Why Jews pray
My 15-year-old granddaughter Leone was travelling last month with her parents and brother from England to Israel for a family celebration. They checked in at the airport without difficulty but when they reached the departure gate, an Israeli security officer discovered that Leone’s British passport was a few days short of the minimum three months’ validity required before a foreign citizen is allowed into the country.
Despite apparent consultations with higher-ups, Leone was denied entry. As she couldn’t be left alone at home, the family’s travel plans were coming to naught and their luggage was about to be unloaded. But unexpectedly, shortly before takeoff permission was granted to board the plane.
They were then approached by a jubilant Orthodox Jewish woman who told them that as soon as she heard their plight, she started praying for them. Her prayers were obviously answered. Though many reasons for the officials’ change of mind or heart could be offered, the woman’s testimony doesn’t seem to be less plausible than any other explanation.
Happy though I am that we could celebrate as a family together and despite my commitment to prayer, I find it difficult to believe that God would pay special attention to our celebration. If God doesn’t seem to stop natural disasters or prevent wars and acts of genocide, why would God care about our private get-together?
Though Judaism includes personal prayer in the daily liturgy, it does so almost invariably in the first-person plural. Though we pray for such blessings as health and prosperity, most of our personal prayers are about justice, forgiveness, redemption and other abstract notions. We often recite these prayers in community and never on Sabbaths and festivals when the worship service is to be dedicated to the adoration of God and to thanksgiving for the gifts bestowed on us. This prompted Heinrich Heine, the great German poet who was born a Jew, to reflect that Jews pray theology.
Though we can never forget or ignore our own needs and predicaments when we pray, to concentrate on them might unjustly elevate narcissism to the level of faith. True religiosity bids us to praise God for the grandeur of the universe and the miracle of human existence. It’s also to remind us of our responsibility to accept and live by God’s commandments.
Unlike my Christian friends who often tell me that they pray to know what God wants of them, as a Jew I turn to Scripture to hear God’s message. Because personal prayer is an attempt to tell God about me and my needs, it’s secondary. The central prayer in Judaism is a quo- tation from the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6: “Hear, O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One.” It continues as a commandment: “Love the Eternal your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” This teaching “shall be on your heart” and is to be transmitted “repeatedly to your children.”
Though the Church has taken over the Jewish way of reading from Scripture during worship services, the readings play a much more central part in the Synagogue where the entire Pentateuch is read in many congregations in the course of a year together with passages from the Prophets and other books of the Hebrew Bible.
If it wasn’t the woman’s prayer that enabled Leone to travel to Israel, it might have been that some official was sufficiently influenced by the teachings of Judaism to realize that to prevent her from celebrating with her extended family was wrong. But whatever the reason, I stand in awe, humility and gratitude before God.