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 By Rabbi Elie Kaunfer
My early connection to prayer had very little to do with meaning or an intense connection to God. Because my father was a congregational rabbi, I always had a relationship with shul. I felt very comfortable in the synagogue building and with the synagogue service. Shul was never that meaningful to me as a kid—I am not sure it was meant to be—it was just sort of fun. Sure, there were critically important events taking place on the bimah (platform), but down in our pew, I was content to play with toys and suck on candies. I never felt out of place in synagogue—in many ways it was a second home. Until I showed up at daily minyan.
I went to daily minyan with my dad on a regular basis when I was in middle school. Unlike shul on Shabbat, this was a space that felt utterly foreign. At ten years old, I was the youngest person by about fifty years. The minyan was populated by older men (and a few women) who started coming when they said Kaddish and then kept on coming. The davening was like nothing I had ever experienced before: people mumbled the prayers audibly. There was no cantor—the men rotated leading services themselves. And it was fast. Extremely fast. The davening was so fast that I was convinced they weren’t saying all the words—how could someone really pronounce all those Hebrew words in that amount of time? I remember listening during Aleinu, trying to catch them skipping words. But they were saying them all, just much faster than I ever thought possible.
I resolved to learn how to daven the way they did—as fast as humanly possible. This wasn’t a spiritual decision, but a social one—I felt out of place not keeping up with the people sitting around me. I was unfamiliar with most of the prayers, but I knew Ashrei from Shabbat, and I decided that I would practice saying that prayer quickly. I remember gearing up mentally as they approached Ashrei (to save time, I had already turned to the right page, waiting for them to arrive). When they started, I kept pace, probably for the first two lines. Then the old men sped past me in a blur. I made it to perhaps the sixth line when they were already moving on to the next psalm. As the weeks passed, I inched forward, until finally, months later, I could daven Ashrei as fast as they could. Now I just had to do that with the rest of the service.
Even though I was motivated to speed daven for social survival, I was surprised by the spirituality embedded in that service—not that the chapel regulars would have ever called it “spiritual.” There were no melodies, no page announcements—just straight, fast davening. And
yet there was an amazing rhythm to it. It wasn’t boring; it was otherworldly. The sounds that filled the chapel, the mumbling of those words that I could barely keep up with, were a contrast to the American cultural life I was taking part in (“must-see TV,” sports, and baseball cards).
I felt transported by the strangeness of the sounds and also attracted to their performance. I was able to connect to God in those fast, mumbly prayer-filled mornings. I thought that “real” davening, as it was meant to be, was taking place right in that chapel, and I was the only kid who
had discovered it.
The above excerpt, “Speed Davening: Empowerment as a Kid” by Elie Kaunfer, is from Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities. © 2010 by Elie Kaunfer. Permission granted by Jewish Lights Publishing, P.O. Box 237, Woodstock, VT 05091; www.jewishlights.com.
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Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, named one of the top fifty Jewish leaders by The Forward, and one of Newsweek’s top fifty rabbis, is co-founder and executive director of Mechon Hadar (www.mechonhadar.org), an institute that empowers Jews to build vibrant Jewish communities. Mechon Hadar has launched the first full-time egalitarian yeshiva program in North America, Yeshivat Hadar (www.yeshivathadar.org), where Rabbi Kaunfer teaches Talmud. A Dorot Fellow and Wexner Graduate Fellow, Rabbi Kaunfer co-founded Kehilat Hadar (www.kehilathadar.org), an independent minyan in Manhattan committed to spirited traditional prayer, study and social action. He was selected as an inaugural Avi Chai Fellow, known as “The Jewish Genius Award.”
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