So last week I’m looking like an idiot on some random street in Dallas, doing my part to bless the moon – I haven’t even finished the first little part where you have to say all this stuff 3 times and people are already done or saying shalom alechim to each other. I’m scared that I wont be able to do the shalom alechim part which to me seems like the most important park of the whole prayer – so I do what anyone who wants to catch up in davening does. I skip it and go right to the shalom alechim part.
What’s the deal? Are people really able to say all that stuff that fast? I could never keep up with people – if I don’t do the shalom alechim stuff is my prayer counted? It always freaks me out that my prayers wont be counted – I don’t really have kavannah as it is, but to discount it for something else puts horrid images in my head.
Heres a short video rant I did on the subject:
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{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
You can do the Sholom aleichem by yourself if 3 people aren’t around, beter than skipping in m.h.o.
Not directed at you Phil, but your post reminded my why I hate the “new” internet so much. Why do people say imho and tbh? We know its your opinion because you are posting. Also, who gave you the power to decide what is the truth or not?
/rant
Ok, so I don’t say kiddush levana, however, I know what you mean about tachnun. Sometimes, I speed read it and I’m barely lifting my head and I hear them ending. Other days, I’m done and the guys aren’t even standing yet and I don’t want to stand because there’s like 2 guys who can see me and I feel weird and plus, the gyoress couldn’t possibly finished before them but, I”m speed reading because I can never keep up and this time I did. So, I read the standing part while sitting and they’re still not done (last Thursday this happened to me….)
It’s always the same shul, in case you’re wondering.
Oh and bentsching, I will be on the nodeh or val hakol paragraph and people are done. Come on, I have the benstch memorized. I read the whole thing is less than 2 minutes. I’ve timed myself at home on a weekday.
Frummy Satire, did you say in one of your rants people feel entitled to only benstch up to some other part?
Veebee, what’s “new internet” about IMHO? That’s a holdover from the old BBS days. At least, I remember using it in ‘92 and I don’t think it was “new” then! /rant (also circa early 90s as ).
NY Style … what?
I think, like many other things, many people simply fake reading a lot of kiddush levana. I speak Hebrew very well, and I never can keep up with any of the folks, especially the chinyuks.
As an aside, on my sister and brother-in-laws wedding video, the videographer caught the guy that did the zimun (or maybe it was another loudmouth in attendance) “skimming” the benching, literally something like “…. homina … oooo …. homina homina …. VEYECHASRENU. Huaminnnna, aminnna, aminnna……..” It’s all on the video, and it’s pretty funny
Same for maariv after Yom Kippur. Sometimes I seriously try for super kavana just that once and everyone around me is zooming through the davening at the same time as ripping their kittel off and folding their tallis. Meanwhile the women and kids are making tons of noise leaving the shul. Then, at the end of maariv we are lucky if there is still a minyan left for kaddish because everyone ran out to chap some cookies and juice. Meanwhile, I might have just finished the amidah. And trust me, I am no tzadik, I know how to do the 5-minute Shachris (TM), I went to MTA.
You’re such a frummie haha you do kiddush levana
I dont know how anyone can skip any part of davening. Kiddush levonoh is such a big mitzvah, and a segula for shmira
and tachanun, your asking the heilige aibishter for mercy how can you fly through it, or skip it all together (unless your like me and on certain yahrtzeits dont say tachanun)
If you care about Hashem, forget about the minyan, mezumen or any of those group activities. Daven b’avoida.
I just thought that it’s a chicken and egg problem.
For you, kiddush levana is not so much about Hashem as about community (in a typical MO philosophy) and the most chitzoiniustike part of the “ritual” (sholom aleichem). So, you hang out with people for whom it’s the same way. As a result, they quickly mumble through or skip the “secondary” (in their opinion) and boring parts to get the the interesting part (sholom aleichem). And you are forced to do the same to catch up with them.
It’s a feed-forward cycle of MO freikeit.
Shaul,
Skipping davening is usally a no-no, but Shulchan Aruch permits it in some instances in order to catch up to the minyan (Yishtabach, Amidah, not tachnun or Kiddush levana).
