Reply To: Cracking knuckles during davening – The New Mishugas!!

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Do you think Hashem accepts your tefilla less because someone sneezes and interrupts your concentration? Who do you think put that sneezer or knuckle cracker into your life? Maybe Hashem would rather see you a little distracted but more accepting and tolerant of other Jews, rather than a little distracted and angry and spiteful at them?

There’s a story about a particular gadol who had a talmid that wanted to get the gadol to daven for a choleh. So one day the talmid wrote the Hebrew name of the choleh in the margin of the gadol’s siddur by refainu. When the talmid realized how disrespectful this was he went to the gadol and profusely apologized for writing in his siddur. The gadol had no idea what he was talking about. He said, ‘when I daven from my siddur, I am looking at the words of the tefilla, not at the margin.’ He didn’t even see the writing.

The idea is that if we have real focus in our tefilla, it isn’t broken by mundane things in our surroundings. If we’re distracted, it’s because of our own shortcomings, not because of sneezes, knuckles cracking or floorboards creaking.