Prayer. Erev RH Thank you for the baby brother but what I really wanted. If we come back as something, please don t let me be

Transcription

1 Prayer Erev RH 5777 Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother but what I really wanted was a puppy. Dear God, If we come back as something, please don t let me be Jennifer Horton because I hate her. Dear God, Please send Dennis Clark to a different camp this year. 1

2 Not surprisingly, these actual letters to God are not found anywhere in our prayer book--but they may as well be. Try this on for size: Lord our God, make this a blessed year...grant blessing upon the earth, satisfy us with abundance and bless our year as the best of years. Avinu Malkeinu, make an end to sickness, war and famine. Grant us peace, that most precious gift 2

3 Maybe the only difference between the first set of prayers and the second set of prayers is that the first set was written by children, and the second set--the set from our prayer books, obviously--was written by adults, or perhaps more accurately, children with a better vocabulary. Because let s be honest here--there s really not a whole lot of difference between asking God to be compassionate to us or to give us peace, and asking God not to make us into Jennifer Horton in our next life, should there, in fact, be a next life. 3

4 And that is because, while the content is different, all of these prayers have a common denominator. They all assume: There is a God This God is all powerful, all knowing, and present everywhere at all times This God hears our prayers and can decide whether or not to answer those prayers; see under, Thanks for the little brother but what I really wanted was a puppy. And, in the words of Hamlet, There s the rub. 4

5 For many of us, even if we are not actively engaged in Jewish life on a consistent basis, the most frequent point of contact we have with Judaism and the Jewish community is prayer--whether it is a Shabbat service, a bris, a Passover Seder, or, obviously, the High Holy Days--prayer is the Jewish activity we engage in most often. And what do we find when we pray? Prayers that do not seem, on the surface, to be much more sophisticated than Please send Dennis Clark to a different camp this year. For people who are highly educated in science, literature, mathematics, philosophy; for people who are actively 5

6 engaged in business, the law, medicine, and so forth--coming to synagogue seems like an exercise in cognitive dissonance, as we are essentially asked to check our modern, scientific, rational minds at the door and start praising and beseeching the Lord with words that often do not resonate with us. Here s the irony: prayer, which is our prime spiritual practice, can actually become an obstacle to our spiritual fulfillment, especially if we see the purpose of prayer to ask God to do things for us or to give us something, kind of like a divine vending machine--insert prayer and receive benefit from God. 6

7 But what if we do not believe in that kind of God? It s kind of hard to utter the words of many of our petitionary prayers. And what if we do believe in that kind of God, and what if we turn to God to fulfill our requests--- and we don t get what we ask for? To put it mildly, we are sorely disappointed, and feel that maybe God isn t in our corner. As Rabbi Daniel Gordis describes the dilemma: If we do not believe there is a God who hears our prayers, what could the purpose of prayer be? Similarly, if God hears us but cannot or will not answer our prayer, 7

8 why should we bother? When we do pray for something we desperately want and we do not receive it, we feel betrayed. Particularly when what we want is someone s health or even the most basic financial security and we do not get that, our frustration with prayer often leaves us feeling abandoned by God. When that happens, ironically we feel worse after praying than we did before. ( God Was Not In The Fire, p. 166). Nonetheless, prayer is an essential feature of Jewish life and has been for centuries, so there must be more to it than meets the eye, because it certainly has withstood the test of time. Now that we are now embarking on, as the 8

9 Holy Days begin, our most prayer intensive period, it is the perfect time to ask: What can we-- modern, rational, supremely logical people, get out of prayer? other than some cake and coffee after services--yom Kippur excepted, of course? Well, there s community of course. That s pretty much what brought people to synagogue in the post-ww II suburban synagogue boom--jews, newly arrived in the suburbs, wanted to connect with other Jews. So, coming to services was mainly about ethnic identification-- being with other Jews. Yes, people wanted a spiritually fulfilling experience in synagogue, but in the aggregate, we, as a 9

10 mid-20th century suburban community, were looking to connect with other members of the tribe. While that is certainly a valid motivation, today, many of us, more than craving ethnicity, are looking for meaning, for purpose, and for a way to feel a part of something larger than ourselves. In short, we are looking for spiritual fulfillment. Particularly in the times in which we live, times filled with uncertainty and fear--we need to feel grounded and connected to God, and to our Jewish values. 10

11 And that is precisely why prayer matters today--perhaps more than it ever has. The key to finding meaning in prayer can be found in one word--the Hebrew word for prayer-- lehitpaleil, which means to judge oneself, or to struggle with oneself. An effective prayer is not necessarily one that gives us comfort or that provides a direct channel to God which we can use to make requests of the Almighty, but one that challenges us and that makes us uncomfortable. Prayer is not so much about addressing God as it is about addressing ourselves. As Rabbi Gordis says, prayer is 11

