With the last Daf of Chapter Four, we get a lot of rules about prayer. Why so many rules? We get one clue today when we discuss why we pray facing the Temple. Song of Songs 4:4 states, “Your neck is like the Tower of David, built to hold weapons, hung with a thousand shields – All the quiver of warriors.”

The Tower of David was a guard tower built by King David over the city of Jerusalem. David was Israel’s greatest military hero and the verse reflects the martial nature of his reign. Yet, when the Talmud was written, Israel was a defeated people, over and over. The Jews had not exercised real sovereignty or military authority for hundreds of years. How do you make a nation of a defeated and scattered people? You reinterpret your glory, not as an empire, but as the guardians of a real spirituality.

In the case of today’s Daf, you take the word “Towers” (“L’talpiyot”) and you re-interpret it. You break down the word into two words “tel piyyot” – the hill of mouths. The hill where all mouths turn. You glorify the inquiries of the mind, not the victory of armies. You reimagine your national history as the triumph of revelation, not the nation-state.

We start with rules about when we recite the Traveler’s Prayer that we learned yesterday. How far do we have to be from home before we are obligated to say the prayer? Do we recite it while travelling or do we recite it while stopped? We then learn rules for when and how we can recite the abridgment of the Shemoneh Esrei and the short prayer in lieu of the Shemoneh Esrei. Every minutia of the prayer is turned into an opportunity to understand how to separate the sacred from the profane – how to turn everyday acts into acts of meaning that reflect God’s presence in our world.

In case you are interested, here is an abridged understanding of the rules as developed (with lots of debate):

• We recite the Traveler’s Prayer at the outset of a journey, when we have traveled about 15,00 feet;
• If we go further, we may not recite the Traveler’s Prayer because we are no longer asking leave of God to travel safely;
• We should pull over to recite the Traveler’s Prayer, but if that is not safe, we can recite it while traveling;
• We should recite the full text of the Shemoneh Esrei three times a day, unless there are extenuating circumstances;
• In an emergency, we can substitute the Havineinu abridgment for the full Shemoneh Esrei;
• If we are in real danger, we say the short prayer at the time of reciting the Shemoneh Esrei and then recite the full text when we can concentrate.

We learn from stories of sages who had to alter their normal routine to accommodate a journey or other circumstances.

We then come to the rules about which direction we pray. If we are outside of Israel, we face Israel. If we are inside Israel, we face Jerusalem. If we are in Jerusalem, we face the Temple. If we are in the Temple compound, we face the Holy of Holies. We do this so that “All of Israel direct their hearts to one place” and we create national unity in the midst of diaspora.

We come to our last Mishnah of the chapter, which concerns rules of when we recite the Mussaf service alone and when we do so with a congregation. We are obligated to say the Mussaf prayer, but if there is a minyan in town, we should not recite it privately. We then end the chapter for rules about what to do if we forget the special Rosh Chodesh prayers that are inserted at the beginning of every month. These rules were necessary at a time when there were not real calendars and the start of the month had to be declared by the Rabbinical Court.