On Track

Project Coordinator: Rachel Bachrach
Illustrations: Marion Bellina

On the spring of 2020, the pandemic forced me into home lockdown for a while. Of course, unable to go to shul, I missed many things: reciting Kedushah and Barechu, Torah reading, responding to Kaddish, plus the camaraderie that develops between people who are united by an unbroken attendance at the daily 6 a.m. minyan, which in winter is often cold, dark, and wet.

But the isolation also helped me in a very real, spiritual way: It gave me the time and space to focus on the davening. Many daily minyanim run like a railroad train: Twelve minutes to Yishtabach, eight more minutes to Shemoneh Esreh. Even the slow-paced minyanim move forward relentlessly; if you pause in the midst of a section, you risk falling far behind, so you learn to keep up and not get distracted by meditating or reflecting too much on what you’re saying.

Lockdown davening allowed me to indulge in these pleasures, to the extent that I had the chance to become reacquainted with the preliminary sections of Shacharis, Ashrei, and Aleinu, among other prayers, not to mention the opportunity to dwell at my leisure on the Akeidah narrative and the amazing interplay in the dialogue between Avraham and Yitzchak.

Normally, we skim quickly over the key verse in Ashrei (Tehillim 145): “Poseiach es yadecha — You open Your Hands and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” But this phrase is nothing other than the very basis of the religious life: G-d the Provider.