Post by Rabbi Neil on Nov 29, 2019 19:07:46 GMT
From time to time, people say to me that they don’t believe in God so they feel it would be hypocritical to pray. The frequency with which that happens shows me that we need to do much more to educate people in what prayer is, and indeed who God is. Judah HaLevi, the 11th century theologian, for example, felt that prayer was nourishment for our soul. Abraham Joshua Heschel felt that prayer was our humble response to the inconceivable surprise of being. Lionel Blue felt that prayer was a question, not an answer or a statement. Through these High Holy Days, we have started to open up an exploration of prayer to see that it is far more than what appears on the page. Prayer is the spontaneous outpouring of the soul, sometimes guided by traditional words, sometimes not. Prayer is the first step in personal, and thus global transformation, and the first step along the path to holiness. Throughout the High Holy Days, I’ve spoken of prayer on the individual level, but today, as we look forward to a day totally dedicated to prayer, I need to add more to what prayer can and must be.
I remember the first Shabbat service I attended after my friend Student Rabbi Andreas Hinz was killed. When we reached Hashkiveinu in the liturgy, the prayer that asks for divine protection, including from violence by others, I froze. I couldn’t open my mouth for the rest of the service. I questioned everything in the liturgy. It was a lie. If God couldn’t protect Andy, or even worse if God chose not to protect Andy, then there was no point in asking for protection for myself. There was no Divine protection. The liturgy was selling false hope. My Rabbi, of blessed memory, had been keeping an eye on me during the service and he saw me freeze up. Afterwards, he asked me “What was the prayer?” I answered “Hashkiveinu.” He nodded and said, “Fair enough.” He got it. He knew what I was thinking. That moment, that Friday evening at the beginning of July of 2002, started a personal and theological journey that transformed my life and that ultimately brought me here to this congregation. My Rabbi knew what was happening, but no-one else in the community had any idea of how profound that moment was in my life. They knew I was mourning deeply, but they didn’t know that my entire world view was disassembling before being reassembled many months later. They didn’t know that at that moment…. I didn’t even know at that moment that it was that specific moment of prayer when I started to move away from the idea of the supernatural God as described in the liturgy. That was the moment in prayer when I started to move from the plain meaning of the words on the page to reading behind the words. But no-one else in the congregation had any idea of that, and never did.
That prayer service was in July of 2002, that is, 17 years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember where I was sitting. I remember the feeling. It was a transformative moment of prayer for me. I’ve been in synagogue services for all of my life – literally thousands of prayer services. There have been many times that I have been moved. But the moments of total transformation, the services where the liturgy profoundly changed my world view, I could probably count on my fingers on one hand. Interestingly, last year’s Yom Kippur service was one of them, which was particularly interesting because a number of people commented afterwards that I seemed different in prayer. They were right. It was a very rare, special and transformative service for me. But the point is that of thousands of prayer services that I’ve experienced, I know of very few that have been totally life-changing. Hardly any, as far as I know, have been world-changing, as I described on Rosh Hashanah. Why is that?
The answer, I believe, is two-fold. Firstly, prayer can be very difficult. Or, at least, sometimes as Jews, we make prayer very difficult as we try to hold together keva and kavannah, Hebrew, Aramaic and English, ancient and contemporary, personal and communal. That’s a lot of things to juggle! And how often do we learn how to pray? How often do we teach our children to pray? Do we even know how? Sure, we can teach children to decode - to read unfamiliar letters from another language – and we can even teach them the translation of many of the words, but decoding and understanding what we’re saying is not the same as praying. Prayer is a journey. Yom Kippur is not just a journey of prayer, it’s a full-blown marathon of prayer. How can we expect people to finish a marathon when they haven’t even trained for a fun run? But if that’s the answer to the question why so few prayer services are life-changing then what does that say about me? After all, I was trained not just in liturgy but also in prayer, so if it happens so rarely for me, then it can’t just be about lack of training or even of exposure.
