Save "Which Direction Should I Face During Prayer? - Transcript for Episode 122"
Which Direction Should I Face During Prayer? - Transcript for Episode 122
---------------------------------------------------------------
Rav Avi: Hi, and welcome to Responsa Radio, where you ask and we answer questions of Jewish law in modern times. I'm Rabbi Avi Killip, Executive Vice President at Hadar, here with Rabbi Ethan Tucker, Rosh Yeshiva at Hadar, a center for higher Jewish learning based in New York City. You can check us out and learn more at hadar.org. So I thought we'd start here today. Do you have a favorite place to pray?
Rav Eitan: That's such an interesting question because actually my instinctive answer is what I love about prayer is having the same script that I say in lots of different places. So in some ways I would almost say to you, my favorite place to pray is a wide variety of places.
Rav Avi: Like you like to pray somewhere new.
Rav Eitan: Yeah, somewhere new, somewhere different, maybe to have a bunch of places I do it and alternate around. I don't overall have a, oh, this is where if I go there, I feel particularly tapped in.
Rav Avi: So that's a lead into the question today, which is going to be about our surroundings and our awareness of our surroundings when we pray. It's a three-part question.
Rav Eitan: Okay.
Rav Avi: I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the person who submitted this question is in New York City, because the first of our three parts says, why are there so many synagogues in New York City oriented towards the west rather than towards the east? Here's the follow up questions: When davening in such a community, when praying in such a community, is there ever a time when it would be appropriate to physically orient myself towards the east? Or is minhag hamakom, is is the sort of standard way the community behaves, a consideration here? Does it matter whether one is a regular congregant or a visitor? Okay, so what if this is my community? And do I make a point of turning myself in the other direction and facing east, even when the whole rest of the congregation presumably is facing west? That's question number two. And question number three is, are there halakhic solutions that could involve an entire congregation physically turning to the west when orienting towards the sifrei Torah, which presumably that's where the ark is, the aron, and physically turning towards the east when orienting towards Jerusalem? I.e. when the ark is closed, should they then turn the opposite direction? So the second question I think is about, do I give myself a different stage direction than everyone else? And the third is, well if I'm actually the stage manager, should I have everyone be facing in different directions at different points of the service? All of these questions come out of the situation of having a a sanctuary to pray in, right? Having a a community, a synagogue. So, so where should we start with this question?
Rav Eitan: Yeah, well, let me give you my comment on New York City. First of all, I have uh,
Rav Avi: You've been there?
Rav Eitan: I've been there. I've noticed this. I would broaden the comment. I don't think it's just uh facing west. I actually think more often you find sanctuaries that face north or south. Um, some of this is just the way lots work in New York City and their lot size, which is to say many synagogues, they have basically, think of it sort of as a a narrow uh, you know, you're on 86th Street, okay? And how is it broken up? You're going all all along the thing. You tend not to have a very wide front relative to how deep back you go. So you've got a sort of smaller entrance, uh and then you're, you know, facing deeper into the into the street. Often the only way it's going to really make sense to orient the room is as you walk into it. Never mind the fact that a lot of times, yeah, people just want the entrance to be in the back, right, of whatever the room is.
And if your lot faces north or south, it's going to be very awkward to have it turn to the east.
Rav Avi: This is such a great New York City answer. It's like, why is it that I can't open my silverware drawer and my fridge at the same time? I don't
Rav Eitan: Shul edition.
Rav Avi: I don't want it to be that way, but that's the only place the fridge fits. Which is by the way a real example from my kitchen, in case you're interested.
Rav Eitan: Really? I'm sorry to hear that.
Rav Avi: It's true.
Rav Eitan: And you don't even live in Manhattan! Um, so, yeah, so a western thing would come up if you're on the west side of the street, and that's where your, you know, your lot opens up. So we can't answer this question without asking, okay, why why are we facing directions at all? Does it matter? How important is it? How much has that been, you know, a factor uh over the course of time? And then maybe we can get into the guidance of, all right, so what do you do if you show up in a place?
