The Prayer Space

My friend Rabbi Brett Kopin once came to Der Nister and approached our prayer space, the space in the back carved out for our Saturday morning services.

“You’ve davened here a lot,” he remarked, looking around.

By that, he didn’t mean that he could recognize that I had stood before the Torah stand for many Shabbats by the layout of the room. Rather, he meant that the room had a sacredness that was palpable.

At first, I accepted his analysis. Indeed, it is part of our tradition to understand that the holiness of places is connected to what we do in them. The Temple itself became holy when it was consecrated — otherwise it would just have been a building. 

But only a few parshahs before, we read that God asked Moses to take off his shoes at the Burning Bush, because it is holy ground. This ground was not holy because Moses was speaking to God. Rather, it was holy because God made it holy through God’s presence.

Does God choose places to make holy in an arbitrary way? We will never know, though we can speculate. 

I believe that we can make space holy by designing it to be that way, not through our own will, but by shepherding and arranging elements of a space so that it conjures our most deeply held feelings and spiritual yearnings.

I believe that the Der Nister prayer space, largely through a series of accidents and conscious design decisions, became a place where the prayer can be felt — not because of my personal prayers.

As Henry likes to point out to me, the space is in a corner, by four big windows that let the light in. That alone can make any space feel special. However, there is another quality that to me is more striking: the windows face brick buildings far up in the sky. It is incredibly difficult to sense where the ground could possibly be or where we are situated. 

It creates the sensation of being in a labyrinth in the sky. Labyrinths, as a motif embedded within human consciousness according to the theories of Joseph Campbell, are where the hero must go deeper. It is the hero’s zenith in their self-discovery, and their nadir in their journey. The hero walks through the labyrinth to find the monster they must slay, an analogy to the great demons we face in our own internal lives when we delve into ourselves.

On the other side of one set of windows stands a wall of old Yiddish books. I recall Dr. Jeremiah Lockwood’s musical performance in the space. The end of his performance reached a height of spirit I have not seen before or since, where he delved into a vein of cantorial spiritual memory. 

“The Yiddish books,” he said. “They are overwhelming.”

In many Jewish sacred spaces, the Torah serves as the visual focal point, and memorial plaques line the walls. Here, memories are preserved not in bronze but in paper. The books are the memories of a whole civilization cut to its knees in the course of a generation, but they are alive. 

Eerily, they are often as foreign and unnerving to us as a labyrinth into our soul is. They beckon us to see what about our culture and ourselves we have been made unconscious of. If we are not aware of this effect, it doesn’t matter, because the feeling takes hold against our will.

In between these walls that subtly challenge us to confront our spiritual and cultural existences, lie several objects that serve as tools to go on these journeys.

Often, when I am praying at the stand, I look up at our Turkish lamp, large and powerful, full of colors and emblazoned with a Star of David. I draw strength from gazing at it, strength that I can then project into my singing and my concentration in my connection to God.

I used to be in the Turkish goods business for a brief period of time. I learned passable Turkish, visited Istanbul frequently, and sampled the best of traditional Turkish culture and life. Though that was not destined to last forever, my enthusiasm for the Sufi influences that I wanted to bring to America remained. 

This came to a head when Henry and I were walking past one of the new Turkish home goods stores that have popped up in the region. I ushered him in to see what was there, and he saw that lamp, which he purchased and installed as soon as he could, to my infinite gratitude.

One day, the bulb burned out in the lamp, and we had no idea how to fix it. I considered calling the store owner, but the last time I did, he took a Facetime call with me shirtless while offering me a job to sell for him, which I did not take up. We suffered for six months with a burned-out bulb until I had the courage to call the shop owner again. This time, he answered the phone normally and graciously, and we spent the afternoon unlocking the lamp’s mysterious mechanisms to replace the bulb.

It was worth it because the new bulb was one of the more attractive gold-tinted ones that we like, instead of the aggressive fluorescent one.

Accompanying the lamp is an intricate Turkish rug, an aesthetic mirror to the lamp, which we found at a local Fashion District shop and carried back on foot. “Is this for a Beit Knesset?” asked the observant shopkeeper.

Add in the plants and the other lamps, and the means to confront the disorientation of the walls and windows is provided: nature, patterns, colors and light. It is the visual poetic ink that we jot our quills in and write our own emotions and contemplations on the canvas of the mysteries within us.

A couple more recent gifts to Der Nister, all brokered by Rabbi Ilana Grinblat, were the Torah stand from Temple Har Shalom in Idyllwild, which replaced the mercilessly dysfunctional lectern we found at a garage sale, and the (new to us) Torah ark from Congregation Ahavat Torah in Mar Vista, which replaced the jerry-rigged wardrobe closet we got for cheap in Westlake, which gives dignity to the beautiful Torah that Cary Pollack has graciously loaned us. 

The twin miracles here are that we received these donations, and that we found a way to haul them up here to the 14th floor through painfully cramped elevators.

The visceral sensation of the power and majesty of Torah was the fruit of these gifts and our labor.

Some of these elements were choices. Some of them weren’t. Some were gifts. Some were purchases. There was little preordained design, but in retrospect, it was created in the same way we create prayer itself: searching around for what stirs us.