Re’eh: Personalizing Prayer

By: Rabbi Moshe Taragin

In Parashat Re’eh, Moshe Rabbeinu begins preparing us for the profound changes that will accompany our entry into the Land of Israel. The transition from a nomadic desert existence to settled national life in our own land will transform every aspect of the experience. Agriculture will become a central part of our lives. We will encounter the beauty and abundance of Eretz Yisrael firsthand. It turns out that the land flowing with milk and honey is actually a land of wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates.

Yet the blessings of settled life also carry new dangers. Financial and agricultural success can breed self-assuredness. Moshe warns us that our success is not a product of our virtue or righteousness, but rather of Hashem’s selection.

Despite prosperity, there will be poverty. Some will be more successful than others. For this reason, Moshe instructs us about tzedakah and Shemitah, which resets the financial system once every seven years.

Finally, as society grows more prosperous and more complex, it will require courts and public institutions to govern it. Yet these institutions introduce a new danger: the corruption of justice. Moshe warns us that the judicial system must never become slanted or corrupt. A society cannot function without respect for the rule of law, and the rule of law cannot exist without trust in the fairness of the judicial system.

{One Place For Worship

One of Moshe’s primary concerns was shifting from scattered sites of worship to a single place to encounter Hashem. This concern reflects Moshe’s dread throughout the entire first part of Sefer Devarim: the fear of idolatry. As we enter a land filled with pagan shrines and altars, Moshe repeatedly warns us to demolish and uproot every vestige of idolatrous worship.

But Moshe’s message extends beyond destroying pagan worship. He also instructs us not to imitate its form of worship. Unlike pagan worshippers, who maintain numerous sites of worship reflecting their numerous deities, we are to concentrate all of our ceremonies in one designated location, as in “Do not worship Hashem in this manner.” This instruction had practical halachic applications. In the desert, primitive altars were permitted. Likewise, during the conquest and settlement of the Land of Israel, sacrifices on private altars (bamot) were still permitted. However, once Shiloh was established as the permanent location of the Mishkan, private bamot were forbidden.

The primary reason for concentrating worship in a single location was theological. Unlike paganism, which recognizes multiple deities for every force of nature, monotheism proclaims one Hashem who created everything. If there is only one Hashem, there should likewise be one place to worship Him.

But there was a second reason for concentrating worship in a single location. Moshe sought to move us away from the religious culture of bamot in which each person did what was right in his own eyes to a system of greater regulation and standardization in how we stand before Hashem. Though the Beit HaMikdash is more public and less personal, he prefers that model to a religious culture where “each man did what was right in his own eyes.”

The tension between a deeply personal religious experience versus a centralized worship model continues to shape contemporary religious life. Should tefillah be conducted primarily in an institutional setting, such as a large shul, or should it take place in smaller, more intimate environments and shtiebel-like atmospheres?

Recently, there has been a shift away from large, collective tefillot. Many shuls are refurbishing their buildings and dramatically shrinking the size of their sanctuaries in favor of multiple smaller rooms to accommodate smaller minyanim. Likewise, smaller shtiebel-style minyanim have become increasingly popular at the expense of large communal services. Equally popular are in-home minyanim.

There are numerous benefits to smaller minyanim. Firstly, they personalize religious experience. In the era of the bamot, each family offered its own sacrifices supervised by its own firstborn, who effectively served as the kohen of the family altar. The great challenge of religion was to find a personal voice within a world of regulations that is highly standardized and demands conformity. Similar to a bamah, smaller minyanim allow for that personalization. They can be tailored to a specific population to create a more personal religious experience.

Secondly, smaller minyanim build mini-communities, which in turn fostered warm and enduring relationships that are much more difficult to develop in larger settings.

Finally, smaller minyanim are by definition less regulated and less bureaucratic. Larger settings require rules and guidelines, and sometimes the mere existence of those rules formalizes the experience and make it feel less authentic. Often, people in large settings feel that they are simply following regulations rather than expressing genuine religious feeling.

