Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

What you pray, whether you pray, depends upon what you expect of prayer. Different answers arise out of different expectations, and expectations in turn reflect different theologies. What role does God and the worshipper play in prayer?

The conflict of expectations is not a modern one. It is evident in the discussions of the rabbis within the Talmudic tradition. In modern form, it is presented with incisive wit by the modern Jewish writer, Y. L. Peretz:

On the Sabbath morning Berel naturally proposes that his son accompany him to the Synagogue to davven.

"Father, I won't go," answers the new doctor.

"What is it, son? Are you ashamed to be seen with me?"

"God forbid, father! What an idea!"

"Is it because you're a doctor and a doctor isn't supposed to pray to God or praise Him?"

"No, that isn't it, father."

"What is it, then?"

"All right, I'll tell you."

The old man puts down his prayer shawl and takes a seat. The young man begins to expound.

"Father, I want you to imagine that you're a rich man; so rich that a few rubles more or less don't mean anything to you."

The father sighs heavily. To see his son through college he had spent the last of his savings, sold the roof over his head, gone into lodgings.

"All right, I'll imagine."

"You're rich, and opposite you lives a poor widow, a poor sick widow, maybe with a lot of children; and she needs help. What would you do?"

"Help her, of course."

"Would you wait for her to come and beg, would you wait for her to fall weeping at your feet?"

"What on earth for? As long as I know..."

"Well, is God better or worse than you?"

"What kind of a question is that?"

"Well!" crows the son triumphantly, "If God is better than you, and he know of Himself what poor, sick people need, do you thing He's going to wait to be asked?"

"M-m-m, yes, but still–-"

"You mean about praising Him?"

"If you like."

"Now, father, how would you like it if someone were to stand up in front of you and start praising you to your face: ‘A fine tailor, a wonderful tailor, an honest tailor. Oh, what a tailor! The true tailor! The only tailor!’"

"It would make me sick of course," said the old man impatiently.

"And why is that? Because you are not foolish, to take pleasure in foolish praise. And you're only a poor human being who can be harmed by blame and helped by praise."

"Yes, but–-"

"No buts, father! No buts! God is wiser than we. Do you think He needs our praise? Do you think He want you to stand up three times daily and tell Him to His face: ‘Oh, good tailor! Oh, wonderful tailor!’"

"What are you talking about?"
"I mean: ‘O good God, O wonderful God, Creator of heaven and earth’ ...doesn't He know it better than you?"

The old man sank into meditation, then suddenly started up!

"You're right!" he exclaimed. "Absolutely right! Still, a Jew has to davven, hasn't he?

UNDERSTANDING BEREL

Berel's answer, "Still, a Jew has to daven" has its own theological logic. Very much like my zayde, Berel understands prayers to be obligatory, mandatory and fixed. For him, the status of prayer is debt–"chov.” To pray is to pay off a debt that is owed. Prayer as debt is a dominant paradigm. Like other debts, this prayer debt has a due date. Payments are to be made on time and there is a penalty for not paying on time. There are definite time parameters within which the prayer debt is to be made. There is a prescribed time for "shacharith,” for "minchah,” and for "maariv.” The opening Mishnah of the Talmudic tractate Berachoth starts with a question about the appropriate time of prayer. "From what time may one recite the sh'ma in the evening?" To pray too early or too late is to fail to fulfill the explicit terms of one's obligation.

The debt is constant. The debtor is indebted for life: morning, noon and night. As a child I remember asking zayde, who, it seemed to me was always praying, whether there was a "time off" from prayers. I wanted to know whether there was a Sabbath, a sort of vacation from davening. He smiled with a "bist azoi zu macht sich azoi" look. "Are you serious or are you playing the fool?" It became clear to me that you pray as long as you breathe. Only after death are you exempt from prayer. As the Psalmist declares, "The dead do not praise Thee, neither any that go down into silence." If you're alive, you pray. Following the analogue with the payment of debt, the prayer obligation does not require special feelings, spontaneity or mood. It is the lender, not the borrower, who is to be satisfied.

I recall watching zayde, in the midst of studying Talmud, davening Minchah. He prayed without closing the Talmud. He prayed and studied at the same time. He knew the prayers by heart. It did not require from him concentration; a debt can be paid without special emotion.

No one better presented the notion of prayer as obligation than the late Professor Isaiah Leibowitz. Referring to prayer, he writes, "As obligatory, it is not what a person desires but what is demanded of him; not prayer initiated by him but one imposed upon him" (Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State, p.30).

