The ‘Prayer of Nearness’ is pre-eminently
the prayer of the solitary Mitkarev, but it is also the prayer of the
worshipping community. In Parshat Terumah we read:
The keruvim
are to have their wings spread upwards, overshadowing the ark cover with them.
They are to face each other,looking towards the ark cover. [1]
The Presence of G-d
is something that we can experience when we are alone but it is also something that we can experience when we are standing in prayer with a
congregation. When we are alone, it is a
bit like standing before the ark in our interior sanctuary with nobody else
present to disturb the intimacy of the moment.
When we are praying in a
congregation, it is a bit like the silent but shared dialogue of the keruvim
we read of in the Talmud— There is a saying, originating in Bava
Batra 99a and Yoma 54a,
that the two keruvim seemed to embrace and touch wings whenever benei
Yisrael were in harmony with G-d’s
will and at peace amongst themselves, and that they seemed to disconnect and turn
their faces away from each other in
times of discord. Though it is possible
that the design or placement of the carvings may have made the figures appear
differently when viewed from differing perspectives—the details are not as
important as the symbolic thought behind this Talmudic notion.
Some
commentators have seen the facing/facing away as a reference to inter-personal
behaviour within the community itself: that the keruvim seemed to face
each other when the community was solicitous for the needs of its weaker
members and that they turned away when Jews were being selfish.
I find
the idea of the two keruvim facing each other but looking ‘down’ at the
ark very reminiscent of the monastic practice of performing the liturgy in
antiphonal choirs. Christian monks face each other during the liturgy but never
look directly at each other. The monastic liturgical seating arrangement is one
whereby the community members are simultaneously facing each other in two lines
but are individually engrossed in prayerful contact with G-d. It is a seating arrangement that some think
originated in Levitical practice (facilitating responsorial chanting) and which
is also reflected in many Sefardic synagogues where the congregation often line
three of the four walls of the building.
Those
who are physically dispersed all over
the world without a nearby community are
somehow ‘facing each other’ even though they do not ‘look into each others’ faces’.
Each Jewish
Contemplative is engaged in the activity of cleaving to G-d in devekut,
but somehow bears the community in his/her heart while doing so.
We are closest to
each other when we are close or near to
G-d.
When we cleave to G-d
we are, in a way, being keruvim ourselves. Each
of us ‘facing’ in the sense that we act as a community, but each of us ‘focused
on the ark’ so that the Divine Presence may rest and maybe even speak or act in
the ‘space’ our prayer creates. The act
of devekut binds us to each other
as well as to G-d.
The
embrace of the keruvim is the union of the individual and the community,
of the practical and the spiritual, of the rational and the intuitive, of joy and sorrow. They are like two flames which want to burn
as one. That union is a flame which we alone can light. And we can do so whenever
we ‘stand before the ark’ and listen.
