Self-Reflexive Self Actualization: The Life Changing Power of Tefillah, Jewish Prayer
Tonight a momentous process has begun. An operatic singer leads communal prayer while an unworthy orator tries to make sense of metaphors that haven’t held your attention since you were five. It is a truly awesome responsibility to lead a community, regardless of the date on the calendar nevermind during the High Holy Days, the Yamim Noraim. So let’s set aside the honest truth that I am an unworthy messenger and get to the message:
Prayer is waiting for you. Jewish prayer has relevance to your life. Even if you’re not Jewish. Even if you don’t believe in G!d. Jewish prayer contains depths that cannot be achieved by intellect alone, nor by any other form of prayer. I’m going to lay out some evidence for you and let’s see if you agree with me.
To pray in Hebrew is le’hitpalel. It is a self-reflexive verb. Let’s break that down, shall we? Self-reflexive. Meaning something we do to ourselves. Verb. An action. We are actively reflecting on ourselves when we pray. We are going through a process of self-reflection.
Not only is le’hitpalel in the self-reflexive family of verbs, the root of the verb, palel, means “to judge.” Though the words of Jewish prayers might reflect the day we are gathered, might seem to be calling upon G!d or praising G!d or otherwise fully focused on something beyond ourselves, the core motivation for Jewish prayer is self-judgment and self-transformation.
Rabbi Alan Lew, of righteous memory, describes how the High Holy Day prayers can help us return to the path of authenticity in his book This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared. He wrote: “These prayers help us recognize our estrangement from G!d, our estrangement from ourselves, our estrangement from the people we love, and our estrangement from Judaism. How do we choose to return to the path of goodness and truth? Do we want to return? What holds us back from this work?” (101)
I completely understand estrangement from G!d, from ourselves, and from Judaism. My spiritual autobiography includes long periods of disbelief. I lacked belief in G!d, I certainly didn’t believe in myself, and I wanted nothing to do with Judaism. So how did you come to find yourself in a synagogue with me on the bimah? I allowed Jewish prayer back into my soul.
The thing is, Jewish prayer is the cornerstone of my personal magic. Before I had any words to describe it, I was transformed by prayer experiences. Whether it was sitting with my mom during a Kabbalat Shabbat service or singing with a synagogue choir, or belting out Shabbos tunes during a youth group weekend, Jewish prayer has always pushed me into dialog with my soul.
As a teenager, lacking language for what happens to me in a sanctuary, I turned to cynicism. I leaned into the belief that religion is the opiate of the masses. I conflated my problems with Jewish classism, as the poor kid living in an apartment, with Judaism as a whole. The lead custodian of my temple observed that none of the kids who were involved as teenagers came back once they went to college and I promised to be different. That was an empty promise. I stayed far away from organized Judaism for as long as my soul could stand the separation. Eventually, in my late 20s, I found my way back into a sanctuary.
I learned that Judaism has something to say to adults. Rather than religion in a box, I found spirituality for personal transformation. That eventually led me on the road to attending rabbinical school. Honestly, I struggled with what a selfish decision it was. I gave up pursuing a career that could help sustain my family in order to pursue my own inner depths. I kept trying to back away from this journey, knowing that every year more and more people cut all ties to organized religion. Like a writer compelled to write, I’m a Jew compelled to engage with Judaism.
So back to our community. Of course, we don’t all have the opportunity to pause our work lives to sink deeply into Jewish wisdom for five or six years. What can this self-reflexive, self-judging technology mean for those of us who are less familiar with the contours of Jewish prayer?
First and foremost, we should let go of needing to be on the same page. Let the cantor stay connected to the order of the service. Don’t feel bad if I’m reading a prayer in English alone. Give yourself permission to use this time for your own self-reflection. Allow yourself time to meditate into a prayer or a memory. It can be the most life changing experience possible.
On the other hand, you might wonder why these services are so long. I think the main reason is that most of us are not comfortable using our prayer muscles. Just as it takes time to get into the rhythm of the gym or Yoga, the flow of prayer requires steady participation. There is a basic rhythm to all Jewish prayer services, just as there is a formula for Jewish blessings. This is the keva, the container, within which our communication with the Divine is held.
Prayer is a vessel for Divine energy to flow into the world. It nourishes our souls and supports every aspect of our lives. You may have heard of many reasons that Jews traditionally pray three times a day. The reason this practice continues is that it allows a person to step out of ego mind and into eternity.
