Congregation Netivot Shalom

September 23, 2006 / Rosh Hashanah, First Day 5767

Jeff Burack

Shabbat shalom and shanah tovah!

A year or two ago, I was walking into Alta Bates hospital while answering a call on my cellphone, using a wireless earpiece.  Still talking, I boarded the elevator alongside a hard-hatted maintenance worker, and turned toward the wall to quietly finish my call.  When I ended the call, hung up, and turned toward him, he noticed the device in my ear.  He shook his head, and said: “You know, you just can’t tell who’s crazy anymore!”  We’ve always been suspicious of people who talk without an obvious listener—nowadays, we treat these people with medications.  The particular type of talking that we do here today, without an obvious listener, we call prayer.  How difficult it is for many of us, to stand before friends and strangers, and sing out in words we may not agree with or even understand.  How much more so, to stand here and pour out the deepest cries of our hearts, our fears and longings.  And yet, that’s what today’s parashah and haftorah are about doing.

Our first teacher of prayer is Hagar.  A few chapters back, the pregnant Hagar fled Sarah’s jealous abuse.  A messenger of God commanded her to return, and promised her a son whom she should call Ishmael, “God hears,” because Adonai had paid heed to her suffering. Hagar calls God “El-Roi--” “God of seeing,” meaning both “God of my seeing,” and “God who sees me,” a God who notices the outcry of the oppressed and the needy.  Remarkably, the rabbis comment that Hagar is the only person in the entire Tanakh who gives God a name!  And the name she chooses marks her as the first to recognize Adonai as a God of tzedek v’rakhamim—righteousness and compassion.  In today’s portion, once Isaac is weaned, Sarah demands that Abraham expel Hagar and Ishmael.  He sends them away with meager provisions, perhaps to die in the desert.  When the water runs out, Hagar sits Ishmael down, then:  “V’tayshev mi’neged; va’tissah et-kolah; va’tayvech:” and she sat down at a distance; and she raised her voice; and she wept.  Heartbroken, Hagar cries out to God at the impending death of her son.  God “hears the voice of the lad”—oddly, since it’s only Hagar who we’re told cries out— and tells Hagar not to fear; and then the “God of seeing” opens Hagar’s eyes so that she sees a well of water nearby. 

This may be the first instance in the Torah of someone calling out to God—of someone praying.  Sarah, in her childlessness, doesn’t cry out.  Abraham speaks to God when spoken to, but doesn’t pray for guidance or for help.  I find myself wishing that Abraham would cry out in doubt or despair when asked to banish Hagar and his eldest son, or when commanded to sacrifice Isaac.  But this is not Abraham’s historical or religious role.  Hagar, on the other hand, a slave woman raised in Egypt, is probably at ease pouring out her needs and woes to a whole pantheon of very accessible gods.  It takes Hagar, Ha-ger, the stranger, to reintroduce prayer to the house of Abraham, and to the God of Abraham. 

In the haftarah that follows, Hannah, childless and, like Hagar, tormented by her husband’s other wife, weeps and cries out in deep emotion to God, so that her lips move, but her voice cannot be heard.  The high priest Eli thinks she must be drunk, and chastises her. But Hannah replies:  “Oh no, my lord!  I am a very unhappy woman.  I have drunk no wine or other strong drink, but I have been pouring out my heart to Adonai.”  Hannah’s heartfelt plea is so poignant that the rabbis of the Talmud took it to be the quintessence of personal prayer, analyzing what she did and how she did it for lessons about how we ought to pray.

We sing the words of Rabbi Shimon the Just:  Al shloshah devarim ha’olam omed:  The world stands on three things:  the Torah, prayer, and acts of lovingkindness.  Now, it’s easy to appreciate the centrality to Jewish tradition, and the importance to the world, of acts of lovingkindness, the work of the hands.  Likewise with Torah study, the work of the head.  One doesn’t even have to believe that the Torah and its commentaries are Divine truth to buy that studying them can help us improve ourselves and our world.   But prayer, the work of the heart?  We may speak of it as the third pillar that holds up the world, but many of us find it awfully hard to do.  I want to focus today on three questions:  What is prayer?  Why is it so hard for us to pray?  And:  Can we do anything to make prayer more accessible?

