PREFACE In the modern world prayer is the main expression of a religious person's faith. As a rule, the commandments which this person observes are of a practical nature, and although they are based on the religious belief that requires a person to lead a way of life in conformity with observance of the commandments, the main expression of religious faith is prayer. This is true both for the observant Jew whose life is accompanied by the observance of the commandments and religious laws for the most part, and for the non-Jewish believers whose religions encompass fewer precepts than the Jewish religion. The centrality of prayer in the religious way of life, and its place in the history of Jewish culture, have given rise to a vast and multi-faceted corpus of prayer, a part of which has been incorporated de facto into the regular prayer cycle, while another part has remained outside the prayer system - they are the stars that have remained outside, in the words of Natan Alterman. Not only were many prayer passages produced over the generations, but also a variety of works that deal with prayer, including Halachic works, research into the history of prayer and its development, as well as studies of thought, language, literature, commentary etc. This book does not set out to introduce fresh ideas and concepts, but an attempt has been made here to present things differently than usual, either slightly or very much so. You will not find here [ ] continuous discussion of prayer passages as they appear in prayer books, and the main bodies of prayer are presented with direct reference to the historical reality in which they were produced. The first part of the book includes introductory remarks about Jewish prayer which do not refer to this or that unit of prayer or to any particular historical period, and several religious and ideological aspects of the subject are examined here. The main body of the book comprises nine chapters. These chapters contain descriptions of the main parts of the prayer and the discussions about them, together with the historical background for their existence. In other words, the description of the prayers is combined with descriptions of the main periods in the history of Israel, and the discussion about them seeks to demonstrate how they answered the spiritual and social needs arising in different periods, especially in ancient times, but also in the Middle Ages and even in modern times. Different units from well-known and important prayers are included in some places in the body of these chapters. A special collection of short and clear prayer extracts from the Bible is given at the end of the first chapter in this part, which deals with prayer in the Bible. I hope that this ensemble of thoughts and spiritual observations, sections of content and history, excerpts from ancient and new prayers, will meet the expectations and the requirements of those who read this book. And may our words please the Almighty! ABOUT THE WORSHIPER The history of religions is more than familiar with the experience that the worshiper undergoes when experiencing prayer for the first time. Among the 'chozrei biteshuva' ('those who return to [ ] religion'), in inverted commas or without them, stories abound featuring a prayer which in retrospect transformed the life and fate of the worshiper. The famous thinker and philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), intended to convert to Christianity in the wake of several of his Jewish friends, but decided that, before doing so, he would spend the Day of Atonement in a synagogue. He therefore spent the Day of Atonement of 1874 in an Orthodox synagogue in Berlin, and it was experiencing the Day of Atonement and its prayers which caused him to abandon his plan and to remain a Jew, and stood him in good stead to be remembered as one of the most important Jewish thinkers of modern times, despite the serious illnesses which he suffered from and his untimely decease. The conventional nature of Jewish prayer, and its being part of the system of religious laws which accompany one who lives according to Halacha, frequently blurs the profound religious significance of prayer: a person standing before his Maker face to face, the one facing the other, with no partition between them. "The worshiper should regard himself as being faced by the Shekhina." This statement in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 22, 71) is attributed to the Sage Rabbi Shimon Hassida (the Hassid). But which person is capable of such self-scrutiny always, everyday and at all times, and at every hour of prayer? Perhaps Rabbi Shimon the Hassid was gifted with this ability, and perhaps aspired to it, but clearly not every worshiper can see himself in all his prayers as if the Shekhina is before him, and only rarely does the ordinary person sense the great force of standing before his Maker. Certain factors are liable to help a person to attain a sense of standing before G-d: praying at a holy site, praying on a sacred and special date, praying in the company of a person of great spiritual stature, singing and other [ ] music, prayer accompanied by profound study. It seems that the experience of standing before G-d in prayer is also likely to occur to people who are not learned, do not know how to pray properly, and who have never in their lives experienced organized prayer. The popular folktale