To summarize, smaller minyanim offer personalization, warm and close relationships, and a less formalized tefillah experience, all of which can hopefully lead to greater authenticity.

However, there are also significant drawbacks to these smaller settings. There are several benefits that only a large and institutional setting can provide.

Before discussing the advantages of a larger minyan, it is important to note that any shul—large or small—offers a distinct religious experience that cannot be replicated in a home minyan.

Central to tefillah is not merely the words we recite, but the experience of standing before Hashem. The first recorded tefillah is Avraham’s prayer on behalf of Sodom. The Torah describes his prayer with the words “al makom asher amed sham,” from which Chazal derive the term Amidah. The verb used to describe the first tefillah is not one of speech or verbal expression, but standing in the presence of Hashem.

A Beit Knesset possesses a halachic level of kedushah. According to the Rambam, the sanctity of a shul parallels in many respects the sanctity of the Beit HaMikdash. If tefillah is, in part, the experience of standing before the Shechinah, shouldn’t we be more motivated to daven in an actual shul?

Based on this, the Shulchan Aruch rules that one should strive to daven in an actual shul even if he has already missed the minyan and will be praying as a yachid. Even without the opportunity to recite Kaddish or Kedushah, the Beit Knesset provides the experience of standing before the Shechinah.

Assuming tefillah should ideally take place in a Beit Knesset, the question becomes, what type of shul best serves that experience?

Larger settings allow people from different walks of life to stand side by side. In a world of ever-narrowing social circles, we have fewer opportunities to encounter people who are different from ourselves. There is great value in davening with a wide range of people to experience the diversity of Am Yisrael.

Large, intergenerational minyanim preserve our mesorah in ways that smaller settings cannot. A child who grows up davening alongside parents, grandparents, and community elders experiences Judaism not merely as a personal practice, but as an unbroken chain linking past to future.

Imagine how the Beit HaMikdash must have been filled with a constant stream of Jews from every sector of society, bringing together people who would otherwise never meet. Standing before Hashem alongside people who are different was part of the religious experience.

In many ways, the decentralized shul system in the United States reflects the broader culture of personal choice and individual autonomy. While that culture offers many advantages, it also weakens a community’s ability to establish shared norms and expectations.

Take, for example, the plight of the agunah. In more tightly structured communities, greater communal pressure can be brought to bear upon a recalcitrant husband. In the United States, by contrast, there are often simply too many places to go and too many shuls in which to daven, making it far more difficult for a community to create the healthy social pressure needed to confront this injustice.

A third advantage of a larger shul setting is its ability to strengthen the broader communal infrastructure. Historically, the shul served as the nucleus around which schools, mikvaot, chesed organizations, and other communal institutions were built. That remains true in smaller communities today. In larger, well-established communities, much of this infrastructure already exists, but larger shuls still provide the financial resources, volunteer base, and organizational capacity that sustain communal life.

Finally, larger shuls make us feel part of something greater than ourselves. Tefillah, in general, is meant to expand our horizons and connect us to a story larger than ourselves. We recite the same words our ancestors prayed. We return to the template established by the Avot, who founded our nation. We envision the day when we will once again return as one people to Yerushalayim. Davening in a larger setting brings that feeling into sharper focus. The more people with whom we stand in prayer, the easier it is to imagine standing among the millions of Jews who have uttered these same prayers throughout history. Perhaps we have lost some of the humility required to daven together in larger shuls. Perhaps we should ask less how to create a tefillah that fits us and more how we can fit ourselves into tefillah. Perhaps in smaller settings we lose some of the gravitas of standing before Hashem. Perhaps in smaller tefillot the story shrinks and we lose sight of the larger historical narrative that tefillah is meant to evoke. n

Rabbi Moshe Taragin is a rabbi and educator at Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush). Find his latest book, Reclaiming Redemption, Vol. II: Faith, Identity, Peoplehood, and the Storms of War, at mtaraginbooks.com.