May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable before You, Adonai, my Rock and my Redeemer.THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER
—PSALM 19:15
The following is a famous story told by the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism:
Imagine a person whose business takes him through many streets and across the city's business district all day long. As a result, he almost forgets that there is a Maker of the world. Only when it is the fixed time for afternoon prayers does he remember. He says to himself, "I must pray now." Then, from the bottom of his heart, along with his prayers, he heaves a deep sigh. He feels bad that he has spent his entire day focused on unimportant things. This attitude permeates each of his prayers. God holds this man very dear: his prayer pierces the heavens.1
Prayer helps us, Jews and Christians, make a personal connection to God. It enables us to enter into a sacred relationship with the divine and then to nurture that relationship through regular and ongoing dialogue. Prayer provides us with the foundation that makes our spiritual journey possible. Coming to know God through this relationship is probably the most challenging but also the most rewarding part of the journey. Not only does prayer help us grow closer to God but it also helps us face and meet the challenges of daily living. In so doing, prayer gives us a chance to reach beyond ourselves and encounter the Divine.
Why pray? There is an old Jewish adage that should be applied to this subject and perhaps just about every word of this book: for every two Jews you will find three opinions. It would be impossible to specify all the purposes of Jewish prayer. The primary purpose is to fulfill the obligation to serve God that is expressed in Exodus 23:25: "And you shall serve the Lord your God." While this act of service once included the Temple sacrifice, its reference today is primarily prayer. Jewish thinkers throughout the millennia have offered a variety of perspectives. Nonetheless, in this chapter, we will describe some of the basic views on the goals of prayer and how prayer functions in Jewish tradition.
The first view holds that the purpose of Jewish prayer is to assess how well you're doing in God's eyes. This comes from the Hebrew word for prayer itself, tefillah [tefiˈla]. Grammatically speaking, the word tefillah is in the reflexive form, meaning that it refers to something that you do to yourself. Thus, prayer becomes a vehicle for personal assessment, which can take the form of introspection and self-evaluation. Prayer means measuring your thoughts and actions and assessing where you can better yourself and come closer to acting in accordance with God. This takes on heightened meaning around the time of the Jewish High Holidays – Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – where there is a great emphasis on figuring out where you have gone astray over the previous year and repenting for those actions.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, considered one of the great rabbis of the twentieth century, holds a completely different view of the goal of Jewish prayer. For Heschel, prayer is not about judging yourself; rather, it is solely about praising God. In an interview Heschel gave before he died, he said, "The primary purpose of prayer [in Jewish tradition] is not to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song. Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved. Prayer is not requesting. There is a partnership of God and man."2
Yet another view of Jewish prayer sees the goal as transcending the gulf between heaven and earth by transcending your ego. This view is central to Hasidic Judaism. In this view, what stands between people and God is the ego – our sense of self – and the goal of prayer is to subsume our consciousness of the self into the universal consciousness of the Divine. Two noted scholars of Hasidism put it this way: "The true goal of the worshipper is to enter the world where 'one may come to transcend time,' where 'distinctions between life and death, land and sea, have lost their meaning.' The worshipper seeks to 'concentrate so fully on prayer that one no longer is aware of the self... to step outside the body's limits.'"3
Another purpose of Jewish prayer comes directly from the Bible: prayer as a means of asking God to fulfill our needs. This may be considered the simplest and most elemental purpose of prayer. The Torah is replete with examples of petitionary prayers to God. For example, Moses petitions God on his sister Miriam's behalf after she has been stricken with leprosy: "Please, God, pray heal her!" (Numbers 12:13). The Torah says that "Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was barren; and the Lord responded to his plea" (Genesis 25:21). Abraham's servant prays God for the successful completion of his mission, "O Lord, God of my master Abraham, grant me good fortune this day" (Genesis 24:12). Petitionary pleas are central to Jewish prayer. Traditional Jewish belief maintains that God is "One who hearkens to prayer"; that is, God will respond to our appeals. Prayers for healing, good health, wisdom, and safe journeys are all petitionary prayers that figure prominently in Jewish worship. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the leader of modern Orthodox Judaism for many years, said that prayer was the genuine articulation of our needs, so that we could bring those needs to God's attention and ask for help.
As you can see from this brief overview of the various Jewish views of prayer, some focus on ourselves and our needs; some focus solely on praise and thankfulness to God; and some (such as the prayer said on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement) act as confessions before God. All these views are authentic and mainstream. Many Jews hold these perspectives simultaneously. Nevertheless, while our approach to prayer may be different, our actual prayers – their words and structure – have remained relatively constant for millennia.
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1. Adapted from Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters (Schocken Books, 1975), 69.
2. Quoted in Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, ed. Susannah Heschel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), 397.
3. Arthur Green and Barry Holz, eds. and trans., Your Word Is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1993), 12.