A second answer, which is really important in terms of prayer, which is really challenging but extremely important, is that it’s not always about you. We’re not biblical figures with God’s immediate presence always with us – Jewish theology clearly moved on from that. We can’t expect an immediate epiphany every time we pray. Yes, prayer in community can be extremely comforting, it can be a wonderful social event, but we’re not always going to have transformative moments. To me, it’s rather like watching the lightning storms that we have here sometimes. If you sit and wait, patiently, if you watch the right part of the sky, if you are patient and attentive, you’ll eventually see a lightning strike. The amount of time spent watching without a lightning strike is far, far longer than the amount of time watching a lightning strike, and we accept that. To expect lightning strikes at every prayer service is totally unrealistic. We’re not Moses. The Sinai theophany isn’t happening at TBS every single service, although it might from time to time in a very personal way for someone even if you don’t actually see it happen. Just like my Hashkiveinu moment seventeen years ago in Middlesex New Synagogue in northwest London, it happened but no-one else saw it. But it only happened because of the community at prayer. It wouldn’t have happened by myself. It’s not always about you. Maybe today it is about you, but maybe not. Maybe today it’s about the person next to you, or the person sitting on the totally opposite side of the Sanctuary. The mitzvah of prayer is not necessarily that you’ll see the metaphorical lightning flashes, but it may be that you help someone else see them. Your presence supports them and allows them to see something that you currently cannot. And that’s okay, because it’s not always about you.
That brings an essential extra level to prayer services. We come to prayer services in the hope that one of us might be transformed. It may be us but it may not and that should be okay. That has to be okay because that’s actually the essence of minyan, of community. We’re here to support each other through love. We’re here so that someone in the community may connect with God, may transcend themselves, may start to change the world in the prayer service. Maybe the mitzvah of prayer isn’t just about love of God, especially because that’s a difficult concept to grasp… maybe it’s actually about love of community. Even if you don’t believe a word of the prayers, you can pray in community to support those who need it. I would go further. Even if you don’t believe a word of the prayers, you should still pray in community to support those who need it. Because it’s not always about you. Because doing so would be a wonderful, selfless act which is the epitome of community. Maybe you’ll see the lightning, maybe someone else will. But if we don’t all come together in prayer, we can be sure that no-one will.
The covenant with God is not a covenant with individuals – it’s a covenant with the community. Atem Nitzavim Hayom Kulchem says this morning’s Torah portion – You who stand here today, plural. Sometimes our prayer is in the singular – Adonai s’fatai tiftach – God, open my lips and my mouth, singular, shall declare your praise. But it’s only singular in the larger plural context. That’s why most of our prayers, especially today, are in the plural. Eloheinu, our God. Avinu Malkeinu, our parent, our Ruler. Ashamnu, we have sinned. The idea of personal redemption, while present in Judaism ever since it encountered Hellenism around two thousand years ago, is an idea that suits our radically individual society to a tee, but which really isn’t healthy spiritually. It’s not about you. It’s about us all. The very premise of minyan is that we support each other in prayer and create a communal prayer. A woven tapestry in which all of our prayers are individual threads. When we pray together as a community, we connect our spiritual journeys together with those around us and also with all other Jews of the past, present and future. We may not share the same liturgy but we do share the same spiritual journey.
One of the most important contributions to society that Judaism can make today is that of community. When I said on Shabbat Shuvah that prayer can be an act of rebellion, we can now add another perspective to that – the rebellion of the statement that it’s not always about you. The decentralization of the self from prayer is an essential contribution to society. That does not mean the removal of self, that would be different. But the decentralization of the self, seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole, seeing our own prayer as part of a larger prayer, that is important, that is rebellion against a radically individualized society that views success on a personal level. Jewish prayer is something wonderful and unique – a group experience, a group commitment to God, a group expression of being and intention. It’s not always about you.
