5767 Rosh Hoshanah Sermon
What Happens When We Pray
Last fall, after some particularly lovely services filled with kavannah, with that spirit that runs deep, I invited you to share with me some of your experiences of prayer, some of what happens to you during such times. Of course on one level this is deeply personal, but on another, because so much of that experience emerges from our gathering together, it deserves articulation, particularly for the younger people in our congregation.
You have been wonderfully forthcoming in response to that request, and so we have this evening a High Holiday first, a sermon composed by the congregation. You are the authors. I am merely the editor and the annotator. It’s like having half the day off! (But, I’ll be back to you full time on Yom Kippur when the title of my sharing is “Yes or No: What is the Answer?” You can guess what that one might be about.) My thanks on this one, also to Paul Berch’s brother Mark for a splendid and helpful piece on the subject of prayer, from which I quote liberally. Thanks Mark!
First a word to those of you who didn’t write in. What at least some of you may have been saying in your non-response is, basically, we have trouble with prayer. I have heard this verbally from lots of you. Some of you tell me it’s that you don’t read Hebrew. Others tell me that you don’t know what to feel, or, in some cases, don’t feel anything, particularly during the Amidah. And some of you, point blank, tell me that you don’t believe in God. (Parenthetically, if Judaism ever defined out those Jews who claimed not to believe in God, we would be defining out some of our most thoughtful but also some of our committed Jews.)
Some of you have told me that you’re here on the High Holidays because of tradition, or because of family togetherness, or perhaps in a desire to be united with the Jewish people, or even because if you don’t show up, it might bring bad luck. Whatever our motivation for being here might be, going to High Holiday services and not deriving some spiritual sustenance is a little like investing lots of time and effort into a vacation tour and then not taking in the sights and the sounds.
So, if you fall into any of these categories of individuals having trouble with the idea of prayer, give a listen and, who knows, you might get a helpful idea from the responses of your fellow congregants, and you might be in for a surprise. What better gift could one take away from a Rosh Hashanah service than the prospect of a spiritual dimension to one’s life?
Right to it then –
The largest number of responses I received focused on the community dimension of our prayer. “I probably ought to pray when I’m alone,” one of you wrote, “but I don’t. I wasn’t raised that way. Yet it becomes eminently possible when we gather together. It feels holy.”
Another of you wrote, “There’s nothing particularly holy to me about the walls of a sanctuary, no matter how it might be decorated with Mogen Davids and menorahs. It becomes holy, however, when we come to worship together in that space. I don’t think God sits in a sanctuary when it’s empty.”
Still another of you wrote about the magic that takes place when we gather together to pray, whether we’re a Monday evening minyan or an overflowing High Holiday service. “We are almost magically connected through these ancient prayers that our parents and grandparents also offered, that Jews all over the world are offering at nearly the same time. We are so much greater than the sum of our parts. It gives life infinite meaning to be part of something like that.”
Rabbi Harold Kushner, whom we remember best, perhaps, for his book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” wrote that the very congregating of Jews is more important than the words we speak – that indeed something miraculous happens when people come together seeking the presence of God. “A spirit is created in our midst,” Kushner writes, “which none of us brought here…The purpose of reading [the words in our prayer book] is not to fool God into thinking we [necessarily] share all the pious sentiments of the prayer’s author. The purpose is to join in song and prayer with our fellow worshippers, to find God in the exhilarating experience of transcending our isolation.” (‘Of transcending our isolation’- isn’t that a marvelous phrase?) “When the service works,” Kushner continues, “we will feel differently about ourselves and the world for having gone through that experience.”
At a time when, all evidence suggests, Americans not only are not bowling together, but are not doing much of anything together; at a time of increasing social isolation when meaningful interpersonal relationships are at a minimum – often limited to family members and the internet – this transcendence of our isolation, this sense of community, Friends, is more important than it has ever been.
So the first responses had to do with community. A second type of response had to do with individual meaning emanating from our prayer. One of you wrote, “I’m not so religious myself, but I feel that my parents who were religious, continue to live through me when I worship. I feel most connected to them when I participate in a Jewish worship service.” And several of you talked about our prayer as a way of dealing with adversity in our lives. “Somehow these services help me to put my woes in perspective, help me to see the bigger picture, make me less sorry for myself.” In the same vein, another of you wrote, “I feel so much less alone at these services. I come to feel that others carry very similar weight, and somehow we are able to support one another. I feel that particularly when we do the Mi Shaberach and the Mourners’ Kaddish prayers, but also when we share so openly during our Torah services, and afterwards in our social time together.”
More than one of you spoke to me about your belief that those Mi Shaberach prayers really help – even when the ailing individual is far away.
And here are some responses which might speak to those of you who express uncertainty about what to do during the Amidah:
One of you wrote about your prayer as a conversation with God. “In the Amidah,” you wrote, “I share my innermost thoughts and feelings and concerns with God, and then close my eyes and feel like I’m getting something back. Who knows, maybe the prayer is simply activating something dormant in myself. Whatever actually takes place, it has a transcendent feel about it. With that kind of conversation, I believe I can make it through the next week, the next year…that I can make it through just about anything.” Another of you wrote, “This is the only time in my life where time stops, and there is no other place to be.”
