Hebrew Daily Prayer Book - Jonathan Sacks

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praise. The middle thirteen on weekdays are requests (we do not make requests in the Amidah on Shab-bat or Festivals, which are times dedicated to thanking GOD for what we have, as opposed to asking Him for what we lack). The final three are acknowledgements. The same pattern can be seen in the blessings over the Torah at the beginning of the morning service (see below, Fractals).

       D. Preparation, Prayer, Meditation

      Prayer requires intense concentration, and this takes time. It is impossible to move directly from the stresses and preoccupations of everyday life into the presence of eternity. Nor should prayer end abruptly. It must be internalised if it is to leave its trace within us as we move back into our worldly pursuits. Maimonides writes that because prayer needs mental focus, “One should therefore sit awhile before beginning his prayers, so as to concentrate his mind. He should then pray in gentle tones, beseechingly, and not regard the service as a burden which he is carrying and which he will cast off before proceeding on his way. He should thus sit awhile after concluding the prayers, and only then leave. The ancient saints used to pause and meditate one hour before prayer and one hour after prayer, and spend an hour in prayer itself.” (Laws of Prayer 4:16).

      In the morning service, the Verses of Praise (Pesukei de-Zimra) are the preparation. In them, our thoughts gradually turn from the visible world to its invisible Creator. The Shema, Amidah and their surrounding blessings are prayer as such. The remainder of the service is our meditation as we leave the orbit of heaven and re-renter the gravitational field of earth.

       E. Description, Experience, Recollection

      It is one thing to describe an experience, another to live it. One of the striking features of the weekday morning service is its threefold repetition of the Kedushah (“Holy, holy, holy”), once before the Shema (known as kedushat yotzer); a second time during the Reader’s repetition of the Amidah; and a third time during the prayer “A redeemer will come to Zion” (known as kedushah de-Sidra). The first and third are different from the second in that: 1. they do not require a minyan, and 2. they do not need to be said standing.

      The Kedushah – one of the supreme moments of holiness in Jewish prayer -is constructed around the mystical visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel, of GOD enthroned in majesty, surrounded by angels singing His praises. In the first and third Kedushot, we describe the angelic order; in the second we enact it, using the same words, but this time in direct, not reported, speech (Geonim, Maimonides). The intensity of Kedushah is heightened by this three-movement form: first the anticipation and preparation, then the experience itself, and finally the recollection.

       F. Private, Public, Private

      The Amidah itself – especially on weekday mornings and afternoons – is constructed on a triadic pattern. First it is said silently by the members of the congregation as individuals. Next it is repeated publicly out loud by the Leader. This is then usually followed by private supplications (Tachanun), also said quietly. As I have suggested above, this is a way of re-enacting the two modes of spirituality from which prayer derives. The silent Amidah recalls the intensely personal prayers of the patriarchs and prophets. The public repetition represents the daily sacrifices offered by the priests in the Temple on behalf of all Israel (there is no repetition of the evening Amidah because there were no sacrifices at night). Thus the prayers weave priestly and prophetic, individual and collective voices, into a single three-movement sonata of great depth and resonance.

       G. Fractals

      We owe to the scientist Benoit Mandelbrot the concept of fractals, the discovery that phenomena in nature often display the same pattern at different levels of magnitude. A single rock looks like a mountain. Crystals, snowflakes and ferns are made up of elements that have the same shape as the whole. Fractal geometry is the scientific equivalent of the mystical ability to sense the great in the small: “To see a world in a grain of sand / And a Heaven in a wild flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, and Eternity in an hour.”

      The first of the “request” prayers in the daily Amidah is a fractal. It replicates in miniature the structure of the Amidah as a whole (Praise-Request-Thanks). It begins with praise: “You favour man with knowledge and teach humanity understanding”, moves to request: “Favour us with knowledge, understanding and insight”, and ends with thanksgiving: “Blessed are You, O LORD, the gracious Giver of knowledge.” You will find many other fractals in the Siddur.

      The existence of fractals in the Siddur shows us how profoundly the structures of Jewish spirituality feed back time and again into the architectonics of prayer.

       H. Midrashic Expansion

      Midrash is the rabbinic investigation into the meaning of holy texts: the root d-r-sh means “to explore, enquire, explain, expound”. It seeks out the inflections and innuendos of words, making explicit their implicit dimensions of meaning.

      One example occurs in the Nishmat prayer on Shabbat morning (page 366). A key phrase in prayer, spoken by Moses and incorporated into the first paragraph of the Amidah, is “God, great, mighty and awesome.” (Deuteronomy 10:17). Nishmat meditates on these four words, one by one:

      GOD – in Your absolute power,

       Great – in the glory of Your name,

       Mighty – for ever,

       Awesome – in Your awe-inspiring deeds.

      Another is the passage on Shab-bat morning following the phrase “who forms light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates all” (page 370). A brief prayer takes the last word, “all”, and builds around it a fivefold set of variations: “All will thank You. All will praise You. All will declare: Nothing is holy as is the LORD. All will exalt You, Selah, You who form all”.

      Always look for apparent repetition in prayer – like the tenfold “Blessed” in “Blessed is He who spoke”, the sixfold “True” after the Shema, or the sixfold “All” immediately after Bar’chu on Shabbat morning. Reiteration is never mere repetition. The prayer is inviting us to meditate on the multiple layers of meaning that may exist in a single word or phrase, as if words were diamonds and we were turning them this way and that to catch their multiple refractions of light.

       I. Numerical Structures

      As we have seen, many of the prayers have an obvious three-part structure, but in some cases this is repeated in great detail on a smaller scale, as in fractals.

      The most striking example is the weekday Amidah, which is composed of three parts: praise-request-acknowledgement. The first and last of these are each constructed in threes: three blessings of praise at the beginning, and three of acknowledgement at the end. Less obvious is the fact that the middle thirteen blessings – “requests” – also share this structure. There are six individual requests, followed by six collective ones, each divided into two groups of three. The individual requests begin with three spiritual needs (understanding, repentance, forgiveness) followed by three material ones (deliverance from oppression, healing, prosperity). The collective requests begin with three political-historical elements (ingathering of exiles, restoration of judges, and an end to internal strife – the “slanderers”), followed by the three spiritual bases of nationhood (the righteous, Jerusalem, and the restoration of the Davidic monarchy). The thirteenth, “Hear our voice”, stands outside this structure because it is not directed to any specific request but is, instead, a prayer that our prayers

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