The Practice of Prayer
Rosh Hashana, 5780
Rabbi Jason Rosenberg
Shana Tova.
Let me ask you something. Why are
you here today? I mean that as a serious question. Why did you decide to come
here today? Some of you just answered in your heads something along the lines
of, “Well, it’s Rosh Hashanah. I have to be here.” But, unless you’re a kid,
you didn’t have to be here, at all. The truth is that you had plenty of choices
of how to spend your morning. And, we know that in part because so many people
are making choices different from this one. More and more people are not
joining synagogues, and many who are members of synagogues choose not to attend
services, opting for work or school, instead. I’m not saying this to shame
them, at all, just to point out that you really did have other options about
what to do with these few hours. So, why are you spending them here, doing
this?
It’s especially worth asking because
this is a pretty difficult day, and Yom Kippur is even more so. High Holy Day
services are long. And, more importantly, they are philosophically and
theologically difficult. The prayers of the season talk about God literally
deciding who is going to live and who is going to die during this next year.
Writing down in a book what our fate will be, but giving us one last chance to
change that decree, if we just pray hard enough. It’s incredibly difficult for
many of us, maybe most of us, to take this idea literally. It’s pretty hard to
even take it seriously. Do I really think that God is making a list? Do I
really believe that, based on how fervently I pray today, I might be able to
get God to change the column in which I find my name scribbled down? No. I don’t
believe that we’re here to change God’s mind. I don’t believe that we’re here
to change God, at all. Through our prayers, we’re here to change ourselves.
A 17th century sage, Rabbi Leona Medina,
taught that we should understand prayer as if it were a boat. Imagine a person
standing in a boat, holding onto a rope. The other end of that rope is anchored
to the shore, and that person is pulling on the rope, pulling herself in. If I am
standing some distance away, and if I completely misunderstand how physics
works, I might mistakenly believe that that person is actually pulling the shore
towards herself, not herself toward the shore. They look pretty much the same.
Of course, they are not the same. When we pray, it sometimes looks like we’re
trying to pull God towards us. Really, we’re always trying to pull ourselves
closer to God.
It’s what we might call a “devotional
practice.” It’s a practice which is meant to increase our love of, our closeness
to, God. If the God language is confusing or off-putting to you, as it is to
many of us, then it’s a practice which is intended to make us more aware of
holiness in this world, and in ourselves.
That language of holiness, rather
than of God, is important. Some of us believe in God, and some of us don’t.
Many of us have questions. That’s all a good and important discussion for
another day. But, for right now, if you don’t believe in God, or if you aren’t
sure, just ask yourself if you believe in holiness. Do you believe in the
possibility of transcendence? Have you ever had the vague, unnerving, unnamable
sense that something larger than yourself, larger than the simplest reality
that we see around us, was happening? I’m not talking about some mystical,
astral plane. I’m just talking about a way to see this world, but to see it suffused
with meaning.
That’s one of the great insights of
Judaism. We don’t actually need to believe in God, per se, to pray, and to pray
honestly, and deeply. In fact, people who think that we do might have it
exactly backwards. We don’t pray because we believe. We pray because doing so
helps us to believe. And, when I say “believe,” I don’t mean that we are trying
to accept a reality that we don’t think we really agree with. I don’t mean that
were trying to trick ourselves into thinking that there’s actually some Being
who once created the world, and who is deciding our fate today, if that’s not
what we really already believe. I’m using “believe” in the sense which the Hebrew
conveys, which is the sense of being aware of, and connected to, a holiness
which seems to suffuse reality, and transcend our selves, and our sense of the
ordinariness which dominates most of our waking hours.
That’s the key. Our awareness of the
sacred. Rabbi Art Green defines the sacred as, “an inward, mysterious sense of
awesome presence, a reality deeper than the kind we ordinarily experience.”
This world can either be “just this world.” Or, it can be a place of astounding
beauty, and power, and meaning. A sunset can simply be the result of the
rotation of the planet, which it is. Or, it can be beautiful. Or, it can be
more than even that. It can move us in our deepest places, the places which,
for lack of a better word, we’ve always called “our soul.”
Who here doesn’t want to be moved
like that? Who here doesn’t need to be moved like that? The world around
us is so broken, so damaged and so damaging. We read the news and we see story
after story of human cruelty and indifference. We see environmental disasters
and hear ominous reports of more to come. Disease, hatred, evil, anywhere we
look. It sometimes feels as if the world is on fire, and many of us suspect
that, when it doesn’t look like that, it’s only because we’re not paying
attention. If we have any awareness, and the least bit of sensitivity, we will
see so much pain.
Sometimes, we need to see the world
that way, because that’s real. We can’t hide from it. But, sometimes we need to
be able to see the world not just as it is, but as it could be, as well.
Sometimes we need to see ourselves not just with our myriad flaws and failings,
but with our endless, holy potential. Sometimes, we need to search for the hidden
sparks of holiness, buried in the ashes which too often fall around us.
Last night, I told the story of some
artists trying to paint a picture of true peace. The best of them wasn’t a perfect,
idyllic scene, but rather a picture of a mother and her baby, huddled against
and protected from a raging storm. In a storm tossed world, each one of us
needs to find a sanctuary from the storm. We need some space for peace. Not
permanently — I am not suggesting that we hide away from the world, and that we
pretend that everything is all right. This isn’t about being a Pollyanna; it’s
not about hiding from our obligation to engage with the world, to make the
world better. But, we do need a sanctuary to which we can retreat, from time to
time.
We need that sanctuary in part
because we need to restore ourselves. We need to restore our strength, and we
need to restore our hope. This world is so terrible that it can lead to
despair. We need to recharge, and just feel good again, if we want to keep
doing the hard work that the world is calling us to do.
