Reflecting on Judaism

Religion without Prayer, is it unthinkable?

I received Rabbi Dr. Jeremy Rosen's e-mail letter of the 29th march 2007 and 'Slavery' was its subject. Rabbi Rosen circulates letters on a regular basis and they are always interesting and thought provoking. This one was no exception. He wrote:-.

"You may wonder why, if the Bible was Divinely Inspired, it couldn't try to change peoples' attitudes and ban slavery outright. Maimonides gives a relevant answer with regard to sacrifices in his 'Guide to the Perplexed'. He says that the Bible tried to wean humanity gently off its idolatrous and inhumane practices. It could not have insisted on too radical a change because the human mind would not have been able to grasp it. So to have created a religion in those days without sacrifices would have been as unthinkable as creating a religion thousands of years later without prayer."

Although religion without prayer might be unthinkable, what kind of prayer does Rabbi Rosen have in mind, for as I will try to show below, not all prayers are of equal importance? It might be a Petitional, Praising or Thanks-giving prayer; either Spontaneous or Formal. If formal how much formal prayer is needed?

The efficacy of prayer has long troubled me. Rabbis and Jewish philosophers have recognised the tensions which exist between those who hold the opinion that a particular event is providential and those whose opinion is that such event was, or may have been, the result of the exercise, by Man, of his freewill. Our prayer books contain many petitional prayers asking that God intervene, thereby assuming that by reciting such prayers what has happened, or what we want to happen, is providential.

The late Chief Rabbi, Lord Jakobovits, in the foreword to the Singers Prayer Book, 1990 edition, page xvi, contemplated "The Jewish idea of prayer" and strongly disapproves of petitional prayers. He wrote:-

"What purpose can be served by formulating our pleas to God? Does the all-knowing God, who knows our needs better than we do, require their articulation of what we feel in our hearts? Still more difficult theologically, how can we hope by prayer to change His will? Our very belief in the efficacy of our petitions would seem to challenge God's immutability, and even questions His justice, since we should assume that whatever fate He decrees for man is essentially just; why, therefore, do we seek to reverse it?"

"But such questions, he continued, are based on a false, indeed pagan, understanding of prayer as a means of pacifying and propitiating the deity and thus of earning its favours. It was against these perverse notions that the Hebrew Prophets directed their denunciations so fiercely when they fulminated against the heathen form of sacrifices, the original form of worship later replaced by prayer."

"Like sacrifices, prayer is intended to change man not God. Its purpose is to cultivate a contrite heart, to promote feelings of humility and inadequacy in man, whilst encouraging reliance on Divine assistance. Through prayer, the worshipper becomes chastened, gains moral strength and intensifies the quest of spirituality, thereby turning into a person worthy of response to his pleas."

From this extract I understand that Chief Rabbi Jakobovitz believed that all happenings are providential; that it is wrong to pray to God for change but that through genuine prayer and proper behaviour God may reconsider.

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks In his book 'To Heal a Fractured World' takes a view very different to that of Chief Rabbi Jakobovitz. He starts by admitting that at the heart of the story he tells is a difficult idea but he has tried to make it as simple and as readable as he could. He wrote, 'There is little that is self evident in the interpretations I offer. They can be challenged at almost any point.'

There are a number of themes running through the book but the main one, as I understand it, is that Man has absolute Freewill and freedom of action. He wrote: - 'God trusts us and empowers us. That means necessarily that He empowers us to make mistakes, to get it wrong. That is what it is to be human and God does not ask us to be superhuman.' 'To believe that we are accountable to no one, or that God will somehow intervene to save us from ourselves, is consistent but irresponsible, and this is not how I read my faith or understand the human condition'

Rabbi Sacks recognises the inequalities in the world, poverty, illness, homelessness, starvation, unemployment and so forth. How could he not? But, he continues 'There is nothing inevitable or divinely willed about social and economic inequality. Judaism rejects the almost universal belief, in antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages, that hierarchy and divisions of class are written into the structure of society. What human beings have created, human beings can rectify.' Indeed, he argues, the Laws of the Torah put an obligation, and the responsibility, on us to rectify them. The ethics of responsibility is the subtitle of the book.

He then allocates several chapters to subjects such as, Charity as Justice, Love as Deed, Sanctifying the Name, all illustrating how you and I, not God, must undertake the task of healing this world's fractures.

One aspect of the book that surprised me is that it contains little mention of 'Prayer'. The subject is not even listed in the index of the book and only one aspect of prayer is mentioned throughout, namely, in connection with Abraham's argument with God to save the people of Sodom. Rabbi Sacks calls this argument a prayer, which I suppose it is in a way. But this is a special kind of prayer for it asks God himself not to act unjustly, it does not ask God to intervene in Mans' Freewill behaviour. I can understand this omission for Chief Rabbi Sacks believes without qualification, as stated above, that God does not intervene in Mans' Freewill acts. It follows that he believes that Petitional prayer is therefore ineffective in any fracture that is a result of Man's freewill action. But his belief runs counter to the many prayers which are to be found throughout our prayer books.

I wonder how Chief Rabbi Sacks reconciles his belief that Man is responsible for this Fractured World and has the responsibility for healing it with his apparent conflicting belief namely, that happenings are providential. In his essay, published in the 2006 edition of the Singers Prayer Book title 'Understanding Jewish Prayer', he states his belief that God does answer prayer. To understand this conflict I can only assume that in his book he is referring to those things that Man has fractured by the exercise of his Freewill whereas in his prayer book essay he is referring to those happenings which were not caused by Man's Freewill behaviour. Is he here referring to miracles; the setting aside of His natural laws?

Professor Stefan C. Reif' is the Director of Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge; Head of Oriental Division, Cambridge University Library; Professor of Medieval Studies, Cambridge. In his book 'Judaism and Hebrew prayer' he quotes authorities to show that obligatory worship was a Temple activity only and that there were no communal prayer services inside Palestine before the destruction of the Jerusalem shrine. It is generally agreed that here, communal prayer came into being as a substitute for the Temple sacrifices. He does stress (page 48f) that communal services existed, in Battai Knesset, among some sects outside Palestine just before this period. Jews attended them to do business, study and read the Torah, pray and discuss matters of general interest.

He explained that Personal prayers have always existed but not all of the early sages agreed that communal prayer services were an appropriate substitute for the sacrifices. When the concept of communal prayer services was generally accepted, its liturgy was arrived at during the Talmudic period by consensus. It probably comprised the Shema, the Ten Commandments, the priestly blessings, the first and last three paragraphs of the Amida; short passages from the Torah; psalms and perhaps, other readings. For R. Joshua Ben Levi, it was sufficient to thank God in the morning for bringing him through the night; To thank God in the evening for allowing him to see the sunset; To beg God in the evening to bring him through the next night (page 102). I have tried to summarise Prof. Reif's detailed discussion on prayer as accurately as I can and hope I have done him justice.

Rabbi Dr. Jeffrey Cohen was, until his recent retirement, a Senior Minister in the United Synagogue and Minister of the Stanmore Synagogue. In his book 'Horizons of Jewish Prayer' he sets out the history of early Jewish prayer in very similar terms to those described by Prof. Reif. He agrees Prof. Reif's description of likely contents of Talmudic, post temple, synagogue services namely, the Shema, the Ten Commandments, the priestly blessings, the first and last three paragraphs of the Amida; short passages from the Torah; psalms and perhaps, other readings. He makes some very interesting additional comments of which I will quote, or paraphrase, just a few.

• Even before the time of Abram people prayed, and although the sages attributed to our patriarchs the introduction of the daily prayer it does not mean that from their day onward statuary prayers were instituted. Prayer was entirely personal and spontaneous.
• There was no congregational singing or participation in prayer on the part of visitors or lay worshipers at the first Temple.
• Some time before the period of Eli, the High Priest, the need and stimulus for prayer at the individual level lapsed during which period the common folk rarely offered up their own prayers.
• Lengthy personal prayers were also discouraged at that time. Rabbi Cohen quotes Isaiah 1:15, speaking in God's name, castigating a sinful Israel by saying:-
  "When you lift up your hands outspread in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Though you offer countless prayers, I will not listen."
• As long as the second Temple was in existence and to some extent even afterwards, the synagogue never attempted to cast itself in an independent spiritual or even liturgical mould.
• *The very first compilation of prayer, which occupied a mere four pages of print, was conceived in the 9th Century C.E.

From the writings of the above quoted authorities we can see that from the time of our patriarchs (circa 1900 BCE) until two hundred years after the destruction of the second temple, a period of some 2200 years, private prayer, if said at all, was the norm whilst communal prayer services were either rare or virtually non existent. We have seen that the late Chief Rabbi Jakobovitz disapproved of petitional prayers other than to help us improve ourselves whilst Chief Rabbi Sacks thinks that petitional prayers are pointless if they are requesting God to intervene and clear up the social, economic & inequality mess made by Man.

I found only two references to prayer in the Mishnah. The first quotes R. Eliezer as saying 'He who makes prayer a fixed task, his prayer is no supplication'. The second quotes R. Simeion as saying 'When thou prayest make not thy prayer a fixed form'. So why is it that our rabbis, who have always sought inspiration from the Talmudic rabbis, have over the centuries, disregarded them and gradually introduced the lengthy and then the even more lengthy statutory services we experience today?

Rabbi Cohen starts his book by saying "The urge to express in words such deep emotions such as fear, gratitude, confidence, happiness, pain, sorrow and love, is an instinctive one." I can understand this statement because we read of persons who claim to be atheists but who, when in danger, cry out to God for help. But why should we, and the rabbis, assume that the prolonged services of today are more acceptable to God than were the early simple prayers, and the later simple services, as described by Professor Reif and Rabbi Cohen, which existed from the time of our patriarchs till well into the Talmudic age.

Why should we think that God even wants these lengthy services? I referred to various compilations of the 613 Torah commandments including the compilation of Maimonides. It is surprising how few prayers were commanded; in fact only two. The first is Deut. 8:10 where it says 'eat, be satisfied and bless the Lord' and the second Duet 6:7 where it commands us to say the Shema several times a day. There are also further verses which tell us to serve God which the rabbis, many hundreds of years after Sinai, interpreted 'serve' as meaning 'prayer'.

I suggest that the rabbis have stretched this interpretation to its limit. Had 'serve' meant ''prayer' then there would have been historical mention of regular praying following the receiving of the Torah. But we have learned from both Prof. Reif and Rabbi Cohen that this was not the case. I think it is more likely that since the Torah gave 613 commandments including those concerned with sacrifices, the command to serve God simply means that we should fulfil our duties in respect of them. Chief Rabbi Sacks mentions that there are only 140 personal prayers, apart from the psalms, recorded in the whole of the bible.

Marvin Fox, a contemporary interpreter of Maimonides, in his book "Interpreting Maimonides" explains Maimonides' attitude to petitional prayer as follows:-

He first raises the question, what of the Biblical passages in which God is petitioned and responds?" He replies, "We must first consider how Maimonides deals with the notion of God's response to prayer. Given his severe strictures against the doctrine that God is subject to any affections, together with his view of God as utterly unlike man and utterly without relations to anything outside Himself, it is obvious that petitionary prayer can hardly be interpreted by Maimonides in accordance with the common religious view. In fact, he takes a position that is to say the least, daring. This position, according to some, may well be open to charges of destroying the foundations of religious faith. Maimonides' theory is that the Torah at times adopts certain metaphysically unsound teachings, because they are useful means for leading men to desirable ends that cannot be achieved otherwise."

In his prayer book essay Chief Rabbi Sacks suggests that prayer is to the soul what food is to the body. The body has a certain maximum capacity for food. It probably had a similar maximum capacity 2000 years ago. But whereas Man's food capacity has remained stable over the centuries the rabbis have increased our prayers, over the same period, many hundred fold, without considering whether the soul has increased its capacity to digest them.

So let us examine some of the prayers being offered as 'Food for the Soul'

The 'Pesukai d'Zimra' service is a short service said before the main morning service begins. It covers some 20 pages, including psalms, and is gabbled off in as many minutes. Can this be considered praying? Or take usual daily morning service which covers some 70/80 pages and which is usually completed in under an hour. Can this be considered praying? Can these prayers, said so hurriedly, really be considered 'Food for the Soul?

We can now revert to the heading of this essay prompted by Rabbi Rosen's e-mail, 'Religion without prayer is it unthinkable?' My answer is 'Yes! I do believe that religion without prayer is unthinkable', but it would be much more meaningful with far, far fewer, and much shorter, fixed prayers as was the practise in the early days, probably up to the time of Maimonides.