Rav Avi: Yeah, right. I can't wait to hear whether ancient synagogues were facing the right direction or the wrong direction.
Rav Eitan: So, all right, let's start. First of all, just as in terminology here, when we talk about facing during prayer, we mean during the Amidah, during the standing, silent, devotional part of the service. There's no real issue of while you're saying the Shema, um, or even, you know, reading Torah or anything like that. Forget about the the Aron Kodesh, the ark and Torah scrolls for a minute. Just when we think about prayer, you're you're showing up somewhere. So we use the word prayer for a very wide set of things, essentially anything where we're saying anything in some meditational kind of capacity towards God. But direction in prayer from a halakha perspective means what way do you have to be facing when you say the Amidah?
Rav Avi: Yeah. That's really helpful. I bet probably for many listeners, already that alone is, okay, if this is something that was stressing me out, at least it's only going to stress me out for the Amidah.
Rav Eitan: Yeah, that's right. So, there are, broadly speaking, two main reservoirs, maybe we could call them, of text and thought uh on the direction question. And one of the complicated things is figuring out how if at all they intersect with each other. So let's start with the first one. Jerusalem and the Temple Mount as a focal point. So that's pretty old. Turns out you can go back to the Bible.
You go to Sefer Melachim, um, and in the first Book of Kings, you find Shlomo dedicating the new temple that he's built. And he gives a very long prayer, basically asking God to listen to all the future prayers of all kinds of people, prayers, right?
Rav Avi: People praying.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. People praying prayers, right? That could ever happen. And people are going to visit and there's going to be famine and people are going to want to pray to you and there's going to be foreigners from other countries who are going to come.
And the house here is supposed to be a house of prayer.
Rav Avi: I find that so moving, right? The idea that he's already praying to God to hear what I'm praying for now, sometime in the future. That's so beautiful.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. And saying that this temple will be that, will be that place. And and the dominant thing that he imagined, and if you were imagining you, would be, oh well, that temple would still be standing there and you would go, take a take a pilgrimage and pray there and all of that. But in the course of this long discourse of his, what you get are some different images of you might be going to war somewhere else in a foreign country. You will then pray to God by way of the city that God chose. That sounds like maybe you're going to turn around wherever you are and face back to Jerusalem. An even more striking thing, you will eventually be exiled into a foreign country and you'll be in the land of the enemy.
They will pray to you, Shlomo says to God. And now listen to the sort of three-part formulation. By the way of or in the direction of the land that was given to their ancestors, the city that you chose, and the house that I built for your name. Giving these almost like three uh, you know, marks in terms of geography, you are going to face the land, the city, aka Jerusalem, and the site, aka the Temple Mount.Right.
Rav Avi: It's almost like it becomes a uh, like mid-century call center. Like, oh, hi, could you connect me to God, please? Oh, yes, I'll put you through.
Rav Eitan: That's right. But you need to be on the right extension, right?
Rav Avi: Yeah, right. You have to know how to get to the call center.
Rav Eitan: Exactly. Um, so that seems to actually be Shlomo's vision from the beginning. I want a world where everyone, really everyone, but certainly all Jews, Israelites who are anywhere, to think of this as the focal point of their prayers. And then a very moving follow-up is that when we get to the book of Daniel and you're dealing with a Jewish exile in Babylon, and he hears about a terrible decree that is going to put him and other Jews at risk. Um, it says as soon as this happened, he went up to his house and he opened up the window in the top floor of his dwelling that faced Jerusalem and prayed three times a day falling on his knees.
Rav Avi: How did he know which window to go to?
Rav Eitan: Yeah, so he apparently has kept track of, right? Like where Jerusalem is. And there's a sense of Shlomo's vision actually has exactly played out here. Um, and people have kept in mind when I need to pray, I find a way to face back to Jerusalem.
