The Light Lab Podcast Episode 19: Asking for Help (Amidah-Middle Blessings 1) Live at SLBC

2:04PM Mar 24, 2022

Speakers:

Eliana Light

Josh Warshawsky

Ellen Dreskin

Keywords:

prayer

rabbi

bina

thinking

answered

people

blessing

wisdom

adonai

eliana

moment

world

talked

understanding

episode

knowledge

question

discernment

josh

flow

Shalom everyone, Eliana Light here, and welcome to another episode of the Light Lab Podcast! We are so glad that you're here and now that we are releasing episodes every other week, we hope you've been catching up, particularly on our series on the Amidah, which we are going to jump right back into this episode. First a few announcements, we have a listener survey, we want to learn how you would like to engage with the Light Lab and how you engage with our podcast. The survey is going to be open until Passover, that link is bit.ly/llpodsurvey. All lowercase. And don't worry, it's linked in the description of this very episode. We would love to hear from you. We are so excited to hear what you think. Second, you will hear that this episode is a little different. It was recorded live at Song Leader Boot Camp, live as in in the zoom but there were lots of other people there sharing their thoughts that you'll hear during the show. We thought it was so cool to do a live recording and we're excited to try that format out in the future, both for anyone and also for organizations, congregations, anyone who wants to bring us in to do this as something for their community members, let us know. We had so much fun, and we think it's a really great way to engage more people in to tefillah learning. Third, and this is very exciting. As of today we have launched our membership page. If you go to ko-fi.com That's ko-fi.com/thelightlab, again, that's also linked in the description. You can sign up at different tiers to support the show. Different tiers have different perks, like exclusive content and merch and one on ones with me. But you can also just give if you want to support the show. And if you'd like to make a tax deductible donation without perks but you know perks in our hearts, there's a link to that in the description as well. So get ready for our live episode from Song Leader Boot Camp!

Shalom everybody and welcome to another episode of the Light Lab Podcast! My name is Eliana Light, and I am here with my friend, Rabbi Josh Warshawsky.

Hello again!

And Cantor Ellen Dreskin!

Here we are one more time!

One more time. Fun fact listeners Josh and I are actually in the same room. I'm currently in Ohio, in Josh's basement. Shehecheyanu. Here we are. It's very exciting. Ellen, unfortunately not with us, with us in spirit, we still love you. And we're all here together in the zoom room with a bunch of other people because we are recording this episode live at Song Leader Boot Camp! Everybody give a quiet applause! Yes!

Not so quiet.

Right? Can you hear it everybody? Exactly. Um, so as we like to do we start with an opening question. And also, as we do we keep it very light and frothy on this podcast. Because that's what light means to us. So the question of the day is, where do you need some help in your life? Where can we lean into the help that we need in our life? I'll start with you, Ellen.

Oh, gee, that's an easy one. Well, where don't we meet? Where don't I need help in my life? What's coming up for me very recently is brain fog and wanting to achieve some sort of clarity. I feel like sometimes my head gets so full of a number of things, that I find that I need to stop and regain balance and clear the fog and, and ask for some sense of clarity about whatever it is that's on my mind at the moment. I guess that would be, that's where I am today, anyhow.

Yeah, amen, amen to that prayer of help. Josh, how about you?

So I recently recently started taking guitar lessons again, which has been really great. But I learned from my guitar, I thought it would help me because one, I want to get better at guitar, but also I had been, whenever I've been picking up the guitar, it had been for work. And then I would put the guitar down and never engage with the guitar as a creative process for myself anymore. And that was very sad. But I've been talking to my teacher a lot about how to set aside specific space and place and time and I've been needing a lot of help with how to design what that looks like in my life. So my teacher was really incredible and they told me that I should create a space that I can walk past and I couldn't miss it, that guitar just sitting right there. And I have to be able to just notice it right there and be able to set aside that time. So I needed a lot of help with realizing that in my life, and they were really, really gracious in helping me to visualize that too.

