He told me he had a remarkable experience. The rabbi showed him how to put the tefillin upon his left arm and upon his head and he went to stand at the Kotel and pray. "I felt this awesome silence. Suddenly all the rush of thoughts in my mind vanished. I felt this silence and peace and I didn't want to leave the courtyard of the Kotel and I stayed there an extra hour."
My friend Jeff's experience reminded me of King David's words, "Silence is my prayer."
Our lives especially today are generally overwhelmed by the influx of experience from the outer world, work, family, bills, politics, traffic, cellphones, internet. Technology steadily increases the pace of life and the flood of sensory experience that we are submitted to. This flow of experience creates an ongoing train of thoughts in our minds, and our lives today often have little room where we find rest from our individual thoughts and stress.
The Beit HaMikdash (the Holy Temple) is the place where we offer our lives up to God in sacrifice. In the past we offered our possessions, money, animals, wine, wheat, expressing that the ultimate purpose of our efforts and lives was to serve the will of God and His Torah. Today in the absence of our Temple, perhaps the most important and challenging offering is to offer up our heart and minds to God, simply to hollow out a space in our experience for His presence to be acknowledged.
As my friend Jeff came to Israel for the first time, to the Kotel, and placed tefillin upon his arm and between his eyes, Hashem reached out to him and revealed the foundation of the spiritual connection between a Jew and God -- silence -- a moment free of thought, a moment of peace to experience the presence of God.
The Beit HaMikdash is the place where we offer our lives up to God in sacrifice. In the past we offered our possessions, money, animals, wine, wheat, expressing that the ultimate purpose of our efforts and lives was to serve the will of God and His Torah. Today in the absence of our Temple, perhaps the most important and challenging offering is to offer up our heart and minds to God, simply to hollow out a space in our experience for His presence to be acknowledged.
As my friend Jeff came to Israel for the first time, to the Kotel, and placed tefillin upon his arm and between his eyes, Hashem reached out to him and revealed the foundation of the spiritual connection between a Jew and God -- silence -- a moment free of thought, a moment of peace to experience the presence of God.