The Workings of Tefillah
Micha Berger <micha <at> aishdas.org>
2012-02-07 20:10:11 GMT
Last in a series of teasers for YHE emails, this one on approaches to
tefillah, and how to understand what we hope to accomplish. Obviously,
the Borei doesn't need to be told of your need, He isn't going to be
swayed by our nagging, and He would do what is best for us either way.
So why are we davening?
http://vbm-torah.org/archive/faith/12faith.htm
PRINCIPLES OF FAITH
By Rav Joshua Amaru
...
3. The Anthropocentric Conception of Prayer
The conception of prayer most prevalent amongst the classical medieval
Jewish philosophers is articulated most fully by Rav Yosef Albo in
his Sefer Ha-Ikkarim.[3] Human beings cannot change God: as opposed
to a king of flesh and blood, the King of Kings, who is perfect and
eternal, is not subject to influence and not affected by us. Prayer
should be conceived as a fundamentally human-focused activity; in
other words, prayer is anthropocentric. Though addressed to God,
the act of prayer does not affect the Divine -- it does not "work"
by changing God's mind. Rather, it affects the pray-er and changes
his or her personality and standing. Prayer is an act that gains
one merit: in praying, in turning to God and crying out to Him, a
person becomes more worthy and more deserving, and divine judgment
may change in light of this change. God does not change -- the person
praying is changed, and this can at times lead to the realization
of one's prayers.
As one would imagine, one who subscribes to the anthropocentric
approach to prayer has an easier time accommodating prayers of
praise and thanksgiving than prayers of petition. In encountering
the greatness of God and His Creation, he or she is inspired and
perhaps obliged to sing His praises; likewise the human object of
divine grace is morally obligated to express thanksgiving. Petition,
however, remains a problem from this perspective: it is not clear
what human good is achieved by the detailing of our needs before an
all-knowing God and begging for His grace.
4. The Theurgical Conception of Prayer
At the other end of the spectrum lies what we can call theurgical
prayer. Theurgy is an activity in which human action affects or
influences the divine, through prayers or rituals. Praying becomes
part of a larger spectrum of religious ritual activity that is
dedicated to changing and improving the spiritual world. Prayer,
so to speak, can "work," in that it can effect a change in spiritual
reality.
In the Kabbalistic tradition we find a great deal of sophisticated
theurgical thinking. Such notions as "raising the sparks," and
"tikkun olamot elyonim" (repairing of upper worlds) are metaphors
for the ways that prayer (and mitzvot) can make a change on a higher
plane. These approaches posit a complex theological reality, of
which the ten sefirot are the most basic components. In performing
mitzvot, and especially through prayer and specific kavvanot,[4]
a person can make a positive difference to spiritual reality in a
way that reverberates also in the everyday world.[5] The perfection
of God is protected by the fact that divinity is mediated through
this complex reality, such that God's higher aspect remains perfect
while He grants people the ability to affect His lower aspects.
Though there is great power and nuance to be found in this
approach, there are two aspects of it that I, at least, find
very difficult. First of all, one must affirm the reality of an
elaborate spiritual reality that is subject to human influence in
a manner that appears magical. The gap between the magicians and
diviners forbidden by the Torah and permitted "magical" practices
becomes very small. Furthermore, the conception of influence on God
as quasi-magical promotes a kind of mechanistic theology. God is
conceived almost as a force rather than as a person, and someone
who has the correct knowledge and technology can manipulate this
force. It goes without saying that this is not how advocates of this
approach conceive of themselves.
These extreme approaches mirror one another's basic strengths and
weaknesses. ...
It is important to appreciate that these brief summaries border
on caricatures of what are profound attempts to grapple with the
concept of prayer and, more generally, the relationship between the
human and the divine....
5. Rav Soloveitchik's Existentialist Conception of Prayer
In his writings posthumously published in Worship of the Heart, Rav
Joseph B. Soloveitchik (hereafter, "the Rav") elaborates a conception
of prayer that marginalizes the question of how or whether prayer
"works." Rather, claims the Rav, prayer must be understood as
primarily a medium of religious experience, as a mode of forming a
relationship with God:
The efficacy of prayer is not the central term of inquiry in
our philosophy of avoda she-ba-lev.... The basic function of
prayer is not its practical consequences but the metaphysical
formation of a fellowship consisting of God and man.[6]
Prayer is the realization of a dialogical relationship between the
individual and God, in which the pray-er is the speaker and God is
the listener. Its parallel is prophecy, in which these roles are
reversed. In both cases, communication leads to communion, and the
human comes into contact with the divine.