It's awesome that you have support for that. I think a theme that I'm picking up is that we aren't alone in this. Like Ellen, when you were talking about clarity, it really spoke to me. And Josh, when you're talking about making space for the things that you want to explore in your life, and the things that you know, will bring you great joy and satisfaction if you do them. That's definitely something I work on. I know that I am overwhelmed, as they might say, I I had a health practitioner asked me recently, Eliana, do you think you have burnout? I was like, oh, yeah, like that's not even, it's not even a question. It's just like a given. It's a baseline. It's not a great baseline, though. And I work with a lot of people to try to help me lower that baseline. As it were, I have a career coach, and we look at my calendar, and she just kind of sadly shakes her head. Like Eliana, we talked about you making more time for yourself? And I was like, Yeah, but I said yes to all this stuff months ago, and now it's all happening at the same time. So for me, because I am leaning into the the consequence of past me saying yes to all of these wonderful things. I think what I'm asking for help with is having compassion on myself. And as we talked about earlier, empathy on myself, that everything is going to get done that needs to get done, somehow, and it might not be perfect, and I can still find time to care for myself and others through that, as best I can. And those of you who are listening, you can think for yourself, Where is a way that you need help in your life? And are there people that you can ask for help from? And those of you who are in this recording with us, you can think about that for yourself also, where is a place that you need help in your life? And I wonder maybe why that was the question we started with today. Josh want to take us there?

But first I just want to give us a ken yehi ratzon to that, so may it be, let's, let's all lean into that a little bit more to. Amen. Here we are. We're, we're jumping into the amidah, continuing on our exploration. And instead of being sort of a deep dive, I feel like we've done a wading into the Amidah. We're sort of wading into the ocean of the Amidah, one step closer to submerging ourselves and really immersing. So first we started with an episode of Adonai S'fatai Tiftach, that opening line, we were preparing for the prayer, we talked about the blessing formula, Baruch Atah Adonai, which is going to come back in this episode as we get into some of those blessings. We've connected to our ancestors with the Avot and Imahot, and we've gotten to Gvurot, those powers, we've talked about raising ourselves up with the Kedusha. And now I think we're like knee deep, right now I would say, now we're getting into the petitionary blessing, this sort of meaty section of the center of the Amidah that changes based on what kind of day it is. This is the petitionary prayer, the blessings that we talked about during the weekdays. So before we even get into the text itself, how we're feeling about petitionary prayers in general? What do we think?

Ellen you just made a face, I wonder if you could start with that where that face came from?

Well, sometimes when I'm teaching, I ask students out of these types of prayers that we pray, which is the easiest or which is the most difficult for us. And, and when I say out of the types that we pray, we've talked about prayers that that say either help, thanks, wow, or and Jews that a fourth one, oops, and that our prayers have to do with these things. And I, I confess that my hardest sell for myself, is that, please. That petitionary prayer. It's a it's a tough one for me, because I'm not sure what my motivation is.. Honestly, I'm not sure if I expect the prayer to be answered to my satisfaction, in which case it's on G?d, or if the prayer is working because I'm able to open my heart and be in a safe place where I can express it. And it doesn't really, I don't need the feeling of being answered. What I need is the feeling of being heard. But sometimes I go back and forth between the two and questioning where do I think G?d is in this whole petitionary prayer thing?

I love that Ellen, and I was thinking about that a lot for myself. And that, we're, you know, it's nice that we're recording this live at SLBC Song Leader Boot Camp because we get some really, really nice things coming into the chat. And and Beth would put Beth Hamer just said in the chat about petitionary prayers being more about asking the question than about who it is you're asking, I think I've been coming at the petitionary prayer as exactly the same way. It's sort of just naming what I need for myself, how to figure out how to put it out into the world and with that I can help manifest it. If I can just at least name what it is that I need, then I can think about how to get there after that. So for me, I think a lot lately it's been a lot of thinking about it personally and just putting it out out into the world and figuring out where to go from there. But that's how it's sort of been unfolding in my prayer practice lately.

