as being the adjudging, as being the reckoning that happens, both inside and outside, both within you and also beyond you, then you have a pretty good framework, I think, for what we mean or what is useful, when we think about T'fillah. It goes way beyond the thing that is recited, it goes to the reciter and the recitee, I suppose, the recipient, and just so the infinitive of the verb lehitpalel. That's part of the magic because that Hebrew verb form means introspectively or intrapersonal, Intrapersonally or interpersonally. Right? Lehitlabesh means to dress yourself. Lehitbonen means to contemplate. Lehitraot means we will see each other again. Lehitcatev - means let's correspond. So when you say l'hitpallel, are you talking about the conversation, as it were, that goes on inside yourself? Yes. Are you talking about one that goes on outside yourself? Yes. Which is it? Well, it is both at the same time, if you let it be. Or if you cultivate the the habit, the possibility for it to be both it can be both.

Talk about more of what you mean by the recipient, right, a conversation necessitates partners. So where does that lie for you?

Well, it means talking, it can mean talking to G?d, it can mean talking to myself. It can really mean both. It can really raise the question if we wanted to, as the Polish poet Miyosz would say dance on the edge of heresy, but not really because we don't have to go, we don't have to be heretical, we can just be in the company of the mystical masters of Judaism, or even the ancient rabbinic masters of Judaism to say that G?d resides within. So, to whom are you speaking? Sometimes it really helps to address something to that which is bigger than yourself and outside yourself. Because you want to be wrapped in the whole world, or some aspect of the world that is outside yourself. Sometimes you want to curl up in a little ball inside yourself. And either way you might be reaching to your potential, if I say, sim shalom tovah u'vracha, am I asking G?d from the outside to give us peace? Or am I asking my innermost self which lies curled up in potential but hasn't been activated in the world, am I asking that piece of me, urging that piece of me. at a moment when I am, when I feel like I'm reaching for the best of myself, is that we're prayer is coming from is that where prayer is addressed to? So let's say either way, it's talking to that which is bigger than myself and beyond myself. The paradox is that sometimes it's also within myself.

Is there a metaphor, a nickname, or an idea of G?d that has been particularly resonant for you lately?

I hope that when you edit this, that you'll let the silence stand because the silence is part of the answer I really have to

Yeah,

slip through my rolodex of, of names. How it is that I'm talking to G?d the impulse to live G?d as the impulse to live. And I say it with, with tears in my eyes, because I'm living with pancreatic cancer. And so to think of G?d as mechaye, as the mechaye, G?d's a mechaye, you're not, or mechayeh hameitim. But really a mechayeh, a life giver. That's really it. That's really it. And the tears running down my cheeks right now have nothing to do with sadness, but rather the opposite. Because I feel like I pray with joy and intensity. By the way, these days I have not been putting on tefillin. It has been too much for me to manage. Although I'm thinking after attending some minyanim in the honor of a bris, or the honor of a bar mitzvah, or whatever it might be of late, I'm thinking about what I what I should be doing in terms of honoring decades of putting on tefillin. Maybe even just to put them on and take them off. Yeah, is is is good enough. For me, these days, the the mindfulness prayer slash mindfulness comes by saying, modeh ani lefanecha that I say every morning, but I never used to. It's sort of taken the place that, plus shema israel has sort of taken the place of full davening. But, it's a it's a statement that I make, when I feel like I've gotten myself together, sometimes suit to get up in the morning is not to, not to feel so coherent. But when I feel like Ah, okay, this is it, I'm on I'm on the road to a good time to my morning, I I say it - modeh ani lefanecha. I've avoided calling it a prayer. Because I'm not quite sure what to call it. I think it's, it feels like a prayer. To me, you know, an acknowledgement prayer as acknowledgement and celebration, it's definitely not bracha, deliberately constructed, so as not to be not to say by baruch, so that you could say it when you first wake up in the morning, if you're a frum person, and so on. But that's, that's my prayer experience. It's taken us a little bit farther away from then maybe we're thinking from the name of G?d, that informs my prayer. Even when I'm in the synagogue, G?d as mechayeh. It's it evokes in me, I could pull it off the shelf, but that wouldn't help your podcast and it wouldn't help. And it wouldn't even help you because you know, what the Siddur looks like, but there are certain Kabbalistic oriented siddurim that have a Yud, Hey, Vav Hey, with the He, kind of chuppah-like with another name of G?d written underneath it.

