Preparations for Davening

Proper Dress for Davening

1. One must wear a belt during davening, though some say this applies only to someone who usually wears a belt, for someone who does not usually wear a belt it is considered a pious practice to wear one for davening.
2. If one’s pants are tight the pants will serve as a sufficient separation between the top and bottom part of one's body, but it is still a pious practice to wear a belt.
3. Being dressed properly depends on the standards of the time and place and the way people would walk in the streets and in front of important people. If it is accepted to wear short sleeve shirts or sandals without socks, one does not usually need to change for davening. One needs to make sure one is wearing respectable clothes as one is standing before Hashem.
4. One who usually works in short pants (shorts) is not recommended to daven in shorts, but it is not forbidden to.
5. One who usually wears a hat and jacket and happens not to have them should not daven without it unless one will miss davening with a minyan if one waits until one aquires a hat and jacket. (Draping a jacket over one’s shoulders is not considered wearing it.) However, one who usually does not wear a hat or jacket does not have to wear them during davening, but it is still a proper practice.
6. One should not daven in a robe or a bathing suit.
7. Some have the practice to wear a hat during davening in order to be properly dressed for davening.

Needing the Bathroom

1. If one needs to go to the bathroom, even if one would be able to hold it in for 72 minutes, it would be preferable not to pray until one has gone to the bathroom, unless one will miss praying before the latest time for Shemona Esreh by doing so.

Going to Mikveh

1. Originally, Ezra HaSofer made an institution that someone who was impure may not learn Torah or pray until he dips in the mikveh. However, this practice was not upheld and nowadays it is permitted for an impure person to learn Torah and daven.