Prayer: are requests answered?

The state of prayer

Whoever walks into an average synagogue sees the situation. People are bored, chatting, hurrying. People try to “revive” prayer with melodies, new versions, Carlebach, changes. And they declare war on it: on whoever comes late, whoever chats, whoever skips. These attempts testify to the problem more than they solve it. The suggestion here is that the boredom reflects a deep feeling: many feel that prayers are not answered. But instead of examining the assumption, they go on seeing the boredom as their own weakness.

Are prayers answered?

According to everything we have seen, God hardly intervenes. So what is the point of asking for healing, livelihood and rain? And there is an interesting proof from the Mishnah itself. The Mishnah (Berakhot 9:3) says: “If his wife was pregnant and he said ‘May it be Your will that my wife give birth to a boy,’ that is a vain prayer.” Why? Because after forty days the sex of the fetus is already determined, and praying that it change means asking for a miracle. But notice: in those days no one knew the sex of the fetus. That is, even a change no one would see, a “hidden miracle,” counts as a miracle, and it is forbidden to ask for it. It turns out that the Sages themselves did not think one could ask for a change in nature, even when no one would notice it. And that fits exactly with what we said: there is no “hidden miracle” that is not a departure from nature.

So what do we do?

Yeshayahu Leibowitz wrote sharp words: there is no logic in asking God for healing and livelihood. “God is not a health fund.” For healing one goes to the doctor, and for livelihood one goes to work. Prayer, in his view, is a duty: service of God, standing before him as a servant before his master, and not a way to obtain something.

There is great truth in this, and it is really the foundation of prayer. But it is not the whole story. The Sages would not have instituted a detailed text of requests if it had no meaning at all. So one can see prayer as a building with several floors. On the lowest floor, the foundational one, stands prayer as service of God: a person stands before God, recognizes that he is the Creator of the world and that he gave him all his strengths, “for it is he who gives you the power to make wealth,” and accepts upon himself the yoke of his kingship. This floor can be fulfilled completely even in the picture described here. Above it there are further floors: the text itself, the intentions, and the requests.

And what about the requests? Here one must speak honestly. On the one hand, we saw that God hardly intervenes, and that a request for a miracle is usually out of place, and even forbidden. On the other hand, one cannot completely rule out rare intervention. So in a situation where “all deadlines have passed,” the need is pressing and there is no natural way out, like a person buried under rubble, perhaps there is room to ask. And even then it is better not to develop expectations. But for livelihood and health in the ordinary situations of life, one must act in natural ways, and not build on prayer. And someone once told a person looking for segulot for livelihood that he knew of one proven segulah: go to work.

And what about the requests in the Amidah, said three times a day? This is a hard question, and it has no perfect solution. Honesty might demand changing the text. But to change such an essential enactment, one would need very high certainty that God does not intervene, and broad agreement among decisors. We have neither. So the practical path proposed here is not to cancel the requests, but to adjust the intention. One can, for example, direct the requests toward other people, who are in truly severe distress with no natural solution. And in the parts of the prayer that are not obligatory, one can reduce the requests.

And there is a precedent for this in halakha. The laws of prayer have already changed when reality changed. For example, the Rema ruled that whoever prayed without concentration does not repeat the prayer, although by law he should, because in our day we are in any case not capable of concentrating, and there is no point in repeating.

And what about thanksgiving?

If God did not perform the miracle, what do we give thanks for? And what about Chanukah and Purim, should they be canceled? The answer is that nevertheless everything is from God in the most basic sense: he created the world, its laws and us. Without him we would not exist even for a second. Only usually we take this for granted, and do not give thanks. An event that seems to us a miracle, even if it is the result of the laws of nature, is an opportunity to give thanks for all this. There is no need to assume God “did” it.

Rosh Hashanah and the day of judgment

The Mishnah says that on Rosh Hashanah “all who come into the world pass before him like sheep,” and it is decided what will happen in the coming year: who will live and who will die, who will grow rich and who will become poor. Maimonides writes (Laws of Repentance 3) that whoever’s sins are many “dies immediately in his wickedness.” But if there were such an annual reckoning, we should see it: that the righteous do better in the following year, and the wicked worse. We do not see it. Some say the reckoning is long-term, or that it is made for the world to come. But these are excuses we “sell” ourselves so as not to face the question, and Maimonides did write “immediately.” And in any case, how do we know there is such a reckoning at all? There is no tradition from Sinai about it.

So what is the meaning of these days? Not that God decides our fate in this world on them. Perhaps he sums up the year toward the future day of judgment, but it does not seem that he responds through what happens to us. And perhaps, as people say, on these days he is “closer,” hears our prayers more, and is more open to forgiving. But their central meaning is different: these are days of soul-searching. Once a year to stop, to look at our deeds, to repent and ask for atonement. That is a healthy and important process for every person, and especially for a religious person. And in this sense they are certainly days of repentance. Days of judgment in the metaphysical sense, on which it is decided who dies and who lives, probably not: that is usually determined by the nature of the world and by our own decisions.