Rav Avi: Welcome to Responsa Radio, where you ask and we answer questions of Jewish law in modern times. I'm Rabbi Avi Killip, here with Rabbi Ethan Tucker, Rosh Yeshiva of Mechon Hadar, a center for higher Jewish learning based in New York City. How are you doing today?
Rav Eitan: Good, I'm doing great.
Rav Avi: Alright, so every week I introduce Responsa Radio as answering questions of Jewish law in modern times, and that is exactly what today's question is about. How do we fit Jewish ritual into modern times? The person writes: "When does one say tefilat haderech, which is the traveler's prayer, given how different modern travel is from ancient travel? A very long trip -- a plane, a train, across the ocean, to another train, might be very far, but have no increased risk over my daily life. Does weather matter? What about population density, or how long I'll be gone? Is this ultimately a gut check, i.e. do I feel substantially more unsafe, or are there hard and fast rules that are applicable in our world?"
Rav Eitan: Great question. One of the things I just want to say as a preface is, the prayer "tefilat haderech" is a very old prayer, and in some ways, the way you can tell that is it doesn't quite fit the forms that we're used to. Right? Those who are familiar with this prayer, it starts with yehi ratzon, and then it ends with a baruch ata hashem formulation at the end. It starts just with saying, oh, may it be Your will, and later brachot, like later blessings and prayers, generally always start with baruch, always start with that sort of formula that, you know, gets us into the formal structure of prayer, and one of the theories about why tefilat haderech doesn't follow those rules is that it predates those rules, right?
And there's something -- what made me think of this is when the questioner talks about a gut check, there is an aspect of this tefilat haderech which even as we'll get to all kinds of rules that surround it, in many ways has its origins in a gut check, has its origins in a certain amount of instinctive instability, fear, uncertainty around travel, and for those of us who hate packing, of which I am, you know, definitely squarely a member of that group, what we hate about it is there's something very unsettling about going from one place to another. And so I want to kind of affirm that there's a little bit of a messiness to this question, even as we'll try to make a little order to it, and that's because it's a really primordial, old ritual. So, the first text we have that really jumps into this is in the Talmud. And right off the bat, we get really interesting different modes and themes of thinking about this. So, there is a statement that's made to one of the sages here, who is talking about traveling. And he's told as follows: when you go on a trip, consult your master and go. Himalech b'koncha v'tzei. And then the text clarifies, how do you do that? You do that by saying tefilat haderech. Now, consulting your master --
Rav Avi: It's like, check in with G-d.
Rav Eitan: Yeah, check in with G-d, and I think even there's a sense here, and some of the texts of the Talmud even reflect this, you have to get permission, right? It's almost like, if you think about, like, a kid needs to like, ask a teacher to go to the bathroom, it's like before you go off on some whole trip, check in with G-d and essentially pray for it to be an auspicious journey in some way. Consult, consult with G-d. Alright? That's the sort of opening line. Then we hear another tradition that says anyone who goes on a trip must pray tefilat haderech, and then it gives the text.
And the text, which many are familiar with today, has nothing to do with consulting G-d or checking in, and is all about please please please please please protect me, and I don't want anything terrible to happen to me. Puraniyot, the fear of catastrophe, get me to my place in peace, l'shalom, l'shalom, l'shalom, repeats over and over in that prayer, which is much more grounded in a real fear that I will somehow be harmed, maybe even killed, along the way. Those are two very different motivations for breaking into prayer or ritual, one of which I would say argues for a much more expansive use -- that is to say, the one that's about consulting with G-d and checking in before a journey, that feels like it may make sense anytime you go on almost any kind of trip, whereas when you're talking about fear, that seems like it's more tailor-made for the kinds of journeys where you're actually worried that you're unsafe.
Rav Avi: Yeah. There's something about also the specifics in the text itself of the things that, you know, that could happen to you, that make it feel very, like, fear-based -- it both makes it feel so modern and so ancient, that you're like, well, pirates? You know? Not exactly worried about pirates, but if you said, like, I hope I don't get mugged, then that suddenly feels very relevant and contemporary; it makes it both ancient and modern at the same time.
