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magidDespite feeling unready (not nearly enough introspection, and not nearly enough water consumed beforehand), I was able to make it through davening (musaf ran until almost 3, and since the mincha I went to started a bit after 4), the day went decently. There were times I found really good kavana, other times I couldn't focus that intensely (even at night; I think that was the minimal water), but drifted on the words in front of me and on the shatz's abilities.
My knees hurt from standing that much, which is a minhag I should probably revisit now that I'm older. They don't seem to hurt any more than they used to, though, and the walking I did during the break helped (it turned out to be a 4-mile day).
Tehillah had a lot of singing, and for the most part, it didn't seem all that slow... but it turned out to be the longest morning davening I've been to, helped along by a dvar Torah on Jonah, who Bernie Steinberg sees as the anti-teshuva guy, not only running away from his nvuah, but when he prays, he is all world weary and asking for death.
The night before, the dvar Torah was about the structure of the day, which today is essentially focused on the individual, but historically was all about the community, as the kohen gadol did the service that would earn our forgiveness. And the language of the prayers is all first person plural (see: viduy, for instance), emphasizing that community. Which was then taken to ask people to think about community building, and the kind of community we're trying to build, and so on.
I went to Harvard Hillel ortho minyan for mincha-neilah. I knew that Mike would be leading neilah, and that he'd have his watch with him; he's very careful about ending right on time. I needed to be able to rely on that. Plus, while his voice isn't amazing sound, I wanted the tradition of his very Ashkenazish davening. And that was good. (Plus, facing east is good.)
Also good: not getting riled up by people doing things that annoyed me. This is a real accomplishment for me, being merely mildly irritated rather than getting worked up. (I might say it would be better if people didn't do annoying things, but I know that I'm hyper m'dakdek about a lot of davening stuff that other people don't care about, so that's unlikely to be the case.)
My knees hurt from standing that much, which is a minhag I should probably revisit now that I'm older. They don't seem to hurt any more than they used to, though, and the walking I did during the break helped (it turned out to be a 4-mile day).
Tehillah had a lot of singing, and for the most part, it didn't seem all that slow... but it turned out to be the longest morning davening I've been to, helped along by a dvar Torah on Jonah, who Bernie Steinberg sees as the anti-teshuva guy, not only running away from his nvuah, but when he prays, he is all world weary and asking for death.
The night before, the dvar Torah was about the structure of the day, which today is essentially focused on the individual, but historically was all about the community, as the kohen gadol did the service that would earn our forgiveness. And the language of the prayers is all first person plural (see: viduy, for instance), emphasizing that community. Which was then taken to ask people to think about community building, and the kind of community we're trying to build, and so on.
I went to Harvard Hillel ortho minyan for mincha-neilah. I knew that Mike would be leading neilah, and that he'd have his watch with him; he's very careful about ending right on time. I needed to be able to rely on that. Plus, while his voice isn't amazing sound, I wanted the tradition of his very Ashkenazish davening. And that was good. (Plus, facing east is good.)
Also good: not getting riled up by people doing things that annoyed me. This is a real accomplishment for me, being merely mildly irritated rather than getting worked up. (I might say it would be better if people didn't do annoying things, but I know that I'm hyper m'dakdek about a lot of davening stuff that other people don't care about, so that's unlikely to be the case.)