Rav Avi: One of the things I like about it is that it offers us um, orientation in what I and many experience as sort of a disorienting world, right? When there's so much around us that feels like it's spinning. That's one of the reasons I turn to the Amidah in the first place, right? Is to give you some grounding, give you some stability. Your opening articulation of I like to be everywhere and come back to the touchstone of these words is um, the fact that it allows you and and requires you, but really allows you to orient yourself. Oh, wait, where am I with regard to some direction that I'm going to keep coming back to, some place that is going to keep anchoring me, um, is I think in and of itself teaches us maybe a lot about what prayer can be.
Rav Eitan: And this is a very physical direction. Um, meaning we are giving direction to people of how they orient their bodies, um, to help bring about that sense of rootedness. And you get this played out as a full system, the Tosefta and then a parallel in the Talmud, uh, just spells it out in great detail.
Um, and it's it's very striking. You'll hear how the opening line sort of tells us what's happening. It starts by saying, well, if you're blind, if you can't see, and you don't really know what direction is what, then you just have intention to be connecting to God. Right? And on some level this text is just saying, that person almost isn't thinking about direction at all, they connect to God. But then the assumption is, but everyone else, right, who in whatever way is able to orient themselves. Of course, today there's all kinds of tools that someone who is blind could also orient themselves. Um, if you're outside the land, you direct your intention to the land of Israel. If you are in Eretz Yisrael, you direct your attention to Yerushalayim. If you're outside, if you're in Yerushalayim, you direct yourself uh to the Temple Mount. If you're in the temple, you direct yourself to the Kodesh HaKodashim, the most sacred uh spot there. And then they end with this uh description. And so what ends up happening? Those who are in the north face south, those who are in the south face north, in the east face west, and the west face east. All Jews are praying to one place. It's essentially construction of prayer space where the Temple Mount is the center of the circle and all praying Jews are located on different radii of that circle.
Rav Avi: So it's a beautiful image. Um, you know, it it's it's so nice and and technical and physical to imagine, you can imagine sort of all the lines in all the different directions coming into this central location. And it also helps to remind us, you're bringing this helps to remind us that there's nothing magic about east, right? The point is not east. And in fact, that's a little bit of a sort of giveaway of where I am that I think of it as, oh yeah, I have a mizrach, you know, sign that I made. Um, it's not about east. It's about Yerushalayim, it's about the Temple, it's about God's home and and I should feel concerned about directing my prayer towards God and this is a way to do that, not a not any other reason.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. We'll come back to the east piece in a minute because it already does show us when people make a mizrach, a piece of art or something that's on their eastern wall and put it up there, it is striking that it doesn't usually say Yerushalayim or Har Habayit or the Temple Mount and then happens to be hung on the eastern wall. It says east, which almost suggests, and I think this is true experientially for a lot of Jews, they're somehow connected to the direction of east. Right. Even separate from, more than, shorthand for being connected to this specific spot at longitude and latitude X.
Rav Avi: Right. Or that's where I feel like it's just about being orienting. Is it about being oriented in where I am in the world or is it about orienting me towards God? We could draw, we could lean into either and I guess they they might not be exactly the same.
Rav Eitan: Ok, so this goes I think to the now nicely to the next reservoir of material. That's the stuff, it's mostly in Masechet Brachot, which talks about uh, one, one center, people at different radii of that circle. Um, but in Bava Batra in the Talmud, different tractate, um, there's a whole discussion there talking about where is the divine presence? Where is the Shekhinah? And some people
Rav Avi: Yeah, where is the Shekhinah?
Rav Eitan: Yeah, right? We've all been looking. Some people there say the Shekhinah is in the west. Sort of absolutely in the west, right? It's not clear are they thinking about a round earth, probably not. So they probably imagine there's some end off in the west,
Rav Avi: But what does it mean that Hashem is in the west?
Rav Eitan: We don't know. Face west, like look where the sun sets. That's where the, you know, where the divine presence is. It may even be related to the sun, which is to say, the sun after the day goes and sort of visits its maker. who is in the west. Right? You have other views that say, Hashem is everywhere. Hashem is here, Hashem is there. Hashem is truly everywhere. There's no, you can't point to a direction. Okay? And it's pretty clear as at first this sounds like a totally theoretical discussion that it's not clear how it would play out, but then it starts to become clear, your answer to this question will determine the direction in which you pray, Because you get the following statements. Rabbi Yitzchak says, if you want to be wise, you should face south. If you want to be wealthy, you should face north.
