For Rabbi Eliezer L. Abish, a conversation with an 8-year-old daughter of a cousin living in Israel changed everything.
He was then teaching third grade Chumash. He asked the young girl to describe her classroom day. She was in third grade; he taught third grade. Rabbi Abish told the little girl that his class learned about three pesukim (passages) a day. The girl, recounted Rabbi Abish, had a stunned look on her face. Her class, she told him, was learning 25 pesukim a day.
Rabbi Abish told the child that it made sense since his students didn’t speak fluent Hebrew. That didn’t help. The young girl asked in complete innocence and wonderment, “So your students don’t know what the pesukim mean?”
His epiphany grew in scope over the years.
He wrote that for many Jews, praying “isn’t always a very fulfilling and enriching experience. A fellow once came out of shul and remarked, `I just saw about 30 people davening but only two people actually talking to Hashem.”
For about 18 years, Rabbi Abish has taken note of prayer, how people pray and how they seek a spiritual connection. He has addressed the subject in Portraits of Prayer, Stories on the Siddur to Bring Your Tefillos Alive. This is the first volume of a two-volume set. The second book will be released later this year.
Portraits of Prayer was something that was perking inside of Rabbi Abish since he was a 10th grader.
He told the Jewish Link that he was learning with his chavrusa in the beis medresh. He said he found a siddur in the shtender of a fellow who davened in the seat he was learning in. He opened the siddur, and flipped through the pages.
“What I saw completely floored me and forever changed my outlook and attitude concerning tefillah,” he said.
The siddur’s owner had underlined in the Shemoneh Esrei the words “For Your deliverance we hope all day.”
Rabbi Abish said that back then he couldn’t believe that there were people who were davening to Hashem because they wanted to, not because they had to do so three times a day. That one underline said to him that there are those who feel a close connection to Hashem.
“My heart breaks for people who view tefillah as a bothersome burden that must be dispensed with in the most efficient and swiftest way possible. They can’t bear to remain in a shul a single moment longer than absolutely necessary.”
His solution was to write volumes of stories related to tefillah. All of the pieces are inspirational and enjoyable. The key is, they take davening by rote and replace it with davening with reason and connection.
“If I had told my third graders back then that we were going to learn the vocabulary of the siddur, all I would have heard were moans and groans,” he said. “Stories, however, are not threatening. I started looking for stories that would have some connection to phrases in the Chumash. That’s what I started to do.”
He also taught classes in Chumash for adults as well. He told his adult students to slow down in their davening and think about what they are praying.”
Rabbi Abish is a rebbe in the Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey as well as general studies principal of Yeshiva Gedolah of South Monsey.
His works are being distributed by Israel Bookshop Publications of Lakewood, NJ. It can be ordered online at www.israelbookshoppublications.com.
Follow the table of contents and you’ll be offered stories from parts of the tefillah ranging from Mizmor Shir to Ashrei and beyond.
Perhaps the best example of the book’s power and meaning is a story he gives comparing davening to a wedding. He wrote that there are those who arrive to shul midway through the service and are gone before the other half of davening concludes. Comparing it to a wedding, he asks the reader to imagine how a family of the groom would feel if a close family member or friend decided to show up only for the second dance and then leave after 20 minutes.
“Do we realize what we are doing and then rush out?” he writes about prayer. “Our loving Father in Heaven Who has tremendous love for us wants more than anything else to have a close and intimate relationship with us. Yet, we run away.”
Rabbi Abish doesn’t want us to run anywhere. His stories will make praying for some more important, not just something that has to be gotten done and finished quickly.
The reaction so far to the book?
“It’s very nice,” he said. “I’m getting some nice feedback.”
By Phil Jacobs
