MINḤA – AFTERNOON SERVICE The Afternoon Service corresponds to the daily afternoon sacrifice (Num. 28:8). Minḥa, literally “meal offering,” was not unique to the afternoon sacrifice. The afternoon service may have become known as Minḥa because of the verse in Psalms (141:2), “May my prayer be like incense before You, the lifting up of my hands like the afternoon offering [minḥat arev].” The sages attached special significance to the afternoon prayer, noting that Elijah’s prayer was answered at this time (I Kings 18:36). It is easier to pray in the morning and evening as we are about to begin or end our engagement with the world for the day. Minḥa is more demanding. It means that we are turning to God in the midst of all our distractions. We are bringing Him into our life when it is maximally preoccupied with other things. Minḥa is the triumph of the important over the urgent, of what matters ultimately over what matters immediately. That is why prayer in the midst of the day has a special transformative power. The Ba’al Shem Tov said: Imagine a man whose business hounds him through many streets and across the marketplace throughout the day. He almost forgets that there is a Maker of the world. Only when the time for the afternoon prayer comes, does he remember, “I must pray.” And then, from the bottom of his heart, he heaves a sigh of regret that he has spent his day on idle matters, and he runs into a side street and stands there and prays. God holds him dear, very dear, and his prayer pierces the heavens. ASHREI Ashrei, at the beginning of Minḥa, is an abridged form of the more extended Pesukei DeZimra, the Verses of Praise, of the morning service. It is a meditation prior to the Amida. The Amida is prayer in its purest form, and it requires kavana, a direction of the mind, a focusing of our thoughts. Kavana involves “clearing your mind of all extraneous thoughts, and seeing yourself as if you are standing before the Divine Presence. Therefore it is necessary to sit for a while before prayer in order to direct your mind, and then pray gently and pleadingly, not like one who prays as if he were carrying a burden which he is keen to unload and leave” (Maimonides, Laws of Prayer 4:16). Ashrei is the way we “sit for a while before prayer” in order to direct our mind (Berakhot 32b). Therefore, though it may be said standing or sitting, the custom is to say it sitting. It consists of Psalm 145, chosen for two reasons: (1) It is an alphabetical acrostic, praising God with every letter of the alphabet (except the nun, missing lest it refer to a verse that speaks about the fall, nefila, of Israel); (2) It contains the verse, “You open Your hand, and satisfy every living thing with favor,” regarded by the sages as one of the essential features of prayer, namely recognition of our complete dependence on God (Berakhot 4b). Psalm 145 is also the only one of the 150 psalms to be called a psalm (tehilla) in its superscription. To it have been added two verses at the beginning and one at the end. The verses at the beginning use the word Ashrei – the first word of the book of Psalms – three times. The concluding verse ends with the word “Halleluya,” the last word of the book of Psalms. Thus Ashrei is a miniature version of the book of Psalms as a whole. Ashrei means “happy, blessed, fruitful, flourishing.” It refers not to a temporary emotional state but to a life as a whole. One who is ashrei does well and fares well, living uprightly and honestly, respected by those worthy of respect. The word is in the plural construct, literally “the happinesses of,” as if to say that happiness is not one thing but a harmonious blend of many things that add up to make a good life. Psalm 1 gives a vivid picture of such a life: “Happy is one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the place of sinners, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the Torah of the LORD, and who meditates on His Torah day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever he does prospers” (Psalm 1:1–3).

THE AFTERNOON AMIDA The sages (Berakhot 26b) associated the afternoon Amida with Isaac, who “went out to meditate in the field toward evening” (Gen. 24:63). If Abraham represents the dawn of Jewish faith, and Jacob the nighttime of exile, Isaac represents the afternoon joining of past and future, the unspectacular heroism of Jewish continuity. We are each a link in the chain of generations, heirs of our ancestors, guardians of our children’s future, remembering God in the midst of time and placing our destiny in His hands. *The central blessings.*There are thirteen central blessings in the weekday Amida and they are grouped into four sets of three: (1) personal spiritual requests: for knowledge, repentance and forgiveness; (2) personal material requests: for redemption, healing and prosperity; (3) collective material-political requests: for the ingathering of exiles, the restoration of sovereignty, and the removal of enemies; and (4) collective spiritual requests: for the righteous, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the restoration of the kingdom of David. The thirteenth blessing is all-embracing, asking God to hear and heed our prayer. Knowledge, Repentance and Forgiveness. Note the sequence. First we pray for knowledge and understanding. Without these it is as if we travel blind. Judaism is a religion of emotion, but emotion instructed by the mind. Second, understanding should lead us not to intellectual arrogance but humility. Knowing how we should live, we come to realize how we fall short, and this brings us to repentance. Only then do we ask for forgiveness. We must put in the work of self-understanding and self-judgment before we can ask God to excuse our lapses.

Temple Service and Thanksgiving. “As the Jew recites Retzeh and beseeches God to accept his sacrifices, he is no longer praying in his local synagogue in Warsaw, Vilna or New York. He is suddenly transported to Jerusalem, and his prayer is transformed into an offering in the Temple. Rabbi Judah HaLevi (Kuzari 3:19) highlights that at this juncture in the Amida we are praying for the Shekhina to return to Jerusalem. We must therefore bow at Modim as if we were standing in the presence of the restored Shekhina.” (Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik)

ALEINU This prayer has a special association with Rosh HaShana since it was first used as the prelude to Malkhiyot, the verses relating to God’s kingship, that are central to the Musaf Amida of Rosh HaShana. Only in the thirteenth century did it begin to be said daily at the conclusion of each service. Note the contrast between the first and second paragraphs. The first is a quintessential statement of Jewish particularity. We thank God for the uniqueness of the Jewish people and its vocation. We are different. It is not our highest aspiration to be like everyone else. We have been singled out for a sacred mission, to be God’s ambassadors, His witnesses, part of a nation that in itself testifies to something larger than itself, to a divine presence in history. But Judaism is not just inward-turning particularity. The second paragraph is a no less emphatic prayer for universality, for the day when all humanity will recognize the sovereignty of God. All humans are in God’s image, part of God’s world, heirs to God’s covenant with Noah, and in the future, as polytheism and atheism reveal themselves to be empty creeds, all humanity will turn to the One God. There is no contradiction between particularity and universality. Only by being what we uniquely are, do we contribute to humanity as a whole what only we can give.

MOURNERS’ KADDISH We bring credit to the memory of the dead by doing acts that confer merit on the living. This especially applies to the saying of Kaddish, since it causes the congregation to praise God by saying, “May His great name be blessed for ever and all time.” According to the Talmud, whenever Jews enter a synagogue or a house of study and say “May His great name be blessed,” the Holy One, blessed be He, nods His head and says: “Happy is the King who is thus praised in this house” (Berakhot 3a). Note that Kaddish speaks neither of death nor of the past. It speaks about the future and about peace. We honor the dead by the way we live. We honor the past by the future we create.