Distracted Davenning
What should we be thinking about when leading prayer?
When we’re leading the community in prayer, there are a million variables that might might draw our attention away from our actual prayer. What page are we going to, am I in the right key, are people singing, who’s that new person that just walked in, and am I saying the right words, are just a few of the many distractions that can get in our way when we’re trying to really lead a community.
When Covid began back in 2020, the community I was the rabbi of moved to zoom. On top of all the normal leadership things that I needed to pay attention to, I had new distractions - someone can’t get into the zoom room, someone has their siddur on the unmute button and I need to keep muting them, a comment has just been posted to the chat, I’m sharing the siddur while I’m davenning along. This is while I’m also leading the service! It’s no wonder my leadership didn’t often feel prayerful.
In an ideal world, what are we supposed to be thinking about when leading prayer? How do we ourselves get to a place where we can actually pray when we’re leading?
In my experience, there are three levels that shlichei tzibur move through in their leadership: Beginner Leadership, Experienced Leadership, and Intuitive Leadership.
Beginner Leadership
When we’re just starting to lead, our distractions take the shape of the fundamental building blocks of leadership: Text, Melody, and Nusach. Some of those distractions include:
Am I saying the words correctly?
How does the melody start again?
What’s the nusach here?
What chords am I playing?
Where do I come back in?
When I was hired as music staff at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin so years ago, I was already an experienced and comfortable prayer leader. What I didn’t have much experience in, and what I was doing most mornings, was leading musical tefillot with my guitar. I had my chord sheet, and my siddur, and was trying to lead, and I remember turning to our head songleader, Rabbi Josh Warshawsky, and commenting about how I felt like I wasn’t actually davenning myself. I was too distracted. The chords weren’t inside of me yet. I may have been experienced in general, but I was a beginner leader in this context.
Our comfortability as a beginner leader comes from practice and experience, and we build our confidence from successful leadership. Ideally, we move through this stage pretty quickly, mostly off bima, and can turn our attention in prayer to the loftier questions (and maybe actually pray a bit ourselves). Practice is key here - we want these basic building blocks to almost be automatic inside of us. Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, the director of the Block/Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts at JTS, teaches that she doesn’t lead a new melody unless she knows it so well she’s dreaming about it. While we don’t always get to that point when we’re called to stand before the kahal (community), the more comfortable we are, the more present we can be in our leadership, which is the ultimate goal. Returning to my camp story, while musical tefillot started out with a lot thinking about the chords I was playing, as I led day in and day out, those chords and the guitar itself became a part of me, and I was able to get back to actually focusing on leading the prayer fully. Slowly, I became an experienced leader.
Experienced Leadership
After many months or years, and hours and hours of practice, we wake up to find that the foundational thoughts that once consumed us when leading prayer have given way to loftier questions. The melodies, text, and flow of the service have been embedded in our subconscious, and our thoughts begin to turn to questions like these:
How do I want to transition from this melody to the next?
What do we need here? Should I repeat the melody again? Should I do the B part a second time?
Why is that person frowning at me?
How do I cue people to sing along with me?
As an experienced leader, we turn outside of our own experience (“am I doing everything correctly?”) and begin to pay attention to our relationship with the kahal. We look up from our book. We notice how and when people are singing or praying along with us. We ourselves might have some moments of meaningful personal prayer.
This stage of leadership is defined by higher level thinking where we focus on the real goals of leading a community in prayer, namely, am I creating a container for people to bring their full selves into? We notice how the community is responding our leadership, and we might catch ourselves thinking about where we want to go or what we want to do next. While these are the right questions, our brain enters thinking mode, and we begin to disconnect from the deep presence that prayer thrives in. Our aim, again with experience and practice, is to move these questions into our subconscious, and to begin to trust that if we let go of the thinking, our body and voice will do what it needs to do. When we’ve achieved that place, we’ve entered into intuitive leadership.
Intuitive Leadership
The intuitive leader feels, rather than thinks. We are deeply present, trusting our skills and experience to make the “right” decisions automatically. We draw our attention to the boundary of our own body and the community, noticing and shaping the energy of the room as we create an energetic container for the community’s prayers. We might be channels for God’s presence, having faith that whatever needs to come through in our davenning will come. We give ourselves permission to change our plan because the moment doesn’t feel right - for instance, the melody we planned is too upbeat for the mood of the room or we might need something that connects and gathers the community together in that moment.
This kind of leadership can be really powerful for a community to experience. They too feel permission to let go, to settle into deep presence, to soften their hearts just a bit more. Sometimes we mess up. We start in the wrong key or with the wrong melody. When that happens to you, you’ll decide how to respond that in the moment. The goal is that we embody, most of the time, the type of prayerful presence that we hope to elicit in the kahal.
A Final Note
While our goal is for our leadership to move towards being intuitive, these stages are not linear - we go in and out of them. When I was first leading musical tefillot at camp, I needed to focus on the building blocks until it became a part of me. You might feel intuitive leading the community during shacharit on Shabbat, but the unfamiliarity or length of time since you last led the High Holidays might move you to beginner or experienced leadership. We might go in and out these during a service as well, depending on who is around to support your davenning (clergy, gabbaim, etc), how experienced you are in general, or if you’re trying something new. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - it’s just a reality. Our goal is that, through practice and preparation, we can maximize the amount of time we lead from an experienced or intuitive posture.
Lastly, prayer can be meaningful at any of these levels. However, the more you can lead from Levels 2 and 3, the more often our prayer will be meaningful, for us and for our community.
Don’t be discouraged! Mastery of any craft takes a long time. Don’t let that stop you, however, from stepping up to the bima. Sometimes we need a kick, when we’re almost ready, to get us out of our heads and to start doing the thing. Good luck!