Introduction to Learning Tefillah

AI summary (may contain mistakes)

Davening has to be learned. Like the taste for a fine wine, it is acquired over time, and then it can become the best part of the day. Two things make davening hard: the same set words every day, and tefillos that seem to go unanswered. Avraham Avinu's tefillah for a city that was destroyed anyway shows that a tefillah is not wasted.

Key points

• A sefer mentioned last week calls tefillah the most enjoyable part of the day, needed like three daily meals.
• Tefillah comes from a word meaning to attach, connecting the neshama to Hashem.
• The Rambam finds no set words d'Oraisa, and in Ezra's time an order was fixed after people forgot how.
• A sefer compares the words of tefillah to a fruit's peel, with kavana as the essence.
• Sefarim say Avraham Avinu's unanswered tefillos were saved for Klal Yisrael, and perhaps they saved Lot.

In this shiur

1. 0:00Learning the siddur more deeply
2. 3:01Choosing Mezritch to learn davening
3. 4:43Tefillah as the day's best part
4. 8:35A remez in the name Adam
5. 13:16The Rambam on a set tefillah
6. 21:46Tefillos that seem unanswered
7. 23:13Avraham Avinu's tefillah for the city
8. 28:43Story of learning to daven slowly

Topics

• Tefillah
• Kavana
• Avodah SheBaleiv