A collection of essays, tips, and halachos to enhance your tefillah

Project coordinated by Elana Moskowitz

During these days, we turn to Hashem in prayer — some from the polished wooden benches in shul and others from the corner of our living room. But wherever we find ourselves, davening can be incredibly challenging — and entirely transformative. Here, a collection of essays, tips, and halachos to enhance your tefillah

Heart Work

Bashie Lisker

We’ve gathered here to talk about our davening — what it is, what it isn’t, and what we want it to be. “I keep coming back to that image of the Yiddishe mamma who tzinds licht with tears streaming down her face,” Brachi says. “Her child grows up to be the gadol hador. That woman haunts me every week. Some weeks I do cry. Some I don’t. Some, I’m so tired that I’m counting the seconds until I can sit down.” Her kids aren’t standing in silent awe — they’re scrambling for missing shoes or fighting or already in shul.

Reena is even more hesitant. “Every siddur play, I listen to the song they’re singing and just look at those little girls and wonder, ‘Does each one of them think that they’re the only one whose mother doesn’t always cry when she bentshes licht?’”

Are we selling an unrealistic image of tefillah to girls and women that makes us feel deficient?

My mornings are a rush of buses and carpools and ponytails and missing shoes. More often than not, my davening is at the bus stop, interrupted by a neighbor who hasn’t noticed what I’m doing or a toddler who doesn’t care. It feels like a personal thing, to turn to other women and say how do you manage? So I don’t. Sometimes, I think it’s because I’m afraid to broach the topic and get an I don’t. More often, I’m afraid that the answer will be how can you not?

Chavi is more pragmatic. “I love that the gold standard is that mothers are so plugged in,” she says. “That the tears are just waiting for licht bentshing or formal tefillah to be let out. But the reality of my life is that the formal moments don’t always release strong emotions, and I’m left with dry eyes and short licht bentshing.”

But that’s not a deal-breaker for her. “When I do feel the strong feelings, I try to lean in, let the tears flow, and turn it into a tefillah. So I am connected, just not necessarily at the classic times.”

In shiurim about tefillah geared toward men, Reena points out, the focus is more technical. But in this conversation about tefillah, we keep returning to tears and emotions. But her personality isn’t an emotional one, and she struggles with those emotions that seem almost expected to come naturally in a woman’s tefillah. Women are more empathetic by nature, are more in tune with our emotions and with our relationships with others. And so this natural expectation falls upon us: are you moved to tears? “It feels like I have to perform my emotions,” Avigail confesses. “Like if I don’t, I haven’t felt enough.”

Chavi doesn’t think that our children need a performance to know what’s in our hearts. “We can train ourselves to talk more freely at other times so they know what we daven for, even if they don’t see the tears at licht bentshing.”

But still, there is a sense of uncertainty, of dissatisfaction, because this isn’t only about what our children see. Because irrespective of that, we do want to find that connection in tefillah.

So what do we do? Do we just say words and hope for lightning to strike, that instance of connection that makes it all worthwhile? Davening is an avodah, is meant to be work. It’s rarely as simple as clasping your hands to your eyes over Shabbos candles and feeling the tears spill out with the words. But the very act of whispering those words — by rote, with or without the emotional connection — is a step in itself.

Blimi remembers how it felt when her sons got older and moved into dorms. “Now I understand that a parent just wants to hear from their kid. I have one son who calls every night, who’s not much of a conversationalist. But he calls! He talks to me! We have this constant connection! If something isn’t going so well, or he needs help, he has this channel already there.”

She sees tefillah as that call. “Hashem has all these amazing things ready to deliver to us, but until we ask, the pipeline doesn’t exist.” So that daily conversation will keep the pipeline open. In essence, though, she thinks that tefillah is more connection. “I don’t think the average frum Jew feels the connection on a daily basis. But still, you call your Father. Because that’s what kids do.” And sometimes, we feel that connection — a moment that is a gift. At Shiloh this summer, I walked down to the spot where the Mishkan once stood. I closed my eyes and davened in whispers to Hashem in the same way that Chana once had in that spot. I don’t know what I said, and I won’t share what I felt. I do remember the tears running down my face, the wind against my face, the distant scent of spices in the air. I remember the sense of transportation, of that ethereal emotional connection.