Tefillah as a Blind Spot

In a broader sense, but not left in context of Chovos HaLevavos. One way to view a person's growth in Avodas Hashem, one type of maybe a mashal for looking at it, is that it consists of dispelling blind spots. Is that many of us have many blind spots. And blind spot in the sense that it's not pshat that it's a madreiga that we're not ready for. It's a madreiga which is higher up on the ladder that we're not ready for, but no pshat, a blind spot, just something we're not seeing. Something we're not seeing. And to just give one example, and the siman for a blind spot is that when someone calls our attention to it, when someone points it out, there's no answer, there's no, it can't be 'oh no this I'm not holding by that, this doesn't relate to me', it's just it's just obvious. So how come I didn't think of it until now? For whatever reason or reasons we live with all kinds of blind spots. One of those has to do with tefillah. And specifically it has to do with our coming late and running out early from davening. When you think about again for a moment what tefillah is. So tefillah is, tefillah is an audience with the Ribono Shel Olam. That's what tefillah is. So how is it imaginable that a person, that we could ever come late? I don't understand, a person has a, ich vais, a job interview. You don't come late, you figure out what's the maximum time it could take me to get there, an hour? So I'll leave two and a half hours early. And you have a flight, so they tell you make sure you come three hours and im yiminu hamuflo you come four hours early. So how is it possible that a person ever comes late? The Gemara says in Berachos that kavyachol Hakadosh Baruch Hu whenever the zman tefillah is called for, so Hakadosh Baruch Hu arrives at that time. If tefillah is at 7 o'clock, so Hakadosh Baruch Hu comes at 7 o'clock. And if there's no minyan, so מיד הוא כועס כביכול. So when you think about it there's no, it's not pshat that I'm not holding by that madreiga. What do you mean I'm not holding by that madreiga? I'm not holding by that madreiga of not being such a machutzif that I come late to an appointment or to an audience with the Ribono Shel Olam? And the same thing is true in leaving early. It's also when we stop and think about it we don't, it's a blind spot. But when we stop and think about it, it's mavil al hara'ayon that a person should leave before the end of davening. Again Nusach Ashkenaz before Shir Shel Yom, Aleinu, Nusach Sefard. It's inconceivable. Who ever heard, if you would have an audience, you'd have 20 minutes with Rav Chaim Kanievsky, you'd tell him after 15 minutes, 'you know sorry I gotta run, I have to leave five minutes early, I have I don't know I have to make this train, I have to make this bus, I have to.' It's inconceivable. We would never ever do it. And yet l’maaseh. So just what's the answer? Again, the answer is that we probably blind spots are just due to not thinking and not reflecting on what we're doing. It's just and it's certainly something that again it would be unnecessary to say that a ben Torah shouldn't do. A Jew can't do it. It should be unthinkable. The same is true obviously

קל וחומר בן בנו של קל וחומר על אחת כמה וכמה

baruch Hashem you know as long as as long as one is in yeshiva so baruch Hashem I don't know whether the yetzer hara exists for talking in shul. But outside of the walls of the yeshiva so certainly there are places where that yetzer hara exists. It's also just unthinkable. It's unthinkable if a person would go ich veis. I don't know I don't know if a person would go to a concert and would talk he'd be thrown out he'd be evicted he'd be ejected from the concert. It's just such a total again blind spot in terms of lack of understanding of what tefilla is. Tefilla is opening a book and reading twenty pages. Okay so if tefilla is opening a book and reading twenty pages so I know how to read faster than you do so I don't need to come on time. I can come ten minutes late and I'll read I'll read quickly and I'll catch up and I'll read so quickly that I can come ten minutes late and leave five minutes early. And when you just again there's no diyukim no chiddushim no he'aros. It's just a blind spot. It's just it's such a sacrilege that we should come late to tefilla that we should leave early from tefilla. What's the attitude? מחשבה ניכרת מתוך מעשה is a halachic category. So what does that say? What does the Mishna Berura quote that the Hakadosh Baruch Hu kavyachol says to the pamalya shel maala when Klal Yisrael says Amen? That listen to the shvachim that my children are saying. And it's just one big blind spot. You see also when Rachmana litzlan people are saying Kaddish Kaddish Yasom. Sometimes you see they're putting away their tefillin while they're saying Kaddish. So how can that be? How can that be? The world exists for answering an אמן יהא שמיה רבא and again so it means that what a person is doing is he's not saying Kaddish he's saying words. Okay so to say words we should multitask. So it's important from time to time to try to step back and try to just look at things that we've been doing our whole lives and ask whether we're doing it blindly and thereby distorting what should be done or what we're really doing whether we're really doing things correctly. Mistama I don't know it's hard to say but mistama since Chazal say not that Rachmana litzlan we should be complacent in this area. But maaseh to have kavana when davening is not an easy thing. Chazal say the ג' עבירות שאין אדם ניצול מהם בכל יום so one of them is iyun tefilla. And Tosafos says based on the Yerushalmi that it means having kavana in tefilla. So that's been a perennial problem. It's got to be more of a problem nowadays than it used to be also. That's the peshitas. That we don't concentrate as well as earlier doros. And in earlier doros bimei hayerushalmi it was a problem. Chazal already said it. So kal vachomer that for us tefilla is not something easy. And mistama in shamayim there's an understanding of that. Again not that that means we should be complacent and not that that relieves us of the responsibility to be trying. But chotch it's difficult it's not objectively difficult to plan one's life to be in shul from the beginning of davening to the end of davening to leave one's tefillin on until the end of davening it's just because That already is there's no reason that that should be, that is not inherently, endemically, shouldn't be a candidate for אין אדם ניצול מהן בכל יום. And if Rachmana litzlan sociologically that's the case then there's nothing inherently which would account for why that should be the case. Where we sort of see the fact that we're blind to what tefillah is is you can go into a shul and you can observe the following. You can observe Rachmana litzlan talking throughout davening and the only time it's quiet, and I don't mean this pashut, I don't mean critically, I'm not being cynical about this and I don't mean it that way at all, is when they say the tefillah for the Shalom HaMedinah then it's quiet. Krias HaTorah is is there's a you can hear a constant, halevai only a buzz. Chazaras Hashatz also the case. So people relate to the tefillah about Shalom HaMedinah which means that everything else we're just totally. Okay, so again it's hard enough to maintain kavanah but at least it's not that hard to relate to the fact that this is a shul, that this is Beis Hashem, and that this is an audience with Hashem. That's not so hard for us to understand. Hard to understand how sometimes you see in some places there's a policy that you can't go in and out during the rabbi's sermon. So that's a good policy. It's taka derech eretz. It's taka shteis when you walk in and out when someone's speaking. But how can you be more makpid on that than Krias HaTorah and Chazaras Hashatz? So it's not that that policy isn't a good policy but the contrast that I don't know but the kovod basar vadam avada it should be that way. It's taka shteis when you walk in when someone's talking, even if it doesn't disturb the speaker, it disturbs the people who he's trying to talk to. So avada that's not right. And avada one shouldn't do that. But lichora Pesukei Dezimrah shouldn't be less than the rabbi's drasha. So we have to try again, we have to try just simple things to try to recognize blind spots. Again the peshat in a blind spot is that there's no two sides, there's nothing, like we have nothing to say in response. There's nothing to say in response. It's just pashut a result of not thinking and not seeing and to try to identify such blind spots and to try to be mesaken.