Group prayer is the creation of the vessel in which we can together hold God’s presence because that presence is too great for any one of us to hold by ourselves. If we did, we would probably turn it into something self-serving, something that is not really God. What we create together is spiritual art, a magnificent spiritual edifice which none of us could possibly ever create by ourselves. And that’s fine, that’s good, but it’s not always about you. It’s about the shared journey, the journey across time, the themes that we experience together, the ways we support each other, the community we create to support those who cannot pray but need to, it’s about a gift. Jewish prayer is a gift. Jewish prayer reminds us that we are part of something far, far bigger. And only once we appreciate that might we be able to see a real spark of divine connection, a flash of lightning, either in ourselves or in someone else. This Yom Kippur, we come together to pray not as individuals seeking instant gratification, an instant response to our own personal needs, but as small and nonetheless essential parts of a larger whole, of a body of people moving on a spiritual journey together.
To pray in a community is to take the first steps of world transformation. We acknowledge that change starts from within ourselves but if prayer is only personal self-reflection, why not just go to a therapist? The answer is… because it’s not always about you! Sometimes it is about you, but only sometimes. More often than not, it’s about us. It’s about our journey of communal transformation as a result of lots of individual moments of personal transformation. It’s about our using the keva, the fixed prayers, to hold us all together so that someone among us may find the appropriate kavannah to pierce the sacred veil. It’s about our rebellion against a society that focuses on the self and how to instantly please our every desire. It’s about communal holiness, the shared and extraordinary covenant with God. “Do not separate yourself from the community,” said Hillel, “and do not trust yourself until the day of your death.” Being in community means being in relationship, which necessarily involves being developed by our interaction with others. We see a very different person when we look in a mirror and when we look at ourselves through the eyes of others. To atone, to be humbled, we need both. Prayer, therefore, must involve a communal component. But sometimes it’s not about us at all. Sometimes it’s about the person sitting next to us, bereft, broken, confused, in pain, unable to open their mouth in prayer. Sometimes it’s about saying the prayer for someone who wants to but who currently cannot even open their mouth.
Prayer needs to be like a relationship – at times exciting, passionate, creative, at times comforting and at times challenging. And if it is to be like a relationship, then it needs a real investment of our time and care. In an age of individualized gratification, where we fortunate few can get pretty much anything we want as soon as we want it, prayer – especially regular communal prayer - reminds us of how unrealistic and how unnatural that is. Prayer is not an immediate download, it’s not a microwave meal, it’s not a question that can be instantly answered by Siri or by Google. Prayer, real authentic Jewish spirituality, the search for holiness that has always been the hub at the center of the life of the Jewish community, indeed the hub at the center of all healthy human existence, takes time and effort. It is the perfect antidote to the worst aspects of contemporary Western society, especially its radical individualism and its instantaneous gratification which, when combined, easily lead to a profound sense of loneliness and dissatisfaction, even addiction and burn-out.
This High Holy Day season, we have through the sermons explored the theme of changing the world one prayer at a time. We have seen that prayer is an essential first step to changing the world given that honest, true prayer involves reflection about the self and about the world that then leads us to action. We have seen that keva, the fixed prayers, are an essential frame upon which we must hang our kavannah, out intention, the outpouring of our soul. We have seen that communal prayer in the past was far more creative than today, deeply poetic, taking individuals in prayer on profound metaphorical journeys, and that we ourselves could absolutely create such prayers. We have seen that prayer is an act of rebellion, a statement of dissatisfaction, an agenda of change. We have seen why the act of praying has become embarrassing for so many people today and how the real embarrassment from prayer should be the embarrassment of having all our hubris and self-lies stripped away, revealing our true selves. And we have seen that prayer isn’t always about the instant hit, the immediate result, and indeed often isn’t about us at all.
Where does this leave us? I think it leaves us at another stage along our shared Jewish journey, a stage which announces a spiritual focus in our community for the coming year. I think it leaves us with an invitation for more members to join us on this journey, to not be embarrassed, but to rebel against that which is unhealthy in ourselves and in our world together by regularly coming together in communal prayer. For today is a day of prayer but will tomorrow be as well? What about the next day - next Shabbat? Will that be a day where you join your voice to our community’s prayer, a day where you support those in need, a day where you help create the sacred sparks that remind us of the wonder of our lives? Only you can answer that question, all the while remembering that it’s not always about you.