Still another of you wrote, “I make it a practice in the Amidah to offer prayers not for myself but for others who are having a difficult time physically or emotionally. I believe that I’m praying for them, but in fact, I always end up feeling lighter and more centered myself.”
Rabbi Harold Schulweis expressed much the same when he wrote, “In prayer [we] pray to move God. But the way [we] move God is by moving the divine in [ourselves.] The purpose of prayer is to activate the godly in ourselves. Isn’t that wonderful: “The purpose of prayer is to activate the godly in ourselves.”
My own children remind me about the conversations they had with God when we prayed together at bedtime. We chanted “El Melech Neheman” seven times (the words that precede the Sh’ma when we recite them outside of a minyan), then the Sh’ma itself three times, and then continued, “Dear God, Thank you for this day. “We had a wonderful time canoeing on the river. Thanks God for rivers and canoes.” or “We went to visit Grandma and Pop today. Grandma’s not doing so well. Please take care of her. She also loves you, and we love her.” And finally they recited the names of those closest to them and asked God to take care of these people as well. Talk about a conversation with God! Noah tells me that having had such conversations as a child, he has never since felt entirely alone.
Shifting gears now to another kind of individual response –
One of you wrote something quite different and also particularly thoughtful. “I have a problem with ego, with self,” you wrote. “My ego always seems to be getting in the way of dealing with what’s inside - the deeper feelings – and, most of the time, it doesn’t allow me to hear what God might be trying to say to me. When I come to shul, however, and have to be quiet, when I can get calm, I’m then sometimes able to get at those deeper places.”
This idea also has been addressed by others. Some Judaica scholars suggest that our prayer may have the effect of releasing and removing some obstructive parts of our egos which have been blocking our ability to transcend ourselves. A group of Hasidic rabbis went yet further in seeking “Bittul Ha-yesh” or the annihilation of selfhood, a philosophy more often associated with Buddhism, in this case a transcendence of the ego in order to be able to have communion with God.
One of you wrote simply, “I pray because I am commanded to pray. I’m not able to follow most of the commandments, but this one I can follow.” The idea of prayer as commandment is part of observing halacha which some observant Jews find entirely sufficient – no need for transcendence or revelation at all.
In addition to reflections about prayer in community, and different types of individual responses, several of you wrote about meditation and prayer that comes more easily in nature than in a sanctuary, a sentiment, I suspect that would be shared by many of you who have had problems with prayer more generally. “In nature,” one of you wrote, “I feel I am surrounded by the wonder of God’s creation. I stand in awe of it.”
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel also shared this belief that God is to be found in the natural world. To Heschel, thinking about God with anthropomorphic or human type qualities is the problem rather than the solution. Heschel was nearly overwhelmed by the mystery that animates everything. He called prayer “our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.” It’s something like stepping outside into a sunrise or a sunset and saying, “Wow!” In that moment we no longer see ourselves as being at the center of our universe; self interest is no longer at the heart of our consciousness. Rather we become humble and we become grateful to be part of something so magnificent, and we pray in gratitude for the opportunity to experience such wonder and such holiness.
One of you wrote something rather similar. “When I’m in shul, and look out over the bimah at the trees and the sky of Vermont, I feel whole and centered again – I feel part of something so much larger. It gives me hope and sustenance.”
And finally, some of you told me that your access to Judaism is not through the spirituality of prayer at all, but through the community of like-minded individuals and families and through education - praising, almost always, not only our religious school but our newly revitalized adult education program. And some of you told me that the Judaism to which you respond is the Judaism of tikun olam, of healing the world – the world of social justice, and of responding out of our Jewish heritage to evil in the world. One of you wrote, “What our congregation does each year to help the Drop-in Center, the stands we take for peace in the Middle East, our protection of local Muslims, our celebration of Martin Luther King, remind me of my own family members who were so active in the civil rights movement and, before that, the labor movement. Frankly, I might have trouble worshiping with persons who lacked such commitment to justice in the world. Here I have no trouble at all.”
It strikes me that our responses about the meaning of our prayer and our time together mirrors, in a way, the breadth and the depth of Judaism itself. Unlike some other religious experiences in America today, Judaism is not a formula into which we must fit, it is not a dogma to which we must subscribe, it is not about the peddling of tickets to heaven or get-out-of-hell-free cards. Similarly, prayer, as you have so beautifully described it, is an opportunity to experience spirituality deeply and meaningfully and – very importantly – in a way that works for us as individuals. It is, at its best, an opportunity to connect with God and/or to activate the divine within us, to join together with others in ways which permits the creation of a common spirit and the transcendence of our isolation – an experience which, ultimately, allows us to feel differently both about ourselves and about the world.
It’s wonderful, isn’t it, to think that as we gather together for these High Holiday services, all of these experiences of prayer are taking place at the same time, providing the richest imaginable spiritual kaleidoscope that swells outward while moving inward. I hope also now that at least a few of you will be able to experience its magic for the first time.
Amen
Jim Levinson
Brattleboro Area Jewish Community
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