Those of us who pray regularly can’t help but ask whether prayer works, as if “works” is defined by whether the entire universe bent to your wishes and desires, based on your simple request.
By AHARON E. WEXLERJudaism’s main goal is to make us God-aware – prayer is just the low-hanging fruit to that end(photo credit: NEEDPIX.COM)
Those of us who pray regularly can’t help but ask whether prayer works, as if “works” is defined by whether the entire universe bent to your wishes and desires, based on your simple request.Christian theologian C.S. Lewis explained the problem of prayer best by asking why an all-knowing God would need me to tell Him what to do, and why an all-good God would need me to prompt Him to do the right thing.Lewis went on to explain that even the word “work” is problematic, as if prayer should function “as if it were magic or a machine,” reacting to causes and effects.If you think about petitionary prayers, the kind that ask God for things or to act a certain way, by definition it must be that sometimes they are granted and sometimes they are not. If prayer always yields the desired outcome of the petitioner, this would mean that the person praying is the one with real power, not God. If we could compel God with our requests, God would be subservient to us. Yes, He would be stronger, but strength is not power. Imagine an old king who had a young, strong and muscular bodyguard. The bodyguard is clearly stronger than the king, but since the king compels the bodyguard, he is the more powerful one. So it cannot work that way.Strength and power both lie with God. What, then, is the purpose of prayer in general and petitionary prayer in particular – especially since we are commanded to pray?REQUESTING THINGS in prayer has two goals. The first is to lend dignity to man, to give us a part and role to play in God’s plan. The second is to give us reason to approach God. As Lewis explains, the real purpose of prayer is to stand in the divine presence.That’s really it – communing with God. When I take three steps back and then three steps forward for the Amida prayer, I know I am standing in the exact same place! I didn’t go anywhere, but I did enter another dimension, a dimension of the divine. Now I can just stand there and just bask in the divine presence.But how long can that really last? And how many times a day can I really pull that off?Some of the most romantic moments I had with my wife before we were married were when we stared into each other’s eyes, saying nothing, communicating everything. The problem is that you can stare for only so long before things get awkward. This is why couples have dates. When someone asks another person to go out for coffee, or dinner, or a movie, the purpose of the coffee is to act as the fig leaf for the real intention of just spending time together.In order to avoid the awkwardness of just standing in the divine presence, God allows us to praise Him and ask Him for things, to give content to our meeting. But these requests are not the goal.
Judaism’s main goal is to make us God-aware. Prayer is just the low-hanging fruit to that end. Every mitzvah we do is meant to make us conscious of God in our lives. Even the recital of brachot, blessings.I remember being a kid in yeshiva, and the rabbi saying (cue the singsong voice) “If you eat without making a bracha, it is if you are stealing from God.”As I got older, I realized that the rabbi was wrong. One cannot steal food from God. God owes us food. It is ours by right. When parents bring a child into this world, they are forced, legally and morally, to feed this child. If they do not, the parent is rightfully labeled a monster and thrown in jail. God, too, as our Father, owes us food. But the food God owes us is the bare minimum – plain oatmeal, without the cinnamon and sugar. God owes us overcooked noodles. God owes us stale bread, mealy apples, government cheese and gross fish sticks. That’s it, the barest minimum of nutrition needed to sustain our physical bodies. God does not owe us the wonderful gift of pizza! (Even when it’s bad, it’s good!)When I recite a bracha before eating a ripe delicious strawberry, I am making what Rabbi A.J. Heschel called a statement of “wow!” We are not blessing God per se; rather, we are making an exclamation of sorts. “Blessed are you, God, King of the universe, Who created fruit from the ground!” That’s right! This was just dirt, and now it is an amazing strawberry. When I eat a Pink Lady apple, I recite the blessing “Blessed are you, God, King of the universe, Who created the fruit of the tree!” Yep! Just a few months ago, this was a piece of wood, and now it is a delicious fruit. Isn’t that fantastic?! Ben & Jerry turned warm cow lactation into ice cream! That is something to be celebrated!One of the struggles we have in maintaining a religious life is not falling into routine. The regimented life of Torah observance, with its daily, weekly and yearly demands, makes it very easy to lose the excitement for the mitzvot. Even the great sages of the Talmud warned us not to make one’s prayers “set.” How many of us approach Mincha, the afternoon prayer, by mentally searching for the right cassette to put into our brains, and then press play? I often find myself bowing for “Modim” with no memory of how I got there.Heschel’s approach of finding the “wow!” can help us turn our mindlessness into mindfulness. Isn’t that what the rabbis were really talking about when they demanded that mitzvot need kavana (intent)?The writer holds a doctorate in Jewish philosophy and teaches in post-high-school yeshivot and midrashot in Jerusalem.
