The Dave Geiss story all began with The Dream.
Well, not the whole story. There was the matter of his birth, into a nice yet somewhat secular Jewish family. Went to Hebrew school, became frum as a young adult but without any formal yeshiva education. He more or less picked up yiddishkeit by osmosis.
Dave’s davening education was more of the same. The people who happened to be standing nearby him in shul became his role models. It did not make much difference when they came in and when they went out, nor in which direction their faces were oriented during the time they were there. Dave watched and learned. If it was good enough for them, it was certainly good enough for him.
Then came that Tuesday, and The Dream. In this dream, Dave found himself standing in front of a door. There was a sign on the door, a nameplate. It read, "Mattisyahu Klopperbagel, DDS." He knocked once on the door, and the door whipped open.
"Come in! Come on in!" bade the man inside. And so he did. "Have a seat!" Dave sat down.
"I've come to see you, apparently," Dave told him, "but I don't know why."
"I'll tell you why you are here. You're not davening fast enough! That's why you've come to see Dr. Mattisyahu Klopperbagel, Doctor of Davening with Speed."
“That's a relief,” said Dave. “I thought maybe you were a dentist.”
“Good thing I’m not! I’d pull all your teeth! They weigh down the jaw so it can’t move as fast!”
“So you can help me daven faster?” Something nagged Dave, something in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. "It is true that I usually have trouble keeping up with the rest of the kehilla, but..."
"Then you've come to the right place!"
Dave still wasn't sure about that. "But Dr. Klopperbagel--"
"Please, call me Klopp. Now, let's get down to business. Which parts go too fast for you?"
"Oh, I don't know, most of them. Pesukei d'Zimra, --"
"Good! Now we are getting somewhere. Let's evaluate you. Here," and he handed Dave a siddur, "start davening Pesukei d'Zzimra."
He opened up the siddur and turned to Hodu (after Baruch She'amar – it was a nusach Ashkenaz siddur) and began to daven.
"Stop!" commanded Klopp. "I see one problem already. Your lips are moving. Do that and you'll get nowhere fast. You've been davening long?"
Was it that obvious that Dave was a ba'al t'shuva? "Not all my life, I admit."
"Look at this chart." On the wall behind Klopp, a large but rather simple graph appeared. It was a line stretching from the upper left to the lower right. "This chart displays elapsed davening time in relation to number of years spent davening. The longer you've been at it, the faster you go, if you're doing it right. Continuous improvement!"
"Is that on a logarithmic scale?"
"No."
Dave took a closer look at some of the numbers. "So your chart implies that, by the time I am eighty, I should be able to finish shacharis in four minutes."
"When there's no Torah reading, yes."
"And is that with or without Tachanun?"
"With, of course! Maximum kavanna, minimum time, is my motto. That's what it's all about. Encounter H-shem, forge a deep but brief connection with Him, then get on with your day."
“That just doesn't sound right.. I've seen some serious daveners, and four minutes is barely enough to get them through the first three brachas of Shemoneh Esrei.”
“Yeshiva bachurs?”
“Well, yeah, but --”
“So there you go. Young guys, they're over here on the left side of the chart. They simply haven't been at it long enough.”
“But--”
“Take a look at Tehillim 90:4. A thousand years are like a day to H-shem. So do the math. If you daven Shemoneh Esrei in 10 minutes, that's like sixteen ten-thousandths of a second to H-shem. If it takes you 2 minutes, to H-shem it's three ten-thousandths of a second. The difference when it comes right down to it, to H-shem, you're only talking about thirteen ten-thousandths of a second. 0.0013, baby. You're making a big deal of nothing!”
It was hard to argue with the calculations, but ... “But what about kavanna, Dr. Klopp?”
“Did I say anything against kavanna? Sure you need kavanna. But don't overdo it. There are two basic kavannas: (1) H-shem's side is good. (2) The other side is bad. So as long as you know which kavanna to have in each pasuk, you're all set. Which is why I'm offering my special kavanna-color-coded siddur at 20% off until midnight tonight. Phrases in green require kavanna #1, red is for kavanna #2. Here, take a look at Ezras Avoseinu, the pasuk beginning “kol bechoreihem”. See how the kavanna keeps going back and forth a few times? Easy to miss the transitions when you’re putting out, say, 10 words a second, with other siddurs. Not with mine.”
“But how can you pronounce the words at 10 words a second?”
“Pronounce? Listen, we're talking davening here. You just have to know the basic davening sounds. If you order my siddur before 9pm tonight, I will throw in a free copy of this tape on the sounds of davening. Listen.”