Rav Avi: Oh, I got to choose?
Rav Eitan: You got to choose. You cannot be both wise
Rav Avi: They're opposites!
Rav Eitan: wealthy and wise, right? Actually, you have to choose one or the other. Uh, they give a nice little mnemonic there, which might even be the origin of the whole idea, which is that in the temple itself, which incidentally faced west, that is to say, you walked into the temple building from the east heading west. Okay. Right? So, um, actually on your right to the north when you entered into the Kodesh, the sanctum, would have been the shulchan, which is a symbol of wealth. It has bread on it, right? It has sustenance. And on your left, on the south, would have been the menorah, whose light is a symbol of uh wisdom. So you may actually be playing out, you're like, oh, imagine I'm in the temple right now. Like, I could face west, which would be where the aron is behind the parochet and all the most sacred stuff. I could face north and get the vibes of the uh table and the wealth, or I could face south and get the vibes of the menorah and its wisdom.
Rav Avi: Wow, imagine how powerful and different our prayer ritual life would be if we had to first ask what's the central thing I'm I'm praying for, and then, you know, incline our direction, you know, that you could say, oh, that I see he lost his job. That's why he's facing that way today or like, you know.
Rav Eitan: Yeah, and it's amazing I think as you, right, it goes back to what you asked at the beginning, there's the version of the question of how where do we like to pray? And then there's the question of what kinds of settings or orientations evoke what kinds of prayer from us. Right? I think in other words, we all experience different kinds of prayer. We have prayer that sometimes is jubilant, that is triumphant, that is desperate, that is sad, that is combative.Are there different orientations and settings that help you with that?
Rav Avi: Um, is there a health direction?
Rav Eitan: So one interesting thing, you commented like, you know, do wealthy and wise go together? It seems they're opposite. So then Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi jumps in on this text and he says, no, no, no. Always face south. Why? Because by becoming wise, you'll become wealthy.
Rav Avi: Wishing for more wishes!
Rav Eitan: So the question of health or other things you could tap into this, oh, maybe if I have enough resources, that's the direction of health and that's what I'm looking for. Then the Talmud has an interesting dilemma. It just quoted this view that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said, you should face south. But it's aware of another tradition where Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said, the Shekhinah is in the west.
And why is that a contradiction? Those could be two unrelated questions, but here's where it becomes clear. Saying where you think the Shekhinah is seems to determine the direction you should pray, which of course makes sense. So, how can Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi in one case imply that you should pray west, and in another case tell you to pray south? And the Gemara resolves and says, he wants you to go on a diagonal. Essentially, you should pray southwest, which enables you to have both the benefit of kind of facing the Shekhinah and kind of facing in the direction of getting wisdom.
It's like how we're angled in this podcast. We're half at the camera, half facing each other. So, I don't know, the vibe of this passage seems a lot more elective, right? It seems like, hey, you know, what what are you feeling today or what are you looking for? And and essentially, right, the statement, Rabbi Yitzchak's initial statement, sometimes you might face south, sometimes you might face north. This seems to have nothing to do with, oh, you want to know how to pray? Let me tell you. There's all these rules including which way you face.
Rav Avi: Right. Also, this text is speaking to sort of question point two on our list, which was where do I as an individual orient myself as opposed to the third question on our list, which was how should I orient my congregation if in these situations?
Rav Eitan: Yes, good. And and maybe there's a, maybe there's a conflict between those.
I mean, this goes to the question of how would you resolve these two passages? Are they speaking to each other? Are they addressing different cases? Right? That's not 100% clear. The question then for anyone dealing with this later on is how do I synthesize this material? Um, one simple way is just to like pick one as the winner. Uh, it's how the Rambam codifies it. He just says one of the eight things you have to do when getting ready to pray is be nochach hamikdash, facing the temple.
