Episode 3: The Triangle

It had been a rough Shacharis for Dave. Short Pesukei D'Zimra, short Shemoneh Esrei, and despite this, people leaving early. Baal tefilla using one of those keys that left Dave with the choice in his responses of going high and risk his voice cracking at inopportune moments, or going low and possibly attracting elephants. It took him five minutes from after the last Kaddish to finish everything he had skipped.

His mind elsewhere, Dave slowly took off and put away his tefillin and tallis. Then he turned to face the wall, gradually tipping forward until his head touched the wall. There he stood, lost in thought.

Shloimie Etzkeil, who hadn't left early but not late either, came back into the Beis Medrash after having discussed a shaila with Rabbi Zinfin. He saw Dave leaning against the wall, nearly motionless. This worried Shloimie, so he walked over to him.

“Dave?” he said softly. There was no response, so a little bit more loudly, he repeated, “Dave?” Still no reply.

Shloimie tapped Dave on the shoulder.

“Aaaok!” yelped Dave and jumped yud tefachim into the air.

“Aaaok!” yelped Shloimie, recoiling daled amos.

After catching his breath, Dave said, “What are you doing, scaring me like that?”

“I tried calling your name a couple of times, but you didn't say anything. Are you feeling all right?”

“I'm feeling just fine.”

“Well you didn't look just fine. What's going on?”

“Nothing's going on. I was only thinking.” He adjusted his yarmulke, which was dangling from his left ear.

“Thinking about what, if I may ask?”

“I was thinking about ... about the triangle.”

“The triangle, Dave?” Shloimie glanced this way and that, looking for something triangular. He found nothing. Then he remembered the position he had found Dave in. “You mean the triangle your body made together with the wall and floor?”

It was Dave's turn to be puzzled. He closed his eyes for a second and imagined it. “You know, you're right. That was a triangle. But it wasn't the one I was thinking of.”

“So what triangle were you thinking of?”

“It was the mind-text-time triangle.”

“Oh, of course, that triangle. Another triangle mystery solved. That just leaves the Bermuda Triangle, and then we can move on to squares.”

“The mind-text-time triangle gets to you too, huh?”

Shloimie sat down on the bench. “In actuality, I have never heard of this triangle. I am trying to recall my high school geometry, but I must have been absent when this particular triangle was taught.”

“You wouldn't have seen this in high school. It's a concept I am working on to analyze my difficulties with davening. I'll give you a little background. You know how the early chasidim used to spend an hour davening Shemoneh Esrei, plus one hour before to prepare and one hour after to come back to earth?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, obviously, they didn't have one eye on the sundial, worrying whether they were going to miss the caravan to market. Mind and text got along famously – they were able to really concentrate in depth on what they were saying. With me so far?”

“Kind of. Do go on.”

“Very well. Now, along comes time. When time enters the picture, when the duration of davening is artificially and aggressively bounded, you get the triangle.”

“Oh, okay.” Shloimie stood up and turned to walk away. “I'm glad we had this little conversation.”

Dave looked at Shloimie, uncomprehending. “Where are you going?”

“Um, to get a bagel for breakfast?”

“But I haven't fully explained the triangle yet. Or is it that obvious?”

“No, it is not that obvious,” declared Baruch Shplitz, who had materialized along the other side of Dave. “Please explain the triangle.”

“Baruch!” Dave exclaimed. “Where did you come from?”

Pointing towards the sefarim shelves on the other side of the beis midrash, Baruch said, “From thataways. But when I saw Dave Geiss jump ten tefachim into the air, I figured that something big was happening. I mean, you were practically in your own reshus up there!”

“Do you need a review to this point?”

“No, I'm fine. Continue.”

Shloimie said, “Excuse me, but I really am hungry, and I can't concentrate on triangles on an empty stomach.”

“Get going, then,” said Baruch. “I'll bring you up to date later. Back to the triangle then, Reb Dovid.”

Dave took out a pad of paper and a pen from his jacket pocket. He drew a triangle. One vertex he labeled “Mind”, another “Text”, and the last one “Time”. “Okay. So if you are on this Mind-Text side, meaning that you are trying to do the whole text of the davening with kavanna, the opposing vertex of Time works against you. But let's say you want to be here, on the Mind-Time side – you want to daven with kavanna, but only for as much time as the minyan allots. That is in conflict with Text, because you don't have enough time to say all the text with kavanna. So you might want to reduce Text, but you can't do that institutionally, or else you're following in the footsteps of those spin-off, low-calorie versions of Judaism. Whether you can do this on your own, that's between a man and his Rabbi.”

“So that leaves, what, Time-Text opposed by Mind?”

“Exactly. If you want to do all the text in an aggressively short time period, then you are in conflict with Mind, with kavanna. Or at least I am. I can't even articulate all the words, let alone think about them. My mind can't switch contexts at that rate. I mean, if all my kavanna consisted of was, 'I'm davening, I'm davening, hey, look at me, I'm davening,' then maybe. But that can't be what it's about. Or else why would the Rabbanim say you should say tefillos as if you are counting money?”

“Maybe the bria changed somewhere along the way, so that now you should say tefillos as if you are spending money. How about that?”

“You know, Baruch, that may explain why a cheapskate like me is having such trouble keeping pace! Because at the minyan's speed, to me, it's not davening, it's ... hydroplaning. I'm just skimming along the top, not gripping the road. Like here, today I come across the line, ‘v’uzo ba’shikachim’. ‘His might is in the clouds.’ And I thought, who associates might with clouds? But then I got to thinking about the Ananei HaKavod, the clouds that protected us in the Wilderness. If clouds can protect, then they must have might, but what kind of might is that? It’s an indirect kind of might. Then again, could be the powers of rain, or of thunder and lightning, or something more symbolic at a higher level...”