Klopp popped the tape into a player and pressed a button. Dave couldn't quite tell whether the sounds coming out of the machine were recordings of people, or cars. There were noises like a-yuh-yuh-a-yuh-yuh-a-yuh-yuh and meh-hamena-meh-hamena.
“That's people davening?” wondered Dave.
“Sure!” replied Klopp in a strange voice that reminded Dave of a vacuum cleaner.
“What was that you said?”
“I said, that's people davening.” The voice was still vacuum-cleaneresque.
“I'm having trouble understanding you,” Dave admitted.
“That's because I'm speaking while inhaling.” Then Klopp returned to his normal voice. “This is another important davening technique to learn. When you can speak while you are exhaling and while you are inhaling, you will naturally be able to daven twice as fast.”
“My voice is supposed to sound like that when I am speaking to H-shem? Doesn't that show a lack of kavod or something?”
“The timbre of a voice, the pitch, the tone, the direction of the airflow – these are all external trappings. H-shem knows what's in your heart. So really, you don't have to say any words at all. That's how many of the pros do it.”
“Well, I don't know, Dr. Klopp. I mean, I really like my siddur, this one that I --”
“Aaaah!” yelped Klopp in alarm. “Put that thing away!”
“What, this? My Metsudah siddur?”
“Yes! Quick!”
“What's wrong with this siddur?”
“AAAAAAAH! It's too late! I'm melting...!”
Dave awoke from the dream in a cold sweat, colder than he had ever experienced before. He resolved to do something about it.
His resolution was, change into a drier pair of pajamas. Which he did.
Shacharis that Tuesday morning was much like all the previous ones for Dave, zipped through while half asleep. A nice, short shir shel yom was always a good mood lifter to wrap up davening. Then off to the job, programming, eating, drinking, talking, the dream having been forgotten.
Dave caught Mincha at a minyan near home. The gabbai klopped, and everyone was off to the races.
Everyone except for Dave. That klopp triggered something, maybe that feeling that you're remembering a dream from the night before without remembering anything about it. Whatever it was, Dave just sat there, staring at word number one. Ashrei.
He thought about some of the translations of that word. Happy. Fortunate. Praiseworthy. Is the way I daven praiseworthy? wondered Dave. I don't think so. I don't feel fortunate to be davening in an unpraiseworthy manner. This does not make me happy.
Eventually Dave made it through Ashrei, Shemoneh Esrei, Tachanun, and Aleinu, but his mind was even less focused than usual on what he was saying, if that were possible.
After minyan was over, Dave approached Rabbi Zinfin, the Morah d'Asra. He explained to the Rabbi what had happened to him at Ashrei.
“The first word?” said Rabbi Zinfin. “You got stuck at the first word?”
“Yes,” confirmed Dave.
“Hmmm. What about the next two words?”
“Well, I guess I must have said them, since I davened Mincha.”
“But did you think about them, like you thought about 'ashrei'?”
“I suppose not. I couldn't think much about anything after my reaction to 'ashrei'.”
“Do you know what the next two words are?”
“They would be, 'yoshvei veisecha'.”
“And that means...?”
“Um, the ones who sit in Your House?”
“Yes, very good,” Said Rabbi Zinfin. “So the first three words are telling us that the ones who sit in H-shem's House are praiseworthy or fortunate or happy. So, do you feel like you are sitting in H-shem's House when you are davening? Never mind where your body is – tell me about your mind.”
“Yes, well, I mean maybe not. “ Dave sensed a gap in his reasoning. “Wait, what do you mean by H-shem's House?”
“Lets say we're talking about a house, and H-shem is in the house, and everyone in the house knows it, and can feel it.”
Dave's face fell. “If that's really what it means, then definitely not.”
“So! There's your answer. Get into H-shem's House first, then daven. Then we'll see where you're holding.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It is easy. And it is very, very hard. There are some people who can help you along the way, though.” Rabbi Zinfin took out a memo pad and a pen, and wrote down the titles and authors of some sefarim on davening. “Here. Have a look at some of these. You might try Rav Schwab's sefer first.”
So Dave read. What Dave read, at first made no sense. This is davening? he wondered. It wasn't like any davening he had ever experienced. But he didn't stop reading. Then he began to try out what he read. There, too, he wondered, is this davening? Is this me davening?
He was fascinated. And he was scared. And he was being asked to do the impossible. And he saw that there was hope.
And so starts the story of Dave Geiss, davening guy.
