As we ready ourselves for the upcoming Rosh Hashanah shul-marathon, it is striking how much the Jewish new year is characterised and dominated by prayer. Yet when we set aside the haunting traditional melodies and important communal aspects of the Rosh Hashanah services, the concept of praying to God is one that many people seem to find challenging.
There are two primary problems that people sometimes have with prayer. The first is from a rationalist perspective: Why do I need to pray? Does God not know what I want and need better than I do? Am I seeking to change God’s mind? Cause a Perfect Being to alter His plans?
Various rational responses have been developed in response to these sorts of questions. Judaism Reclaimed examines those of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch and Rambam.
R’ Hirsch notes that the Hebrew term to pray lehitpallel is in the reflexive form, meaning that it focuses inwards as an action performed for oneself. He continues that the focus of communal prayer from a fixed prayer-book liturgy is primarily intended:
to infuse oneself with Divine ideas. Jewish prayer is not an outpouring from within oneself; rather it means infusing the heart with truths that come from outside of oneself. If prayer were merely an expression of what the heart already feels, prescribed prayer…at fixed times would be absurd. For such prayer would assume that certain emotions could be present on demand at predetermined times. Instead, “hitpallel” means to steep oneself with lasting, eternal truths because they are likely to fade away from one’s consciousness.
This view sees prayer primarily as an educational tool which serves to guide one’s thoughts and perspective towards a more elevated religious viewpoint. In the specific context of Rosh Hashanah, it would mean starting the year with a two-day humble meditation on what it means to “appoint God as king”, and appreciating both the individual and communal responsibilities that arise from such a realisation when planning our year ahead.
A key function of prayer, according to Rambam’s understanding, is helping human beings form, maintain and improve this relationship with God. He advises in the third section of Guide to the Perplexed:
Know that the intended function of all of these acts of worship such as reading from the Law and prayer and performing other commandments is only to train one to be involved in the commands of God and to free oneself from worldly matters …You should empty your thoughts of all matters when you read the Shema and pray
Prayer provides a crucial (and regular) opportunity for people to unburden their minds and transcend the stresses and strains that tie them down in day-to-day life. Instead they are able to focus their mind on their relationship with God and see their life in that context. A relationship which, in its own right, is understood to enhance the providential input one can expect to receive in one’s life.
A second aspect of prayer that people sometimes struggle with is the difficulty in not knowing how a prayer has been received. Has the prayer been answered? How do I even know if God is taking any notice?
While the rationalist templates of Rambam and R’ Hirsch that we have described offer some degree of function of prayer regardless of how it received, this remains quite distant from the popular idea of prayer with which most people are likely to be entering shul later this week.
This suggests that there remains a further function of prayer. The biblical template in which key characters such as Hannah – who we read of over Rosh Hashanah – cry out to God in pain for many years, pouring out their heartfelt troubles in prayer. Hannah’s prayer, which is a prototype upon which Jewish law has constructed various features of contemporary prayer, reaches beyond our limited rationalisations of the utility of prayer and how we believe a Perfect Being is able to relate to us.
Rambam places great emphasis upon the fact that we cannot fathom the very nature of God’s knowledge, and deems His providential interactions with the physical world to be one of the secrets of the Torah. While Rambam emphasises that the primary function of prayer is its role in strengthening the crucial relationship between God and humanity, he also considers it to be critically important that the nation cry out in prayer to God over any calamity which befalls them.
In conclusion, I would suggest that the optimum approach to prayer integrates all of these different components and approaches. The primal cry out to God – the inexpressibly powerful feelings represented by the Shofar’s cry – represents the most basic biblical features of emptying one’s soul to God. But our prayers should not be limited to our personal feeling that God is responding by providing what we perceive to be our needs. And our assessment of prayer’s utility should not be entirely dependent on its ability to satisfy us emotionally.
To this end we must bear in mind the approaches of Rambam and R’ Hirsch that the very act of standing before God and praying reinforces important religious principles within our consciousness, and allows us to maintain and strengthen our relationship with God for the upcoming year.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all the readers of this group a Shana Tova – a wonderful happy and healthy new year in which all their prayers are answered, and in which their relationship with God is meaningfully and profoundly developed.
First posted to Facebook 5 September 2021, here.