Rav Eitan: That's right. And there's a lot of people that I know personally and then there's, you know, texts of the prayer that you can find, which explicitly add things in like, te'unot drachim, car accidents, right, or various other things to really make it reflect, well, what are the things that I'm actually afraid of in this journey? But nonetheless the whole framing of fear as opposed to hey, part of what I do when I travel is reach out to G-d the same way, you know, part of what I do when I get up in the morning is I pray to G-d, I praise G-d for having had sight returned to me, all sorts of things like that. You can certainly imagine a frame of tefilat haderech that's just entirely around, you know, Jews say blessings and prayers for all the significant things they do in life -- travel is one of them. That's a very different frame than protecting me from fear.
Rav Avi: Right. So in that first frame, do I say tefilat haderech every morning on my morning commute the same way that, you know, I reach out to G-d over breakfast, I reach out to G-d over opening my eyes to the first time -- do I also recite tefilat haderech every single day that I commute, or is it something that I'm gonna reserve for those longer trips, or bigger trips or more dangerous trips?
Rav Eitan: Yeah. I think -- like, for most of these sort of halakhic discussions, the philosophy gets played out through the details. So for that we need to go just a little further in the Talmudic passage, and then we'll be able to understand how different authorities kind of play this out. So after saying, okay, you have to pray this prayer, and giving at least one version of the text of it, the Talmud then says, well, when do you pray it? And Rav Hisda says, from the time when you set out on your way. Alright? So in other words, you're clearly, you're supposed to do it more or less at the beginning. Like, once you're out of the city is the way that's usually interpreted, or at least, you know, out of your neighborhood, whatever it is, you're sort of beyond your normal radius of home. And then the Talmud says, in very cryptic language, ad kama, which we could translate as how much, or until when, or until how much -- we'll come back to that. To which Rav Hisda says, ad parsa. A parsa is about four kilometers, okay?
So, what is going on here? Okay? There is a guideline that's clear here, which is something to do with this four kilometer distance. You know, between two and three miles, something like that. But what exactly does the text mean, what is it getting at? And you have a -- first off, very straightforward early medieval split on interpretation. The Halakhot Gedolot, which is from the Gaonic period, says that the parsa here, the four kilometers, that's the minimum journey length that triggers the obligation to say this blessing. Meaning, only if the trip is four kilometers long or more do you say tefilat haderech; anything that's less than that, it just counts as, like, walking around your neighborhood or going nearby. Right? So he reads the ad kama as how long must the journey be in order to kick in the obligation to say this prayer? That's one reading.
But Rashi says something different. He thinks ad kama means until when on a journey are you allowed to say this prayer? Just as we said you're supposed to start saying it from the time you leave, but what if you don't remember? How long do you have into the journey before it's sort of expired, right? You know, think about if you, you're supposed to say a blessing over an apple before you bite into it. Right? If you took the first bite of the apple and you forgot, then before you take the next bite you should still say the blessing. But if you finish the entire apple and threw out the core and there's nothing left, at that point you don't say the blessing of borei peri haetz -- it's too late, you've done the thing in question. Rashi thinks that's the frame here, and says ad parsa means you only say tefilat haderech within the first four kilometers of the journey. After that point, you're enough on your way, it doesn't make sense to ask G-d for this kind of protection or to check in -- we'll get to those two frames in a second. But that's the kind of interpretational dispute of this phrase in the Talmud.
Rav Avi: So Rashi's definitely thinking of this as the G-d check-in model, because if this was, you say it at the point when you feel afraid, then we would say it doesn't matter if you're thousands of miles from home; when the turbulence hits, that's when you daven, that's when you start saying this particular prayer.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. I think that's certainly a very plausible reading, that Rashi, even though he's aware of the text of the prayer being about protecting you, does feel like yeah, there's something about that beginning, which is the time when you haven't yet begun. And it's almost like you could imagine him saying, until four kilometers you might consider going back, like, you know, for something you've forgotten or something pressing; once you're further along than that, you're on the trip, and it doesn't make sense to check in at that point. I think that's a nice reading.
Rav Avi: Right. Well, it's also in the check-in frame, it's like if a parent telling a child you can't call me from the city limits and ask me if it's okay to go away for spring break; you have to ask me before you get there.
Rav Eitan: That's nice. That's good. Yeah yeah yeah, I think that's really good. So, what do you say about Halakhot Gedolot, does he clearly give into one frame or the other here?