It was around this time that he noticed a thin layer of glaze on Baruch’s eyes.

“Right,” said Dave, getting back to the matter at hand, “so in the eight seconds or so that I processed this idea, I was already two perakim behind and had to skip almost all the last five kapitel Tehillim in order to sync up. Look, it could be just me. Maybe I've got the slowest mind in the West.” He leaned his head against the wall again.

Baruch gave Dave an invigorating slap on the back. This had the unfortunate consequence of jamming Dave's nose hard into the wall. “Cheer up, Dave! You are not alone. I, too, do not achieve your davening ideal with the minyan, or even at home, er, on those rare occasions when I don't make it to shul. I confess, I fall prey to the allure of Time-Text. My davening, to paraphrase the old song, is 'Gentle on my Mind'.”

Dave was about to reply, but entered into a sneezing fit. It lasted eight sneezes.

“Need a tissue?” asked Baruch after the fifth sneeze.

“Yes,” said Dave. Baruch took one out of his pocket. If one were to judge by the number of creases, much as one uses rings to gauge the age of trees, one would be inexorably drawn to the conclusion that the tissue had spent quite a long time there. “I mean, no.”

Three sneezes later, it was over. Baruch remarked, “Dave, your nose looks a little red.”

“That's not unexpected, given where it was when you slapped me on the back.”

“Sorry about that. I must have been focusing on your back, not your head.”

“Since the two are somewhat interconnected, namely by my neck, the narrowness of your focus was my nose's undoing. But at least I am heartened by knowing that it is not only I that suffers from the scourge of suboptimal davening. “ That's when it dawned on him. “Oh, wow, I used 'scourge' in a sentence!”

“I am impressed.”

“And talking about it does make me feel a little better. But where do we go from here? Next minyan, it will be more of the same. I want to stay off the Time-Text axis. Mind-Time is not a good alternative, except in emergencies. It's got to be Mind-Text. How do I deal with Time?”

“You need to get more time, then. Either you have to find another minyan which offers you time, or you have to take it from the minyan you've got.”

“Taking more time... You mean...”

“Get there early, is what I was thinking of. Get a head start.”

“Of course! What an elegant solution!” Dave smiled for the first time that morning. Baruch smiled back at him.

Returning to the beis midrash with a sefer in his hand and crumbs in his beard, Shloimie informed Dave and Baruch that there were some good doughnuts in the Gawlapur (Gertie and Wilhelm Loghshmeer All-Purpose Room). Then he noticed the smiles on their faces. “Why is everyone so happy all of a sudden?” he asked them. “It's not the triangle, is it?”

“Baruch here has solved my main davening problem.”

“How did he do that?”

Baruch told him the secret. “Get to shul earlier.”

“How much earlier are you talking about?”

Dave thought about it a moment. “I'd say 15, maybe 20 minutes earlier.”

Shloimie contemplated this new idea. “Hmmm. That would mean you have to wake up earlier, no?”

That was a new wrinkle. Dave turned to Baruch. “Yeah, how does that work? I need to get even less sleep than I do now?”

“There are other options,” replied Baruch. “You can simply cut out 15-20 minutes of your morning pre-shul routine.”

“That would mean...” Dave considered the options. “That would mean I need to come to shul in my pajamas.”

“Not necessarily. You have to think out of the box. For instance, who says you have to change into pajamas the night before? Keep the same clothes on all week! That gives you the added bonus of lower laundry bills.”

“Why don't you just go to sleep earlier, Dave?” asked Shloimie.

“Sure, I'd love to, but what am I supposed to do? Cut out even more of my time for learning Torah? It's barely enough as it is.”

“There must be other things you can skip in the evening.”

“You make it sound easy, Shloimie,” said Dave. “What would you cut out?”

“Well, I could find someone else to walk the d--” Shloimie suddenly remembered where he was and lowered his voice. “I mean, the other species.”

“So, that doesn't work in my household, which is a one-species household.”

“Well, then,” Baruch said, “we go back to the drawing board. Can't cut down learning time. Can't cut down sleep time. Have to come to shul in clean clothes. I hate to admit it, but I'm stumped. You sure you just don't want to daven faster and be done with it?”

Gloom began to settle on Dave's mood. “At this point, maybe I do, I don't know. When it comes down to it, my kavanna doesn't feel so much better at my slower pace, because I keep thinking about how fast everyone else is going. So maybe it's a case of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' “ He spied the clock at the other end of the beis midrash. “Aah, I've got to get to work.”

The topic didn't leave Dave's mind as he drove to work. He was getting tired and frustrated, consistently moving against the crowd when it came to davening speed. And it ate at him that people by and large didn't seem to see anything too wrong with it. He felt like an anasakis-worm-riddled wild Alaskan salmon swimming upstream. So why not just daven faster? The more he thought about it, the more trouble he had arguing with it.

Suddenly Dave had to jam on the brakes, to avoid hitting a backhoe rumbling along in front of him. He wanted to pass it, but a steady line of vehicles moved past Dave's car on his left. His frustration grew as he vainly sought a gap in the traffic so that he could pull into the left lane and get moving again.

Then a sign on the backhoe's rear bumper caught Dave's eye. It was the warning sign for slow moving vehicles, an orange triangle with a red border --

Dave let out a long sigh, and smiled.

Thank You, H-shem, he thought. Thank You for helping me keep my priorities straight. Thank You for that sign.