Let me be the first to say how challenging this topic is for me personally.  I’m not used to thinking of myself as someone who’s good at prayer.  And deep down, I’m not always sure that I want to be.  My prayer experience has all too often been marked by feelings of hypocrisy, self-deprecation, and extreme self-consciousness.  Like many of us, I’m inclined to approach my Judaism intellectually, rather than spiritually.  We live in a skeptical, scientific age, and the material world is amazing enough—many of us no longer turn to the supernatural for explanations of how the universe works.  We’re taught critical thinking, to a fault.  Our culture grows ever more cynical, our humor ever more ironic.  And our own religious and cultural traditions have usually honored learning and rational argument as paramount. We Jews have been bred to excel at the work of the head, followed perhaps by the work of the hands.  The work of the heart has seemed mostly an afterthought.

And work it is.  The Talmud recognizes that prayer is rarely easy, and refers to it as avodah she’balev, the hard labor of the heart.  Or in the words of that 20th century mystic, Ringo of Liverpool:  “Gotta pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues, and you know it don’t come easy…”  There are many obstacles to prayer--many reasons it don’t come easy.  I want to touch on two kinds:  first, the damaging associations we have with specific words or translations; and second, the very personal doubts and self-consciousness many of us feel around traditional public prayer.

Just as when we talk about God, the words we use to talk about praying get in the way.  We’ve inherited a narrow, culturally bound view of what prayer is and what it’s for.  Two millennia as a minority group in Christian societies have attached a churchy, formal feeling to “prayer.”  It has to fit a certain formula, and be read from a book, preferably one written long ago in a language other than our own.  Even the word “pray,” from the Latin for “beg” or “entreat,” encourages us to think of prayer as always being petitionary, that is, always asking for something.   We’ve learned to think of  “to pray” as what’s called a ditransitive verb:  it not only has a direct object, the prayer or the thing that you pray, but also needs an indirect object—you don’t just pray, you pray to someone.  For many of us who may be uncertain about what God is like, whether God is the sort of being who hears, or even whether we believe in God, this makes praying problematic.  So the very word “prayer” seems to commit us to a set of theological beliefs we don’t always accept.

Some other words may fit our intentions better.  Here in Berkeley, we’re OK with meditating, which sounds nice and cognitive, turns out to be good for your blood pressure, and after all is what those pretty together-seeming Buddhists do—though it seems too quiet a verb to describe what Hagar or Hannah do.  Many in traditional and Jewish Renewal communities prefer to talk about davvenning.  The Yiddish word connotes the individual, ecstatic worship of the Hassidim, without the stiffness and uniformity we associate with the English “prayer.”  We also, though, have a perfectly good Hebrew word, the one used repeatedly in today’s haftorah to describe what Hannah does: l’hitpallel, to pray, and its derivative noun tefillah, prayer.  The root, “pilel,” doesn’t mean to beg or ask, but means to think, suppose, or judge.  And the “hit” part is a reflexive prefix.  Rabbi David Aaron writes:  “L'hitpallel means to do something to yourself…  And what exactly is that? We see the word palel in the story of Jacob and Joseph. When Joseph learns that his father Jacob is nearing his death, he goes to his father for a blessing for his [own] two children. Jacob says, "I never palel-ti that I would ever see your face again, yet God has granted me to even see the face of your children."  ... Rashi explains this verse to mean, " I never [palel-ti--I never] would have filled my heart to think the thought--that I would ever see your face again." Therefore, when we [try] l'hitpallel, we are actively, intentionally trying to fill our hearts, to think the thoughts, to dream the dreams, of what it is that we want to see and do in this world and then change ourselves in order to make these things happen.”  Imagine:  l’hitpallel, to judge, reimagine, and change ourselves.  We call Rosh Hashanah Yom haDin, the Day of Judgment.  But what I take Rashi to mean is that the reason we pray today is not so that God may judge us, but so that we may judge ourselves, to reflect, to take stock, to empty our hearts and to fill them again with our best yearnings.  It’s we, not God, who need to hear our prayers.

And how do we do this sort of tefillah?  Rabbi Burt Jacobson, of Kehilla Community Synagogue, just down the street, points out that we pray every day of our lives without knowing it:

“Every cry of agony from a pained heart is a prayer.
Every longing you have had for a better life has been a prayer.
Every dream you’ve ever had for a better world is a prayer.
Every time you look for guidance from the still, small Voice within, you are praying.
Every time you feel a sense of awe or gratitude, you are worshipping.
Every time you celebrate beauty and love, you are worshipping.
Every time you surrender to the flow of life, you are worshipping.”

