[Avodah] Benefits of Davening K'Vosikin

[Akiva Miller]

.
R' Simon Montagu wrote:

> This is one of the things that really grinds my gears too. Placards
> went up recently on the street corners in my neighbourhood pointing
> towards one of the local shuls and advertising "tefilla banetz",
> and I cringe every time I go past.
>
> But I try to be melamed zechut on Am Yisrael. ...

I used to cringe too. But then I thought of a different limud zechus,
and it's not just an excuse. I really believe this:

They are not speaking the language that you'd like to think they are
speaking. We are in the process of developing a new dialect, or
creole, ... I don't know or care what the technical term might be, but
consider the following phrases:

making kiddush
will be davening
had paskened
was mekadesh

Technically speaking, I do concede that "davening k'vasikin" is
meaningful, while "davening vasikin" is bizarre. But the truth,
whether you like it or not, is that when someone says "davening
vasikin", EVERYONE knows what the speaker meant. In this new language,
there's nothing wrong with saying "davening vasikin".

It is (I think) EXACTLY like the phrase "Good Shabbos", when the first
word is pronounced "good" (and not "goot") and the second word is
pronounced "SHABbos" (and not "shabBOS"). What language is that????
It's not Hebrew. It's not Yiddish. It's not English. It's something
new. (Where "new" can have values of 50 to 100 years. Maybe more.)

I am reminded of going to the bakery when I was twelve years old, and
the sign by the brownies said that the price was:

.10¢ each

(If your computer messed that up, it is a decimal point, followed by a
one, and a zero, and a "cents" sign. You know, a "c" with a line
through it.)

Twelve-year old me looked at the decimal point, and noted that the
sign had a cents sign, and not a dollar sign. So I concluded that the
price for the brownies was one-tenth of a cent each. I tried to buy
ten of them for a penny.

It didn't work.

And I was pretty upset about it too. I knew I was right. Plenty of
people tried to console me, but no one could explain my error. I was
right, and everyone seemed to agree.

It took about 40 years, but I finally figured out the lesson of that
incident: What people SAY is not nearly as important as what they
MEAN. Focus on the ikar, not the tafel.

Akiva Miller