tells of the ignorant boy who was brought to the synagogue on the Day of Atonement, and because of the multitude of thoughts inside him, burst out with a cry- and in some versions with a whistle, with playing the shepherd's pipes or with loud bodily gestures. A Hassidic source describes an ignorant shepherd boy, who, in the course of the emotional prayers of the other congregants, jumped up and declared to His Lord G-d his love of Him and his readiness to care for the Lord's animals without any reward. It goes without saying that the narrator knows that this prayer, just like the whistles and gestures, made a deep impression on high. Another Hassidic tale relates that the Seder night meal held by a simple and ignorant water drawer was received in Heaven with greater regard than that of Rabbi Levi of Berditchev. In answer to the Rabbi's question, the Jew replied that, before the entry of the festival he had got drunk, and on the Passover night had raised his glass to Heaven, and cried out: "See, my G-d,- this glass of mine I drink to You, and may You Yourself look down upon us and redeem us." And then he promptly fell sleep. The experience of the person who prays and attains a state of emotional exaltation, also affects the one who is uneducated, and may even make a more profound impression than the prayers of the wise and the righteous. Furthermore, in spite of the many statements of praise for public prayer, it appears that from the standpoint of the unique religious experience that affects one who senses that This story also appears in Buber's 'Or Haganuz' ('The Abundant Light'), pp.208-209 [ ] the Shekhina is before him, individual prayer has greater power than organized public prayer. And here is the place to also discuss briefly the worshiper who feels that he is unable to pray by reason of knowing and being faithful to the truth. Is a person justified, under certain circumstances, to refrain from praying because he feels that his prayer is dishonest? Here now is a case related by Dov Sadan regarding prayer in our day; It happened on the Day of Atonement, on the very days when there reached us the terrible rumor about the destruction of the remnant of our people in the Vale of Slaughter of the European Diaspora - whilst reflecting bitterly about the words of awakening that I heard and read during the days of repentance, and among them arrogant words of tax collectors of faith, I passed by a Hassidic shtiebl from whose nocturnal interior there emanated sounds of mourning and moaning, complaint and protest. And suddenly all remove their prayer shawls: man advent nisht (they aren't praying!) and they fall silent and their faces like grief itself. True, two hours later they put on their prayer shawls once again, but who can assess what happened in those two hours of the rebellion of the believing soul, shocked to its very core.. Needless to say, such a rebellion of worshipers can only occur in a society possessing a very profound religious consciousness and which generally follows a conservative and demanding lifestyle. There is nothing like the prayer rebellion to testify to the value of prayer and the depth of faith which exists as a rule in this society of "rebels," who daily observe the verse "I have set the Lord always before me" (Psalm 16, 8). In that same discussion, Dov Sadan also illustrated the opposite aspect of the phenomenon: prayer which has the sense of tradition but which is altogether divorced from observance of [ ] the commandments and standing before the Creator. As usual, to make his point Sadan employs a combination of wit and Yiddish, which in such a context is far superior to Hebrew. The subject is a Jew who abandoned his G-d and the commandments, but who would say: "Sometimes, when I forget that there is no Creator of the world, I exaggerate in praying Le'eila U'Le'eila. And here you have a prayer whose accent is Le'eila U'le'eila ..but in which nothing remains of the experience of a person who prays opposite his Maker, who hears his prayer. This Jew of Dov Sadan does not correspond to the secular Jew who prays or to the present-day chozer biteshuva. Perhaps it is correct to say that that same complex Jew is attempting to escape from the tradition of his ancestors and his youth, but the memory of his prayers will not set him free to go on his way. On the other hand, the modern chozer biteshuva who tries to take his new place in the world of tradition, finds it difficult to do so since he does not possess the traditional fragrance of prayer, for there is no way to sense it and be immersed in it except by continual effort and spiritual readiness, allied to religious awareness. The secular Jew, who prays and seeks the cultural experience of prayer and the way to pray without believing, or at least without believing with complete faith, is also unable to taste the full cultural significance of traditional and familiar prayer. In any case, there is room in the complexity and diversity of the prayer experience both for the worshiper conscious of the religious significance of his act and even of the challenge posed by the delay of prayer in extreme cases, as well as for the person in whose prayer the cultural or emotional experience overrides the notional awareness to such an extent that he is capable of praying even without "setting the Lord before him always."
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