But, we also need this sanctuary
from the storm in part because we deserve it. As human beings, beings created betzelem
Elohim, in the image of God, beings created to be just a little bit less
than divine, we deserve to lead lives of meaning, to lead lives of
blessing, of happiness. Lives of dignity. The world is set up in a way which
makes this just so difficult, and so unlikely. If we just go about our way, let
life and the world unfold as they will, we’ll almost never have the opportunity
to explore the transcendent. To search for, to encounter, the sacred. Days will
turn to months will turn to years will turn into a lifetime, and we’ll have
lived it without ever having fully lived a single day of it.
We deserve, and we need, a space in
which we can ask ourselves the deepest questions. What really matters in this
life? What was I put here to do? What kind of impact am I having on this world,
and what kind of imprint in my leaving with my life? That’s how I want to go
through this world, asking myself those most essential of questions. Usually, I
don’t. I’m pretty sure I’m not in the minority with this. Life is so busy and
overwhelming. Even in a job like mine, ostensibly focused on holiness, I can go
days, weeks, without ever asking myself those sacred questions. I can live a
life unconcerned with holiness. It would be quite easy to do so. But I don’t
want to. So, how do I do that? How do I get myself to focus on those questions,
and that holiness?
In a word, prayer. Prayer is a way —
not the way, but a way — to move ourselves. To change ourselves.
To pull ourselves closer to that shore. Prayer and religion mean something
different to each of us, but whatever it means to you, it got you here today.
Something in you is calling you toward religion, or you’d be somewhere else
right now. You may not be able to fully identify or name it. But, it’s there,
inside of you. Why are we here if not to make ourselves somehow better? “Better”
doesn’t only mean “more moral.” It can also mean better functioning. More
fulfilled, more fully realized. That’s what we’re here to do. That’s what
prayer is supposed to help us do.
It’s not easy. It’s not always clear
exactly how prayer can actually accomplish this. Especially if you read the
translations — what they’re saying can sometimes feel very remote from anything
meaningful. Just coming into the room, sitting down, and singing along isn’t
going to do much for most of us. This isn’t magic, and it’s not even medicine —
it doesn’t work just because you take it in. It takes work.
So, how to do it? How do we pray in
a way which might actually move us, inspire us, change us? There isn’t a single
way, of course. But, think about taking time during services some Shabbat, or
some holy day, picking one prayer from the prayerbook, and approaching it like
a poem. Read it, slowly and closely. Ask yourself what it means, and then ask
yourself what it stirs inside of you. If you can’t find a prayer which
resonates that day, look at the alternative readings. In our weekly siddur,
and especially in our High Holy Day mahzor, there are some truly
stunning pieces of spiritual writing. Read them. Use them.
Try sitting down, closing your eyes,
and listening to the music as deeply as possible. Feel what happens when you
let yourself sing along without worrying about what anyone else is thinking.
Or, just take a few moments to breathe — use this time as a meditation practice.
There isn’t one right way to do this, and what works for me might not
necessarily work for you. Which means that we have to be willing to try a few
different things to see what clicks. Try coming by some Shabbat morning when there
isn’t a bar or bat mitzvah, and our services are small, friendly, and more
personal. Drop in for our monthly Making Prayer Real sessions before services.
It’s just a group of us willing to take an hour to think about and talk about
what’s going on inside of us when we try to pray.
I’ve come to realize that physical
exercise is an almost perfect metaphor for spiritual exercise. In part, that’s
a reminder that none of this “religion stuff” is required. Nothing is mandated,
and nothing is forced. If you don’t want to get physically stronger, then you
don’t have to go to the gym and lift weights. Not working out most certainly
does not make you a bad person. There’s no penalty for staying home, other than
not getting the potential benefits. If you don’t want to come and pray, then
you really don’t have to come and pray. It doesn’t make you a bad person, and
you’re not going to miss out on a place in the afterlife because your Shabbat
attendance wasn’t sufficient.
But, if you’re looking at the
brokenness around you, and asking how you can deal with the overwhelm that you
feel, this could help. That’s what we’re here for, or, at least, it’s what we’re
supposed to be here for. And, you’ve got nothing to lose by trying — there are
no negative side effects to prayer. It’s no guaranteed magic bullet, either,
but then again, nothing is. The only way to know if it will work is to try it.
Tsemah HaShalem Li-Tzevi teaches that God is like a source of water, and prayer
is a pump. When we first start to use it, nothing happens.
Then, we
might get a tiny trickle. It’s going to take at least a little while to really
get things moving. God is always there. Holiness is always on tap. But, if we
want to draw anything from it, we’re going to have to try. Don’t be surprised
when it doesn’t work at first. Giving up when our first attempts at prayer don’t
give us the results that were looking for is a bit like someone going out for
their first run and saying, “Well, that felt terrible. I’m never going to do
that again!” This is a discipline which, if we’re willing to stick with it for
a little bit, truly can transform our lives.
And, don’t forget that there are
ways to do this outside of the synagogue, as well. Some of us need the gym,
some prefer to work out on our own. If you’re not sure which is right for you,
come talk to me — I’m happy to help you create your own spiritual workout plan.
But, get started,
because this is the perfect time to start. Today, Rosh Hashanah, is the
birthday of the world. The anniversary of the world’s creation. Our sages, and
our prayers, tell us that God did not create the world once, 5780, or 6
billion, years ago. God creates the world anew every day, every moment. We,
too, have the ability to re-create the world, at least our own world, the world
that starts within. Every day. Every moment. Today is the first day of your
life. As it always is. Let’s make this first day, and every day which follows,
a holy one.
