Reflecting on Judaism

Dear rabbi
 Thank you for inviting me to continue exchanging views on the subject of Prayer. You must be almost unique among your orthodox colleagues in so far as you are prepared to discuss our religion and our beliefs and not just pontificate about them as many of your colleagues do. Why their reluctance?  This is my further contribution. I will try to define Prayer and put it in its historical context, according to my understanding.

 To my mind there are two forms of prayer; the first, Praise and Thanksgiving the second, Petitional. Of the first form some are, as you say, considered to be obligatory, you call them ‘Teffila DeOrayta’ i.e. Prayers commanded by the Torah. Many others, including the Psalms are ancient, were written by our Poets and Songsters, have been embraced by us and form part of our inheritance and culture but, presumably, are not Teffila DeOrayta. They should be said as and when considered appropriate. I believe it is right and proper to give praise and thanks.

Petitional Prayers can be sub divided into two categories. The first, prayers requesting God to intervene directly and without an intermediary; an example of this is when He caused Miriam to contract Leprosy and cured her only when requested by Moses. In this instance, God inflicted her and then God cured her without the intervention of Man; a miracle. I cannot argue against this concept of Petitional Prayer but miraculous occurrences of this nature were rare. The early Rabbis and Jewish philosophers were extremely unhappy about the concept of Miracles, the reversing of God’s Natural Laws, and the Talmud suggests that the Era of Miracles has long ceased.  It would follow that such Prayers, asking God for miracles, are ineffective.

 The second form of Petitional prayer is when people pray for an outcome which is the consequence of their own or other persons Freewill behaviour. Here again, in such circumstances, Petitional Prayer can be no more than a comfort. God, having decided to grant Man Freewill, it is Man, not God, who is responsible for the results of such Freewill behaviour. God does not predetermine the outcome. According to my understanding, therefore, even your prayer ‘Dear God, I desperately want this, and I can only hope that you do too, but of course if not, I fully understand’ has little practical value.   

 Many will try to argue that God, who has granted Man Freewill might, somehow or other, influence how Man uses it. It is like suggesting that ‘the woman is little bit pregnant’. Freewill is either absolute or it isn’t Freewill. I have agonised over this problem for many years and have set out the reasons for my conclusions in my essay ‘Where was God when …..?’.

 I have suggested that Petitional Prayer in either form does little more than give comfort to the petitioner and is not effective. One can react and say, so what! If it gives comfort to those who believe in the Power of Prayer, let it be! The problem with this reaction is that when people look around the world and see the overwhelming mass of Human suffering, from whatever cause; (need I spell it out?) they become disillusioned. I won’t ask you to reconcile this suffering with the 13 Attributes of God.

 Fewer and fewer in Western Society believe in the power of prayer; fewer and fewer believe in the God to Whom they have been taught to pray for His intervention and help.  Some while ago a survey was carried out at one of the United Synagogues south of London and the results showed that less than 50% of those who regularly attend believed that there is a God.  
 
 So what is the historical context of Prayer? All agree that apart from Teffillot such as Teffila DeOrayta and prayers such as that of Moses regarding Miriam, Prayer is a substitute for Temple Sacrifices. So what was the nature of Prayer before the destruction of the Second Temple and the introduction of Prayer, say between 1200BCE and 70CE? There may be a clue in the story of High Priest Eli and Hannah recorded in the Book of Samuel. If today a Minister of Religion walked into a House of Prayer and saw a woman ‘who spoke in her heart, her lips only moved’ the Minister would know that she was praying; it is not an uncommon occurrence. However when the Priest Eli saw Hannah in the Temple, under just such circumstances, he thought she was drunk and he told her so. This would indicate that petitional prayer was then not common.

 Following the destruction of the First Temple and the exile of the Jews to Babylon and elsewhere, Jews formed Community Centres, Battai Kenesset, which served as a Cohesive for the exiles. These centres were used for various purposes, social, study and prayer. Prayers were few in number, comprised mostly psalms, and were not then central to the Community’s activities.  Synagogues, Battai Teffilla, as centres of Prayer, were not established till some centuries later.

 At this stage of the discussion I am reminded of the saying ‘If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.’ I realise that am being entirely negative. Thus far I have suggested that neither form of Petitional Prayer is effective other than it gives comfort to some petitioners and have also suggested that the totality of Prayers today stands no comparison to the few prayers of yesteryear, a period closer to the Giving of the Torah. At the time of the First Temple, on Yom Kippur, girls dressed in white, danced in the fields looking for a husband. Today we treat it as a solemn day, say numerous prayers, many of them written by medieval Mystics and Poets. We may well ask, ‘which version of Yom Kippur does God want’? You suggest that prayer time can be, and is for you, reflective time and I agree but how much reflective time can a person want or use and do the rabbis, openly, offer it as an alternative? 

 You quote Rambam as saying that prayer and the synagogue were the cohesive elements in his day but did he have 3 to 4 hour-long services in mind? I realise that the Synagogue is today’s Cohesive and without it Jewry would be in an even worse state than it is. But if we accept that Prayer is not the inspiration that it was and the Synagogue is not serving the Community as well as it should, see for example the out-marriage rate, what can be done to improve matters? Let me allow my imagination to run wild.

 We have agreed that Prayer is the substitute for sacrifice but may I suggest it is a poor substitute. If, in Temple times, people wanted to say thank you or sorry, they brought a sacrifice. A Sacrifice costs money and was a tangible expression of their feelings. Today we say ‘Sorry God or Thank you God’ and it costs nothing. Talk is cheap and therefore freely available. I would not like to see animal sacrifices return but how about making contributions to charity the official Jewish substitute for sacrifice/prayer? However I realise that this alone would not act as an adhesive for the community. Some might say that this would allow people neither to donate nor pray but is this different to temple times?  

 I do not know the order of service among the Muslims in their Mosques but I am impressed by their adherence to their 5 minute 5 times-a-day personal prayer service. When I had private lessons, which stretched over some twenty five years, with a well known and knowledgeable rabbi he taught me that if I were to put on my teffillin each morning and say only the Shema I am ‘Yotzer’ for Shacharit; a concept, he said, not to be disseminated. Suppose we were to emulate the Muslims and encourage our community to say the Shema three times a day, a Declaration of Faith, with tephillin in the morning, whilst maintaining our basic Moral Teachings, Traditions and Mitzvoth, would this make our religion more acceptable to the masses, encouraging them to participate, as in Temple Times, without breaching the basic tenets of our faith? Those who want the full prayer service can maintain the option.

 Of course this will never happen but what do you think? I submit these ideas as a basis for discussion only. 

 Can you help dig me out of my hole? With the out-marriage problem reaching overwhelming proportions our leaders should sit down and think through a solution.  Over to you.
 Yours Sincerely,