Wow. Sounds beautiful.

And so I I envision that yud hey vav hay with the hay extended, like, like a chuppah, with mahaya, written mechayeh written underneath it.

That's so beautiful indefinitely after we record, I would love to take a picture of that so that we can put it in the notes. No, actually, because we talk a lot, or at least I talk a lot on the show and in general about how yud hey vav hey within itself has so much meaning and also leaves so much room open for these nicknames for these other ways of understanding. I'm also thinking about how there seems to be this interplay in you're talking about it between the words in the language of the Siddur, Modeh Ani is there, it has been handed down to us, the language of mechaye, has been handed down to us. And he had prayer as a personal conversation with something that is bigger than you. What is the relationship then, in your mind between prayer and liturgy? Why do we have both of them together? Can you have one without the other?

You can have one without the other. You can have prayer, certainly, without liturgy. You can have extemporaneous prayer, which in some traditions, some Jewish traditions, is cultivated in the vernacular, you should speak in the vernacular because that's the language. That's where all the good colorful language comes from. It's not restricted to the deck more decorous language and limited vocabulary of the Bible or of the Rabbis. It's not just lashon naki, just not clean language. You can have prayer under the circumstances. And there is a greeat machloket, a great argument, a productive and wondrous argument, that travels throughout the Talmud, and throughout rabbinic literature about whether prayer needs to have a form in general, nevermind a particular language. So you can have prayer without the the liturgy, but you can also have liturgy without the prayer. You are, if you come into a synagogue, to become a part and take your place as part of a minyam, then you're counted, whether you're thinking about your shopping list, or whether you're thinking about the tefillah, or whether you just say, amen in a perfunctory fashion, or whether you understand the words or not, or whether your your head, your heart might be in it. They are, they can be separated out. And I think for all of us, they are sometimes separated out. Boy, when they come together, it's just such a reunion. It's it's extremely, it's extremely important and joyful, when they come together.

In your mind, then, what does liturgy do to suffuse, bulk up, help us with the prayer part? Because I think for a lot of people, maybe I'm speaking for myself, though it changes constantly. Oftentimes, the liturgy is a block to prayer. How is it a block and how can it be a help and support?

Liturgy means though, the work of the people, it's, it's the stuff of the community. Liturgy is the container for the community, we spill the watery consciousness of the community into the liturgy. And it carries more than my own canteen, my own inner canteen can carry, and perhaps some political or cultural ideas, references, associations, that are antithetical to the way in which I live my life. Can I say something celebratory, let's say the great cause to struggle these days has to do with Israel, the State of Israel, the land of Israel, the people of Israel in its own land, can I engage that liturgy as the voice of the people, this is something with which we live, it's also something with which we struggle. I might have written it completely out of my prayer book, my inner prayer book. That personal prayer would never occurred to me. But as a matter of community, that's a different thing. And it means that my, my consciousness is forced in a into a different dimension. That my to tefillah is in some ways, a, a judging of a weighing of all these different things on a personal level, but also reckoning with what they mean on a community level. For the community, this is extremely important. Mechaye hamaeitim, a literal belief in resurrection, or a theoretical possibility, do I hold out the possibility that the idea is more than just an idea, is it just is it metaphorically true or just metaphorically true, but I like for it to be true. All of these things are a part of the dizziness, I think both the mindful, pray-er, and they are the stuff of which community is made.

That's so beautiful. I want to take a step back now and ask, I'm wondering about your tefillah journey, may we call it over your life. Like the ideas that you have about tefillah. Now, we've already heard about your teachers, Rav Solomon, and Rav Green, wondering, what are some other people or experiences that have shaped your understanding of tefillah?

