How do Jews pray?  Jewish liturgy is rich and meaningful, but the prayer book – the siddur – can be an intimidating work for many.  Its vastness, its repetition, its formal language, can make one feel lost in a sea of words and completely disconnected from the emotion it intends to invoke and inspire.  And while some may find it possible to spontaneously engage in prayer, whispering words of their own choosing, this felt unsatisfying to me.  I want to pray in the way of my People – to connect to the experiences, aspirations, and community that Jewish prayer represents.  As Hayim Donin so eloquently expresses in his book To Pray as a Jew:

A Jew may choose his own words when praying to God; but when he uses the words of the siddur, he becomes part of a people.  He identifies with Jews everywhere who use the same words and express the same thoughts.

The challenge for those of us who are untrained in Jewish prayer and unfamiliar with the content of the siddur is that because we have never used this device in normal circumstances, we become easily frustrated with it when circumstances become desperate.  As Donin explains, because we have never prayed out of a sense of obligation to pray, we find it extremely difficult to pray at those times when we truly want and need to do so.  It’s much like the peace the musician finds in music: countless hours of practice is required before he can finally find the notes effortlessly and lose himself in the act of playing.  While we may have a great deal of kavanah, or intention, walking into prayer, our lack of familiarity with keva, or the form of prayer, often leaves us feeling like we are doing nothing more than making noise, not music.  Our words feel untethered, fractured, and unfocused without the structure formal liturgy provides.  Keva provides a scaffold, an anchor, that bridles the often overwhelming emotion and urgency that brings us to prayer in the first place.

So, I decided to practice.  I opened the siddur.  I began to study – rigorously, methodically, and carefully.  Understanding the very first, seemingly simple, prayer Jews recite upon waking, Modeh Ani, led me to pages and pages of interpretation, explanation and analysis.  I studied the text of this simple, short prayer, its history and origins, the meaning it holds and has held for others, the ideas and concepts it intends to convey.  I listened to recordings of the prayer in Hebrew – spoken, chanted, and sung – and practiced reciting each word myself.  And very quickly, I came to realise just how much meaning each prayer conveyed – and what a long journey I had in front of me.

Jewish prayer is both obligatory and time-bound.  Three times a day, we pause to pray – not because any God needs our prayers, but because we do.  A commitment to prayer is not only a commitment to our tradition, it is also a commitment to ourselves and our spiritual needs.  It is a means by which we can let-go of the distractions of daily life and be fully present in a particular moment in time.  The cycle of Jewish prayer allows us to pause, to step-back, to sanctify time and return to an awareness of ourselves in a very structured and specific way.