I find for me, while petitionary prayer might be challenging in the context of the Siddur, meaning, now is the time asked for these things, which we'll get to in a second, petitionary prayer is something that we do all the time in our lives. All the time, all of us, we talk about, Oh My G?d as a knee jerk response of prayer, to moments of wonder and moments of gratitude, but also to moments of grief and sorrow. And when we can't imagine that such a terrible thing is going on, when we think, oh, gosh, I hope that it wasn't my friend who was in that fire, or when we hear whatever sort of bad news it might be. That's when we ask for help. And this gets back to this idea, I think, that in those moments, we just hope, against hope, we hope against hope that there is something that can be done. And even if our intellectual brain, our thinking brain might know that there's nothing that we can do, our open heart and our emotions and our empathy yearn for there to be some sort of goodness that comes out, yearn for things to change, yearn for there not to be that bad thing, whatever we're afraid of. And so it is only human, to ask for help in those moments. And then we can intellectualize it and say, Well, I don't know if help is going to actually come. But for me, kind of on my own G?d journey as I moved away from imagining kind of like Bruce Almighty, now that image is coming of him sitting at the desk, at the computer answering all those emails, right? It's a great scene, we'll put it in the show notes, where he's like, I don't know, post it notes! And then they're everywhere. I don't know, file cabinets! And they're everywhere, write emails, and then the answer is yes, everybody. So Bruce Almighty used to be very informative for my theology and like, Well, G?d can't answer yes to everybody. Because then who knows what could happen? So that's why my particular things weren't, yes, that didn't really hold up very well, honestly. And, and I think that's okay.

I also think in terms of things being prayers that we don't realize, and when we say, Oh, My G?d, or something like that, what you were saying, Eliana is, I can make a lot of very judgmental statements toward myself. I can sit here and say, oh, I need to clear my head, I need to finish this or that or the other, I need to make sure and whatever. And those themselves, sometimes, I hear them as prayers when I turn off the judgment. May I have more clarity? May I please have the strength I need to get through all my tasks today? Which is showing self compassion right there as opposed to oh, G?d, why did I wait this long? I'm never going to finish everything I need to finish today. Well, let me just be curious about it, at least put it in a question or a request. Because it helps me to feel more in tune with myself in terms of instead of beating myself over the head about things.

I feel like what you're also getting at is that the the framing and the phrasing is really important, right? How we think about the words that we're saying helps us identify and feel what that looks like and feel into the prayer. And, you know, for me also, I think that the way that these that these petitionary prayers are ordered, you know, and taking a look at some of our source texts, it's it's very clear that there was a directionality to it that we were trying to frame for ourselves, how we can get at the ideas that we want to get out and how we can get it to ask we want to get it and turning it into the kinds of requests we want to make, that it was all set at set aside and set apart intentionally.

I would love to ask y'all a question. A quick question about the looks on the camera like wait, but I have a question, Eliana, I have a question! You know, it's so interesting to me that just the deeper we wade into the Amidah, that we are, we've had the metaphor of entering the having a private audience with G?d. And this being You and me, G?d, just You and me right here. And yet these prayers are still in the plural, and very communal in language. And that presents an interesting thing to me about, about being told what it is that I'm supposed to petition for. And I'm curious if either y'all have have, you know, it's my private time with G?d, how come I still have liturgy here in front of me that's saying, and here's what you need to be asking for.

I'm thinking back to what Rabbi Steve Sager talked about in his interview, which listener if you haven't listened to Rabbi Sager's two interviews, I would highly, highly recommend them. He talked about liturgy as the container in which we pour the watery consciousness of the community, I think that was his words. That the liturgy is the containment vessel, and that there is something that binds us together, perhaps thinking about the in particular the 13 middle blessings of the Amidah, as we move into kind of talking about that, as those little containers, where it's not just about me anymore, that makes petitionary prayer in a way, actually easier for me, in a sense now that I'm thinking out loud, because it's not just for me, it's for all of us. And it's bringing into focus, as people are saying in the chat, as Josh has mentioned, it's bringing into focus particular values that were values for the rabbi's of the Talmud. And if you go back even forward, and you think they existed at all in history, the men of the Great Assembly, who kind of constructed the themes of the Amidah that were handed down today. And you know, as Judith Houtman says, in our favorite series, My People's Prayerbook, Josh is holding it up now, tadah! In Brachot 29a, in the Talmud, it shares that the topics of these middle blessings are fixed. The topics are fixed, but the words are flexible, in the sense that whoever was leading the service at the time, would say a prayer from their own heart, about whatever theme they were on, and it only became standardized around the 15th century with the printing press. So maybe something that you could do to make it more personal, is to actually write your own prayer from the heart in the moment, but based on the theme that we have been given from our ancestors.