Regarding “flying” through davening, though most agree that it is better to take your time and daven with kavana, there are opinions that mention not taking too long for 2 reasons:
1) The longer you take, the more your mind can stray.
2) Tircha if your leading the minyan or part of a minyan with exactly ten.
I think your difficulties with Kiddush Levanah are rooted in the lunar effect. You’re being pulled to your more luna-tic side by the power of the full moon and it’s raising a lot of questions in your mind which may be better left for reflection in mid-month. My suggstion is to focus on the kavanah and don’t worry about shalom aleichem. (BTW, I enjoyed the rant)
Ahuva – Back when I first started to regularly use the internet, and I don’t mean to find kosher recipes, there were no 1337tards around. Of course, there was always the one kid who thought he was e-thug and talked like a moron, but he was easily disposed of. And then came myspace. Now people post LOLIMAFAG!!!!111 to anything and spread cancer all over the interwebs. It’s almost as bad as the failchanners and rickroll. But there is no point in me lecturing about the internet, as I doubt you will ever touch upon the oldguard’s territory.
Back to the current topic: skipping davening.
veebee,
as Ahuva says, its VERY old school. Keeping things as short as possible relates to when we had to either use pay per minute dial up links or pay per byte transferred. Also the IMHO, OTOH, TBH etc. make disagreeing look more polite. From your second post I think you know this already though.
¥was part of the BBS scene in the early 80s
¥¥remembers BITNET
¥¥¥built my first Internet connected unix box in 94
¥¥also davens slowly compared to others around
I never liked saying kiddush levana but apparently one can’t die in an accident or something like that if they have said it in the last month! but the only part I liked was the shalom aleichems, i did it to at least seven people each time. oh, and get a haircut!
You are yotzi d’orisa with five words:
“E-l na refa na la”.
I say: skip at will.
For example, i never repeat the verses that repeat in Hallel. That way, i can barely finsh with the kehila. Works for me.
Overall, I read five times slower in Hebrew than in English. If davening was in English, then maybe i could keep up with the old farts. After all they have been saying it by rote since first grade.
I see guys with the jaw just going up and down like they are saying “ra ra ra ra ra ra ra….”. Don’t your lips and toung do anything when you talk? If the words are varied, shouldn’t the rythm vary according to what you are reading? There are people who can read very fast in Hebrew, just that I am not one of them. So skip away as desired.
I havent said p’sukei d’zimra in years.
How many words are in Shakris, anyway? I once did a study on Aleynu. In our shul, the average time for Aleynu is less than 30 seconds. There are 174 words. do the math, that’s nearly 350 words per minute.
furthermore, I can just meditate on the letter Shin of Shema for 10 or 15 minutes. Like Yogi Berra once said, you can see a lot by looking.
I can say the whole book of Tehillim in one second.
“Atzhgrhmt”. There.
Davening it alone, in my opinion, is better than not praying at all.
While it would be best to daven with a minyan and say every word, whether saying everything by yourself or some of it with a minyan is debateable. Everyone so far seems to be of the opinion that saying everything by yourself is preferable. I’ve heard though that davening with a minyan gets your tefilos through with everyone elses ‘in a package’, so to speak. Also, davening as it is today is midirabnan, and tefilos have accrued over time. More and more things have found their way into the siddur. That’s not even taking into account different nussachs, some of which completely omit parts of davening that others hold to be extremely important.
CA “It’s a feed-forward cycle of MO freikeit.”
That’s mean-spirited. You’re talking about people who take time they could have spent doing anything they wanted and instead come to shul. However much someone may enjoy the social aspects of shul, it isn’t exactly a party.
Here’s my solution: I read part of Kiddush Levana and Loonnng Taaachanuuun in Hebrew for kavanah- and part in Englsih to catch up with the minyan. So there, no skimming, and no skipping.
HaShem understands all languages, and that nobody wants to be late to work on a Monday morning, especially in this bear economy.
In most cases, the shaliach tzibbur would wait for the rabbi to finish his Shema, Amidah, and Tachanun. So all it takes to reduce speed davening in a respected rav to act as a traffic cop.
