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On Kavannah

Rabbi Hiyya Ruba said, “I never had kavannah in my life.  Once I tried to have kavannah and I thought in my heart and said, “Who will enter before the King first the tax collector of the head of the community?”

 

Learning to pray with intensity is no simple task.  As Rabbi Hiyya Ruba admitted, the mind ceaselessly wanders to all kinds of extraneous thoughts when we should be focused solely on HaKadosh Baruch Hu.


-Yerushalmi, Berakhot 2:4

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