Does prayer matter to you?
Why do you pray? Do you find worship services meaningful or boring, thought-provoking or anachronistic, soothing or mumbo-jumbo? What do you want to get of prayer? Do our worship services help you achieve that? How would you like to pray? Should we bother?
The liturgy is meaningless. It is like talking to a fearful, insecure, and dangerous monarch. He has to be constantly told that he is all-powerful, wise, all-knowing, merciful,etc.
Also, few believe in a personal god who knows and cares about each of us individually. The liturgy should reflect this. How? I don’t know.
I have a different viewpoint, apparently, from most of the respondents. I don’t believe in the God of the Bible who will wipe out scores of people because he’s ticked off at David, and I certainly don’t believe in the God who let the Holocaust happen. But I do believe in, and pray to, a personal God. This God may not be all-powerful but s/he is watching over me and protecting my interests. Maybe this being is within myself, maybe in the world around me, maybe from a polytheistic value system. But when I feel luckier than I deserve to be, I credit this being; I try to do good to please him or her; and when I want to continue being lucky, I ask this God for help.
While Howard’s feelings are stronger than mine, they are reflective of mine. Why do I pray? I don’t, mostly, because as Howard said, I don’t believe that G_d cares much about us individually. Most of the prayers are thus habit, but not all that meaningful to me… even when I do understand them.
Even the parasha can fall into this category. There are all sorts of things the Torah that are not relevant beyond the Bronze Age and/or are rejected by ourselves and our society.
Further, I find a lot of the medieval rabbinical commentary to be anachronistic and/or arguing such arcane points as to be meaningless. How many Jewish faeries can dance on the head of a pin? Well, we don’t believe in faeries, and even if we did, who cares?
So why bother? Well, I think that meditation on topics is a good thing. I actually like the concept of Yom Kippur – a day to think about how to improve yourself – while finding lot of the liturgy incomprehensible. I also think that discussion, within a framework of our ethics, is both interesting and a driver for unified action to solve problems. To the extent that prayer drives either the self-consideration or the unified action, I think it’s a good thing.
But a lot of the liturgy? I’ll be the first to admit I’m often counting the pages until we’ll be done.
We’re taught that people were created in God’s image. The best people I know don’t like to be constantly flattered, and don’t fly into a rage over the smallest infractions. They don’t want to be bowed down to, and wouldn’t want other people to try to communicate with them by reading or memorizing words in a language that the speaker doesn’t understand.
So, my conclusion is that if there is a God he must be either amused, embarrassed, or offended by the obsequy of his worshipers. I recognize that prayer serves a purpose for some of us, and I’m not looking to interfere with that. For me, though, the harsh language of the question – “boring, anachronistic, mumbo-jumbo” is pretty much where it’s at.
+1 Nice and concise.
For me, prayer is a means of focusing on a higher plane than usual; either social justice, self improvement, or personal relationships. If the prayer is public and goes in the direction of praise for an archaic deity with favors to bestow, that ruins it for me. My god does not require praise, does not bestow personal favors ( not health, not long life) and is a means of communicating with the inner sense of community and continuity. If tomorrow we learned from some set of scientific advances that the universe created itself, and the exodus never happened, and the torah was written by an obscure scribe in a tent somewhere, that would not disturb me at all; so why should prayer focus on these things?
When I am in a worship service, whether at Temple Isaiah or at friends’ congregations elsewhere, I find great meaning in the act of gathering together as a community, giving thanks for all the wonders of our world, challenging myself to continue to engage in Tikun Olam (repairing of the world) and spending a few quiet moments in my own head to reflect on life. The liturgy has become much more meaningful to me as my children have moved into late adolescence and as I and my parents age. Music, and specifically singing, elevates the experience to an even higher and more rewarding experience. I can’t achieve this alone.
Prayer does matter to me. I love some of the rituals of Judaism, including saying the sh’ma and singing prayers of healing like Mi Sheiberach. I find it meaningful because these are the same prayers Jews have said for centuries. It ties me to my heritage, to my religion, and to the greater Jewish community at large.