May our prayers today and in the future bring comfort to us and to others. May they lead to the transformation of ourselves, of our community, and of the world. May we be creative in our prayers, may we be honest enough to rebel against the negative influences on our lives. May we never be embarrassed to step outside our unhealthy society and create a healthy community. May this be our kavannah, our intention, for the coming year, and let us say, Amen.
I remember the first Shabbat service I attended after my friend Student Rabbi Andreas Hinz was killed. When we reached Hashkiveinu in the liturgy, the prayer that asks for divine protection, including from violence by others, I froze. I couldn’t open my mouth for the rest of the service. I questioned everything in the liturgy. It was a lie. If God couldn’t protect Andy, or even worse if God chose not to protect Andy, then there was no point in asking for protection for myself. There was no Divine protection. The liturgy was selling false hope. My Rabbi, of blessed memory, had been keeping an eye on me during the service and he saw me freeze up. Afterwards, he asked me “What was the prayer?” I answered “Hashkiveinu.” He nodded and said, “Fair enough.” He got it. He knew what I was thinking. That moment, that Friday evening at the beginning of July of 2002, started a personal and theological journey that transformed my life and that ultimately brought me here to this congregation. My Rabbi knew what was happening, but no-one else in the community had any idea of how profound that moment was in my life. They knew I was mourning deeply, but they didn’t know that my entire world view was disassembling before being reassembled many months later. They didn’t know that at that moment…. I didn’t even know at that moment that it was that specific moment of prayer when I started to move away from the idea of the supernatural God as described in the liturgy. That was the moment in prayer when I started to move from the plain meaning of the words on the page to reading behind the words. But no-one else in the congregation had any idea of that, and never did.
That prayer service was in July of 2002, that is, 17 years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember where I was sitting. I remember the feeling. It was a transformative moment of prayer for me. I’ve been in synagogue services for all of my life – literally thousands of prayer services. There have been many times that I have been moved. But the moments of total transformation, the services where the liturgy profoundly changed my world view, I could probably count on my fingers on one hand. Interestingly, last year’s Yom Kippur service was one of them, which was particularly interesting because a number of people commented afterwards that I seemed different in prayer. They were right. It was a very rare, special and transformative service for me. But the point is that of thousands of prayer services that I’ve experienced, I know of very few that have been totally life-changing. Hardly any, as far as I know, have been world-changing, as I described on Rosh Hashanah. Why is that?
The answer, I believe, is two-fold. Firstly, prayer can be very difficult. Or, at least, sometimes as Jews, we make prayer very difficult as we try to hold together keva and kavannah, Hebrew, Aramaic and English, ancient and contemporary, personal and communal. That’s a lot of things to juggle! And how often do we learn how to pray? How often do we teach our children to pray? Do we even know how? Sure, we can teach children to decode - to read unfamiliar letters from another language – and we can even teach them the translation of many of the words, but decoding and understanding what we’re saying is not the same as praying. Prayer is a journey. Yom Kippur is not just a journey of prayer, it’s a full-blown marathon of prayer. How can we expect people to finish a marathon when they haven’t even trained for a fun run? But if that’s the answer to the question why so few prayer services are life-changing then what does that say about me? After all, I was trained not just in liturgy but also in prayer, so if it happens so rarely for me, then it can’t just be about lack of training or even of exposure.