Rav Avi: I mean, that version is certainly um easier to apply in a minyan. Like everybody, like how weird would it be if we were all facing different directions in the same minyan?
Rav Eitan: That's right.
Rav Avi: You can't really do that if it's like, well where are you spiritually? You know, but if we're like, well where are we physically? We're all in the same place. We can all face the same direction. Has some practical benefits.
Rav Eitan: Yeah, and that's where I agree with you. The overall vibe of Bava Batra seems like it's more attuned to an individual prayer experience. Um, but nonetheless, that is not explicitly drawn out as a contrast between the texts. So one thing is you just swat that whole elective piece down and you're like, we all pray in one direction. So Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi had that weird diagonal thing that he suggested. So the Smag, who is also from the world of the Tosafot, uh Rav Moshe Mikutzi, he adopts that as a strategy for synthesizing the two models. So get this one.
He says, you face your body in the elective direction that you want. You want wealth, face north. You want wisdom, face south. You're feeling like the Shekhinah's in the west and you really need to go that way, fine. But then you turn your face towards the Temple Mount. So this is not quite standing on a diagonal.
Rav Avi: It's a different way to split the difference.
Rav Eitan: Yeah, you don't stand on a diagonal, but you actually take advantage of the fact that you have a neck to rotate your head one way and your body the other way. There is actually, there's a precedent for this from a totally different thing. They have a dilemma of when they're confessing sins on a bull as part of the Yom Kippur ceremony, they want the bull's head facing like the domain of God in the Holy of Holies, but they don't want the rear end of the bull to be facing the people who are standing there and the altar. So they actually align the bull one direction and then turn its head towards the sanctuary. So it's almost like mimicking that in people. Can I face two ways at the same time? And can I combine basically the ethos of we should all have our faces in the same direction, but our bodies might point differently depending on our need. Um, and the Rama, Rav Moshe Isserles, uh endorses this. He actually says if you decide you're going to pray a different direction, that's okay, but you got to turn your face towards Jerusalem. Doesn't sound very comfortable to me, um, but it gets endorsed. As you can imagine, some people play with it the other way. They're like, no, face your face in the elective direction but your body towards Jerusalem. But you get the idea. There's a third option, which is: these are just both different options. That is to say, the Shulchan Aruch when codifying this, says, you should face Jerusalem. That's sort of like the first, you know, section of this siman, this where he talks about this. And then the next paragraph is, and if you're facing another direction, then you do this. Um, and he doesn't do with the turning the head and this and that. He just seems to think, actually different people are going to have different needs. Um, and the reason these sugyot aren't resolved is some people are going to feel like I want and need the experience of all facing in the same direction as every other Jew, I need that sort of, in a way, I think you can think about this as, sometimes the plausibility of prayer can only be established by a sense that a lot of other people are doing it. So a lot of times we get that done through minyan. But sometimes if I'm just like I'm getting up and I'm davening Mincha, it's like, why would God care at all what I'm saying right now? But I can imagine someone in Russia and in South Africa and in France, like all facing the same direction I am, it makes it more plausible. And sometimes people have a very unique sort of inner directed sense of here's what I need out of this prayer and my idiosyncratic orientation is itself going to be what what shores that up for me.
Going back to what you were talking about with like Mizrach and East, so here's two interesting things. One, the Rama when he is authorizing you to face other directions as long as you turn your head to uh Jerusalem, says, but the one direction you really shouldn't face is east. Why? Well, at original root cause because there's a real concern, you already see this in in classical rabbinic texts. Um, there's always a concern in the morning of sun worship when you face the east. Right? That's actually like, and particularly like if you live in North America and you're facing east for a Jerusalem perspective and you get up and daven early in the morning, and if you're timing it like in the winter mornings or like, I'm going to wait till sunset, sort of have this weird experience of like as the sun's rays come up, you start bowing down to it. Right? Facing in that direction. But also, interestingly,
Rav Avi: But also if you've ever prayed at sunrise, it's so moving. Like you could see the danger in it.