I believe prayer can provide comfort in tough times, though it cannot solve problems. As for the worship experience at Isaiah, I am delighted to see our services going through a bit of an evolution as our clergy work to bring meaning to the liturgy said in temples everywhere each week.
The music always draws me, but so do the thoughtful sermons of our rabbis. Are our service boring? No, not to me. Are they soothing? Sometimes, sometimes not. The more our clergy makes the services relate to our lives, the better. And that is starting to happen more and more.
Most of all, praying and worship is a way to connect to other Jews. It is about community.
Prayer gives me
opportunity for introspection. At the same time, it helps to remind me that we humans are fallible and finite, and that we should be grateful for the variety and bounty of nature and society (even though the bounty is far from equitably distributed).
Prayer also connects me with the rich Jewish ethical tradition, its history, and its cultures.
These outlooks do not require belief in a personal God who cares for and watches over me. Nevertheless, viewing God and traditional godly attributes metaphorically is often an effective aid to meaningful prayer. (At other times, I tend to regard God as a deistic entity.)
Group prayer, if conducted in a primarily contemplative style, usually suits me better than individual prayer: Jews are a people, not a collection of noninteracting individuals.
Because I prize thoughtful prayer, the character of music at Temple Isaiah’s Friday night services repels me. I believe that religious music should be uplifting and edifying. I also believe that, whenever possible, the words and their musical setting should reinforce one another.
The music at Isaiah Friday night services usually clashes with these ideals. It’s often raucous or shallow, relying on Hootenanny and lounge music styles — appropriate to performances, not prayer. Tunes and styles are infrequently relevant to the content expressed by the words. Since music is employed to “carry” the service at Isaiah — is integral with the service — this is no triviality.
For these and other reasons, I customarily avoid attendance at Isaiah Friday services (or endure them when I attend my parents’ and in-laws’ yahrzeits).
Question #5 asked, straightforwardly, whether services help me toward my goals for prayer. I have therefore given a straightforward answer. I’m sorry if this answer causes discomfort, but answering the Question honestly and frankly is better than continuing to bottle up my feelings.
I come to services regularly on Friday nights and Saturday minyan. Partly I come to be part of a community of people doing the same thing together. And I find that prayer satisfies something deeply emotional and lets me express gratitude and awe and a desire to do better in my life. But considering that I do not think that God, whatever that means, needs our flattery and praise, and I cannot believe in a God who intercedes in our individual lives if we only plead strongly enough, I am at somewhat of a loss as to why I nonetheless repeat prayers that flatter and praise and ascribe anthropomorphic attributes to the Divine. And yet the liturgy helps me be in tune to both the transcendent and the immanent aspects of whatever Divine forces I call “God” even though my core beliefs seem distant from the literal meanings of the words in the liturgy. Maybe it is the music and the poetry which carries me through services, more so as I have aged than when I was younger and rebelled against what then seemed out of date phrasing.
I pray often, to center myself, to reflect on my behavior, to make myself consider what is really important. Sometimes a service helps me to those things and sometimes it just gets in the way. When the music inspires people to sing together, I feel surrounded by people who are sharing a beautiful moment. When we learn new music in a service, my prayer is interrupted and I feel torn from my time to be within myself and my community. I hate being taught a song during a service. I LOVE when everyone is comfortable with music and sings together. I also love when Lisa sings to us and we just listen. I don’t like the new addition of drums. Should be bother to pray? Yes. I appreciate when prayers are put into context, moving through words or thanks, words or petition, times of inner thought and times of community expression. I think we have had more time reading together in English, and this feels good to me. I think it would be better if Shabbat services were over in 55 minutes, and that the time of the service should be consistent.
I don’t pray. I used to pray in Hebrew when I was younger; I knew the service well and felt a part of it. Praying in English is not something I feel comfortable doing. There was something about the music and prayer together, in the Orthodox tradition, that I found moving. It was soothing, quiet, mystical, and it prompted me to reflect quietly. I don’t enjoy the services at Temple Isaiah. I don’t attend services any more except during celebrations; they no longer have any meaning for me.