Rav Avi: So, Halakhot Gedolot is the opinion that's telling us it depends how far you're going; if you go at least that far, then suddenly that triggers the need to say this blessing, right?
Rav Eitan: Yeah, that's right.
Rav Avi: So, I don't know. That one I could see going either way. In some ways I still think that's a check-in again, because it's not saying well, you decide when to say it based on how dangerous the road is; it's more prescriptive in terms of you must say it at this time, at this distance from home. So I think I actually would put both opinions into that first model. What do you think?
Rav Eitan: Alright, so I think -- I think you can definitely make the case that Halakhot Gedolot is also in the first model; in other words, if it's not far enough, then it's just not worth a check-in. But I think, you know, what you started to articulate and I think is important to recognize is also possible here, is you can, in a way that seems harder to do with Rashi, you can with Halakhot Gedolot see this as an assessment of okay, but like, what's a significant enough thing that it is worth being nervous and, you know, asking G-d for protection? And in particular, that is true if you think about Halakhot Gedolot and Rashi as kind of contrasting uses of the category of parsa, of this four kilometer distance. Because think about it: for Rashi, he says you've gotta complete the prayer within the first four kilometers.
But it seems like Rashi therefore also is certainly consistent with the idea that a journey smaller than four kilometers would also require tefilat haderech; it would just mean that's the kind of the thing that's short enough that you could say it at any point along the way. But Rashi doesn't have any text in the Talmud, as he reads it, that specifies any minimum length. Right? It's basically, whenever you understand yourself ot be going on a trip, you should say tefilat haderech; the only limitation is if it's a really long trip, you gotta do it right at the beginning for it to be meaningful.
Rav Avi: When you read the Rashi, does it sound to you like he means your daily commute? Like, he's imagining this is a regular occurrence?
Rav Eitan: Alright, we'll come back to that. I agree, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what Rashi's lower limb it is on that. But again, I think as you pointed out, if Rashi really seems consistent with the notion of check in with your creator, it's not unreasonable that your daily commute would be included in that, because you would say, as you put it, I get up every morning and I, in a, you know, maybe sometimes in a more mechanical way, thank and reach out to G-d about all kinds of basic things of my functioning; sure, my commute is one of those things. So I'm reflecting on that. I don't think that's a stretch. It's not the only possible reading of Rashi, but it's certainly a plausible one.
Halakhot Gedolot, though -- think about it from the other perspective. Halakhot Gedolot, by insisting there's a minimum journey length that triggers this blessing, also implies thereby that he doesn't think there really is a Talmudic text that weighs in on by when you need to say it, and that then suggests if halakhot gedolot thinks it's okay for you to say it any time during a trip -- like, ideally you should say it at the beginning, but if there's no formal cutoff, that does tend to push it more towards a discourse of, well, as long as you're still on the way and there's some kind of danger involved, then maybe you should say it. Alright? This is at least what triggered some discussion in the Middle Ages in evaluating these two positions. The Rosh, Rav Asher ben Yechiel in 13th century Germany and Spain, he takes up this question. There's Rashi and there's Halakhot Gedolot, and he sides with Halakhot Gedolot.
And here's what his basis is: he says if you go less than a parsa, less than four kilometers, then there's no danger involved in such a short trip, and therefore not only do you not say it on a journey that's less than a parsa, less than four kilometers, but you also don't say it when you have that little left in the journey. Okay? So he takes for granted, basically, he says the whole discourse here of Halakhot Gedolot is assuming that this is about danger, that is the right frame to think about this through, therefore Halakhot Gedolot is right, therefore we don't make people say things on little short trips that they do every day; it's only things of significance. But that creates an interesting limit, which is he also says though, you have to evaluate if you're almost at the tail end of a journey where, you know, the danger has essentially passed, then at that point, it's no longer appropriate to say tefilat haderech anymore. So you don't have to do it right at the beginning, but you do have to do it when there's still a stretch in front of you that you're nervous about.
