An Approach to the עמידה, Amida:

I would like to invite you to join me on a journey to prayer. Over the next several months, I hope to share one essay every two weeks. Each installment will analyze one or two texts that serve as an introduction to a life of davening.

We will begin with the first berakha of the Amida and then move slowly through the nineteen blessings of the daily tefilah. The experience of standing before God can be uplifting, boring, enlivening, repetitive, fun and tedious. The essays on the first berakha offer a broad introduction to a way of thinking about prayer.

I see five core ideas emerging from the first berakha that lie at the heart of the prayer experience: 1) honesty and integrity, 2) humility, 3) spiritual diversity, 4) silence, and 5) divine love. These five key concepts will help drive my approach throughout this journey to prayer. As we travel together on this path, we will begin to notice the ways in which how we approach prayer echoes many broader question about Jewish life and Jewish law.