[Avodah] The Workings of Tefillah

[Micha Berger]

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