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Davening or Dogwalking
Ilana Kurshan
Adventures in Mishnah with My Kids
My son Matan has a hard time waking up for shul on Shabbat mornings. He tells us, rightfully so, that it is his only day to sleep late. (Like most Israeli elementary schoolchildren, he has school six days a week.) And our shul starts at 7:30, which is, in all fairness, quite early. But it is important to us that Matan come with us, and so each Shabbat morning, the whole family takes turns trying to wake him, until inevitably we give up – I don’t want the rest of us to be late, and I don’t want to have to spend the first part of shul catching up on what I’ve missed. Most weeks I leave him home with the sun streaming through his open window, telling him firmly, but warmly, “I hope and expect to see you soon – please come.” And then I come home from shul two hours later to find him, alas, still in bed.
This past week, saddened and frustrated by his poor attendance record, I suggested that we study a Mishnah in Berakhot about the proper times for davening. The rabbis instituted thrice-daily prayer, in the morning, midday, and evening. The cornerstone of each of these services is the Amidah, the standing prayer, consisting of eighteen (and later nineteen) blessings. The fourth chapter of Berakhot begins with a dispute about how late one may recite the morning prayer. According to the rabbis, it may be recited until the sixth hour of the day, that is, until midday. Before I can even get to the other opinion, Matan pipes up.
“See Ima, you don’t have to wake me for shul. I have until noon on Shabbat mornings! The Mishnah never says you have to be at shul by 7:30!”
“Wait,” I tell Matan. “You interrupted me. Not everyone agrees that you have six hours. Rabbi Yehudah says that you have to finish davening by the fourth hour of the day, not the sixth.”
“Yeah,” says Matan. “But the fourth hour of the day is still later than 7:30.”
I remind Matan that an “hour” is not an hour on the clock, but a halakhic hour, calculated by taking the time from sunrise to sunset and dividing it into twelve equal parts. In the summer, when the days are long, a halakhic hour is longer than an hour on the clock; in the winter, it’s considerably shorter.
“Fine,” says Matan. “But even in the winter, I don’t have to wake up that early.”
Before we continue with the rest of the Mishnah, which is about the proper times for the afternoon, evening, and musaf (additional festival) services, I suggest that we look at the Talmud’s commentary on this Mishnah, which opens with the statement that it is a commandment to pray the morning service at sunrise (Berachot 26a).
“How is that possible?” says Matan. “You have at least four hours, no?” Indeed, the Talmud points out this very contradiction, noting that it is only the vatikin—the scrupulous early-risers—who would pray at sunrise. “You can be one of the vatikin, but I’m not,” Matan tells me.
It seems like the Talmud supports Matan’s position, because the rabbis go on to ask if it’s really true that according to the rabbis, one is permitted to pray the morning service for a six-hour window. The Talmud quotes Rabbi Yohanan’s teaching that if a person missed one prayer service, he or she can make it up by reciting the next service twice. Thus even if a person missed shacharit, he or she could make it up by reciting minchah twice. Indeed, to Matan’s credit, while he almost never makes it to shacharit on Shabbat morning, he has a near-perfect attendance record at minchah, in part because of his dogwalking. Matan works as a dogwalker during the week. On Shabbat afternoons, he volunteers to walk another local dog whose owner davens in our shul; he then meets the dog’s owner at minchah to return her. “Why can’t I just daven minchah twice?” Matan asks, noting that minchah takes much less time than shacharit. Again, I urge him to read on.
The Talmud clarifies that while it’s true that a person could in theory pray all day long, one only receives “merit for prayer at its proper time” if one concludes the morning service on time, which the rabbis determine is by the fourth hour of the day, in accordance with Rabbi Yehuda’s opinion in the Mishnah. “It’s true,” I tell Matan. “You could make up shacharit by davening minchah twice. And you could even make up shacharit by davening at home alone on the porch, the way you do. But you only get merit for praying at its proper time if you make it to shul.”
Matan needs to think this over a bit more. He is still very averse to waking up early on Shabbat mornings, and the notion of reward seems rather abstract. “If someone offered to pay you a thousand shekels to get up and come to shul, would you do it?” I ask him. He looks at me skeptically. “Matan, the reward for doing mitzvot is infinite! That’s why you should come to shul.” Matan shrugs his shoulders. “I’m not sure,” he tells me. “If I were in it for the money, I’d probably just get another dog walking job instead.”
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