Is "storming the heavens" a Jewish approach to prayer?

Requests to pray for sick friends and relatives – and even for people who I’m pretty sure I’ve never met – have become a regular feature of my social media in recent years. This phenomenon can certainly be said to have advantages: increasing the pool of people praying while enhancing our feeling of care and concern for our unfortunate brethren.

One phrase which has started to feature with increasing regularity, however, has been causing me considerable discomfort. “Let’s storm the Heavens with our prayers!”. This battle-cry did not seem wholly consistent with what I understand to be a Jewish approach to prayer. While it is true that certain prophets, such as Avraham, have been known to question God’s actions, this came from a place of humility rather entitled demanding. Yesterday’s parashah saw Aharon seemingly praised for humbly accepted his fate rather than petitioning God. In the Talmud meanwhile, Choni Hame’agel is heavily criticised for his strongly worded and irreverent insistence that God must provide rain for the Jewish people.

More broadly, Judaism Reclaimed examines the approaches to prayer of Rambam and Rabbi S. R. Hirsch who understand its function as being primarily to forge and maintain a relationship with God and improve our understanding of him rather than to try and force Him to comply with our demands.

I set out therefore to investigate the origin of this troubling phrase. Imagine my surprise when I discovered not only that it has firmly Christian roots, but that it has also been the subject of inter-denominational debate among Christians. The following was written by a Catholic Friar:

“…we see Protestant spiritual terminology adopted by Catholics, such as “storming heaven with prayers.” What this means is that when you pray, you have to do so in a bold and confident manner and seeing our urgency, God will not turn down our request. In modern lingo, some might say, “Pray big or go home.” Storming a castle in the Middle Ages meant that a king was defeated and forced to submit to the will of his conquerors. So, in like manner, “storming heaven with prayers” suggests that we can force the hand of God and demand that His divine will conform to my will. This is not the nature of Catholic prayer.

When we pray as Catholics, we remember the proper order: God is our Father, we are His children. This means that we believe He knows what is best for us and our salvation and we accept this with humility and faith. We always pray with divine providence in mind, repeating over and over again the words of the Our Father: “Thy will be done.” When we pray, we believe that we are merely asking for blessings that God has waiting for us for all eternity. We can’t change the divine will by “storming heaven with prayers…”

My feeling is that Judaism would broadly concur with this critique of the “Storming the Heavens” model of prayer, and gravitate instead towards “hatzne’a lechet im Hashem” (walking modestly with God) suggested by the prophet Micha. In the concluding words of the Avinu Malkeinu prayer:

“Our Father, Our King, be gracious with us and answer us though we have no worthy deeds; treat us with charity and kindness and save us.”

First posted on Facebook 16 April 2023, here.