Rav Eitan: That's right. So the Rama is like, don't face directly to the sun, but there's another problem there, which is also Christians adopted the eastern facing posture with respect to their churches. Churches were basically all oriented to the east and the Rama is one ofBecause of Jerusalem?It can't be Jerusalem. It's basically, first of all, for some, it probably is some hold over of pagan traditions of praying to the east and with the rising sun. But also there are notions of whether it's the savior and the Messiah coming from the east and when Yeshayahu
Rav Avi: So it comes from different places than ours.
Rav Eitan: Exactly. Or maybe some overlapping, but already the Talmud seems to be aware of this practice, whether it's Christians or other associated sects, and there's sort of nervousness about uh how to how to play that out. So the Rama says basically, you know, make sure you're like southeast or something like that, okay? But it's the case that basically all the synagogues in Europe face east.
Rav Avi: Yeah, I feel like that's one of the ways you know that the ruins of a building are a synagogue, you know, you say like see how it's facing east. That's how we know it was a synagogue.
Rav Eitan: And if you think about it, in Poland, it's really not that west of Israel. It's basically north. If you're in Western Europe, Right. it's southeast and meaningfully east. But even in places like Moscow, like shuls face east in a lot of places. In in Lithuania, they faced east, even though they're almost due north of Jerusalem. So the Aruch Hashulchan, important authority, turn of the 20th century, kind of takes up this question. He's like, what's going on? All our shuls face east, and we're not really even in that, you know, main direction.
Rav Avi: Don't face away from Jerusalem.
Rav Eitan: You shouldn't be facing directly opposite. But once you're sort of generally accommodating, going to the east. So he would say, if you're in Japan, you can't face east. But if you're even the tiniest bit west on longitude from Jerusalem, it's okay. It's okay. The shul can face east. It's basically not a big deal. And that's his effort to basically say, don't, part of the reason you think there's a contradiction between these two bodies of material is you're taking each of them too seriously. It's not that it's optional, do whatever you want, but we want to see that you've sort of made a nod in the direction of facing Jerusalem. From that perspective, yeah, a synagogue in New York facing west is not great. We'll get to the Aron Kodesh in a minute. It's just not a great way to orient things because you're really backwards. But to start to worry about, am I exactly on the great circle that's going to link me in the shortest direction to Jerusalem, that's not actually what this is getting at and it misses the point of what this spiritual technology is meant to do.
Rav Avi: Yeah, so that could both mean, don't worry about setting up the synagogue with the pews facing diagonal to the corner of the room just because that's exactly the right direction. But it could also mean maybe like don't choose to pray in one synagogue as opposed to another because of the way the seats are oriented. Like that doesn't have to be the the deal breaker for you.
Rav Avi: Yeah. So, this is where I think you start to get into the question of how seriously you take the Bava Batra material, that elective orientation stuff as having normative force is going to make you more flexible on how you think about these spaces. So to be clear, like, if you're asking me, someone's in new construction and they're setting something up, and they have the possibility in New York City of facing east or facing west, they should face east. I think you should even be pushing the limits of what feels viable in the space, you know, to do that. Usually, for better or for worse, we confront these situations, sometimes even in buildings that like we spend a lot of time in, where the decision's already been made. It's done.
And there is another factor, which is the factor of the Aron Kodesh. What if you have a permanent installation where the sifrei Torah live, as opposed to being, you know, brought out when they need to be read, which in a lot of synagogues, that's how it was for a long, long time. The idea of like a...
Rav Avi: They were in like a back closet?
Rav Eitan: Yeah, it's like you guard them somewhere, they might have been in someone's house. When the Talmud talks about it, it's like they had a minyan and they had to bring the Torah from an apartment. There wasn't like a, a place that it necessarily lived. Now, that's almost like a defining feature to us of a synagogue. And then that creates a different set of situations where, what if they built that right on the wrong side? Because on some of them, nothing ever stops you from praying in the other direction.
Rav Avi: Meaning, do I turn my back on the Torah in order to not turn my back on the Temple?
