Dear Community,
I spent a lot of time this week thinking about the Jewish concept of
kavanah, the Hebrew word for intention. On Monday, the Bucks County Kehillah met at Ohev Shalom for Tisha B’Av services. We sang ancient songs, read modern poetry, and listened to teachings. All of this was orchestrated to elicit strong feelings as we mourned the various historical destructions of the Jewish people since the fall of the First and Second Temple. The
kavanah, intention for the evening, was to bring together our ancestral mourning, our communal mourning of October 7, and our personal sense of loss to the forefront of our minds and our hearts while being held in the protection and comfort of our community. The lights were low. The chanting was somber. The feeling was intense. The result was cathartic.
Our Torah study class- Thursdays at 12 p.m. join us in-person or virtually!- has begun studying the
parshat hashavua, the weekly Torah portion, as interpreted through
Hasidut, the teachings of the founders of the Hasidic movement. This week we focused on
kavanah. In
Va’Etchanan, the rabbis of
Hasidut teach that even Moses, who was used to speaking
panim el panim, face to face, with Gd also had to set a
kavanah, an intention, before he could plead or pray to Gd. Moses knew the importance of preparing oneself before speaking to Gd about all that was in his soul.
Kavanah as a concept does not exist alone. It goes with hand-in-hand with
keva, structure in Jewish prayer.
Kavanah lets our heart speak openly, as Moshe did when he pleaded to Gd to allow him to cross over with the Israelites into the Promised Land in this week’s Torah portion.
Keva teaches us the structure of prayer; the when, what, and how to pray.
Kavanah says, "Pray from your heart."
Keva says, "Put on a
yarmulke and begin with the words '
Baruch Atah Hashem…'”
Jewish tradition often gives primacy to
keva over
kavanah while more liberal settings hold up
kavanah. This is makes sense for liberal movements since
kavanah can be a lifeline for many Jews who are unfamiliar with the complex rules of Judaism and struggle with Hebrew.
Keva should not be overlooked by us either.
Keva can be the push to actually pray regardless of whether we "feel" like it. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in
Man’s Quest for Gd (with my additions in the parentheses for emphasis):
"How grateful I am to Gd that there is a duty to worship, a law to remind my distraught mind that it is time to think of Gd, time to disregard my ego for at least a moment (keva!)! It is such happiness to belong to an order of the Divine will. I am not always in a mood to pray (kavanah!). I do not always have the vision and the strength to say a word in the presence of Gd (kavanah!). But when I am weak, it is the law (keva!) that gives me strength; when my vision is dim, it is duty that gives me insight.”
The two are sometimes pited against each other, however both are necessary. A balance of
keva and
kavanah, the fixity of our prayer and the spontaneity of our heart, are the two pillars necessary to the practice of Jewish prayer. One wants to make prayer a regular practice (
keva), but never stale or lacking in meaning (
kavanah). Attention to both keep our prayer ever balanced between the two extremes.
Wishing you a Shabbat filled with prayer.
Good Shabbas,
Rabbi Janine Jankovitz
(she/her)
