I haven’t written much lately and people are beginning to wonder where I am. Maybe it is writer’s block. Maybe it was the intensity of the high holidays. Maybe it was writing 40 days or almost 40 days about peace. Maybe it is in not quite completing that project and leaving people who wrote beautifully hanging. For that I apologize. Maybe it is in balancing my own need to write for my own spirituality with the needs of a congregation that is traditional in approach. Historically, Jews did not write on Shabbat. It is one of the 39 categories of prohibited work based on building the Temple in Jerusalem. So if I write on my computer is it writing? Even the Orthodox in Jerusalem are figuring out how to text on Shabbat. Is that possible? http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/international/new-shabbos-app-creates-uproar-among-orthodox-circles Like all things, maybe yes, maybe no.
If I write on my day off, as I am now doing, is it a day off? Do rabbis ever get a day off? Is it possible to turn off my brain from thinking about these really deep theological, philosophical realms?
So I am back to writing. Thank you Jim, for asking for it, cajoling for it, demanding it, nudging for it, even during a football game.
This month my congregation is focused on prayer. Jewish prayer to be clear. We are trying a shorter, more relevant (?) service on Saturday mornings at 10:30 in parallel with our traditional one that begins, like always at 9:30 on Shabbat morning. We are struggling with what to call it. Is it an alternative service? Experimental? Experiential? Some wonder if it is even a service if it is shorter.
As part of this month long focus, I am thinking deeply about the issues, challenges, pleasures of prayer. I am asking questions—of everyone—the kids, the parents, our senior members. I am asking questions of myself.
This week I asked the kids, “What is prayer.” They answered that it is a conversation between them and G-d. They do it in appreciation, gratitude, thanksgiving, to ask for something like a goal in a soccer game or to do well on a test or for a family member who is sick. The adults who came to the first service pray to achieve comfort, community, serenity, peace, calm, healing. As one of our older members said, “It is simple. To praise G-d. Nothing more.”
Why do I pray? For those reasons and to be reassured. To realize that there is something beyond myself. To not feel alone.
So come join Congregation Kneseth Israel’s conversation. How do you pray? Why do you pray? What do you want to get out of a prayer experience?
I was so relieved to hear that others were wondering where you were! I actually was planning to email you this morning to ask why you had not written. I felt abandoned! I was delighted to hear from you.
As to prayer I have always felt inadequate because I wasn’t “doing it right.” When I was released by Tufts Medical Center, I returned to a collection of prayer books but they didn’t seem to be the answer I was looking for. But one day, when I felt stronger, I discovered all the “books” I had written, for quite a few years, diaries hidden from view, beneath the table in my bedroom which is covered by a blue floor length tablecloth. They were all addressed to God. And I realized that they were my daily prayers. And a special gift to me enabling me to know where and when certain events took place! I am 80 years old, and will be 81, in April and I am experiencing memory problems. Either my age or chemotherapy is causing it.
I am an Episcopalian and we use a Prayer Book that is very helpful and I have started again to write a letter to God every day.
That is lovely, Donna. Thank you for sharing your story.
I love the idea of a daily letter to G-d. I think from time to time I have used that approach, of writing to G-d but probably lack the discipline to do it daily, Might be worth trying–for me and others.
I just had a conversation about prayer with a secular Israeli friend of mine. He isn’t necessarily against God, but he’s against all trappings that remind him of the strife in Israel between the ultra-orthodox and everybody else – Jew and non-Jew alike. It has turned him against all things orthodox, and consequently, against things like prayer. Trying to explain to him why I pray, to make sense of it for him, was difficult but positive in that we are seldom called upon to articulate these things. I pray because God – the facet of God I experience anyway – is consistently available, a great listener, always open and accepting, strangely calming, a centering tool. A stabilizing force in a life that is anything but stable. My secular friend says it’s psychological. I say, even so…