Rosh Hashanah 2005

Are Jews Allowed to Pray?

Dan is driving around the Chico state campus, late for class, but to his dismay, he can't find a parking space. He drives around for half an hour then looks up to the heavens and says: "Excuse me? It's Dan. G-d, I really need your help. I can't find a parking space. I promise if you find me one I will go to temple every week and I will keep every Jewish law ever written!"

Just then, a parking space appears in front of him. Dan looks up to the sky again and says: "Actually, don't worry G-d, I just found one!"

Are Jews allowed to pray in their own words? In their own language? And is prayer just asking for things that one wants from some kind of father figure in the sky? As modern Jews, we have many issues to confront around prayer.

Once, when I was living in Texas, the day after Yom Kippur a woman accosted me in the parking lot at the Jewish Community Center. "I have a question for you," she said. "Why don't Jews pray?"

I was taken aback by her query. "But of course Jews pray! We just spent an entire day in the synagogue," I said. We had just spent some 15 hours in prayer during the long fast day.

We have a full and rich liturgy, with prayers for weekdays, Sabbaths and festivals. How could a Jew ask me why Jews don't pray?

"That's not what I mean," she said. "I don't mean praying out of a book. I mean that Jews don't seem to pray out of their hearts, their own words, like so many of our Christian friends do. All of the prayers are in the siddur. Why don't we pray spontaneously over daily events-is it even allowed in our tradition?"

This doubt that spontaneous prayer in one's own language is "kosher" was expressed by another student of mine back in the Old Country (South Texas). She related a story that once she and her spouse had been in a dangerous situation. Both of them wanted to pray, but they weren't sure that Jews were "allowed" to pray like that.

Is spontaneous prayer "Jewish"; is it "kosher"? Is it an authentic part of our religious tradition? Do we need to pray in our own words, or is the communal recitation and chanting of the traditional liturgy the essence of Jewish worship? And beyond that, why should we even care about the subject? Do most of us modern, religiously liberal Jews even find value in prayer or feel a need to pray in our daily lives? Most Jews vote with their feet-surveys tell us that between 16 and 27 percent participate in a synagogue service even once a month.

Sholom Aleichem's classical figure of Tevye the Dairyman, who became the main character in "Fiddler on the Roof," is always taking time out for a little chat with God. If we look into Jewish tradition from the Bible onward, we find that spontaneous, personal prayer has been a part of our heritage for thousands of years. In fact, it was the chief form of prayer in the bible. In the rabbinic time, as described in the Talmud, prayer was slowly becoming more fixed, but many individual variants and personal prayers were described. At the end of each Amidah in our prayer book, a silent meditation is added. But the Talmud indicates this was only included to get us started; each of us is urged to say a personal prayer our own words at this point. In tractate Berachot 29b, Rabbi Eliezer says, "If a person makes his or her prayers a fixed task, it is not a genuine supplication…What is meant by a fixed task?...whoever is not able to insert something fresh in it." According to this Talmudic sage, each time that we pray, even from the siddur, we are bidden to include some of our own words. In modern parlance we might compare it to sending a greeting card to G-d without writing a personal note at the end or signing our name.

A later classic type of personal prayer are the Techines. I know that it sounds like a sauce to put on your falafel, but it's actually a Yiddish word for personal supplications. Women in particular would say these prayers, in the vernacular, for private occasions such as the birth of a child, sending a child to school, or lighting the Shabbat candles.

In the Hassidic movement, personal prayer took on great importance. Rabbi Nahman of Breslov is noted for his teachings that a person should make time each day to be alone, preferably outside in nature, and pour out his or her heart to God. He emphasized that people need to say these prayers in their own native language.

But what of us modern people, who often have enough trouble with the idea of God and the idea of asking God for anything? How can we pray? There are different approaches, depending on your theology and temperament. There are three approaches to prayer that I think can be very meaningful and helpful to contemporary Jews. One is for the rationalists: the prayer of the mind-represented by Reconstructionist theology. A second is for the mystics-the prayer of the heart-represented by Jewish Renewal. A third approach is spiritual, and is found in Jewish meditation.

