Prayer is Sacrifice

Prayer has the power to generate insight, it endows us often with understanding not attainable by speculation. Prayer is a way to faith. Some of mankind’s deepest spiritual insights are born in moments of prayer.

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism

The Primacy of Inwardness

“Prayer is not for the sake of something else. We pray in order to pray. It is the queen of all commandments. No religious act is performed in which prayer is not present. No other mitzvah (commandment; a sacred act) enters our lives as frequently, as steadily, as the majesty of prayer.”

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism

You Stand

The way to prayer leads through acts of wonder and radical amazement. The illusion of total intelligibility, the indifference to the mystery that is everywhere, the foolishness of ultimate self-reliance are serious obstacles on the way. It is in moments of our being faced with the mystery of living and dying, of knowing and not-knowing, of love and the inability of love – that we pray, that we address ourselves to Him who is beyond the mystery.

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism

Before Whom You Stand

To pray, then, means to bring God back into the world, to establish His kingship, to let His glory prevail. This is why in the greatest moments of our lives, on the Days of Awe, we cry out of the depth of our disconcerted souls, a prayer of redemption:

And so, Lord our God, grant Thy awe to all Thy works, and your dread to all Thou hast created, that all Thy works may fear Thee, and all who have been created prostrate themselves before Thee, and all form one union to do Thy will with a whole heart.

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism

You Stand

The act of prayer is more than a process of the mind and a movement of the lips. It is an act that happens between man and God – in the presence of God. Reading or studying the text of a prayer is not the same as praying. What marks the act of prayer is the decision to enter and face the presence of God. To pray means to expose oneself to Him, to His judgment.

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism

Know (or Understand)

To live without prayer is to live without God, to live without a soul. No one is able to think of Him unless he has learned how to pray to Him. For this is the way man learns to think of the true God-of the God of Israel. He first is aware of His presence long before he thinks of His essence. And to pray is to sense His presence.

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism

The Separation of Church and God

Prayer is the microcosm of the soul. It is the whole soul in one moment; the quintessence of all our acts; the climax of all our thoughts. It rises as high as our thoughts … thus, prayer is a part of a greater issue. It depends upon the total spiritual situation of man and upon a mind within which God is at home … The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God.

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism

Spiritual Absenteeism

Spiritual problems cannot be solved by administrative techniques … The problem is not one of synagogue attendance but one of spiritual attendance. The problem is not how to attract bodies to enter the space of a temple but how to inspire souls to enter an hour of spiritual concentration in the presence of God. The problem is time, not space.

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism

Prayer and the Community

We never pray as individuals, set apart from the rest of the world. The liturgy is an order which we can enter only as a part of the Community of Israel. Every act of worship is an act of participating in an eternal service, in the service of all souls of all ages. Every act of adorations is done in union with all of history, and with all beings above and below:

We sanctify Thy Name in the world, as they sanctify

it in the highest heavens . . .

A crown will be bestowed

Upon the Lord our God

By the angels, the multitudes above,

In union with Israel Thy people

Assembled below . . .

(The kaddish in the liturgy for the Sabbath morning)

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism

Prayer and the Community

It is not safe to pray alone. Tradition insists that we pray with, and as a part of, the community, that public worship is preferable to private worship. Here we are faced with an aspect of the polarity of prayer. There is a permanent union between individual worship and community worship, each of which depends for its existence upon the other. To ignore their spiritual symbiosis will prove fatal to both.

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism