Change
Your Life in 10 Minutes
Chayei Sarah 5780
Several years
ago, I visited the site of the Wannsee Conference, the infamous event in which,
over the span of two hours, the elite of the Nazi Party formulated the plan for
the extermination of 6,000,000 of our brethren.
After touring the room in which the worst atrocity in history was born,
I stepped outside, overwhelmed by the gravity of what I had just ingested - and
our group realized that it was nearly time to daven mincha. In a few more minutes the sun would set and
we would lose the opportunity. We had
the numbers to form a quorum, that was not our problem, the only question which
plagued us was whether it was appropriate to pray at the location of such pure
evil? We further realized that in order
to face east, we would have to stand facing the cursed structure while reciting
the amida. After a few moments of uncomfortable debate,
we recognized that we had no choice, and if anything, this mincha prayer would
be our little victory celebration...I closed my eyes, took three steps back and
then forward again, I uttered the words “כִּי שֵׁם ה’ אֶקְרָא הָבוּ גֹדֶל לֵאלֹהֵינוּ
“
And was
transported from the outskirts of Berlin, to Israel, into Jerusalem and over
the walls of the Kotel haMaaravi, where I would spend the next 5 to 10 minutes
in exalted communion with Hashem. Who
would have guessed that a tiny little afternoon service could be the most
memorable and transformative part of such a day!
Long before my
powerful and transformative mincha experience, our patriarch, Yitzchak was the
very first person to daven mincha. The Torah sets the scene. The complicated
negotiations leading to the shidduch between Yitzchak and Rivka have
concluded, and all that is left is for
the happy couple to meet. Rivka travels with Eliezer, and she draws near
astride a camel, festooned with jewels. No doubt she is anxious to meet the man
she has pledged to marry. Will he be kind and generous? Will he be
communicative? Will he be a good parent? The Torah says precious little about
Yitzchak, and his preparation for this fateful meeting. As the caravan
approaches, Rivka sees a solitary figure off in the distance, oblivious to his
surroundings, lost in holy devotion. ויצא
יצחק
לשוח
בשדה
לפנות
ערב
This is not the
first time Yitzchak seems disengaged. Consider that at every pivotal moment in
his life, Yitzchak played a passive role. The Akeida saw him bound helplessly
on the altar, as his father hovered ominously above him. He did nothing to secure his status as his
father’s spiritual heir; instead, his mother did the heavy lifting, casting his
half-sibling Yishmael into the barren desert[1]. Nor
did he have to sacrifice anything to live in Eretz Canaan, where he lived his
entire life without interruption. And
later, as blessings are to be given to his children, he is a mere pawn in the
scheme orchestrated by his wife Rivka. Everything in Yitzchak’s life was either
done to him, for him, or despite him. At
this moment, we’d expect something different. Eliezer could bring the young
woman, but he had to, at the very least, show up on the date! The absurdity of
this scenario becomes obvious when updated somewhat, and made a little more
contemporary. Picture a stunning young woman about to go on a date. She has
spent an hour deciding which outfit to wear and which makeup to apply. She
arrives at the restaurant where they’ve decided to meet, and she sees her date.
He looks in her direction, and the first thing he does is daven Mincha. Really?
Now he starts to daven?
בראשית פרק כד פסוק סג
וַיֵּצֵ֥א
יִצְחָ֛ק
לָשׂ֥וּחַ
בַּשָּׂדֶ֖ה לִפְנ֣וֹת
עָ֑רֶב
EVen more
surprising to the reader is that when Yitzchak lifts his head out of the siddur
to take notice of his future wife - he notices the irrelevant details - the
camels!
וַיִּשָּׂ֤א
עֵינָיו֙
וַיַּ֔רְא וְהִנֵּ֥ה
גְמַלִּ֖ים
בָּאִֽים:
Yitzchak has done
literally nothing to secure this Shidduch. All he needs to do is look up, and
say “hello.” Why is he davening now? This question is especially strong when
you consider that Mincha was a voluntary service at the time, and not an
obligation.
Maybe the Torah,
in telling us this detail, is stressing the significance of the Mincha prayer,
and maybe it was Yitzchak’s way of
preparing for marriage and building a home.
In order to
understand why, we must remember that Yitzchak’s meeting with Rivka was not the
only significant biblical event associated with Mincha. Many hundreds of years
later, on the top of Mt. Carmel, Eliyahu HaNavi conducted a showdown with the
false prophets of Baal, whose empty promises and hedonistic rituals held sway
over the hearts of so many wayward Jews. Many of us remember the denouement of
the story, with God’s heavenly fire descending to consume Eliyahu’s offerings.
But what we don’t usually recall from the story is perhaps the most critical
detail:
מלכים א פרק יח פסוק לו
וַיְהִ֣י׀ בַּעֲל֣וֹת הַמִּנְחָ֗ה
The confrontation
took place as Eliyahu calls out to God during Mincha time. Our sages were quick
to pick up on this detail.
ברכות ו:
Rav Chelbo said
in the name of Rav Huna, a person should always exercise great care in praying
Mincha, because Eliyahu was only answered during the Mincha service.
What is it about Mincha that is so propitious? I’d like to suggest three
reasons.
First, mincha is
an opportunity to perform an act of chessed
for others. Here at KCT, we have people join us for davening from literally all
over the world, coming here on business and looking for a minyan to say
Kaddish. Anyone who takes time from their day to join a minyan for Mincha is not only fulfilling their mandate בין
אדם
למקום,
but also a sanctified form of בין אדם
לחבירם.
Mincha minyanim often gather a motley crew of people, from vastly different backgrounds,
all united for the same purpose. It is a great privilege to be a part of such
an assemblage.