The other thing that your question Ellen made me think of is, I wonder if there's something to be said about it being easier to ask for something for the collective than it is to ask for something for yourself. Right, even though we want the first you know, we'll get to the first blessing. But let's say we're asking for wisdom for ourselves. We're asking for discernment. But it's much easier to say I, you know, I really hope we all start to understand things a little bit better, as opposed to saying, I really, I really hope I start understanding things a lot better. I think it opens it opens it up to feeling like there's not as much pressure on me. And so the Ask becomes a little bit safer, if we're able to ask for it on behalf of the community, even if what we mean is that I really hope a little bit of that wisdom comes to me.

Hmm, I love that the understanding that if I'm in the dark and asking for a light that I am connecting myself within that web still with all of those, surely I'm not the only one. And their prayers will help me and my prayers, perhaps will help them to feel that light to see that light. I appreciate that very much. I know about the the middle 13 that something that that I'm pretty sure I learned from Larry Hoffman, even though I don't know that it's in the book, but perhaps it is is, is that when we went thousands of years ago, a couple thousand years ago into that Amidah section and the private prayers, he said, just like Larry Hoffman said, just in Talmudic times, you know, they're sitting around eating lunch, the rabbi's of the Great Assembly, and one says together, so what was your prayer during the Amidah? And, and some, and a rabbi will say, Oh, well, I prayed X, Y, and Z. And then, oh, let's write that one down. That's good. And all of a sudden, there were three set prayers, and then six set prayers, and that eight, and we got to these middle 13. And then they they were concretized. They were literally etched in stone once they were printed, and in a book for people to read. And I think that that is a lovely idea that to know that at one time, they were not set that this was meant to be private, yet communal time. And and that we are allowed, we are given permission to make this house of liturgy as we've talked about the Siddur as a house before, to make this house, our home with our own intentions, in our own words.

I want to make sure we name before we get too much farther, that there is a pain that comes with petitionary prayer. And that pain comes with a theology that I certainly don't have any more. But I see echoes of it in the Jewish tradition of those who are deserving having their prayers answered. That seems to be the theology of the Torah. Those who are deserving have their prayers answered, and those who are not do not. But as you know, Rabbi Shai Held says, the Tanakh itself is wrestling with its own theology. It's the whole book of Job. It's the Psalms in which the Psalmists say, G?d, I'm doing the best I can here. I'm still drowning, I'm still struggling. We walk around, and we recognize that the world isn't actually like that. And yet, you know, I'm thinking about a synagogue I was at for high holidays a couple years ago. And I said something before the healing prayer, about how we don't know what causes totally sickness in this world, and that we don't actually know what our prayer is going to do, but that it does something for us to pray for healing. And there's a woman who came up to me afterwards and she said she hadn't been to synagogue in a year, because last Yom Kippur, she showed up to synagogue with a broken leg. And someone had said, What terrible thing did you do last year that God punished you with a broken leg. And so she didn't come back to shul. You know, it was - Don't say that listeners, it's not a good thing to say. But unfortunately, that kind of idea is part of our liturgy, it's part of our heritage. And we are wrestlers with that we are wrestlers with the divine. You know, my, there is a tradition in a lot of synagogues that during the leader's repetition of the Amidah after the first three blessing that the tzedakah box comes out, and people then give tzedakah, I remember this from when I was a kid. And my father who was a rabbi, it was always very uncomfortable with that. We were walking to synagogue once and he was telling me about his worries. He said, What if there's a kid who comes to shul, and he's praying for his grandfather to feel better, and he says, G?d, I'm about to put a couple of dollars in the tzedakah box. And then he connects those two things, the asking, and the tzedakah, and it keeps giving sadaqa and then his grandfather doesn't get better, right. Petitionary prayer, any prayer really, is an acknowledgment that we are not fully in charge of ourselves, and acknowledgement that we are not fully in control of anything. Gratitude is saying there are things here before I got here. Awe is saying, well, a world exists without me, and help us saying, Oh, no, there are things going on, that are terrible, that are out of my control. I think it's important to acknowledge the pain point there before before I move on.

