Berakhot 098

3:
Our mishnah, as is the very nature of the whole work, makes a bald statement: "we rise to recite the Amidah only in a serious frame of mind". The Gemara [Berakhot 30b], as is the very nature of that whole work, cannot resist requiring a firm base for such a demand. After a couple of false starts, the base is determined to be a verse in the Book of Psalms [2:11]: "Worship God in awe, with trembling exultation". The Gemara [Berakhot 31a] also brings several other statements of the sages which are concerned with the frame of mind that one should be in before reciting the Amidah. What one has been doing immediately prior to this devotional exercise will have an immediate impact upon one's thoughts and powers of concentration during its performance. Therefore, "We do not rise to recite the Amidah after a legal judgment [in a Bet Din] or after a discussion on halakhah – but this does not include study of halakhah that has already been determined" – since this would not leave us in an argumentative frame of mind. Furthermore, "we do not rise to recite the Amidah after something very sad, or something hilarious, or a conversation or frivolity…"

4:
These admonitions would suggest that the liturgical framework that was accepted during the Mishnaic period was less rigid in some respects than that in use today. For both in the morning and in the evening, nowadays, we rise to recite the Amidah immediately after reciting the Shema and not any other kind of activity. This is further borne out by a parenthetical note recorded by the Gemara [Berakhot 31a] to the effect that the public behaviour of Rabbi Akiva when reciting the Amidah was different from his behaviour when reciting it privately: in public he would recite his prayer as swiftly as was decently possible, so as not to unduly detain the congregation; however, when praying in private "one could leave him [at the start of his devotions] in one corner of the room and find him [at the end of his devotions] in another corner of the room!" – because he would bow and kneel so often. Such a turn of affairs would be impossible if he had been following the halakhah in these matters as accepted today.

5:
Indeed, later rabbinic custom does seem to have preferred other means for impressing on the worshipper the seriousness of the task in hand. Customs have been developed that require the worshipper to imitate the behaviour of someone gaining an audience [personal interview] with a medieval absolute monarch or potentate. Before commencing the recitation of the Amidah we step backwards in preparation for the beginning of the audience. Before we recite the first sentence of the Amidah we take three small steps forward, approaching as it were the Divine throne. (These steps should be small steps – "toe-to-heel" is how our sources describe them.) At the beginning and end of the first berakhah we are required to make a deep obeisance: at the word barukh we bend the knees, at the word attah we make a deep bow ("sufficient to make all the vertebrae crack"! [Shulĥan Arukh, Oraĥ Ĥayyim 113:4]) and at the word Adonai we resume a completely upright posture – so as not to suggest even to ourselves that God is in any particular direction. This procedure is followed also for the penultimate berakhah of the Amidah. After having completed the recitation of the Amidah we take three small steps backwards, as a courtier would do when taking his leave of a medieval monarch.

To be continued.

People are still offering me assistance in my search for verification of a statement attributed to Albert Einstein. The following is from Greg Ashe:

There is a similar quote from Einstein in which he says: "When judging a physical theory, I ask myself whether I would have made the universe in that way, had I been God." I don't have the exact source, but will look through my books on Einstein (he has many wonderful quotes on religion and science and did a lot to repair the unfortunate break between the two). In response to Einstein's quote (disbelieving quantum mechanics) "God does
not play dice" there is another (perhaps better) quote from Einstein "God is cunning, but not malicious".

David Kogut reports:

With respect to Einstein's comments made while he was at Princeton, Bohr retorted: "Don't tell God what to do."