Prayer

Recycled

Prayer is a big part of organized religions, including Judaism. By the amount of required time dedicated to it, and its seemingly inherent purpose, it almost begs for personal attention. But it nevertheless somehow gets way too little of it – at least in the version I experienced.

It’s considered one of 613 explicit commandments by Judaism’s god, embedded in the bible, located in Deuteronomy 11:13 - “…I command you this day, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart.”

Wait. It doesn’t say anything about prayer there. Indeed. But the bible is often long on story and short on detail as to what exactly god wants. Rabbis in the Talmud always come to the rescue and decode cryptical commands. For this one, they explain “serve him with all your heart” means to pray. Got it?

OK. Great. Now what does pray – aka serving him with all your heart - mean?

Well actually, it means exactly as it sounds - however and whenever you feel like talking to god, just do it, and voila, the command to pray has been fulfilled.

And here’s a Talmudic bonus: “all your heart” isn’t poetic flourish – no such thing in the bible. Your heart’s got two inclinations, good and bad. Serve god with your shady side too.

How’s that?

Imagine you’re a burglar. Before breaking in, if you pray to god, “hey lord, do me a solid and let me score some serious swag,” congratulations - you’ve fulfilled the prayer commandment. Sure, you’ve also sinned by stealing, but this isn’t a zero-sum game.

Anyway. Prayer was meant to be a personal heartfelt chat with god. And people did that. Some people, like King David 3,000 years ago, got creative and prayed poetically.

His poetry (Psalms) became everyone’s prayer.

Somewhere along the way, “god, thanks so much for saving my butt in that deal… and can you please do it again tomorrow” got replaced by that everyone must read aloud specifically someone’s ancient Hebrew poetry three times a day. Like a pious robot. Sure, the scrupulous might understand what they’re reading and fold their hearts into someone else’s words and make them their own, but personal prayers? Gone.

Today, religious Jewish prayer means blitzing through curated scripts from eons ago. You can whisper a personal prayer anytime, anywhere – and if you do, you’re probably serving god with all your heart as IT demanded, more than the speed reader of David’s poetry in the synagogue. But no one will refer

to your spontaneous convo with god as “prayer” – except maybe god.

“It’s got to be the Hebrew Hallelujahs” says social and peer pressure.

Prayer became a play with a provided script – not the improv standup it was meant to be.

Ritual is king. Close your eyes, sway like a flag in the wind and hope to impress god with your pronunciation of someone else’s words.

Raw self expression? The whole reason of prayer? Discarded. And no one even knows to miss it.

We do, without much thought about what we do.