Hence, prayer is a mindfulness practice. The way we chant prayers calls our attention to our breath. If we choose to embody our prayers by shuckling, incorporating our entire physical beings into our prayers, we further encourage ourselves to be vessels of Divine energy. Our prayers open our souls to the wonder that surrounds us.
Engaging with prayer stretches us beyond small mindedness into expanded consciousness. It is far easier to acknowledge the other people who share our lives when we lift ourselves above our own anxieties, pain, and anger. Thus, we awaken with words of gratitude. We gird ourselves with Divine energy for the day ahead. Mid-day, we pause briefly for the gift of prayer. And during the betwixt and between twilight hour, we acknowledge G!d’s part in bringing on evening and keeping us safe as we prepare for another day.
So what sets the High Holy Day service apart from other services? Actually, one simple thing: prayers added to the Amidah. That’s it. Extra poems written for the Standing Prayer. And in case like me you thought the word machzor referred only to the book read during Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, it is actually the name of any Jewish prayer book for our holy days, whether Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Pesach, or Shavuot. The word machzor means cycle, from a root that means “to return:” chet, zayin, resh [חזר].
As the Jastrow dictionary of Rabbinic Hebrew explains, chazar means to go around, as in searching for something. It can also mean to turn around, to repent. A machzor helps us search through the cycle of our holy days. That holy day cycle helps us turn around and return to our best selves.
So, we’ve got a cycle of prayers crafted to help us return to our deepest selves. This dance is available only if we set aside our cynicism. We must be willing to accept flawed messengers. No human is perfect, yet we can all choose to be vessels of Divine energy. We can harness our thoughts, speech, and actions towards righteousness and compassion. We can balance our own desires with the needs of the other people we are encountering. When we fully embrace Jewish prayer, we recognize the deep power of every word we write and speak.
And this is the reason for the discipline of daily prayer. Growing up, I learned to speed read Hebrew I did not understand, or speed read English I could not fully comprehend at a fast pace, in order to get to the chatimah, the closing blessing of prayers, as I made my way through the complete Shabbat morning service. In rabbinical school, I learned that the Conservative prayer books I grew up with made an interesting choice. In order to support a rational understanding of Judaism, the editors had either rewritten prayers in English or simply didn’t include translations for every word that they included in Hebrew. The only poem that was allowed to stay was actually a personal and optional prayer at the end of the Amidah.
O L!rd, Guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile.
And to those who slander me, let me give no heed.
May my soul be humble and forgiving unto all.
Open Thou, my heart, O L!rd, unto Thy sacred Law,
That Thy statutes I may know and all Thy truths pursue.
Bring to naught designs of those who seek to do me ill;
Speedily defeat their aims and thwart their purposes.
For Thine own sake, for Thine own power,
For Thy holiness and Law.
That Thy loved ones be delivered.
Answer us, O L!rd, and save with Thy redeeming power.
Did anyone else grow up with a prayer book full of Thy and Thine, as if old timey English was needed to convey the meaning of Hebrew? Right, well, this personal prayer is actually one of several listed in the section of the Talmud devoted to prayer. The word blessings in Hebrew is Berakhot. And this prayer, in roughly the same way, exists on page 17a of tractate B’rakhot. Our prayer books add the personal prayer of Mar son of Ravina to the end of each occurrence of the Amidah. It’s actually an indication that this is the place for us to add our personal prayers. Except instead of just saying “speak directly with HaShem here,” we give each other more words to read.
Like I said, since as long as I can remember reading a prayer book, the words of Mar son of Ravina have been seared into me. I think it is the first poem I ever memorized. Yet, memorization and internalization are not the same thing. I struggle every day to live up to the aspiration of this prayer. My ego self’s defenses are extremely strong. My Yetzer HaRa, my inclination towards evil, is skillful. My Yetzer HaRa wraps its venomous tongue in the self-justification of self-preservation. And so, on my best days, I remember that daily prayer is my salvation.
Prayer, particularly the order of Jewish prayer, centers me. It’s hard for me to sit in silence, focusing solely on my breath. Meditating into Jewish prayer is much easier for me. The book Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide, by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, of righteous memory, is a brilliant guide into the longstanding, Jewish tradition of using the prayer book, the written word, and the memorized word as meditative devices.