Forget mood. Prayer is invariable. As Leibowitz points out, the same prayers without variation are imposed upon the Jew every day of his life, except for the variations of some added prayers of the Sabbath and holidays. Prayer is constant and by and large, does not vary with the mood or need of the worshipper. Prayer is predicated upon the acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. The same benedictions of the Amidah are required of the bridegroom as of the widower, are recited on the day of the wedding and on the day of the funeral.

From this point of view, prayer is pre-eminently theocentric. We do not pray for our sakes, we pray for the sake of God. Prayer is not meant to elevate man's mood, to give expression to his spiritual yearnings, to actualize his potentialities, to move God so that He intervenes on our behalf. Authentic prayer is not for your sake, but for God's sake. Therefore, prayer will never disappoint the worshipper. Prayer always works because it is meant to obey God's demand to pray, not to satisfy human desire nor to derive ulterior benefits. Answering Beryl's son, this position would inform him that all his expectations are wrong headed. You pray because you owe. Leibowitz answers Berel's son in a straightforward manner. The religious Jew throughout his life feels no need to "pour out his complaint before God." He knows that "there is no need to inform the Omniscient of his needs, and despite his understanding that as a frail human he cannot effectively praise and glorify the Almighty.” He prays without the confidence that there is a relation between his prayer and the events which befall him or occur in the history of Israel. If his child falls ill, he consults the physician as would any atheist, not with expectation that God will heal the child. He prays unconditionally, out of duty to a God who owes him nothing, but to whom everything is owed.

Once, it is told, a Chasid came to the Rebbe to explain that because he had a headache he could not pray. The Rebbe answered "And what has the head to do with prayer?" From the Rebbe's point of view, the matter of your state of mind does not excuse you from the mandate that Beryl gave to his son, "Ober davenen darf men doch.” Still, you have to pray.

Against this understanding of prayer as mandatory debt stands a contending notion that insists that prayer has a great deal to do with the life of the petitioner, with his head and with his heart. On this view, prayer is to make the worshipper alive, to register in him the wonders of the world, to refine his moral sensibilities, to lift up his heart, to help him make choices. The intention of prayer has to do with the head and the heart. To pray without the head is like putting on the tefillin of the hand without finding the phylacteries of the head. On this view, prayer requires thought. The liturgical world of petition requires understanding of the nature of the world and of the self. One has to know what is real in the world, what is possible in the world before one can petition God. There is a logic of reasonable expectations in prayer.

A section in the Mishnah 54a Berachoth declares "To cry over the past is to utter a vain prayer." If a man's wife is pregnant and he prays, "God grant that my wife bear a male child,” this is a vain prayer.

If a man is coming home from a journey and he hears cries of distress in the town and he prays "God grant that this is not in my house,” it is a vain prayer. But given the omniscience and omnipotence and benevolence of God, why are such prayers dismissed as vain? Because there is a reality principle in liturgy. Time is irreversible. We do not pray that the deceased be brought to life or that the amputated limb spring a new organ. That runs counter to our knowledge of the reality of God's world order.

In the second illustration of the Mishnah, to pray that your home is not affected in the midst of the conflagration is to pray ruthlessly. It is to pray immorally. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, in his book The Lonely Man of Faith, (p. 37) asserts: "Man should avoid praying for himself alone. The plural form of prayer is of central Halachic significance. When disaster strikes, one must no be immersed completely in his own passionate destiny, thinking exclusively of himself, being concerned only with himself and petitioning God merely for himself. The foundation of efficacious and noble prayer is human solidarity and sympathy..." Soloveitchik continues "Within the prophetic community God takes the initiative: He speaks and man listens. In the prayer community, this initiative belongs to man:  he does the speaking and God listens." For Soloveitchik, the inner life is translated into external facticity. "The world of prayer is man's and God accepts it." Prayer is not narrowly theocentric. It involves human judgment and human needs. Prayer is a covenantal dialogue, more than a contractual debt.

The competing paradigms are shaped by different expectations of prayer. The tensions between them are not consequences of modernity, autonomy, or individualism. They are present in the ancient debates of the rabbis as to the weight to be assigned to "keva" (constancy) and "kavanna" (intention).

