Tefillah 017

25:
The next psalm is Psalm 90 [Sim Shalom, page 89; Va'ani Tefillati, page 41]. This psalm also has an ascription: "A prayer of Moses, the man of God", and again the content of the psalm does not explain the ascription. Psalm 90 is a psalm about the frailty of human existence:

However, the psalm ends [verse 17] on a positive note:

To be continued.

In Tefillah 015 I wrote: What does the modern worshipper do who really does want to spend this 'pre-service' segment in a quiet and contemplative mood? The answer – not mine, but that of the poskim [decisors] – is to skip whatever you don't have time to read; and what you do read to read very slowly and carefully "as if counting gold".

Michael Epstein writes:

I have struggled for years to keep up with the congregation. There were times I stayed home to daven [pray – SR] – wanting to avoid the trap of rushing to keep up. I would suggest that rather than skipping certain prayers to give more kavanah [spiritual concentration, inspirational meaning -SR] to ones you do say that you make the effort to read every prayer even if you have to eyeball some. What I have noticed for me personally – is that those prayers I used to struggle with – have (over time) become easier for me to read smoothly, with kavanah, and to keep up with the congregation. I never, for the life of me, thought that the Song at the Sea would ever be "short enough" but it has become so. Baruch Hashem the rest of the service should follow in time.

I respond:

The sages were not referring to 'statutory' parts of the service, but to the psalms of P^esuké d^eZimra. No great spiritual loss will encrue if the slow reader skips some and great spiritual gain will follow intense reading. And, as Michael's personal experience teaches, if you always select the same psalms to read slowly you will gradually become more proficient at reading them, they will become 'old friends', and you can then add an additional psalm to your devotions.

The problem that I have with Michael's method is that it does not distinguish (as far as I can tell) between the psalms of em>P^esuké d^eZimra and the statutory parts of the service. The whole purpose of praying with a minyan is to join in the recitation of the Amidah together with the rest of the congregation. If it were not for that we could all pray at home! While praying with the congregation is not an absolute requirement of Halakhah it is "warmly recommended" by the poskim. In Mishneh Torah [Tefillah 8:1] Rambam puts it this way:

That is why it is best, I think, to read as many of the psalms of P^esuké d^eZimra as you can conveniently so that you can join in with public worship at the appropriate moment. It is not logical to give precedence to the reading of the psalms of P^esuké d^eZimra over the Reading of the Shema and the Amidah, which should be done as far as possible together with the congregation, as we shall see. (The poskim expect that someone who was forced to skip some of the psalms will read them at his liesure after the service. I fear that most moderns just do not have that kind of 'liesure'.)