Just as our holiday prayer books are called cycle, machzor in Hebrew; our daily prayer books are called order, siddur in Hebrew. The cycle of time is orderly confronted by Judaism. We won’t always have words to express ourselves, but we can enter into the timeless conversation of our people through prayer.
Every morning service, whether weekday, Shabbat, or another holiday has the same structure. Similarly, the afternoon service is the gift of brevity, or the gift of a break in ordinary time throughout the year. (The name of the afternoon service is mincha, which means gift.) And the evening service abbreviates the morning service, adding prayers to acknowledge the passage of time and G!d’s presence in all that happens. HaMa’ariv Aravim. The One Who Evenings Evenings. Mem-prefix nouns create a noun out of a verb. And that prayer, which is included in every evening service, reflects that The Source of Life causes day to turn to dusk.
The scientifically minded among us may cynically respond to the sentiment of HaMa’ariv Aravim with a simple statement of scientific “fact:” It is the rotation of the Earth on its axis on a 24-hour basis that causes the sensation of day and night to occur. Of course you would be correct.
Allow me to quote Rabbi Dr. Lawrence Hoffman from his essay “Prayers of Awe, Institutions of Wonder,” in the book he edited Who By Fire, Who By Water.
“By mistakenly treating prayer books as scientific textbooks, worshipers were led either to denounce or to defend their prayers as they found them…It is easy to assume, therefore, that religious believers have escaped ordinary intelligence–as if science speaks truths, art suggests them, and religion trashes them. We will never find our way through the complexities of prayer if we do not grant that its writers were souls like us, who marveled at nature’s grandeur, questioned the persistence of evil, and held out for a G!d of ultimate meaning—even when the world seemed mired in the muck of desperation” (7).
There is so much to lament about the world as it is. Science and social science can attempt to accurately explain material reality. Prayer speaks to something deeper and more timeless. Prayer speaks to the rhythms of the day and the rhythms of the seasons and the rhythms of the human condition. When we allow prayer into our lives, we make space for our souls.
Mindfulness is secular America’s shorthand for living into the depths of each moment. Personally, I get to those depths through the practices of Judaism more than I ever could by breath work devoid of praise and wonder.
My lament and my apology to G!d is that I’ve known the power of Jewish prayer; I’ve experienced the power of daily prayer; and yet I have not lived into this practice. I made more time for daily prayer when my job was anti-war activist at CodePink than I have as your rabbi. And my actions have borne the consequence of my lack of spiritual discipline. My words are sharper, my emails more pointed, my presence at meetings takes up more space, because I lack the humility and grace that flows from daily connection with my soul and the Soul of the universe.
My deepest resolution for the spiritual year 5784 is to embody my own life with as much resolve as I take in defending our children from anti-Jewish hate.
Prayer can take many forms. It can be orderly or extemporaneous. According to Jewish tradition, it should always be spoken out loud, loud enough that you yourself can hear it. Did you know that we have no silent prayer? I know many rabbis have told you to continue the Amidah prayer silently. The reality of Jewish tradition is that to speak is to create. Therefore, traditionally, every prayer must be said in a voice loud enough for you yourself to hear it in order for it to be a prayer and not merely a review of prayer.
And yet, we have all experienced powerful silence.
We have also experienced the power of writing. Journaling can be a form of prayer. Hiking too. Playing with children. Playing with our inner children. These too are prayers.
Whether formal prayer speaks to you, or soulful play is more your jam, I hope you will join me in making time for our souls every day in every season. No matter how busy we are, no matter how much responsibility we bear, our souls deserve their time.
May the depths beyond intellect, science, and reason welcome each of us into daily communion. May the wonder and joy of childhood shine through us each day. May we be worthy vessels of Divine blessing. And may we be held by Unending Love.
Shabbat Shalom and Shanah Tovah.
This sermon was written for Rosh Hashanah 5784 at Temple Israel of Alameda. If you enjoy my writing, considering donating to my community.
The cover image of this post is a pomegranate found on Pixabay. There are many reasons pomegranates are connected to the Jewish New Year. My favorite is that they are a symbol of fertility and love.
Next year, I highly recommend buying a gorgeous pomegranate candle from Jewitches. I highly recommend the Jewitches Instagram Page. She does a gorgeous job of sifting authentic Jewish culture from the Christian-infused new-age miasma.
Also, in case you’re new to all of this, I wrote an explanation of the Jewish High Holy Day season for the Alameda Unified School District.