And then the, you know, what qualifies as success? The Reform Siddur has a famous passage, the punch line of which, when one rises from prayer a better person, their prayer has been answered. And that the change takes place within us. And maybe it's not an answer to all our problems, but it is a sense of calm. It's a sense of being held. It's a sense of being connected. It's a sense of being heard, and I can get up and feel different afterwards.

I also think the thing that that we're talking about and that we're wrestling with and that you said that you mentioned so beautifully that the Torah is wrestling with I think, even in the Talmud we see the people who are the rabbi's are codifying these conversations. We just got finished in the Talmud Daf Yomi cycle is studying Masechet Taanit a while ago, which had to do with all these people who are praying for things and some people's prayers are heard and some people's prayers weren't. And it starts with like rabbis and righteous people who are like, supposedly righteous people who are asking for things, and then it isn't being answered. And then it turns out that like the school teacher goes up, or like the person who bakes bread for the poor goes up,and suddenly the prayer is answered in a way that like the wisest person in the community's prayer wasn't answered. And it's the rabbi's dealing with their own understanding that even studying and being the smartest person in the room doesn't mean that your prayers gonna be answered any more than the person who is actually helping the person standing next to them. And not that, you know, they're still struggling with some prayers being answered and some prayers not being answered. But at least moving it away from like the explicitly wisest,righteous people are the ones who are the ones who whose prayers are answered, I think takes us into the conversation about how prayer is understood.

I think the rabbi's were also doing an exercise in reinterpreting language in the same way that as we've been going through the Amidah, we've talked a lot about the reinterpretation of language that can happen through translation, right? Because anytime you translate, you're making a choice about what to raise up because there's so many ways to translate. There's a great passage from the Talmud about Hael HaGadol Hagibor Vehanorah, which we talked a lot about in our Avot V'Imahot episode, but this is one in which I'm not going to go into the whole thing now, but it's great! Maybe we can post it in the show notes for you to peruse at your leisure. But basically, the rabbi's kind of re imagine what it means for G?d to be mighty, right? You might have thought that for G?d to be mighty, G?d would be smiting our enemies. But actually, what makes G?d mighty is holding back G?d's wrath and not acting right away. Right? We almost have to reinterpret it for it to make sense, because in that theology, G?d still has to have the power to do things. So now G?d has the power to do things, and it's choosing not to, and then we get to decide, each of ourselves today, what does it mean for G?d have to have the power to do anything, which again, we talked about a lot in the Gvurot episode. What does it mean for us to be asking for things? Is it a magic slot machine? Is it a magic claw game? Or is there something more profound going on here?

The question is in the chat window now, should we actually expect our prayers to be answered? And I think that for each of us the definition, as we were mentioning of what it means to have a prayer answered, it can be a very individual thing. It's a good question!

And with that, we'll be right back.

Especially at SLBC this year, since we are recording right now, let us remind you Live from SLBC, we're into numbers and counting at SLBC this year. And so somebody may be asking themselves, wait a minute, the Amidah is called the Shmonah Esrei, the 18 benedictions. And we have three at the beginning that stay the same, and three at the end that stay the same, that's six. So if we're going to have Shmona Ashrei, that would mean if I haven't lost all of my math from my childhood, there should only be 12 blessings in the middle. And yet there are 13. The Shmona Ashrei actually has 19 Blessings depending upon sometimes which sidd. T you look at somewhere along the way, a blessing was split into two. And there is a specific blessing which many some of us may know better than others, asking for the end of all the evil people in the world that and it's not nice, it's not benevolent in nature and some siddurim leave that one out, that evil people should be cut away and destroyed. So sometimes we don't go all the way there but there are 13 Blessings there. Kabbalistically 13 is a very cool number because people who study Kabbalah notice there's a huge connection between Kabbalah and the zodiac. And the reason that in Kabbalah, 13 is a special number, a magic number, is because the 12 signs of the zodiac seem to control or influence our instinctive reactive behavior to the world. And the Kabbalists say that the 13th blessing the number 13 helps to give us control over the 12 signs of the zodia. Help us to to to have some control to respond instead of react, to not be so knee jerk. And so 13 is a magic number in Kaballah I think we're going to dive right in now and take a look at the first at least the first two of these middle 13 benediction. So I'm going to read the first one to you in Hebrew and an English, I am reading at the moment from Mishkan T'fillah, from the Reform Movement siddur, and and the first blessing of the middle petitionary prayers goes like this. Atah chonen la'adam da'at umelamed la'adam da'at umelamed le'eino shvina koneinu meitcha chochma bina l'da'at. Baruch atah adonai chonen hada'at. And it's translated here as You grace humans with knowledge and teach mortals understanding, graciously share with us your wisdom, insight and knowledge. Blessed, are you Adonai who graces with knowledge. Do y'all have other translations you'd like to share? Perhaps or note some differences in what you see?