Petitional prayer is at center of this religious experience. The
Rav emphasizes the fact that petitional prayer is a mitzva,
a religious obligation. In a person's realization of his or her
utter dependence upon God, in recognition of his or her existential
"depth crisis," both the need and the obligation to call out to God
are formed. Every person must realize that despite the greatness
of the human personality, each individual is a "being born out of
nothingness and running down to nothingness."[7] We are equipped
with infinite imagination and desire but "must be satisfied with
a restricted, bounded existence."[8] The mitzva of prayer includes
the responsibility that a person realize this fact and experience
the distress attendant upon it. From the depths of crisis, a
person is drawn to call upon God out of the realization of his
utter dependence. This call, when issued from the depths of the
human personality, brings about the miraculous manifestation of the
divine presence.
...
6. Prayer as Intersubjective Influence
I now turn to a final conception of prayer, which I think is very
widespread; it is the simple meaning of the liturgy as well as
the mainstream understanding of prayer found in both the Torah and
Chazal. What I have to add is merely a philosophical defense of the
idea that petitioning God is an actual request of an individual to his
Maker, which includes at least the possibility that the request will
be answered affirmatively. It is explicitly an attempt to influence
and impact upon the Divine.
How can such a conception of prayer be accommodated to the idea of
God as transcendent, complete, perfect and all-knowing? The short
answer is that it cannot -- but that is not a tragedy. As I have
emphasized in previous shiurim, insistence on the transcendence of
God as our point of departure produces nothing but silence. We cannot
think about or relate to a fully transcendent God -- all we can do
is point to the presence of a being beyond our ability to grasp. Yet
the transcendent God, in His chesed (grace), has chosen to manifest
Himself to us, as a subject, with various personae: the King of Kings,
the Lawgiver, the merciful Father, etc. Our relationship with God is
necessarily limited and constrained by our own limitations, and all of
religion is mediated by the varying conceptions we have of God. None
of these are complete, but by negotiating our way amongst them we
can accomplish, to some limited extent, the seemingly impossible and
have a relationship with the Divine. That relationship can include
situations in which we make requests of God and they are answered.
Yet even within our human conceptions of God, petitional prayer
poses a problem. If God is the ultimate arbiter of justice, who
determines the fate of everyone and everything in accordance with its
just deserts, then even the hope that God might "change His mind"
because of someone's petition amounts to a scandal. Should a judge
change his verdict because the convicted criminal falls to his knees
and begs for mercy? Doing so would make a mockery of justice! How
is petitioning God for mercy any different?
...
But there is another sort of influence. How we relate to another
is not indifferent to the nature of the relationship or to the
forms in which it is expressed. This is perhaps easiest to see with
parents and children. When the same child asks nicely for the candy,
the parent might be inclined to loosen up the rules a bit (no candy
before dinner). This is not necessarily the parent acting against his
better judgment, but in accordance with it. It is possible to err in
the direction of being overly rigid, even in enforcing appropriate
rules, while it may be preferable to let things go occasionally. When
these occasions are, and how frequent they are, will be functions
of the relationship between the parent and the child. The trust the
parent has in the child, as well as the circumstances, which include
whether the child has asked for a special treat and how he has asked,
all play a role.
Chazal (the Rabbis of the Talmud) understood a person's relationship
to God in an analogous fashion. They make use of different images
to represent the ways that God relates to the world. Most prominent
are the images of God as judge, exhibiting the attribute of justice,
and the image of God as merciful Father, exhibiting the attribute
of mercy. The scandal arises when we presume that justice is
to be equated with some sort of ultimate rightness, the correct
way for God to manage the world. If so, then any divergence from
that is a scandal. But the Rabbis did not conceive of justice in
this comprehensive fashion. A judge must never allow his judgment
to diverge from the fair and the just. But God is not merely a
judge. Justice is but one of the ways that divine concern for the
world is manifest...
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
--
Micha Berger It's never too late
micha <at> aishdas.org to become the person
http://www.aishdas.org you might have been.
Fax: (270) 514-1507 - George Elliot
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