Each position follows its own logic of expectations and its own supporting anecdotes. Consider the story told to sustain the importance of structure, obligation and fixity of prayer:

There was a town clock in a small village which everyone looked to in order to adjust his watch. Once the town clock stopped, and there was no one in the village to fix it. No one knew the correct time. The town clock stood still. Most of the villagers decided that it would be senseless to keep winding their watches. They would wait until the expert from the great city would arrive and adjust the town clock in the middle of the square. One man, however, though he did not know the right time, wound his watch every day. When the expert finally arrived from the city to fix the town clock and set it at the right time, those who had not bothered to wind their watches found their timepieces dusty, corroded, out of order, except the one man who daily wound his watch. The moral of the story is clear. One must discipline oneself to pray whether or not the exact time is known. The conditions need not be perfect. The exercise of the heart cannot wait upon the right feeling. So a rebbe explained, "We read in our daily prayers, 'These words which I command you this day shall be set on thy heart.'" It does not say "in" thy heart but "on" thy heart. For not every day when you recite the prayer is your heart receptive. On such occasions, put the words "on the heart.” When the time comes and you feel the ecstasy and exaltation and the heart will open, all of the prayers that have been gathered on top of the heart will sink in." Such is the anecdote that argues for the fixity, constancy, and obligatory character of the prayer debt.

Those who expect that prayer should express the spiritual feeling, the ecstasy and spontaneity, have their own supporting anecdote. A Chasid is called before the Rebbe because it is reported that the Chasid does not pray on time. "Why do you not pray on time like your other colleagues?" The Chasid explained "It is not out of willfulness. In the evening when I approach the window in my home and look out and see the stars and the moon in the heavens, I am overwhelmed by the majesty of God's creation and I fall into deep contemplation until I fall into a deep sleep. When I arise it is too late for the evening service. In the morning I rise and am resolved to pray shacharith on time. I draw close to the window, look out and see the rising of the sun and the light that spreads over the face of the earth. I am awed at the order of God's universe. And before you know it I fall into deep meditation, and then discover that it is too late for the morning prayers."

"In the late afternoon I come home from work and am intending to pray minchah. I again draw near to the window and see people coming home from their work, and notice the setting of the sun. I am amazed at the complexity of nature and of the wonder of the world that I fall into deep thought about life and the order of God's world until it is too late for minchah."

The rebbe stroked his beard and asked the Chasid, "Do you ever pray on time?" "Yes" said the Chasid, "I pray on time whenever I turn my back to the window and do not look outside."

But not to look out of the window, to draw the curtains on the world, is this not to turn prayer into stale and pedestrian routine? Is it not to deny prayer the ecstasy of the Psalmist who declared "The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth the work of His hands."?

What is needed and what the rabbis sought is a sense of balance between structure and spontaneity–keva and kavanna. But liturgical equilibrium is difficult to achieve. For we are given a text, a prayer book, a Machzor. It is written down for us. The liturgical time is given us and there is precious little time for silence, meditation, to wrestle with the interiority of our being. Yet, to wait for the moment of inspiration, to ignore the structure, the fixity, the debt, is to remove ourselves from the millennia of prayer traditions of our fathers and mothers.

Which set of expectations has priority? Is it God or the worshipper who is to be moved? Is prayer for God's sake or for our own? Shall we reject the complaint of Berel's son, or dismiss Berel's discipline of obligatory prayer? Either/or positions are seductive. They promise to overcome the tensions of dual expectations. But what they gain by the certainty of an either/or answer, they lose the wisdom of the other side.

Perhaps the forced disjunction may be bridged by considering the implication of the immanence of God, the divine image that resides in and between us. What is to be moved is not either God or human but the godliness which is sought and cultivated through prayer:  To move the petitioner, to enable the expression and elevation of his spiritual yearnings, to support him in his falling, to heal him in his despair, to free him from the fetters that bind him is to honor and obey the transcendent God within.

Room must be made for spontaneity and regularity in prayer, for the voluntary and obligatory elements in prayer. A balance must be struck. Kavanna without keva threatens to turn the discipline of worship into desultory behavior. Keva without kavanna tends to turn prayer into mechanical routine. Prayer is both for our and God's sake. It is a debt we owe to God as Creator, and that we owe to ourselves as God's creation. In prayer, God is both the transcendent Source of our being and the immanent Presence of our moral behavior. Prayer is a duty and privilege, obligation and opportunity. Prayer is to move God within and between us. Whether God is or is not moved by prayer we know in our heart and in our mind. God is both the One to whom we pray, and the One who prays through us.

There is a head, a heart, and a hand in prayer, and in prayer all are bound up in wisdom, in love and in act.

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