In Kuntres M’arat ha-Lev I wrote:
“The contemplative is always in community, whether that be a handful of neighbours, a family, a circle of distant friends kept often in mind, or the people they meet briefly or correspond with. Even if they were in total solitude they would still be part of the community of Creation: Responsible not only for themselves but for everyone. This is not just my own reflection. It is one which permeates the liturgy of Yom Kippur.
The
Arizal asks:
“Why was the confession composed in the plural?
Because all Israel is one body and each individual Jew is a limb of that body.
We are all responsible for each other …”
Yesod ha-Teshuvah 6
Prayer is one of the deepest and most selfless forms of caring for others that we are privileged to exercise as human partners in the Divine Plan.
It is a hidden activity which does not draw attention to the ego, and it can be exercised not just by Leviim and Kohanim, but by anyone with a good and pure intention. Such profound and atoning prayer may be performed in physical solitude or in the midst of a congregation— It is a paradox of Jewish prayer that it is always communal and (at its most profound) always a matter of an individual’s intimate communion with G-d.
When it is performed in solitude one never prays “outside”
the community, and when one prays in the company of other daveners, the real
“business” still takes place in the sanctuary of one’s own heart.
In Vayikra we read the instructions for the High
Priest on Yom Kippur:
“And there shall be no man in the tent of meeting when he goes in to make atonement for the holy place, until he comes out after having made atonement for himself, and for his household, and for all the assembly of Israel.”
Though the vast majority of halakhic commentaries on the liturgy
place communal prayer in a firm position of superiority over individual prayer,
and though the strictest and most physical conception of “ minyan ” is
the one which has prevailed to this day—the fact remains that the principal prayer
in our principal liturgical ceremony, on our most holy
day is performed by a single individual in clearly commanded isolation.
He enters and prays alone, but (as his vestments underline) the
High Priest takes the whole community on his shoulders and bears them on his
heart. So do we if we bind ourselves to the whole
Community of Israel and to those we pray for. We may pray alone, but if
our prayer is to be true—we never pray without this awareness of the community.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev said that a person who prays with
sincerity is actually standing in the Holy of Holies when they pray, and that
such a person’s upheld hands are like the wings of the keruvim above
the ark.
On Yom Kippur. Each of us
is a High Priest in the Inner Sanctuary
of our Hearts.
oooOooo
Along with all other full-time contemplatives I have attempted to
turn my solitude into a positive lifestyle. I persist (since 2003) in claiming that such such solitude is not loneliness if it is viewed and practiced as a form of active participation in the communal life of Knesset Yisrael.
Such an eremitic lifestyle would not suit many Jews, but this year, and every year, there
will be millions of Jews who are unavoidably isolated and simply unable to attend
any form of communal worship over the High Holiday season.
There will be many who, rightly or wrongly, also feel unwelcome at such gatherings even if they are physically able to attend them.
There will be those who are in the depths of spiritual
trials and who actually choose not to
attend religious services on Yom Kippur.
If you are alone this Yom Kippur…whether by choice or circumstance…..I invite you to make a “special remembrance” in your prayers for those other Jews who are also “alone”.
Together, may it please God, may we make a sort of minyan which meets in intention if not physically.
If you are fortunate enough to attend congregational worship on Yom Kippur ...I invite you to remember those who are alone and not present in the synagogue.
For despite geographical, social, or ideological distances
We are all of us One Israel.
All of us together—each of us alone.
©Nachman Davies
Safed September 24 2023