Well, in the company of Zalman, and Art, as another teacher, maybe the greatest teacher of my rabbinical school career, who is a wonderful, kind and thoughtful davener, with a lovely tenor voice, that threads its way, it knits together your soul, really, it's a voice that breaks your heart and heals it again. And I admire his stance, literally, in praying. His name is Norman. I named the other two so I named him. His stance literally, how do you stand before the amud? How do you stand before the lectern? Where do you place your hands? How do you maintain your position in front of a community or take your place as a member of the community? And what do people get when they look to you and see you? So he joins that group of pray-ers, who have been very influential to me, as do great pray-ers, who have influenced me all the way back to my childhood, the chazan of the shul in which I grew up. Who's - the greatest part of his voice, or the most fiery and precise part of his voice had, I believe left him already by the time I got to him, but his face was so kind. And his intention was so pure, that it was like looking at an angel, if I can extend myself that far, just to say it and use another term that we haven't talked about. And I always had the kick, the sense that he was looking at me. So that was extremely powerful and penetrating, for me. As were the voices of all of my friends in USY, with whom we-I would daven every shop this morning, I came from a shul of very knowledgeable children, very well educated children. And we, we could all daven by the time we were in the seventh grade, we could daven a whole shatz.

What shul is this?

A shul called Har Tzion in Silver Spring, Maryland. And I can still see some of my the faces of some of my friends, necks straining, veins bulging as they would sing Hallel, for example. And to be a part of that group, was it was very, very important to me. I remember as a young child going to show I think I was probably three or four years old, judging from the shoulder remember the shul that I went to for Rosh Hashana during those years and we never went there again. It wasn't really a shul, it was a the second floor of a bank building across the street from the apartment where I lived in my earliest years. And I remember men in white, standing around the table and singing whatever they were seeing that I didn't know. And I remember saying to my cousin Mark, who was sitting next to me on the on the bench: well, they're singing their prayers. Do you have a prayer that you say? And he said, Yes, when I go to sleep at night, I've heard that I say, and I said, I, I do also. Let's sing our prayers while they're singing their prayers. So there I was, intermingling whatever the prayers were that they were singing, and I don't know what part of the liturgy they were singing at the time. But there I was. Father, we thank thee for the night. And with a pleasant morning light. And I sang my prayer. So, an impulse to join the prayer. And to make myself into a pray-er or in a public space where everybody was dedicated to that task was important to me. I would say that, in terms of the power of liturgy, some years later, six, seven years later, I was not, I was maybe 10 years old. I went to shul Rosh Hashanah time and I remember seeing in big block letters in the middle of the line of the unetakna tokef in the Silverman Conservative prayerbook: prayer and repentance and charity avert the evil decree. And I thought, oh, evil decree? Have I done enough of these things? Am I going to survive the year? And I remember going home and taking out a book of Hebrew letters that my grandpa had given me. Another great prayer influence in my life, about whom I can tell you some. But I remember taking the book off the shelf, along with some onion skin paper, and finding the tzadik and the daled and the kuf and the hey, tracing out the word tzedakah. Because if I wasn't doing to tzedakah, I could at least write the word out on Rosh Hashanah. So, taking T'fillah very seriously, or the words of tefillah very seriously, at hat point.

Actually, reminds me of something that a rabbi friend of mine brought to me this year, and I'd actually love your take on it, which is that a child in his in a class he was teaching, young child, came up to him or maybe even spoke after the class and said, There's a book of life in a book of death. Well, what if I'm written in the Book of death this year? What if I'm not written in the book of life? Very scared. Because I think part of the challenge of liturgy is a theology may or may not be so comfortable for us these days. So I'm wondering, what might you tell that child or their family? And what do you do nowadays, with a piece of liturgy that kind of calls out to be taken, seriously, but maybe not literally.

I would say the prayer language is in various stages and turns the metaphorical and concrete and that children are, or adults, oftentimes challenged by which way to go. And I think that we don't have enough ways of approaching prayer. We haven't made it into enough of a learning laboratory. I think that praying from the place of a Beit Midrash praying from the place of the ongoing study project, which is the heart of Judaism, that's what that's where the great prayers come from. And I don't mean you have to be sitting in a room called Beit Midrash. But there should be time for a person to reflect in the serious and studious way with somebody else or with other people about these kinds of things about these about these issues, these matters. That can kneh lecha chaver, get yourself a companion, means, be with some can mean be with somebody with whom you can daven, and you can share these kinds of questions and concerns. Help me clarify this language. I think that I would say to that child, you know, sometimes you're thinking about living and, and life and sometimes you think about dying, and you think about death. And if you're at a funeral, you're thinking about death. And if it's almost winter time, and the trees have shed their leaves, and the colors have bled away in a, in a sense, then you're thinking about frailty. And what other kinds of words you associate with death. How about frailty, or a shift in imagination, and mechaye hameitim, or other, the book of death is a book that explores that, it doesn't mean you're going to die. But it's a book that explores that image, and the words that surround it, and the feelings that come over you when you think about it. But don't think about it in terms of I'm, I'm going to die. If I have, if I haven't done this or that. That's not, that's, that's too linear for prayer. Prayer is not so linear. If you want to think about it, when you're getting ready to cross the street, that's helpful. You look in both ways. But in prayer in the prayer world, it's, it's too linear. You have to be more expansive.