A second answer, which is really important in terms of prayer, which is really challenging but extremely important, is that it’s not always about you. We’re not biblical figures with God’s immediate presence always with us – Jewish theology clearly moved on from that. We can’t expect an immediate epiphany every time we pray. Yes, prayer in community can be extremely comforting, it can be a wonderful social event, but we’re not always going to have transformative moments. To me, it’s rather like watching the lightning storms that we have here sometimes. If you sit and wait, patiently, if you watch the right part of the sky, if you are patient and attentive, you’ll eventually see a lightning strike. The amount of time spent watching without a lightning strike is far, far longer than the amount of time watching a lightning strike, and we accept that. To expect lightning strikes at every prayer service is totally unrealistic. We’re not Moses. The Sinai theophany isn’t happening at TBS every single service, although it might from time to time in a very personal way for someone even if you don’t actually see it happen. Just like my Hashkiveinu moment seventeen years ago in Middlesex New Synagogue in northwest London, it happened but no-one else saw it. But it only happened because of the community at prayer. It wouldn’t have happened by myself. It’s not always about you. Maybe today it is about you, but maybe not. Maybe today it’s about the person next to you, or the person sitting on the totally opposite side of the Sanctuary. The mitzvah of prayer is not necessarily that you’ll see the metaphorical lightning flashes, but it may be that you help someone else see them. Your presence supports them and allows them to see something that you currently cannot. And that’s okay, because it’s not always about you.
That brings an essential extra level to prayer services. We come to prayer services in the hope that one of us might be transformed. It may be us but it may not and that should be okay. That has to be okay because that’s actually the essence of minyan, of community. We’re here to support each other through love. We’re here so that someone in the community may connect with God, may transcend themselves, may start to change the world in the prayer service. Maybe the mitzvah of prayer isn’t just about love of God, especially because that’s a difficult concept to grasp… maybe it’s actually about love of community. Even if you don’t believe a word of the prayers, you can pray in community to support those who need it. I would go further. Even if you don’t believe a word of the prayers, you should still pray in community to support those who need it. Because it’s not always about you. Because doing so would be a wonderful, selfless act which is the epitome of community. Maybe you’ll see the lightning, maybe someone else will. But if we don’t all come together in prayer, we can be sure that no-one will.
The covenant with God is not a covenant with individuals – it’s a covenant with the community. Atem Nitzavim Hayom Kulchem says this morning’s Torah portion – You who stand here today, plural. Sometimes our prayer is in the singular – Adonai s’fatai tiftach – God, open my lips and my mouth, singular, shall declare your praise. But it’s only singular in the larger plural context. That’s why most of our prayers, especially today, are in the plural. Eloheinu, our God. Avinu Malkeinu, our parent, our Ruler. Ashamnu, we have sinned. The idea of personal redemption, while present in Judaism ever since it encountered Hellenism around two thousand years ago, is an idea that suits our radically individual society to a tee, but which really isn’t healthy spiritually. It’s not about you. It’s about us all. The very premise of minyan is that we support each other in prayer and create a communal prayer. A woven tapestry in which all of our prayers are individual threads. When we pray together as a community, we connect our spiritual journeys together with those around us and also with all other Jews of the past, present and future. We may not share the same liturgy but we do share the same spiritual journey.
One of the most important contributions to society that Judaism can make today is that of community. When I said on Shabbat Shuvah that prayer can be an act of rebellion, we can now add another perspective to that – the rebellion of the statement that it’s not always about you. The decentralization of the self from prayer is an essential contribution to society. That does not mean the removal of self, that would be different. But the decentralization of the self, seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole, seeing our own prayer as part of a larger prayer, that is important, that is rebellion against a radically individualized society that views success on a personal level. Jewish prayer is something wonderful and unique – a group experience, a group commitment to God, a group expression of being and intention. It’s not always about you.
Group prayer is the creation of the vessel in which we can together hold God’s presence because that presence is too great for any one of us to hold by ourselves. If we did, we would probably turn it into something self-serving, something that is not really God. What we create together is spiritual art, a magnificent spiritual edifice which none of us could possibly ever create by ourselves. And that’s fine, that’s good, but it’s not always about you. It’s about the shared journey, the journey across time, the themes that we experience together, the ways we support each other, the community we create to support those who cannot pray but need to, it’s about a gift. Jewish prayer is a gift. Jewish prayer reminds us that we are part of something far, far bigger. And only once we appreciate that might we be able to see a real spark of divine connection, a flash of lightning, either in ourselves or in someone else. This Yom Kippur, we come together to pray not as individuals seeking instant gratification, an instant response to our own personal needs, but as small and nonetheless essential parts of a larger whole, of a body of people moving on a spiritual journey together.
