Is prayer an essential part of Jewish observance?   On the one hand organized thrice daily prayer is something fairly “new” in Judaism, instituted to take the place of the sacrifices which were lost with the destruction of the Temple.   On the other hand prayer goes all the way back to our ancestors who beseeched god, talked to God, and made deals with God.   Prayer’s two pronged history is expressed by the Talmud in the following language (Berachot 26b): “Prayer was established by our ancestors but the Rabbis relied on the sacrifices as a model for the structure and laws of fixed prayer.”

There is no denying that humans sense prayer as an essential part of religious and spiritual life.  Yet in the modern Orthodox community I think prayer has become very difficult and takes a backseat to many other parts of our observance, such as shabbat and holidays, kosher and interpersonal mitzvot.   A large number of our congregants celebrate shabbat, but the number of us who pray every day in shul is a much smaller percentage.   I do not think it is out of anything malicious or some deep lack of faith, but because prayer is very difficult -and as one longtime congregant said to me-”boring”.   Today I was meeting with another congregant and they said something quite insightful in this regard.   That in the Charedi world prayer is fixed but there is a lot of passion.  Maybe, at times  it is a passion born of communal conformity, but it is passion nonetheless.  In the world of liberal movements prayer is less fixed and more creative, utilizing musical instruments and a variety of spiritual tools.   But, they observed,  modern Orthodoxy finds itself in the uninspiring middle, neither passionate nor creative, with a lot of pages to cover in a short time.   It is no wonder that so many members who are quite dedicated observant Jews come only once a week to daven and when they do it is often only for musaf.

This parsha contains the moment of our exodus from Egypt, but, though this shabbat has a special name it is not called the Shabbat of Exodus, rather it is Shabbat Shirah, the Shabbat of Song, named for the Song at the Sea which the Jewish people sing in thanks to God for saving them.   This is the first moment the Jewish people pray as a nation.  It is a jubilant prayer of thanks and it does not look much like our prayer services.   It seems from our parsha that the most visceral form of prayer is song.   The Jewish people intuitively and spontaneously pray, each with their own gender, in a responsive song and dance and play instruments.   It seems that song, dance and music are then the most elemental and intuitive form of Jewish prayer.

I think this parsha asks us to think hard about how we can inspire our prayer services more.   For instance, perhaps once a month we should begin Kabbalat Shabbat half an hour before candle lighting and use instruments along with song and dance through the end of Licha Dodi before we take on Shabbat.   Perhaps on weekday Rosh Chodesh, the New Moon, we should have maariv with musical instruments and song, or maybe several times a year we should go together to the forest and spend some time in meditation and talking to God as Rabbi Nachman of Breslov instructed his chasidim to do every day.  Judaism is too replete with spiritual tools for us to only utilize the prayerful reading of words from the siddur.   Perhaps you have other ideas about how we as a community can deepen our davening and infuse it with more passion, to make it an experience which is as engaging as possible.  May this Shabbat Shirah inspire us to think in neways about how we praise God!