12 less about finding comfort--although that is great too, of course--and more about growth, spiritual growth. Authentic prayer helps us grow spiritually because it opens us up to our true selves. Granted, that is not always an entirely pleasurable experience but an important one. Prayer holds up before us a vision of the best we can be, and in so doing, reminds us in no uncertain terms, where we are falling short. One of the central prayers of Rosh Hashanah-- Un taneh Tokef, is a good example of how a prayer, that on the face of it, seems hard to relate to, can help us grow and do teshuva. 12

13 It s imagery of God as judge, witness and prosecutor, calling us to account for our various misdeeds in a kind of divine trial, and describing human beings as sheep passing under the staff of the shepherd, seems anachronistic and hierarchical, ascribing little value to us. Un taneh Tokef rhetorically asks Who shall live and who shall die? Who shall be secure, and who shall be tranquil? as if our fates are all being decided now and written down in the Book of Life. The judge is passing our final sentence!! Talk about cognitive dissonance for modern people! 13

14 But there is another message we can take from Un taneh Tokef, a more spiritually useful message. When we read, This is the day of judgment, it reminds us that, yes, we do need to hold ourselves accountable for our actions; When we read Each of us is a shattered urn, grass that must wither, a flower that will fade, a shadow moving on, a cloud passing by, a particle of dust floating on the wind, a dream soon forgotten, it is a powerful reminder that our days are, in fact, fleeting, and in the grand scheme of things we are not on this earth very long, which means this is the time to ask ourselves, what are we doing with the time we have. 14

15 And when we read Repentance, prayer and charity temper judgment s severe decree, it teaches us that no matter our fate, at least we can work to live lives that matter, that create blessing, and that leave us, and the people we love, feeling that we were as good as we could possibly be. No matter what time of year it is, prayer has spiritual value. While prayer may not work like a diving vending machine, there is value in expressing our longing and desire because when we ask God to fulfill our requests, we 15

16 become aware of our incompleteness, of what we lack, of what we most need, which in turn makes us humble. For all of our accomplishments, for all of our wisdom, for all that we control in our lives and our world, the act of prayer helps us realize that we are not whole and that we are in need and that we need help--we cannot do it all alone. Rabbi Mike Comins puts it well when he says, Yearning can reveal the gap between where we are and where we ought to be. Sometimes longing is painful, but... we might experience our pain with compassion. We can feel the pain of where we are, but we can also experience the joy of getting honest and knowing where we want to go. We can hold on to longing and let it be our 16

17 teacher...the question is whether longing is healthy and holy or self-centered and destructive. Do we long for virtue or vice, for peace or for power, for joy or for pleasure, for the good of others or only ourselves? The choice is ours. ( Making Prayer Real, pgs ). Prayer not only cultivates humility and an awareness of what lack, prayer also instills gratitude. When I say the prayers praising God for creating the world, it is not because I believe God created the world--i m a Big Bang kind of guy--but because it reminds me to appreciate and care for the world we have. 17

18 When I praise God for giving us the Torah, it s not because I believe God literally spoke the Torah to Moses--I m an our ancestors wrote the Torah in response to the presence of God in their lives kind of guy--but because it reminds me that Torah and our heritage, is indeed, a precious gift that reflects divine values and I need to study and do a better job of living by. When I praise God for saving our ancestors from Egyptian slavery it s not because I literally believe God made frogs jump all over Pharaoh and turned the Nile into blood--i m an our ancestors attributed their liberation to God as a way of reminding us that a better world is a partnership between God and humanity kind of guy--but because I 18

19 know that all of us, individually and collectively, are on a perpetual journey to make our lives into what we want them to be; we are all heading towards a Promised Land of some kind or another, and while we may never fully reach that promised land, I am grateful for any progress I make on that journey and our ancestors liberation from oppression reminds me that as my people were oppressed there are still people living under oppression today. The big question remains: does prayer actually change anything? Does prayer get us what we need? There are those who believe that the purpose of prayer is, in fact, to change the world by getting God to do what we 19

20 want, and while there are those--like me--who believe prayer is more about trying to change ourselves--in classic Jewish fashion, maybe it s really about both. Maybe--if prayer really works, and we become better people and that in turn affects other people in a positive way, we are making our world better. As Rabbi Comins says, Do my prayers change anything in the world around me? I can only assume so. For everything we do sends energy of some kind into the world. The more good energy I send, the more there will be...so when I pray for a friend to overcome illness, I don t believe that I am influencing the decision of a divine mind that this one shall live and this 20

21 one shall die. But I am sure that the divine energy is always there, and we can tap into it. When we do, we immediately feel a difference. And just as I can draw it in, I can send it out to affect the world, through prayer. ( Making Prayer Real, pgs ). So we continue to pray; we pray to change ourselves, to make ourselves better, to challenge ourselves to grow; we pray to look ourselves in the mirror, uncomfortable as it may be. We pray to make sure we live with gratitude, to be aware of the gap between where we are and where we need to be. And we pray to change the world, to connect to the Divine Power in the Universe and perhaps together, 21

22 God and humanity, can truly make the world better than it is right now. And who knows? Next year, maybe this year, Dennis Clark will go to a different summer camp. 22

23 23