Well, not only do we have different translations, but I think we have a different order of the end of it right? Choneinu meitcha deah binah vehaskel.

Mm hmm. Can I tell you I? Yeah, I looked in a number of sidurim and I found that Mishkan T'fillah, which I just read from, and the artscroll siddur, sfarad, the Sephardic version of the artscroll siddur, says chochma, bina, v'da'at, the artscroll Ashkenaz, and I'm guessing whatever you have in front of you as well, says deah, binah, vehaskel. So here's a conversation right here. What's the difference between chochma bina daat, and deah binah and haskel?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind that chocma bina and daat are all Kabalistic emanations. They're all sefirot, which is pretty cool. All having to do with knowledge.

Mmhm.

Yeah. What do you have there?

That was with Larry Hoffman so great. So they're all sephirot. Also, at first I thought you're gonna say that chochma bina da'at is also the acronym, that's where Chabad gets its name from?

Ah, yes, that's what I that's where I thought you were going too. And deah is kind of this, this shadow sphirah. It's it's not there on all of the charts, which also makes it interesting.

I think what you were saying the continuation of what you were saying is that the idea that this the Sephardi version da'at, chochma bina and daat, because they wanted the wisdom to come from the sephirot. Right, that that that connection was direct for them, from the sephirot into the Amidah in the request that we're asking for those specific three things when I was thinking about high school I never thought about haskel before and why that word is in there and why usually I think of, when I think of chochma and binah, sorry bina and daat, I usually connect chochma with it because it's what's more prevalent in I think in the Ashkenazic world, and then, but this haskel is a really nice idea. The Haskalah was the Enlightenment period in our Jewish history. And I love the idea of when enlightenment could be. I don't know if you want to talk about what you said Rabbi Dorf says and -

Yeah, what Rabbi Dorf says, also My Peoples Prayerbook, y'all. If - I don't know if they can give us like, I don't know. Should they sponsor the pod -I don't know if that's a thing a book series can do. But if they did so. So Robert Dorf talks about three kinds of knowing which someone asked in the chat, why these three? The deah is factual knowledge. This is the thing that I know. And binah is discernment, the ability in the human mind to recognize differences, to decide things is a really important thing, right? Discernment is what we talk about at Havdalah, the ability to distinguish, to make differences. And that haskel, wisdom, is experiential knowledge, knowing through doing knowing through action, knowing through being so that we have these three different levels, we're asking to know things, to be able to decide things and also to be able to know through experiencing things. And I love kind of moving through that in these three words.

I love the idea of haskel being experiential knowledge, and I like that a lot better than chochma, which I feel like we usually translate just is like, like, like knowledge that we know, like things that have been passed down, as in haskel difference being that we have to see it, we have to do it, we have to be a part of it. Jonathan mentioned in the chat also that the Sephardic transition, we get perception instead of knowledge in there also. And I like the idea of perception connected with discernment of like, this is something that we have to be actively doing. You can't just be given this understanding, we have to be noticing the differences. And even in the Hebrew, we get that this is something that G?d does, you, you give this, you chonen da'at to us, chonenu, but keep doing it. This is something that we have to keep renewing every single day, we have to keep learning, we have to keep noticing, we have to keep realizing what's going on, we can't just let what was in our minds before, whatever that first thing was whatever that da'at was, we can't just let that be the end all, we always have to be re engaging and reinterpreting and re understanding and actualizing.