For Rabbi Harold Schulweiss, a great American Jewish thinker in the Reconstructionist vein, prayer is essentially a reflexive experience. In his book, For Those Who Can't Believe, he states that prayer is not a magical expectation that we remotely manipulate a distant father figure who will grant our wishes. Rather, the Hebrew word to pray, "l'hitpallel," means to judge ourselves, to examine ourselves and find the godliness within us that will motivate us to improve ourselves and make the world what it should be. Life is full of miracles and wonders, with no supernaturalism needed. For Schulweiss, God should be viewed not as a Person, but as a verb. He says, "Not the qualities of divinity but the divinity of the qualities is essential to belief…Godliness is in the activity of doing justly, healing the sick, raising the fallen, supporting the disadvantaged, uniting the real and idea." Therefore, "we may not pray that an amputated limb should spring to life, but we may pray for the inner strength to deal with the loss. We may not pray for the resurrection of the limb, but we may give thanks for prosthetics…prayer on its own does not cure disease. It may alert the patient to the curative powers and inspire the petitioner to devote his or her mind and heart to participate in the cure." Prayer enables us to activate the Godly qualities latent inside ourselves, to act for God in the world.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of Jewish renewal, gives a more mystical and experiential view of prayer. In Jewish With Feeling, Reb Zalman (as he is called) tells a story of his childhood. He saw his father with tears in his eyes. "Why are you crying, Papa?" he asked. "Who hit you?"

"Nobody hit me," he replied, "I just talked to God."

"Oh," Zalman said. "Does it hurt when you talk to God?"

"No, it doesn't hurt," answered his father. "I'm just sad because I've waited so long."

Reb Zalman emphasizes a feeling approach to prayer, saying, "Instead of an intellectual struggle with all the logical implications of the act of prayer," he seeks a "heart-centered, feeling way, one that is open and inviting of experience." For him, theology is "the afterthought of the believer." Spiritual and emotional experience comes first, and then we begin to construct our intellectual concepts of God.

For Reb Zalman, the Siddur (the prayerbook) and the Psalms are treasure-troves of Jewish prayer. But "like a coloring book," they "just give us the outlines." When our spouse says, "I love you," for the thousandth time, he isn't trying to give us new information. He is conveying a feeling. Thus it is with prayer. Reb Zalman states, "We're not trying to lay the same old praises at the feet of some old man in the sky; we're trying to connect with a being, a will, a love radiating out from the center of the universe-not the astrophysical center but the spiritual center-that can nourish something deep in our souls, something that has gotten very hungry among us."

Reb Zalman urges us to make prayer, whether private prayer in our own words or prayer from the Siddur, an individualized and emotional experience. Saying every word in the book isn't important. Focusing on one phrase or image of a prayer can lead us to connect with God. In fact, we should start with our own words, just at various times throughout the day when we have authentic feelings of gratitude, need for support, or a desire for guidance.

We have looked at modern prayer from the intellectual viewpoint of Reconstructionism and the emotional approach of Renewal. Prayer can also be approached spiritually, as a form of meditation. An Orthodox rabbi, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, wrote, "Jewish Meditation-A Practical Guide," in which he states that the prayers in our siddur were intended as meditative experiences. He was one of the first contemporary teachers to emphasize Jewish meditation, which is also popular in Jewish Renewal circles. There are many books and resources on Jewish meditation, and I have taught classes at CBI on Jewish mysticism and meditation as well as begun to incorporate a simple meditation at the beginning of our Shabbat morning services. By meditating, we open ourselves to higher, more expansive states of consciousness.

Once we practice the ability to enter those states, we will slip into them more readily in times of prayer, whether of spontaneous prayer, prayer with a partner (such as prayers for healing) or prayer at services. Prayer can become a time of expanded consciousness that helps us to grow spiritually and that changes and improves us as human beings.

Clearly, meaningful and personal prayer is a central part of Jewish tradition. Although many of us have theological doubts, that doesn't mean that we can't pray. We can choose an intellectual approach, an emotional approach, or a spiritual or a meditative approach to prayer at different times and circumstances. The Days of Awe teach us that insights that we gain in prayer can motivate and enhance our growth in teshuvah (renewal and repentance) and in tzedakah (righteous and generous living).

Are Jews allowed to pray? We are-if we give ourselves permission. Prayer can challenge us to grow, provide spiritual and emotional comfort and healing, and help us to attain higher awareness. My prayer is that each of us will take the time to pray and will find the style and approach to Jewish prayer that is most authentic and meaningful to us in the year ahead. Amen.