Second, Mincha
challenges us to remember that we are Jews. In the days of Eliyahu, the Jews
felt they could worship both God and the Ba’al. The fateful moment on Har
HaCarmel was when Eliyahu challenged them, “How much longer will you straddle
the fence? Either pick God, or pick Ba’al!” Mincha is the prayer you utter to
show that we live in one world, not two. It is the only prayer that asks you to
peel away from the other commitments in your world. The Tur (OC 232)
articulates this idea beautifully. Shacharit is prayed at the beginning of the
day, before you leave for work or whatever other endeavors the day will bring.
Maariv is prayed at the end, when the phone has stopped ringing and when you
begin winding down your day. The time for Mincha, however, begins shortly after
midday, and particularly during the winter months, requires us to determine
whether we are Jews during work, on vacation or in the middle of the Bears
game.
טור אורח חיים הלכות תפלת המנחה סימן רלב
הלכות
תפלת
המנחה:
….והטעם מפני
שתפלת
השחר
זמנה
ידוע
בבקר
בקומו
ממטתו
יתפלל
מיד
קודם
שיהא
טרוד
בעסקיו
וכן
של
ערב
בלילה
זמנה
ידוע
בבואו
לביתו
והוא
פנוי
מעסקיו
אבל
של
מנחה
שהיא
באמצע
היום
בעוד
שהוא
טרוד
בעסקיו
צריך
לשום
אותה
אל
לבו
ולפנות
מכל
עסקיו
ולהתפלל
אותה
ואם
עשה
כן
שכרו
הרבה
מאד
וע"כ
מנעו
חכמים
לכל
אדם
לעשות
מלאכות
הקבועות
סמוך
לזמן
המנחה
דתנן
לא
ישב
אדם
לפני
הספר
פי'
להסתפר
סמוך
למנחה
עד
שיתפלל
ולא
יכנס
למרחץ
ולא
לבורסקי
ולא
לדין
ולא
לאכול
Nowadays, it is
not difficult- especially in larger communities- to find workplace mincha
minyanim. In our community, there are at
least a dozen, and there is even a 2 PM Mincha at the Yeshiva hosted in our
shul. In several places, the Agudah publishes a Mincha Minyan directory, and on
godaven.com you can find listings for the nearest Mincha minyan anywhere in the
world. This was not always the case. In May 1977, the New Yorker[2] ran a profile of the legendary Chabad chossid
Reb Leibel Bistritzky, who owned a dairy store on the Lower East Side. Reb
Leibel was a pioneer of many Jewish initiatives in New York- he was one of the
first members of Hatzoloh, for example. But what he was best known for was that
which the New Yorker wrote about. Every single day, at 4 PM, he would close his
tiny store for 10 minutes for a Mincha minyan. It didn’t matter how many
customers were in it, and how many were waiting to be served. A neighboring
proprietor, Meilech Torn- co-owner of H&M Skullcap- said, in his interview-
“It can rain, it can snow, it can lightning-
there’s Mincha at Bistritzky’s...He’s a man with a soul. Nobody else would do
it- close a store when he has twenty customers. If it weren’t for him, a lot of
Jews wouldn’t be praying. So when he calls, we answer.”
Most of us won’t
have the same level of impact on the broader Jewish community that Leibel
Bistritzky did. We won’t be a founding
member of Hatzoloh and we won’t be proprietors of iconic food establishments.
But like Leibel, we can all be mincha
yidden.
Finally, in
taking a break from the day and fulfilling our prayer obligations, we are not
just declaring that we are Jews. We are also declaring what kind of Jews we are. Rav Eliezer Melamed, he great posek of
the religious Zionist community and Rosh Yeshiva of the Har Beracha Yeshiva,
writes[3]
that mincha challenges us to take whatever it is we are doing and to uncover
the Divine dimension within.
His understanding
of the role of tefilat mincha
encourages us to take stock of our entire day, and ask, what have we have done
to sanctify it? If I enaged in a casual
conversation over lunch, was it part of my day as an eved Hashem? If you watch a
movie- even a “kosher” one- can you find the two or three lessons that may
inform the way in which we conduct ourselves as moral and righteous Jews[4]?
This challenges
us to live the kind of life in which it’s easy to connect the dots, that
nothing we did throughout our days should be viewed as separate from the
overall mission of our lives. Praying Mincha retroactively sanctifies the day
and shows that everything we did fits into that holy framework- or at least
ought to.
These two
approaches to tefilat mincha echo the two interpretations of the word מנחה. It
means menucha – or rest, an oasis away from the madness of the rest of
your day. It also comes from the word מָנְחה , meaning
“director/leader” as in שמות יג:יז:
|
וְלֹא-נָחָם אֱלֹהִים דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ פְּלִשְׁתִּים,
כִּי קָרוֹב הוּא:
|
that God led them not by the way of the land of the
Philistines, although that was near;
|
Mincha
interrupts what we are doing, to introduce a little קודש
into the חול, and it informs the rest of our day that
it is meant to be קודש as well. We have the ability to stop what we are doing
and initiate something exalted and moreover we can transport ourselves for ten
blessed minutes to another world – you aren’t in work, you are engaging the
Almighty, you aren’t standing in the cursed grounds of Berlin, you are in
Yerushalayim Ir Hakodesh!
It’s no wonder
that at the most pivotal moments of Yitzchak and Eliyahu’s lives, they carved
out a few moments to recite the most overlooked prayer of our day. Let us use
their example and take time out from our day for the same purpose.
[1] Contrast this with Yaakov who must confront
Esav directly throughout his life
[3] Pninei Halacha- Hilchot Tefillah
[4] Nietzsche said that if you look back
on your life and contemplate the 5 or so moments you really felt alive, then
connect the dots, drawing an imaginary line - you will find your life’s purpose
- why cant do this each day, connect the dots - at Mincha we connect the dots
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