Sermon for Erev Rosh Hashanah: On Kavanah

Written by Rabbi Josh Levy — 18 September 2020

Let’s imagine that this Sunday morning you are out for an early morning walk.  You hear the sound of shofar coming across the road – maybe your neighbours engaging in a – perhaps not entirely legal – back garden minyan.

As the sound of shofar drifts across to you, have you, in that moment, fulfilled the obligation lishmoa kol shofar – to hear the blowing of shofar for Rosh Hashanah?  Or, do you still need to come online later that morning if you wish to hear the shofar being blown?

It is a question asked by the Mishnah, the earliest layer of rabbinic law1.  What if someone happens to be walking past a synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and hears the shofar by accident?

The answer given by the early Sages is unambiguous: Im kivein libbo yatza, v’im lav lo yatza – If someone has directed their heart, then that person has fulfilled the obligation – but if not, they have not.

It continues: Af al pi she-zeh shama v’zeh shama – even though this one heard and this one heard – zeh kivein libbo v’zeh lo kivein libbo – this one directed the heart and this one did not.

That is, the fundamental act may have been the same – but the act itself is not sufficient. Hearing shofar requires that the engagement be purposeful, that it be done with intent.

Shofar is just one example of this requirement for kavanah.

Another is prayer.

In his codification of Jewish Law, the Mishneh Torah3, Maimonides writes, kol tefillah she-einah b’kavanah einah tefillah – Any prayer without kavanah, without intentionality, is not really prayer.
If you have prayed without kavanah, Maimonides tells us, you should go back and start again.

***

Very often in our tradition, legal texts are not really about law. Halachah is often the mechanism by which our Sages grappled with big religious ideas.

And this is a good example.

Underlying these texts are a bigger question – What does it mean to behave as a Jew?  Not just to be a Jew who happens to be acting, but to act as a Jew, to act with Jewish meaning?

The big idea that these texts share is that our Jewish lives –
be it in the area of ritual, of interpersonal relationships, of social obligation – our religious lives cannot happen to us by accident, cannot become mere rote.

***

As so often, our tradition also points to a deeper psychological insight.
Repeated studies have shown that our expectations, our intentions, what we believe we are doing, then impacts on our experience – sometimes even physiologically, affecting the way our senses, our nervous systems work.

The Sages somehow intuited what we now know: that how we approach something can change how we perceive it, our neurological response, what it does to us.

So it is not merely that kavanah – in the language of the sages – determines whether we have fulfilled, but perhaps more importantly for us, it can determine whether we feel fulfilled, too.

The wisdom of our texts is that intention matters.
What we bring into the experience matters.
Heart matters.

***

Despite this warning from our tradition, of course, many of us do take aspects of our communal and prayer life for granted.

And perhaps never is that more the case than at the Yamim Noraim.  The High Holy Days sometimes happen to us rather than through us.

And while this is not ideal, often it is enough.  We are carried by the moments of community, of melody, of grandeur, of being together.  The High Holy Days are big enough to carry us on their shoulders.

But this year, that is not the case.  This year, letting it happen isn’t enough.

This year we face a new challenge, a different task.  To quote Abraham Joshua Heschel this year we are on an ‘adventure of the soul’4.

And fundamental to this is this rabbinic idea of kavanah.

What we have learned over these past months is that that to make this work we must each of us be an active, intentional part of the experience – we must direct the heart.
If there is one thing that we have learned about praying from home over zoom, it is that it requires preparation, thoughtfulness, kavanah.  That we have to shape the experience for ourselves.
That we cannot step from a Zoom meeting to a Zoom service without working on ourselves in between.

***

Whatever we do over the next two weeks, it will not be the same as in any other year.  Next year’s High Holy Days, let us hope, will be a celebration of everything that we have, of the community we sometimes forget to cherish.

But this year will be different.
And each of us will need to choose what it will be.

Will we go into it as an ‘adventure of our souls’?
And if so, what will that adventure be?

An opportunity to reflect on the extraordinary challenges that we have lived through together; to stop for a moment and to breath and to reflect?

The chance to study – to take a moment to step out and engage with our tradition?

The opportunity this year in the quiet of our own homes to really read the liturgy and grapple with its ideas?
Or perhaps to sing as if no one is listening, to raise our voices wherever we are?

An expression of community, a commitment to being together when apart?

Or maybe a time to reconnect to what Rav Kook called the ‘inner, essential I’?

In other words, for each of us what will be our kavanah, how will we direct our hearts?

***

Zeh kivein libbo v’zeh lo kivein libbo the Mishnah teaches us.  This one directed their heart and this one did not.

In its insistence on kavanah for shofar, for prayer, our tradition recognizes that intention makes a difference to experience – that each of us is responsible for what we bring into our religious lives.

That is the challenge for these next few weeks.

Never has that ancient idea of kavanah, the direction of the heart, been more important – if we are to make the next few weeks powerful and fulfilling, if we are to make the next few weeks a true ‘adventure for the soul’.

1. Mishnah RH 3:7
2. OC 589:8
3. Hilchot Tefillah 4:15
4. “The Spirit of Jewish Prayer”, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1958)