To pray in a community is to take the first steps of world transformation. We acknowledge that change starts from within ourselves but if prayer is only personal self-reflection, why not just go to a therapist? The answer is… because it’s not always about you! Sometimes it is about you, but only sometimes. More often than not, it’s about us. It’s about our journey of communal transformation as a result of lots of individual moments of personal transformation. It’s about our using the keva, the fixed prayers, to hold us all together so that someone among us may find the appropriate kavannah to pierce the sacred veil. It’s about our rebellion against a society that focuses on the self and how to instantly please our every desire. It’s about communal holiness, the shared and extraordinary covenant with God. “Do not separate yourself from the community,” said Hillel, “and do not trust yourself until the day of your death.” Being in community means being in relationship, which necessarily involves being developed by our interaction with others. We see a very different person when we look in a mirror and when we look at ourselves through the eyes of others. To atone, to be humbled, we need both. Prayer, therefore, must involve a communal component. But sometimes it’s not about us at all. Sometimes it’s about the person sitting next to us, bereft, broken, confused, in pain, unable to open their mouth in prayer. Sometimes it’s about saying the prayer for someone who wants to but who currently cannot even open their mouth.
Prayer needs to be like a relationship – at times exciting, passionate, creative, at times comforting and at times challenging. And if it is to be like a relationship, then it needs a real investment of our time and care. In an age of individualized gratification, where we fortunate few can get pretty much anything we want as soon as we want it, prayer – especially regular communal prayer - reminds us of how unrealistic and how unnatural that is. Prayer is not an immediate download, it’s not a microwave meal, it’s not a question that can be instantly answered by Siri or by Google. Prayer, real authentic Jewish spirituality, the search for holiness that has always been the hub at the center of the life of the Jewish community, indeed the hub at the center of all healthy human existence, takes time and effort. It is the perfect antidote to the worst aspects of contemporary Western society, especially its radical individualism and its instantaneous gratification which, when combined, easily lead to a profound sense of loneliness and dissatisfaction, even addiction and burn-out.
This High Holy Day season, we have through the sermons explored the theme of changing the world one prayer at a time. We have seen that prayer is an essential first step to changing the world given that honest, true prayer involves reflection about the self and about the world that then leads us to action. We have seen that keva, the fixed prayers, are an essential frame upon which we must hang our kavannah, out intention, the outpouring of our soul. We have seen that communal prayer in the past was far more creative than today, deeply poetic, taking individuals in prayer on profound metaphorical journeys, and that we ourselves could absolutely create such prayers. We have seen that prayer is an act of rebellion, a statement of dissatisfaction, an agenda of change. We have seen why the act of praying has become embarrassing for so many people today and how the real embarrassment from prayer should be the embarrassment of having all our hubris and self-lies stripped away, revealing our true selves. And we have seen that prayer isn’t always about the instant hit, the immediate result, and indeed often isn’t about us at all.
Where does this leave us? I think it leaves us at another stage along our shared Jewish journey, a stage which announces a spiritual focus in our community for the coming year. I think it leaves us with an invitation for more members to join us on this journey, to not be embarrassed, but to rebel against that which is unhealthy in ourselves and in our world together by regularly coming together in communal prayer. For today is a day of prayer but will tomorrow be as well? What about the next day - next Shabbat? Will that be a day where you join your voice to our community’s prayer, a day where you support those in need, a day where you help create the sacred sparks that remind us of the wonder of our lives? Only you can answer that question, all the while remembering that it’s not always about you.
May our prayers today and in the future bring comfort to us and to others. May they lead to the transformation of ourselves, of our community, and of the world. May we be creative in our prayers, may we be honest enough to rebel against the negative influences on our lives. May we never be embarrassed to step outside our unhealthy society and create a healthy community. May this be our kavannah, our intention, for the coming year, and let us say, Amen.