ENGLISH & HEBREW PRAYERS FOR EARLY A.M. SOLO DAVENING*

O My God [E]
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Is It Possible [E]
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Searching for My God [E]
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God Bless My Soul [E]
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Send Your Light (Psalm 43:3) [E/H]
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Love of God [E]
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Gift of Life [E]
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Sing Praises (Psalm 113) [E]
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Lift Up My Eyes (Psalm 121) [E]
Streaming music file (mp3)
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Golden Chariot [E]
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You Are One [E]
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One-Being (Shema) [E/H]
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Lovingly Hold [E]
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True and Certain [H]
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Sukkat Shalom [H]
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Silent Prayer [E]
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Eighteen Blessings [H]
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Oseh Shalom [H]
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One Has Told You [E & H]
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New World Coming [E]
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God Is My Shepherd (23d Psalm) [E]
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O Glorious Day [E]
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*It was my minhag (custom) for many years to get up every morning while it was still dark outside and ride12 miles on my bicycle while davening (praying). That radical departure from my previous early morning activity (sleeping!) was inspired by Dr. Mark Hyman’s book, Ultra-Metabolism (Scribner 2006), which got me to thinking about exercise and pikuach nefesh (saving a life) in a much more personal way. I gave up this minhag after ten years, in 2016, when my orthopedist told me I had to replace my bike-riding with extended daily weight-bearing (walking) exercise for the sake of my bone health—although I have continued my early morning solo davening.

When I first began riding in the early morning, I realized that my ride was the perfect opportunity for davening, but I also knew it wouldn’t be practical to carry a siddur (prayerbook) while riding my bike. And even if I could carry a siddur, it would be wildly impractical to read the prayers by the light of passing lampposts while trying to look out for road hazards.

So if I was going to daven on my bike ride, it would have to be from memory. But that idea was problematic: first, because the tradition reminds us that praying from memory runs the risk of “swallowing” a vowel sound, thus changing meanings; and second, because in the absence of a siddur, we may end up “searching” in our minds for the required prayers and their particular words, thus undermining our kavanah (intention).

I wondered about davening without the use of a siddur, and not the traditional liturgy but my personal prayers. Many years earlier I had composed music and mostly English prayers that Magidah Khulda and I regularly davened together back then. I asked myself whether I would want to use the mostly English “liturgy” of my bike-riding davening to replace the traditional Hebrew liturgy as an alternative? Clearly, I would not. Our oldest traditions, dating from the precursors for prayer found in the rites of sacrificial offerings of the Ohel Moeid (tent of meeting), put me off such an idea. So my solo, bike-riding davening of my own liturgy would supplement the traditional liturgy, not be an alternative to it.

When I began my solo davening, my unwitting tendency was to launch into a performance, even though I was alone. In effect, much of my consciousness and emotional energy were focused on producing the nusach (exact liturgical text) and hazzanut (cantorial music). I became aware that instead of davening, it was as if I was on the bimah (synagogue platform), trying to shape the sounds made by my voice to please a congregational audience.

But as my davening kavanah emerged, I began to transition from performance to prayer. It’s difficult to explain the process precisely, because it was more a matter of transitioning emotions than thoughts, but it entailed imagining myself not on the bimah but among the congregation, no longer producing but somehow consuming the service. At that point, I was listening to the sound of my own voice, as if it were the voice of someone else, coming from a source other than myself.

Then I began to daven in earnest: the words and what they represented came to me as challenges, visions and paths against which to compare my own life and the day-to-day ways in which I was living it. The liturgy of the Torah called to me, asking me to take in its wisdom and thrive on its life-giving mitzvot (commandments). As I finish nowadays, the words that come to me are these: You have filled me with your wonder, lifting me high up above; You have thrilled me beyond knowing, taking me out of myself.

—R' Moshe

[Key: E = English, H = Hebrew, E & H = English and Hebrew]