Back to Question of the Week Back to Archives Q: Can you expand at all on what you mean when you say "prayer is a bodily experience"? Why do Jews daven while praying, is there instruction anywhere, any description of how to daven properly? Diana
		A: First, just a small clarification: What Diana is apparently referring to is the swaying and bowing that accompany traditional Jewish prayer. The swaying motion is called "shukling" in anglicized Yiddish. "Davvening" (also anglicized Yiddish) refers more to the recitation of the prayers, especially the Ashkenazic style of reciting them in an undertone. How could prayer not be a bodily experience? We are embodied beings! Even sitting quietly, or standing without motion, are things we do with our bodies that convey certain spiritual messages to ourselves and to those around us. As Diana makes clear in the full text of her letter, the traditional recitation of the prayers is a sort of a dance: there is a whole series of prescribed movements in a prescribed order. The main movements of the dance are standing, sitting, and bowing, with a little bit of shaking and kissing thrown in. The morning blessings, the birkhot hashakhar, were originally intended to be said throughout the process of waking up and getting ready for your day. To recite them in this way gives that process a thoughtful, slower, intentional, dance-like feel: Realize you're awake and say a blessing. Open your eyes and say a blessing. Sit up in bed and say a blessing. Put your feet on the floor and say a blessing. etc. (See Talmud, Berakhot 60b.) Our tradition recognizes the physicality of prayer in a number of ways. As I mentioned in my sermon, one hint at the body-spirit connection of Jewish prayer is in the Hebrew words for soul and breath: neshamah and neshimah. Our breath is our most basic gift from God, and is something that literally connects our insides with that which is larger than us. Breathing is a spiritual activity. Or consider the statement of Rabbi Tankhum in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi (Talmud Berakhot 28b): [The eighteen blessings of the daily Tefillah (also called "Amidah") correspond] "to the eighteen vertebrae in the spinal column.' Rabbi Tankhum also said in the name of Yehoshua ben Levi: 'In saying the Tefillah, one should bow down until all the vertebrae of the spinal column are loosened." The structure of the prayers is thus connected to our structure as physical beings. One of the functions that the tradition ascribes to prayer is that of teaching the one who prays. In praying, we inculcate in ourselves certain values and priorities. But every good educator knows that learning happens both mentally and physically. Prayer is also intended to move us emotionally in such a way as to make us receptive to the great spiritual truths it contains. Here, too, our bodies can help to open us to the divine Presence in our world. Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan called the ritual mitsvot "religious poetry in action." From lighting candles (we do that physically, not by telepathy!) to shaking the lulav and etrog to bowing in unison with the congregation, motion, like poetry, delights and instructs us. It moves us in more senses than one. In prayer, we also join physically in the universal chorus of praise to God. This is hinted at in the prayer "nishmat kol khai: Though our mouths should overflow with song as the sea, our tongues with melody as the roaring waves, our lips with praise as the heavens' wide expanse; and though our eyes were to shine as the sun and the moon, our arms extend like eagles' wings, our feet speed swiftly as deer -- still we could not fully thank You .... Therefore, O God, limbs and tongue and heart and mind shall join to praise Your name.... (trasnslation from Gates of Prayer, pp. 298-299) We even join with the angels in praise during the Kedushah. In the prophetic passage describing how the angels praise God, saying "holy, holy, holy," the foundations (also translated as "doorposts") of the Temple shake up and down as the angels praise. This is the origin of the custom of shaking up and down on our toes three times as we say "holy, holy, holy." (It is not an attempt, as many people think, to escape gravity and fly away with the angels.) We aknowledge with our shaking the power of our words. A similar notion is the origin of shukling. The bottom line is that we are embodied beings. If part of prayer's goal is to teach us, we all learn both with our minds and with our bodies. If prayer's goal is to move us spiritually, we are moved by the motion of our bodies. If prayer's goal is to connect us to God, our bodies are an incredible gift from God. If prayer's goal is to join in the universal chorus in praise of God, we sing with our bodies. If you want more details, a good resource is To Pray as a Jew by Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin. Its traditionalism may not be where many of my readers are at, but it is the best "how to" manual I know of for the physical aspects of prayer. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz
		last update: August 1999 Got a question for Reb on the Web? Visit our Archived Questions SHOOT*! ("SHOOT" is the Hebrew acronym for SHe'elot OOTeshuvot (Questions and Answers), the centuries-old dialogue between Jews and their rabbis.)

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