Kittavo. Be silent and listen. During our first coronavirus lockdown, there was one question

I was asked more than any other. What about prayer? Just when we needed it the most, we found

ourselves unable to participate in Tfilob, but Sibur, public communal prayer. Our most sacred prayers

devarim Shibik Dusha are communal. They require a minion. There was an argument

between Rambam and Rambun as to whether originally and essentially the command of prayer was

directed to individuals or to the community as a whole, but there was no disagreement between them

as to the importance and value of praying as part of a community.

That is supremely how we, as Jews, come before God, not primarily I, but as we.

So how then, during the pandemic, were we supposed to find spiritual strength without this communal dimension?

My answer was, this is indeed a terrible privation. There's no point in minimizing the loss. As Rabbi Yehuda Halavi said in the Khuzari,

individual prayer is like protecting yourself by building a wall around your house.

Collective prayer. It's like joining with others to maintain a wall around the city.

The wall around the city protects everyone, not just me. Besides which, when I pray for myself,

I may pray selfishly, asking for something that may directly benefit me, but might also be harmful for others. If I sell ice cream, I want the sun to shine, but if I sell umbrellas, I want

the rain to fall. Praying together, we seek not private good, but the common good. Communal

prayer is not just an expression of community, it's also a builder of community.

Hence the psychological cost of the pandemic lockdown.

We're social, we're not solitary beings, we long most of us for company,

and even the marvels of Zoom, Skype, YouTube, Facebook, Live, WhatsApp and FaceTime,

cannot compensate for the loss of the real thing,

the face-to-face encounter.

But there was one gain to praying in isolation.

...