I really love what you said, about wanting space to make prayer a laboratory, or to be able to experiment experience explore what prayer is, because that's why we call this space this show, this, whatever this is becoming the light lab. I don't know if you knew that. That's what this podcast was called, actually.

Actually, I never did.

Right! So you got it, exactly.

So Eiana wants to talk about prayer, I'm there. I don't care what she calls it!

Oh, I love it. But but the idea of a laboratory came up naturally for you. What would you want to teach or engage in? What would you want someone to know about, prayer, let's say first of all, if they were entering a communal prayer setting, and they might not know what's going on, or they might not be sure what to do, what would you tell them? And then I want to ask, what would you tell someone who wants to start on a journey of the prayer side, not the liturgy sides. So first, like the liturgical communal space, and the personal space.

I remember one time being in a gym to which I belonged, and I was riding a stationary bike, and a woman got on the treadmill next to me, and was very tentative. She was she was dressed for it, you know, she had a color coordinated workout outfit and was she was clearly ready to be ready for it ready to be into it. But she didn't quite know how to get her footing or how to adjust and so on. And she asked me, Can you help me? And I said, yeah, the best thing I can tell you is be prepared to look like an idiot for about five minutes.

Yeah.

You're gonna get it but not if you try to be perfect at it at the beginning. So step into it. I know how to say baruch. So people are saying baruch say baruch, say it loud, you know, baruch atah, I know how to say those two words, I know how to say, amen, I can look around the night, I can see when people are standing up and when they're not standing up. Do it! There are some people in the community who are pulling their prayer shawls over their heads at a certain point in the service. I wonder what that's about. Not everybody seems to be doing it. But it looks rather impressive. I think I'll try that. Then you get to find out what it feels like under there. And I suppose there we're kind of getting to the bridge between the form and the feeling of it. You feel like what it's what's going on underneath there, how you can be with somebody and also alone. So, liturgy, yeah, you have to, if you're interested in the power of community, then you have to apprentice yourself to the cannon. There are some things that you just simply have to know. Ritual loves erudition. Ritual loves it when you know what you're doing. When you get called to the Torah for aliyah, it's a real good idea to worry about whether you know what to do, and to prepare yourself for it because ritual loves loves, its own unfolding in a fluid manner commensurate with the kind of respect that the community deserves. So yeah, there's some things that you just simply have to learn whether you, whether you have earned it or just learned it, you know, take your take the cringes of your palace, somebody might whisper to you, in touch, right where I'm showing you. And I'm, nevermind, do it, you know, and then take those fringes and touch them to your lips, kiss them. Really? Yeah. Hold on to the handles and say this. There's some things that we start doing perfunctorily. And maybe we feel like an idiot for five minutes, or we feel very self conscious about. At the same time, we need to allow ourselves to learn what it means to be standing in front of a com - of a community and holding on to the handles of the scroll that contains our sacred story. Or being in a community where people are pulling to stay in the world of T'fillah have their prayer shawls pulled up over their heads, you start to learn something, as I said before, about what it means to be inside and outside. And you can bring your own, not only that, but you can and should bring your own thoughts, your own deepest thoughts and fears and hopes to this particular place. And and understand if the cues are powerful enough, and if the community actions are powerful enough, protective enough, you might feel that this is a space that's strong enough for you to to relax here. And to let some things out. Somebody once came to me, a member of the congregation of long, some long standing and said, I've been thinking a lot about it. And I really need to leave this synagogue because I don't know any Hebrew and I just don't feel comfortable. And I said to him, Well, as you look around at other synagogues, or a place where you're comfortable, please try to find a place for yourself where you're also comfortable being uncomfortable. This is not just about being comfortable.