What a different, richer, and more flexible sense of “praying” than what we’re used to!   But even stretched this way, tefillah remains hard for many us.  Let me turn to the other kind of obstacle I mentioned, springing from personal doubts and self-consciousness, and briefly give some examples that seem important to me.  First, since it doesn’t usually bring quick, tangible results, it’s hard for many of us to make prayer a priority in our busy lives.  Second, some of us may feel uncomfortable with parts of the liturgy.  When we understand the Hebrew, or read the translation, we may at times be surprised by, or disagree with, what we find ourselves saying.  At other times we may feel foolish or false uttering words we don’t understand.  Third, many of us have a ritual inferiority complex.  We may feel that we don’t know enough about the “right way” to do the prayers, and squander a lot of attention worrying that we’re doing it wrong.  Fourth, and related, is a sense of embarrassment before our neighbors.  It’s cool to be skeptical and self-sufficient; we may feel nerdy, credulous, phony, even afraid to pray, especially as a beginner, and especially in public.  Fifth, we may feel a vague lack of moral entitlement:  since I don’t do X (fill in the blank:  observe more mitzvot, give more to charity, spend more time doing good deeds, control my temper better)—well then, who am I to think that I’m entitled to ask for, let alone to get, anything by way of prayer?  Finally, there’s the worry about theological hypocrisy:  are we entitled to pray even if we’re not entirely settled in our belief in, or beliefs about, God? 

Our hurry, our doubts, our shame, our preconceptions, our hostility to past experiences--these are like layers of tough skin wrapping our hearts, keeping us from opening them to self-expression and self-exploration.  Nearing the time of his death, Moses exhorts the Israelites, “U’maltem et ahrlat l’va’v’chem”—literally, “circumcise the foreskins of your heart.”  We echo this during the Amidah, when we pray “V’taher libenu l’avd’chah be’emet”—“purge our hearts so that we may pray honestly to you.”  This is the hard work of prayer, the avodah she’balev—stripping away from around our hearts the impediments to expressing ourselves, to pursuing self-awareness and self-transcendence through tefillah.  The great Hassidic master of prayer, Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav, told his disciples:  “Even though you cannot speak to God, you long and yearn to do so—and this itself is very good.  You can even make a prayer out of this.  You can cry out to God that you are so far from God that you cannot even speak.  You can ask God to have mercy on you, and open your mouth, so that you should be able to express your thoughts to God.”

My favorite part of the Amidah, one I’ve taken to focusing on, and repeating over and over to get myself started, is the little prologue from Psalm 51: Adonai, s’fatai tiftach u’fi yagid tehilatechah:  “Adonai, open my lips, and my mouth will speak your praise.”  Sometimes, I never get past this part.

The Hassidic Rebbe of Kotzk once asked, “Where does the Holy One dwell?”  His students, thinking this was a no-brainer, replied with one of the fundamental principles of Hassidut:  “Why, of course, God is everywhere, in everything, at all times!”  But the Kotzker Rebbe said, “No, God dwells only where we let God in.”  Many times during the Yamim Noraim liturgy, we use the metaphor of heavenly gates.  When the gates are about to close, as we begin Ne’ilah next week, we will read:  “Said the Holy One:  If you have come to a house of worship, do not remain standing at the outer gate, but enter gate after gate, until you have reached the innermost gate.”  The gates of heaven are not up there somewhere.  The gates that we need to open, to breach to allow us to pray, are the innermost gates, down here:  the gates of our own hearts. There’s no obstruction at the other end.  Holiness can only dwell where we let it in, and the work of our tefillah is to pry the gates open.

