Five Times I Prayed (and One I Didn’t)

One time I prayed: every other weekday, in Hebrew school

I was small enough that the hardcover-sized siddur I can hold in one hand today needed both arms. The book rested open on my forearms, and I held onto the top from underneath. The pages bearing important prayers — the Sh’ma, Shmona Esreh — are now yellowed from my small grip.

I’m not sure I believed in elementary school. It’s more accurate to say that some of my teachers did, and their belief or apathy swayed mine. One made me feel — half awed, half guilty — that God was listening to the class right now, like when the principal would hang in the doorway to keep an eye on us. Others seemed more concerned with respect for tradition than devotion.

As a child, I took joy in prayer. My cynical grown-up self thinks that it was probably easier  to do before I understood the concepts behind the Hebrew words. But that’s not the whole story. Something else I had as a child but lost as an adult is un-self-conscious delight in showing the mastery of a skill. Sometimes tefillah (prayer) class was a race. During silent sections, I’d keep an ear open for my friend beside me turning her page. Was she ahead by a blessing? Was I behind? Who’d sit down first, waiting triumphantly for the other to finish Amida and catch up?

Every time I hear certain paragraphs of liturgy, I miss the childish way our class would hurtle through them like we were trying to get to the end in one breath. It wasn’t exactly trying to get things over with fast; it was also boasting, like swinging as hard as you could on the swingset until you could feel the structure shudder every time you came down. Look how high I can go!

A second time I prayed: at home, before Friday night dinner

We learned the kiddush, the ritual Sabbath blessing chanted before drinking grape juice or wine, eating challah, and sharing a meal, in first grade. The teacher gave us a printed Hebrew sheet; our homework was to read it before we learned the tune. Dad said, “Do you recognise it?”

I didn’t. He said, “We sing it every Friday night.”

I still didn’t. But he sang it that Friday, and even though we learned a different tune at school, I could eventually concede that perhaps the words might be the same.

Right now, there’s only one tune that comes to mind, and I can’t remember whether it’s our teacher’s or his, especially because Dad sometimes adopts the tunes we brought home from class.

A third time I prayed: once on the swing at the cottage

Because swinging makes you feel like singing when you’re seven, and I knew the words to more Hebrew prayers than English songs. I can’t call up that feeling of not differentiating between “Wonderful World” (a favourite song of mine since kindergarten) and Ahava Raba, of thinking of them both as things that are fun to sing, instead of one as hooray a song! and the other as a Song That Means Something Important.

I wonder what Grandma thought, listening to me bawling out the key parts of the Shacharit all afternoon. I doubt she would have been familiar with them individually, although she could identify them as Hebrew liturgy. All my cousins studied up to their bar and bat mitzvahs (hating and liking it to a varying degrees), but my sister and I were the only ones on that side of the family who went to a religious day school, the one my father and his siblings had attended.

If I’d been a little older, I’d have wondered if using prayers this way were disrespectful.

A fourth time I prayed: before bed every night until my early twenties

I remember discussing with a friend sometime before third grade: “I say the Sh’ma every night before bed. What do you say?”

“I say the Sh’ma and Ve’Ahavta.”

“You don’t have to say all that.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, you do!”

“Well, then I’ll say it too and the next part.”

“You don’t have to say the next part.”

“Yes, you do.”

etc.

Later, as a teenager and adult, saying the Sh’ma was part habit, part something I did each day because I knew it was good for me even though I couldn’t see the immediate results. Like eating all your vegetables. I think prayer, especially the prayer learned in school, is where I got into the mindset of “do this X times a day, even though it’s boring, and good things will happen.” I’m not sure what good things I expected to happen in the beginning, but by the end I was aware that it was a way to remind myself, “I am Jewish, and this is where I came from.” A shorthand packing-list for many of the memories and principles I wanted to carry with me through my life.

A fifth time I prayed: at shul, preparing for my bat mitzvah

Well, you had to. Before you had your bar or bat mitzvah ceremony, you were supposed to come to services every week and be part of the community.

What I learned: I was slow. During the time we were given for silent prayer, I’d barely get halfway through before the chazzan, the leader of the services, would start with the next paragraph. I knew I was going pretty fast — how did all the adults manage to go even faster? If I was barely paying attention to the meaning of the words I thought, how could they?

I could read fast enough if I tried the English translation on the left-hand page, but wasn’t that cheating?

And one time I didn’t: this Rosh Hashanah

I read the words, by myself because I didn’t have room in my budget to buy tickets to a shul service, and, to be honest, I didn’t have the time or the inclination to skimp on hockey registrations or video games or dinners with friends to make the money happen. I even sang some of the songs.

But I wasn’t thinking of praying. I was thinking of having prayed. Of memories from school. Of how strange it was to find myself starting a paragraph and realizing I knew what words came next without being able to remember under what circumstances I’d repeated them enough to memorize. In tefillah at day school? At shul? Like seeing yourself in a home movie and not at all being able to imagine yourself in the shoes of that five-year-old on the screen. Finding traces of a person who disappeared so long ago.

This isn’t prayer. At worst, it’s aimless nostalgia. At best, it’s love for the places and people who shaped me. But I guess right now, as an atheist and agnostic who’s caught up in her work and friends and family, it’s the best I have.

G’mar chatimah tova.