Rav Eitan: Correct. So, here too, you basically have three opinions that contend for people's loyalty, as it were. I'm not sure we can say this is resolved by anything more than minhag hamakom, then local practice. One, pretty uncommon for the most part, I would say, is all you care about is the geographic direction of the Temple Mount. And if you need to, you turn your back, you know, on the Aron Kodesh. It's just like, it doesn't, it doesn't matter, right? Like what matters is the orientation.
Obviously, a more modified version of that, which I have often done, you'll sometimes you, you might be sitting in a synagogue that let's say has seating like in a U. And it's, the ark is facing north. All right? You could choose to sit on the left side of the sanctuary and thereby be facing the ark and facing east. Right?
Rav Avi: Yeah. Nice diagonal compromise, you could say.
Rav Eitan: Exactly. So that, it's more conflict averse. But there are views that are like, you should, even if it's really awkward, be facing the Temple Mount, and even if not everyone else in the shul is doing it. Like they're doing it wrong, and you should stand in a different way. Some people have the diag- the diagonal compromise, the twisted body compromise. Yeah. They'll say, you face your body towards the ark, but turn your head towards Jerusalem. And then, as you can imagine, the third is, just follow what the congregation is doing. To me, that is the position that is most intuitive and what I would argue for when we're in a communal setting.
It's ultimately very disruptive, I think, in communal prayer setting to be oriented completely different from everyone else. And there's a strong basis for saying that, well, if the community has either settled on a practice of they face the ark, more common, or they turn, you know, 90 degrees from the ark, less common, but practiced, that's what you should do, because here's where I would sort of, you know, fundamentally, side with the Aruch Hashulchan. Probably we should chill out a little bit on the direction of prayer, not because the components don't matter, but because they each have some power and validity to them. And when you're in a situation where you're not calling the shots, you didn't build the building, there's other people who are doing it, so go with the interpretation and the version that will enable you to be at peace.
Rav Avi: you'll know that there is some opinion that you could be calling on or pulling on.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. Masechet Derech Eretz, that unusual extra Mishnaic tractate, which talks about how you kind of have etiquette around other people. You know, one of the things that it says is, don't sit when people are standing and don't stand when people are sitting. I would just extend that to, don't face west when people are facing east and you're in the middle of it. That's not a nice thing to do. When you're on the capital campaign committee next time, you can lobby for reorienting the ark.
Rav Avi: Yeah, although I also feel, that makes so much sense, and I also feel a little bit like we could, we could sort of come in for a landing on this question by saying, different people have different instincts. We've talked about this. Some people want their halachic observance to be something that sets them apart and makes them different, and some people want to fit in. And, and to maybe say like, if you want to make this mitzvah that you're really particular about that when you go into a new community, you figure out what's east and you make sure that you turn your head under your tallit, you know, you could do it in a way that's not about everybody else. That's a thing that you can do and there's precedent for that. And if you think that sounds stressful and you want to say, I need to just be able to trust the kahal, the community, wherever I walk into, you know, I'm not going to be in the business of like facing my face in a different direction than everybody else, you've got good precedent to lean on there too.
Rav Eitan: Yeah, I think I might encourage those who are combatively looking to stand out to think about how they can more genteelly, sort of fit in with their surroundings and encourage those in a community who might see someone doing something different to respect the fact that maybe they have an important spiritual reason to do it that way. And if we could sort of lower the judgment all around, that might be helpful.
Rav Avi: Yeah. Thanks. I really, I appreciate this question and I appreciate the opportunity to take, what, what could this mean for my spiritual life? What are the opportunities here? How can I look into this debate and this question to understand how I might want to orient myself, my relationship with God and my sort of spiritual life as a whole.
Rav Eitan: Thanks.
We use cookies to give you the best experience possible on our site. Click OK to continue using Sefaria. Learn More.OKאנחנו משתמשים ב"עוגיות" כדי לתת למשתמשים את חוויית השימוש הטובה ביותר.קראו עוד בנושאלחצו כאן לאישור