Tefilla in the Land of Israel

I am not proud of the fact that, since I've been a parent, my prayer life has dwindled. I made halachik arguments and excuses in the beginning, and I made a point to keep conversations going with God on a regular basis, which allowed me to justify my abstention from traditional Jewish prayer for the better part of the last five years. It makes me sad- I feel a real friend has been lost. The siddur was my favorite Jewish book for many, many years. I sang its praises, and I taught classes about its greatness. However, Having other responsibilities got in the way and I allowed caring for children, spouse and home to take over my routines.


This morning, however, I decided to leave the mess in our apartment, and after bringing the kids to their respective destinations, I sat down on the mirpeset to daven. My old friend, the siddur, hasn't changed a bit. But I have, of course. I am still enticed by the songs in pesukei dezimra- ישמחו השמים ותגל הארץ, ויאמרו בגויים ה' מלך ( Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; and let them say among the nations: 'The LORD reigneth.' -Chronicles I 16) The universal messages continue to reach deep within me and I feel there is no better mouthpiece for singing God's praises than this lovely prayer-book. The length of the service challenges me now in a way it did not when I had the momentum of daily prayer going.

I once argued that the relationship we have to the siddur, and perhaps to much of Judaism, is akin to a marriage- where we might not always feel excited and enthused by every piece, but we stick to our commitment, and we can only stand to gain from that. I now return to my lost love, and I struggle with those commitments that I once took for granted. Also relevant to this week's Torah Portion, singing the song of the sea is difficult for me, not only because the poetic hebrew is difficult to understand, but because the victorious song about the Egyptian people's destruction has never touched my soul in the same way that other parts of the liturgy do.

But the main thing that struck me this morning was the complete and absolute relevance of so much of the siddur in modern-day Israel. Of course, prayers of return and restoring us to our land are now coming to reality, and the seasons that we pray for rain are now the seasons when Israel really needs that rain. But on a deeper level, when we praise God for his strength, and we sing out His ability to resuscitate the dead, and to heal the sick- I feel the pulse of a nation brought back after thousands of years in every word. I know that we were a people nearly dead in Europe, and that this magical, miraculous country is a song of praise to God in its very existence. Our national redemption is not finished, and so the praise also suggests a furthering of our healing and our renewal.

I feel like a person at a siyum- promising the siddur that I will return to her. Dear Siddur, I am grateful for your consistency, and I will make my way back to you, as the people of Israel have returned to this great and complicated land.