I translate daat as information, which I think is data. And when I, when I studied a little bit about the sephirot, I was taught that the first the highest or the the most elusive, perhaps to us is chochma, undifferentiated, not with wisdom, everything, the the fullness of what we could possibly, and remember we know, but the fullness of what we can understand, and binah sorts things out into categories, into, into bite-sized pieces that we can understand, into categories, light and dark into opposites, etc. And then when we get to the reason I love haskel, but I find it very different from chochma, is my dad would always say, Where's your seichel. And this was usually when I did something that my dad thought was not the smartest thing to do in the whole world, would say use your seichel. Seichel absolutely met common sense, to take the information I've been given, to try and be wise. But that the the haskel is to let it flow through me and use my own common sense to respond to the information I've been given.

That made me think of, I love the idea of common sense there. And the kind of understanding that it's different for human beings than than animals I think, right? It brought me back Birkot Hashachar. Asher natan lesechvi bina, right, the thing that the rooster gets is understanding, but they don't know anything else to do with it except just to shout out that the morning is here. They can't do anything else with it. They can't use that to live any other part of their lives. That's what we do with haskel. We take it one step further.

And perhaps that's why out of all of the things that we could have had as the first petitionary prayer, that's why we're asking for knowledge and understanding first. Before we get any further, you know, Maimonides, it said again, My People's Prayerbook in The Guide for the Perplexed part one chapter one, it says what is the image of G?d within us? It's knowledge that we access our divine qualities when we access our knowledge. But before we move forward, I actually want to move backward because something that I noticed right as you were reading it, Ellen, that I never had noticed before, which is why I love that we get to slow down and actually hear these prayers being read out loud, is that it starts with the word atah, and that we move through the kedusha, right, through the holiness, and our first petitionary prayer starts with You. Right, immediately directing whatever things we are asking for or feeling outward. And that these first two lines which have this very similar structure that we find kind of all over poetry in the siddur, you do blank to blank and you give blank to blank. Right, kind of mirroring each other, that just as we talked about in Gvurot, it's just stating a thing that is already there. We know that there is wisdom in the world, G?d You give us wisdom. And then we do the ask. First, we kind of direct it, you. And we're saying, you know, I did not teach myself everything there is to know, I am not the arbiter of all the wisdom in the world. There was wisdom here before I got here. I am grateful to know all of these things, and to be part of a world in which wisdom and discernment exist. And let's keep that going. You know, I just think the structure is hitting me differently. Today.

It jumps out to me when you say that now that it doesn't say atah noten le'adam da'at, it doesn't actually say you give us, there's this atah chonen. This is adonai adonai, el rachoom vechanoon. That, that and maybe it follows through the other prayers, maybe it's a hint of, of this isn't just about giving you something, this is about gracing, being graced with something. That if we didn't have this stuff that we're asking for, we couldn't survive. In that second line, I love it repeats vechonenu, and then this word meitcha. I have here, the Kabalistic daily prayer book, as a matter of fact, and the translation of choneinu meitcha, says graciously grant us from Yourself. And this is this this flow, that there's something of G?d's essence that is being shared with us during this blessing. And that just, you know, I'll spend the next six weeks thinking about that one.

There is a there's a teaching of the Baal Shem Tov that Nehemia Polen brought up in again, our source book here, that talks about how this chochma, this sort of wisdom that we're getting, the more one draws from it, the stronger it flows. Right, the more that we engage with this wisdom, the more that we engage with whatever we're receiving from, from G?d, the more that we're engaging with that and using it and actualizing it. And being aware, as we're noticing in the chat, the more it can grow, the more it can influence us and the people around us.