Easier said than done, I know.  But let me just mention a couple of tools available to help us do this heart-opening.  One is developing a regular tefillah practice. The contemporary Mussar teacher Alan Morinis tells of the time he spent at a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center in Dharamsala, India.  Regardless of the daily lesson, there was one message his teacher repeated every single day:  “Do spiritual practice now, so you’ll have it when you need it.”  The abilities to calm and focus ourselves, and to open our hearts on demand, are like spiritual muscles.  We need to use them regularly, to stretch and strengthen them, if we expect them to be able to take us places, or to rely on them in times of need.  Now, we’d be setting ourselves up for failure to expect to go immediately from no practice, to an hour a day, every day, of fervent prayer.  Compromise with your skepticism.  Start small.  Think about what kind of practice would work for your tefillah needs, and think of some regular way to do it.  At first you’ll feel stiff and achy; you’ll be tempted to stay in bed, or turn on the radio.  But eventually, the muscles start to limber up and strengthen.  As Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, has said, prayer “…is like a bed on a cold night. First you warm it up, then it warms you up.”

Consider doing at least some of your praying in English.  Rebbe Nachman advises using the language with which you are most comfortable, because that is the language your heart speaks--and because in true prayer, above all, your heart must break open.  On the other hand, the importance of private, heartfelt tefillah doesn’t mean there’s no value in communal prayer. Remember that God hears Ishmael’s voice, even though it is Hagar who’s crying out. The draw of community, the support of others seeking to be able to pray, and the commitment we make to those others to show up—all may help us to sustain a prayer practice when others demands compete, or when we just don’t feel like it.  If you prefer, bring a different siddur, or some other piece of inspirational reading, for the times when the liturgy doesn’t grab you.  My experience has been that during parts I have trouble with, or when my mind wanders, or when I simply need a break, the community’s davvening surrounds me, lifts me, carries me along. The deeply familiar tunes and Hebrew words somehow penetrate my right brain, even while my left may be worrying about work, or a relationship, or the Oakland A’s; and when I’m ready to start again, I can just slide right back in. 

Davvening with a community offers one more very important tool I want to mention, and that is music.  As Jonathan Sacks writes:  “Music is at the heart of religious experience. Whenever…we [Jews] use language to fulfill a mitzvah, we turn it from speech to song. We don't pray; we davven. We don't read Torah; we sing it. We don't learn Gemarra; we chant it... Music is the medium in which we map the landscape of the Jewish soul.”  For many of us, the peak of religious experience may be singing along with a Shlomo Carlebach remake of a traditional bracha, or turning a 16th century arrangement of a favorite psalm into a soaring 3-part round.  I used to think of this as cheating—that what I was appreciating here was popular music instead of prayer.  But this really is prayer, in one of its highest forms.  The musical idiom of our generation, the one that touches us, that thrills us to the marrow, is precisely what we should set our tefillah to.  When I’m in the car and feeling empty, and I crank up Debbie Friedman’s version of the morning prayers* and sing along at the top of my lungs, and feel the goosebumps rise and my eyes well up—the gates of heaven are cracking open…

There’s a classic Hassidic tale of an illiterate young shepherd who attended Kol Nidre services led by the Ba’al Shem Tov.  The boy, who didn’t know the liturgy and couldn’t read Hebrew, was embarrassed at not knowing how to pray. Overcome by emotion at the peak of the service, and unable to help himself, he took out his shepherd’s whistle and blew a high piercing note.  The men of the congregation turned on him with outrage:  how dare he disturb the sanctity of the holy service?!  But the Ba’al Shem Tov, with tears in his eyes, thanked the boy:  “Until now,” he said, “I could feel our prayers being blocked as they tried to enter the heavenly gates.  But this young shepherd’s whistling was so pure that it broke through, and brought all of our prayers straight up to God.”

Usually on Rosh Hashanah, we blow our own shepherd’s whistle, the shofar.  Today, because it’s Shabbat, we will not.  But when you hear the shofar’s call tomorrow, and again on Yom Kippur, think of Hagar’s cry in the wilderness.  Think of it also when you say “al chet.”  Think of the shofar as the music that strips the coverings from our hearts, the inarticulate cry that blasts open the gates of heaven where they’re locked—right down here in our chests.  May we feel less self-conscious about speaking what is in our hearts, regardless of who might be listening or watching—or who might not be.  May the shofar call to mind the prayer to be able to pray: Adonai, s’fatai tiftach u’fi yagid tehilatechah:  “Adonai, open my lips, that my mouth may speak your praise.”  May we begin the new year less afraid to ask for help in the hard work of opening our lips and filling our hearts.

Shabbat shalom, and g’mar chatimah tovah—may we all be inscribed for a year of goodness.

(*Note:  Renewal of Spirit, © Debbie Friedman 1995)