Rabbis' Sermon Archives

Rabbi Moskowitz
Rosh Hashanah 5767

TRANSFORMING PRAYER

Let me be one of the first to wish you all a “Happy Birthday!” For according to our tradition, it was in this month of Tishrei that the creation of the world was fulfilled. Even more specifically, this very day, the first of Tishrei, is the day on which humanity was born.

Judaism celebrates this day as a time of renewal, of hope, of optimism. It is a season filled with the spirit of being able to start over. The birth of this world is described in our Torah with these Hebrew words: “Bereishit bara Elokhim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz,” “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth….” Our sages were fascinated that the Torah begins with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, bet. Why not with the first, aleph? They suggested that perhaps the Torah begins with the second letter because there was another beginning. That something had gone wrong, and that God had decided to start anew; to give creation a second chance.

Our tradition associates with this day a number of events that reflect this sense of renewal. The First of Tishrei is the date from which we begin counting off cycles of seven years and of fifty years. Every seventh year, according to the Torah, is the time when debts are to be forgiven. And, in the Torah, the fiftieth year is the time when slaves are to be freed and land is to be returned to previous owners, who had lost it as a result of economic hard times. In both cases, the slates are to be wiped clean. Debts are eliminated. Freedom is restored. Hope is renewed.

And our tradition tells us that the First of Tishrei is the day when Ezra the Scribe, one of the Israelite leaders who returned from exile in Babylonia in the fifth century B.C.E., began to read the Torah out loud to the people for the first time in communal gatherings. This was a generation still struggling with the after-effects of their ancestors’ exile. They had drifted from the values and ethics of Torah. When they heard Ezra read the words of Torah, they wept in recognition of how far they had strayed. Ezra told them not to weep but to rejoice, for God was providing them with the way to return, to renew themselves in their relationship with God.

This is the character of the day that we celebrate today: a day redolent with the fragrance of hope and renewal. Our tradition calls upon us not only to commemorate this renewal but also to participate in it. How shall we do so?

One powerful source of renewal since our earliest days as a wandering people has been prayer. It was Moses who first taught us how to open up our heart to God. During the second year of the exodus from Egypt a family quarrel broke out between Miriam and Aaron and Moses. Suddenly, Miriam is struck with a crippling disease. Moses rushes forward, cradles her in his arms and cries out, “O God, please heal her!” And there is a healing, not only of Miriam’s physical disease but also of the rift between Moses and his siblings.  

The Biblical figure who demonstrated for the early rabbis the model of prayer was Chanah. Chanah, the childless wife of Elkanah, comes to the sanctuary which had been built in the village of Shiloh. At the entrance to God’s sanctuary, Chanah turns her grief into a prayer to God. Scripture tells us that she pours out her soul to God, praying for a child, one whom she would dedicate to God’s service. Her prayer is answered. Where there was barrenness there is now life. And the story of Chanah is the haftarah for this day, for according to tradition it was on Rosh Hashanah that God heard and granted Chanah’s prayer for new life.

From these beginnings of prayer our early rabbis eventually crafted the liturgy of our daily and Shabbat worship services. Intended as a vehicle for renewal of the spirit in order to bring healing into the world, the prayer service at times has become a force for domesticating rather than unleashing our spiritual yearnings. Our recitations may feel far from the outpourings of Moses or Chanah or the Psalmist who in Psalm 39 cries out: “My heart burns within me; as I meditate, my inner fire ignites; then I call out to You in prayer with my tongue.”

Prayer is a pathway for arriving at the conjunction of our deepest yearnings and sacred purpose…for reviving within us the strength to realize our capacity to sanctify life. This alignment of self and divine is expressed in Hebrew by the word spoken in today’s Torah portion by Abraham: Hineini. Here I am, ready to fulfill my purpose and Your will, O God.  

It is this search for personal presence in and not mere attendance at prayer that has inspired recent transformations in worship services, particularly within the Reform movement. We have introduced new readings, inserted contemporary poems, composed new melodies…all designed to awaken us from the slumber of routine to the sanctity of the moment.

That Reform Judaism should be engaged in the crafting of such creative services should come as no surprise. Reform Judaism began not with a focus on ethics, social justice, or personal autonomy. It began as a revolution in worship. It was a reaction to the declining participation in prayer services as a result of the routinized form of Jewish prayer that existed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The enterprise that has crafted creative services over the past two decades is a modern reflection of that original drive to revitalize worship.

This impetus to reshape and improvise upon the words of our liturgy has its roots in the earliest days of rabbinic Judaism, which was itself a movement dedicated to reviving and redefining Judaism during a period of crisis in Jewish life. For centuries the contours of the Jewish prayer service were shaped more by themes and modes than by fixed words. A prayer service was more like a jazz jam session than like a symphonic orchestration. There was improvisation and exchanged moments of soloing.  

The ultimate composition of a fixed liturgical text was not intended to restrain the exercise of imagination. On the contrary. As with all Jewish sacred texts, the intent of the early rabbis who developed liturgy was that it should be read primarily as a point of embarkation rather than one of arrival. In the Talmud, rabbis are recorded as saying: Anyone who is unable to innovate, to bring some new meaning to the prepared words of the daily Tefilah prayer, has not truly prayed. The set words are designed to incite our own individual spiritual journeys within a communal experience: to ignite sparks of meaning rather than tamp them down.  

The early rabbis who first created our prayer service recognized the importance of not only what was being said but also how prayer was being said.    The Talmud records that the early rabbis would prepare for their communal prayer sessions by meditating so as to bring a spiritual focus, a meaningful presence to the words they were about to recite.

Jewish tradition teaches us that this spiritual focus, this meaningful presence, this alignment between human aspiration and divine purpose is driven primarily not by the mere recitation of words but by the opening up of our hearts. The great teacher of the reviving power of prayer, Rabbi Nachman, wrote: 

Do not think that the words of prayer as you
say them go up to God. It is not the words
themselves that ascend.

It is rather the burning desire of your heart
that rises like smoke toward heaven.
If your prayer consists only of words and
letters, and does not contain your heart’s desire – how can it rise up to God?

There are times when the expressions of our heart cannot even find articulation in the constraining garment of words. So the composer of Psalm 150 urges us to:

Praise God with blasts of the horn.
Praise God with harp and lyre.
Praise God with timbrel and with dance.
Praise God with lute and pipe.
Praise God with resounding cymbals.
Kol haneshama t’halel Yah.
Let every breath praise God.
Halleluyah.

Composing new words of prayer, re-imagining the meaning of inherited texts, bringing greater spiritual intention to moments of prayer, giving voice to our heart’s desire through melody and rhythm…all of these methods aim at achieving the goal of prayer, a goal which in Judaism is disclosed by the very word for prayer in Hebrew.  

The English word “prayer” primarily evokes notions of requesting something of God. However, the Hebrew word for prayer conveys a different nuance. It derives from the root word palal, which means “to judge.” The particular form of the Hebrew verb to pray, hitpalel, is reflexive. Thus, in Hebrew “to pray” conveys the notion of “judging oneself.” Ultimately, the purpose of prayer is to transform ourselves…to make manifest that within us which is divine…and thereby uplift the world around us.

To be present in and not merely in attendance at prayer is a challenge for all of us. During this year at Temple Israel…in our adult education classes, in Torah Center, and through our prayer services…we are going to focus on the renewing power of prayer. To the extent that we join in dedication to this enterprise, we may be able to say at this time next year that this season of renewal is not merely one that we are commemorating but one that we have helped to shape.