I like benching out loud and slowly enough to read along in English. I could zoom through it — I know it well enough, but why bother? The content is kind of neat. If I’m going to bother, I will enjoy my meditation, even if I do it very quietly.
Besides, you’re supposed to wait a few minutes between eating and jumping in the pool, anyway. It’s a win-win.
That’s mean-spirited. You’re talking about people who take time they could have spent doing anything they wanted and instead come to shul.
To do what exactly? To speak with their Father in Heaven or to do some sort of Jewish communal shtick?
Imagine you have a man’s children come together to visit him. They stay for a few seconds, talk to each other, discuss their business, say, “What’s up Dad, how’s it going? Well, gotta run. Nice seeing you guys…”, and leave.
While it may be pleasant for the father that his children at least used their visit to him as a pretense to talk to each other (otherwise, they wouldn’t even do that), from the children’s perspective, such a behavior is extremely disrespectful to their father.
As to being mean — grow up. This is real life, not kindergar… I mean, high school.
(On the other hand, imagine the same situation if a king’s subjects come visit him, mumble some formula without paying attention to what they are saying, schmooze with each other while standing in front of his throne, and then leave, because they are too bored and have other business to do.
They’d be freaking executed.)
It’s clear in halakha that “saying a little with kavana is better than saying a lot without kavana” — if you’re rushing through Tahhanun, and therefore not doing it properly, it’s fine to skip part of it if it’ll improve the rest of it that you do say.
And i’ve seen non-Modern Orthodox shuls with worse talking than MO ones. This isn’t an “MO freikeit” issue.
It’s an MO freikeit issue. Of course, you can have any other group’s freikeit issue (in the particular realm of the group or bichlal) as well.
On the topic of Kiddush Levana, I have a joke to share with you all, (hebrew comprehension required)
Why do Ashkenazim call it Kiddush Levana, and Sefardim call it Birkat Halevana?
?? ????? ??? ?? ???? ????
Sorry, seems like the hebrew didnt come out the first time. Here goes again.
On the topic of Kiddush Levana, I have a joke to share with you all, (hebrew comprehension required)
Why do Ashkenazim call it Kiddush Levana, and Sefardim call it Birkat Halevana?
Ki Sfaradi haya met lekadesh levana.
Very cute! I enjoy all the serious stuff, but we do need to dialogue with the nuts and bolts of what’s really going on. The only times I ever finished first, it turned out I had left out a full service, Shabbos conclusion. By the way, how do you even read the siddur outside when it’s so dark?
“…how do you even read the siddur outside when it’s so dark?…”
About reading books in the dark, Mark Twain said:
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read a book.”
“…Davening it alone, in my opinion, is better than not praying at all….”
Which brings me to one of my earlier observations. That is, that praying is not the same thing as davining. Here is the scoop. To daven is to say the words by rote as fast as you can, without any feeling or kavana. To pray is to actually want and feel what you are praying for. You daven every day. You pray when someone is sick or in danger. Specally yourself.
Sorry for posting to such an old post, but to clarify the original questions.
Once a frume yid came in Heaven and met Hashem. Hashem greeted him and said: bluperupiwuop gerpejash.
The frum Yid excused himself and said: Sorry Hashem, but I do not understand. Can you please repeat.
So Hashem said again: bluperupiwuop gerpejash.
The frume Yid again excused himself and asked Hashem gain what he said.
So hashem replied: Sorry, in such a speedy way you spoke to me all these years and I was not able to understand a word of it. Now you are complaining about my speaking.
The message:
-dont worry about speed davvening or not. You are standing in front of Hashem, Blessing Him. Take your time.
-if you want to be faster: make sure you have said the Blessing, starting with Baruch ata A-do-na-y, and ending with Mechadesh Chodashim. This is essential part of the whole Birkat HaLevana.
The same for all the other Berachot in our daily service:
Shema Yisroel with the first Pasuk ” VeAhavta et A-do-na-y E-l-o-hei-cha” is essential.
But if you want to know all: Buy yourself a Kitsur Shulchan Aruch and see what you can skip for now.
Please do not misunderstand: When you get to a higher level, try to say all, as it brings tremendous joy. But, for starters it’s no problem to omit some parts temporary.
Best regards,
Bar Pinchas