Rav Avi: I read something once that said most muggings happen very close to home, or the closer you are to home, that that's sort of when people let their guard down, you say well, now I'm on the street, so you could walk from here. And it occurs to me also with plane flights, that most plane crashes happen right when you're taking off or mostly right when you're landing, right, when you feel like, okay, I could let my guard down. And it makes me, this comment that you're saying makes me realize of course there's danger when you're going, when you're staying home or when you're almost there, but that maybe it's trying to convey that you -- it's unhealthy to have a mental space of fear all the time. Like, you can't, every time you leave your house, even just to go to the grocery store, have a sort of framing of awareness of the danger that you could be in. It would be too much in every moment, and that to some extent we should reserve that fear for longer trips, because otherwise it would just be crippling.
Rav Eitan: That's interesting, that's an interesting kind of psychological reading of what's at stake here for preferring Halakhot Gedolot over Rashi. That's really interesting. Shulkhan Arukh goes in that direction, endorses Rosh and says, you know, we don't, for every tiny trip, engage this ritual; it's gotta be something of some significant length. And what that then kicks in, which the questioner is really asking about here, is once you're sensitive to the notion that, let's say, the tail end of the journey already at least in terms of your mentality, maybe not in terms of facts, as you're pointing out, but in terms of your mentality no longer feels as dangerous -- does that extend to all kinds of other modes of travel where we don't feel that way?
So I heard a story -- I heard it told that Rabbi Joseph Soleveichik, when he was kind of going back and forth between his base in Boston and Yeshiva University, he would, you know, he would often be driven by someone, and the story was told that as the student was driving him, I think it was back from New York to Boston, he pulled over to the side of the road to say tefilat haderech. And that Rabbi Soleveichik kind of looked at him and said really, you wanna… okay, fine, fine, if you want to do that, do it. And the theory was essentially for him, this was essentially a normal commute, even though it wasn't done every single day, he felt that was simply part of his routine, and that the category of yotzei laderech was meant to be something of, I'm going on an unusual trip. There's something disorienting around this where I feel a little less confidence and I'd like some support, and that's a kind of extension of saying, well if the last four kilometers of the journey I'm already comfortable, I know where I'm going, I don't feel lost in the same way, so I shouldn't say tefilat haderech, that ultimately ought to be extended to any kind of trip that feels totally routine and secure to me.
Rav Avi: Yeah. Well, I love that example because I did that exact commute for a full year between Boston and New York on the Acela train on the Amtrak train, and I basically every time asked myself the question, well, should I say tefilat haderech, I'm going on a train, I don't usually go on a train, but I actually go on a train every week. And so, is this exceptional or not?
Rav Eitan: Yeah. So, I think, you know, to the extent you have that instinct and maybe also to sort of explain what that student was motivated by, I wonder if there was an implicit return to the kind of, you know, checking in with your creator mode here. Which is, sure, from the perspective of fear and danger, it didn't necessarily feel like this warranted tefilat haderech, but at the same time, it was a trip. It was like a big deal, you know? It was a major part of my day, and it felt like, oh, there's a Jewish ritual to mark this, I should do that. Going back to the questioner's gut check question, you know, there's some sort of element there not just a gut check of safety but a gut check of am I doing something significant here, and therefore I should mark it?
And I think, you know, Rav Soleveichik's response, at least as told in that story, is helpful because he clearly avoided the kind of extreme binary of well, either it's obligatory to do it, or it's taking G-d's name in vain. Right? There was sort of a sense of, I don't think this is necessary, I wouldn't do this, but someone who felt, and I think this is quite common practice, this trip is long enough, it's enough defining what my day is today, that I should have a Jewish response to it. That's okay. It doesn't necessarily have to be completely clear-cut as to whether it's one hundred percent obligatory for it to be appropriate, even with invoking G-d's name, to say this blessing and to do this ritual.
Rav Avi: Right. So that response, to my mind, puts us back into the fear -- maybe fear is a little bit too strong of a word, but it's into the fear mode in terms of that's actually something that's subjective. I may not be afraid on my drive between Boston and New York because I've done it so many times, and you may have a lot of anxiety around that trip, and that puts us in different places in terms of whether or not we need this blessing in that moment.