And what it's bringing up for me is the fact that anytime that I feel I am being particularly creative, where I am creating something, a song or program, it doesn't actually feel like I'm doing anything at all, because I feel like I am a channel for something beyond me. And it's very difficult to describe flow state, whatever you might say. But in the moment where I might, where someone else might say Eliana is making a thing, or Eliana is creating a thing, I actually feel Eliana isn't doing anything, and something else is coming through me. And that's what it's, that's what meitcha is making me think of. That in our most creative moments, we are tapping into that divine quality. And also, all of the wisdom and all of the things that have ever been created in the world are like funneling through us at the moment, because we wouldn't be able to create this podcast if people hadn't invented microphones. And that couldn't have happened if people hadn't done, right, every single thing that we're doing, every book, every piece of tech, every website that we're looking at, every data point that we know about the Siddur, somebody else did that. And so every thing that we create, is the sum of all the creation that has ever happened before it kind of being funneled through you in a divine system at this moment.

And going to look very, it's the flow through the it's all about the flow through. I'm sorry, now we're stuck. We're so excited, we're jumping all over. You go, I was gonna say that, that it's all from above or all from what surrounds us, but the filters are so very different, that it will look different. Everything's flowing through. And yet as it comes to us, continuing the flow, it's going to get very individual and unique and different. Because we can't all write songs like the two we all can and and that's that's the flow through now that's okay, that's non judgmental. Everyone's got their, their jam and their skills. And how wonderful is that?

Here I go thinking well, I would I got from that was Kohelet, Ein kol chadash tachat hashemesh, right, that there's nothing new under the sun. And we're just sort of re re understanding and reusing these different things, but I like the way that you framed it. It's like it's gonna look different when it comes out of this, as when it came out of that. And there's a new refurbishment to it that I appreciate.

That's why I like the image of light. I mean light is the best metaphor for everything. But as we know with this podcast. But I like to think of all of us as prisms, and we are all shaped differently and uniquely as prisms, and we're shaded differently as prisms based on who we are, what we've experienced, what our ancestral heritage is like what our life is like. And when the Divine Light shines through us, it shines out into the world differently, it's the same light. And yet when it is filtered through each prism of each individual holy soul, it gets to shine out in the world differently. And that makes the world in much better and more beautiful place.

Amen.

And with that, we'll be right back.

Welcome back, everyone. So grateful that you have used your powers of discernment to choose to listen to this podcast all the way to the end, so that we get to do a practice together. So I invite you to sit a little more comfortable in your chair if you are able to. Again, if you're driving, you might want to pause and do this part when we get home. Feel yourself connected through your feet or through your seat. Roll your shoulders back, imagine your spine as a holy ladder reaching from the heavens to the earth. Allow your hands to fall to your knees, down to ground for open to receive. And begin to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Breathing in to lift. Breathing out to ground. Breathing in to lift. Breathing out to ground. And as you start to follow the pattern of your breath I invite you to know that you are breathing. This meditation of Thich Nhat Hanh that I actually learned just yesterday from our dear friend Chava Mirel. As you breathe in, I know that I am breathing in. As you breathe out, I know that I'm breathing out. Take a few seconds and just sit with that breath and the knowledge you have that your breath is happening right now.

So often our mind takes us to the past or the future. But what is it you know about right now? What is the mantra that you need right now? I know that what is true right in this moment that you can think, that you can discern, that is your own wisdom. A mantra that can be supportive to you right at this moment. What do you know. Repeat that mantra to yourself a few times until you move from knowledge to understanding.

Allow your body to be filled with a feeling of gratitude for that knowledge. With the ability that you have to discern, the ability you have to make decisions. The ability you have to learn, to teach, to share. I know that I am here and I am gratefu. I know that I am here and I am grateful. I know that I'm here and I am grateful. Place that mantra in your heart as you take one last in breath. Whenever you ready, open your eyes.

Wow, wow friends this was such a special episode to be able to record with the two of you and all of our amazing friends who we are seeing here on the Zoom screen. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Ellen and Josh for being here once again. And thank you so, so much for listening. Our podcast editor is Christi Dodge. Our show notes and social media are by Yaffa Englander, thank you so much, Christi and Yaffa. And a big thank you to Rick and Elisa Recht and the whole SLBC family for giving us this opportunity to do this live episode, again, we have so much fun. Thank you so much and check out song leader boot camp if you are interested in T'fillah education particularly on the music and leadership side. It's a really incredible convention conference and resource. Find us on Facebook and Instagram at the light.lab. Don't forget to check out our show notes subscribe and share, and we will see you soon!