Yeah.

It's not a place where there is only the light and the stained glass windows, there's turbulence here. And you must be able to engage it.

If you're leading a T'fillah experience, if you're davenning from the amud, what is your hope for the people that are there?

My hope is that I can open up the siddur in a way that gives them some, the Siddur being the order of prayer, the prayer book itself that contains the liturgy that gives them some sense and understanding, a deep understanding, even if it's not a literal one of what's going on. And sometimes that happens, or it will happen because of can happen because of affect. How is it that I reach into the world of my great prayer teachers like Art Green and say, sim shalom tova uvracha chein vachesed verachamim aleinu v'al kol yisrael, and we just all have that. And people might not understand the words, but they'll get the affect. And to me, that is part of what the shaliach tzibur, what the representative of the community needs to be able to do. And I hope I can do that. I hope I can do it with a pleasant melody also. And I will oftentimes daven in English, something else that I learned from Zalman Schachter. And, and switch back and forth from Hebrew to English, to give people a sense that there is a seamless, there can be a seamless flow between one and the other. Hospitality, these people have come to me to a space that they've entrusted me to furnish and be furnished in a comfortable way.

And in your mind, I'm not even going to ask about the importance of tefillah, it's something deeper than that. How can a relationship with tefillah, a relationship with liturgy a relationship with prayer, how might it change someone's life? Or what is the change that it might put into the world? Why does it matter, all this stuff, to you?

Tefillah, the idea of tefillah, the dynamics of tefillah, help me to do the adjudging that's bound up with the root of the word, and help me move from imagination and personal thought out to a place where I can actually interact with people and do some good. And so I think that it is foundational in that kind of way. To get up in the morning, and to, to stretch and to say, Blessed are You who open opens the eyes of the blind, not only means that I opened my eyes to the sunlight and my pupils have to adjust it. I'm not even really sure what time it is until I can see the clock. It means not only that, but it means Blessed are You who opens the eyes of the blind. That there are people who can't see who won't see in the world and I might be able to help that. Bless it are You who raises up those who are bowed down just so an arc between the personal kind of stretching and overcoming yesterday's tennis game or exercise and the need to help people stand up straight in the world. And the ideas that lie behind tefillah, that lie just where imagination is hinged to action, are the ideas on which the world I think is based.

Do you have a prayer for us today? Not just you and me, but whoever is listening, the podcast? What might your prayer be for us today?

Hmm. There's a wonderful story in the Talmud that has two parts. I won't tell you the whole story. Sounds like we've we've reached a place to put a bookmark in the, in our, in our conversation. But I will tell you this that when the curtain goes up on this story, the question is asked, from what verse in the Bible can I learn that G?d prays? And that's the way the question is asked, it's not asked whether G?d prays or not, that is appparently a foregon conclusion. But how can I find a biblical verse that would find the idea and found the idea that G?d prays. And the verse is given. And then the next question is asked by another generation and in another place of people who take that if you take that challenge very seriously, and they say, Well, what does G?d pray? And the answer is that G?d prays, G?d's T'fillah is, yehi ratzon milfanai, may it be My Own will. Because on that level, prayer is introspection. It's inside G?d, may it be My Own will, that my attribute of compassion take precedence over my other attributes. And then I treat all of my children and everybody with compassion. So I think that would be today's prayer.

Beautiful. Rabbi Sager, as always, it is such a blessing and a prayerful experience for me, to learn from you, and be in dialogue with you, and as you can tell listeners, we have many more things to talk about. So we will be back but for now, just thank you. Thank you.

My pleasure. And thanks again for the invitation.

And thank you so much for listening. Our podcast is edited by Christie Dodge of Allobee. Thank you so much to Yaffa Englander for being our show notes and social media extraordinare. Next week, we're back with our series on the Amidah diving into the first blessing of the text itself. So very excited to do that. And stay tuned in the next couple of weeks for part two of my conversation with Rabbi Sager, as well as some exciting announcements. Have a beautiful and blessing filled with everyone see you soon.