In a matter of days it will be the beginning of February and we will look to the prognosticator of prognosticators to tell us whether or not we have six more weeks of winter. I can say with a great amount of certainty that I would love to think that there are going to be less than six more weeks of winter. Unfortunately I cannot predict the future and neither can a rodent living in Pennsylvania. Yet year after year we trot out this groundhog to perform a ritual that almost no one believes in. The exercise of Groundhog’s Day brings up an interesting question. What do we do with rituals that have been handed to us by previous generations?
When examining a ritual, we ask ourselves many questions. We ask questions that demand that we assess not only the ritual itself but our relationship to the ritual, to the past, and perhaps, our personal feelings surrounding the ritual as well. How difficult is the ritual to perform? Is it a burden on me and my family or is it something that we do easily.
For example; even if we don’t like the ritual of dipping our apple in honey on Rosh Hashanah (and I’ve never heard of anyone not liking it unless they have an allergy to one or both of those foods) we know that it is not a big deal to perform this ritual and we know that many people enjoy it. At the same time, because it is an easy and somewhat quick ritual, the dipping of our apple into the honey does not necessarily fill us with a sense of spiritual ecstasy.
In contrast, we might find that certain rituals have the potential to affect us in many significant ways. For example, the ritual fast of Yom Kippur has a profound effect on many of us. For many of us it is very difficult to go twenty five hours without food and drink. It is precisely because of the physical and mental toll that it takes on us that we are able to find such meaning in it.
Given the above criteria let’s examine one of the most prevalent practices in the Jewish religion. By all accounts prayer is at the center of our Jewish existence. We gather together throughout the year. We pray to rejoice in our happiness and we pray through our sorrow. We pray as a way of saying thank you to God. We pray as a way of beseeching God for help in some aspect of our lives and we pray to praise God. The rabbis tell us that in order to be able to even begin to pray, we must have two simultaneous feelings in our hearts, joy and trembling. When was the last time you were at a prayer service that allowed you to feel even one of those emotions?
A few weeks ago, we concluded a six-part class about prayer. We discussed what it means to pray, what it means to be commanded to pray, as well as other philosophical, halachic, and theological questions.
There are many sources that people will cite for the origin of prayer in the Judaism. According to many we are commanded to pray three times a day, once in the morning (called Shacharit) once in the afternoon (mincha) and once at night (maariv). The rabbis of the Talmud tell us that the prayers were instituted by our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the same passage of the Talmud we are told that our prayers today have been instituted to replace sacrifice as the way in which we worship God.
Prayer is simultaneously one of the most instinctive and inaccessible rituals in Judaism. We all find ourselves in moments when we need to talk to God, when we look for someone outside of us to help guide us. We know the prayers that we say before we take a test, and before our sports teams take the field. We also know how much we struggle to search for help when someone we love is struggling. At those times prayer flows from our lips effortlessly. We know what we want to say, we know what is in our hearts, even if we find ourselves unable to utter them aloud.
But prayer is also inaccessible. Most of our prayers are written in the poetry of ancient or medieval Hebrew. Personally, I know how much I struggle with medieval English. When you add the fact that we are dealing with an entirely different language, it makes it that much harder for us to really feel like the prayers express what we are feeling.
If I am not alone, if many of us struggle with our desire to pray being mitigated by our lack of inspiration then we should struggle together. No one is going to come into our lives and magically change the way prayer is done. No one is going to wave a magic wand and break the dam of prayer. It is up to us, as a community, to find ways in which prayer and worship can work for us, ways in which we can grow spiritually together. Together we can create an environment and a service that allows us to feel fulfilled and is inviting to those who are eager to join in. It is my hope that over the next few months we will find that we are able to experiment with services as we search for our own, communal voice.
As we enter services these next few months, I invite you to explore your personal prayer journey. If you find that services, or prayers aren’t meeting your spiritual needs, I hope you’ll share with me. If you would like to talk about prayers or other deep questions, please join us on Thursdays at noon for our weekly classes.
Sending all of us prayers of happiness, and health. Here’s hoping that winter is coming to a close and that we’ll have a spring full of rebirth, blessings, and prosperity.
Kol Tuv,
Rabbi Goldstein