Rav Eitan: So, you know, the one other dimension here which we haven't touched on but is probably the practical, practically most relevant one, is, is parsa meant to be a measure of distance or time? Parsa, I translate it as four kilometers because that, of course, is the unit, it is technically a unit of length. But was it shorthand for time? It's gonna take you 72 minutes, it's gonna take you an hour and a quarter, is what we normally, you know, estimate with that kind of distance, to walk it. And the idea is that yeah, if you were on a horse or if you were on something else that went faster, that doesn't matter; that just means you're gonna get there faster. But it's really supposed to be about being a certain physical distance away from your point of origin. Or no, is it about time? It's about, this is the experience of being out that long, and if you're on a horse or a car or a boat or a plane, it should still be judged by that standard of duration, and the technology should actually affect the application of this halakhah.
So, the Mishnah Berurah says it's distance, and even if you're on a train, I mean, he doesn't yet have airplanes, but even if you're on a train, and certainly if you're on a horse -- they had horses in the time of the Talmud, they didn't tell us a distinction about that, and therefore even small journeys, you in fact say tefilat haderech. Rav Ovadia Yosef said no, it's time. It's 72-minute journeys or more, and anything less than that, you should not say tefilat haderech. So, you know, the most common thing of that is you've got a situation where a person has to just drive to the next town over for half an hour, right? It's much more than four kilometers, but it's not how long it would have taken them to walk a parsa. Do you in that context say tefilat haderech? My own personal practice is to follow Rav Ovadia Yosef on this, without the length of time, it's very hard for me to in any intuitive way that makes the ritual make any sense do it for, you know, something that's technically the distance but just doesn't take that much time in the day, and if someone asked me about, you know, their commute, let's say, their train commute in the morning that was, you know, less than an hour and 15 minutes, I would hope for them, I would say yeah, you don't say tefilat haderech on that, not only because perhaps, you know, following Rav Soloveichik it's too routine to qualify, but it just doesn't feel like that is long enough.
But I want to share one interesting compromise practice which I heard about years ago, which some people may find useful, which was by Rav Yehuda Amital, who was the Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva Har Etzion which is, you know, not very far south of Yerushalayim. And he would frequently make trips from Alon Shvut where he was based with the yeshiva there, up to Yerushalayim, and it was exactly in that interval where in terms of distance it's longer than four kilometers, but in terms of time, it's much less than 72 minutes. And what he would do, it was reported, was he didn't feel comfortable going against Rav Ovadia Yosef and saying tefilat haderech with G-d's name for such a short journey, but he also didn't feel comfortable going such a long distance and avoiding the Mishnah Berurah's directive that that qualified. So what would he do? Tefilat haderech, of course, ends with baruch ata hashem shomea tefilah. Whatever was the last amidah that he would pray prior to going on his trip, he would insert tefilat haderech into the bracha of shomea tefilah in the amidah.
And that way, he would essentially fulfill, you know, the Mishnah Berurah's requirement, but sort of swallowed up in a larger liturgical framework that was praying for other things. You know, for some people that'll feel like, oh my G-d, that's like too much to think about, and for other people that will be an incredibly beautiful example of what it is to kind of live in a full matrix of liturgy and to know how you can balance kind of different positions and different perspectives by interweaving different pieces. But I wanted to share that because I think at least some listeners may find that useful as a way of balancing those two.
Rav Avi: It's also an excellent example of how daily prayer practice or multiple times daily prayer practice can help you have perspective and awareness on everything that's happening in your life, even things that may not immediately seem to be part of or connected to that prayer practice, that it's not just time you take out from your day; it becomes a part of your day and helps you, you know, take a moment to stop and think, okay, what else am I doing today, and what kind of intentions and check-ins do I need to do in order to confront those?
Rav Eitan: Yeah, it's a very nice example of that spiritual need.
Rav Avi: So we've discussed a lot of different approaches, and I think what I love about this question is that it brought up different frames, not just for how to understand this particular ritual, but really to understand life, and when we feel safe and when we don't feel safe, and you know, the changes when we talk about this as a modern question, the changes in the speed with which we move around, and the distance within we can move, and how often our lives now take us so much further away, and how important it is to figure out really how this tefilah and how our interactions and check-ins with G-d play into this new, fast, distant, globalized, modern world. So thank you.
Rav Avi: Have a halakhic question you'd like answered on the show? Email us at halakhah@hadar.org. You can also leave us a phone message at (215) 297-4254.