Prayer as Partnership - Rosh Hashanah I Morning 5768

Rabbi Tracee Rosen

Congregation Kol Ami, Salt Lake City, Utah

Rosh Hashanah I Morning 5768

(c) 2007 Rabbi Tracee Rosen. All rights reserved.

It's Yom Kippur, around 11:30 am, a young man dressed in a suit and tie walks hurriedly to the entrance of the synagogue. Immediately, an usher is there to greet him. "L'shanah tovah. May I see your ticket please?" "I'm sorry, I don't have a ticket. I've got to find my boss, Richard Weinstein. It's an emergency, and there's no other way to reach him." "I'm sorry," said the usher. "It's synagogue policy. If you don't have a ticket, I can't let you in." "Look, I'm not going to stay," pleaded the young man. "I'm not even Jewish; I just need to see Mr. Weinstein." The usher thought for a moment, and being a kindly man, relented. "Alright, you can go in. Just don't let me catch you praying."

We've all heard this joke in some form before, and yet we still laugh. Not only because it's an indictment of the kind of commercialism that synagogues use in order to keep the lights on, but also because there's a huge element of truth in it. Synagogues aren't places where we want to be caught praying.

Another questionnaire designed for congregations who have assigned High Holy Day seating asks: Do you want to sit in the a) praying section, or b) talking section? If you answered b), do you for an additional donation want to be seated next to a) a lawyer, b) a doctor, c) a CPA or d) as far from my in-laws as possible.

Note that this is only an issue for the High Holy Days, on any other day of the year, you have your choice of seats in any congregation in the country.

Which brings me to the question, where are all the Jews the rest of the year? Or, why don't Jews like to pray?

I want to open this up to you, in a spirit of honest inquiry:

Why don't Jews come to synagogue services? Is it because we struggle deeply with a belief in God? We're not sure if prayer does any good? We have a hard time following the service? Our friends don't come, so why should we? Let's face it, we're Jewish professionals and overachievers - we can't make time in our lives for regular services? Perhaps we feel our sense of spirituality elsewhere, and that's where we go instead?

What do you think?...

Thank you for your insights. I'm sorry to have to temporarily cut short this conversation - I hope it is one we will continue, and in just a few minutes I'd like to share with you some ideas about continuing this conversation.

So, I'd like to tackle a number of these issues this morning.

If you're not sure there's really anyone or anything at the other end of your prayers, you're not alone. In a Harris Poll Survey of Religion last October, 12% of Jewish respondents claim they don't believe in God, and another 24 % aren't sure (highest statistics of all identified religious groups).

That still leaves 64% of American Jews who say they believe in God.

Yet only 12 percent of Jews report attending services 1-2 times per month or more. That means 88% of us, including, presumably, at least 52% of people who say they believe in God, don't make synagogue services a regular part of their lives. Presumably, if you are here today, you're much more likely to be in the latter group, so, on behalf of God, I've got to ask, "how come you never call?"

The second thing I want to say is that we American Jews are hampered by the fact that English, which is our native language is at its core a Christian language. The word prayer comes from the Latin precaria, which means, "obtained by entreaty," to pray is to ask for something. Taken in this way, it sets us up for what I call the Santa Claus idea of God - we ask for stuff, God checks his list to see if we've been naughty or nice, and then delivers the goods. The problem with that image is that around the age of 8 or 9 we all discovered that that's not the way the world (or God) really works. At that point, a lot of us stopped praying.

But traditionally, Jews don't pray, we daven. That's Yiddish for reciting the Jewish liturgy, but it doesn't mean asking for things. Another Jewish word for services, the Hebrew, L'hitpalel, is a reflexive verb which means it is something we do to ourselves - it comes from the root word meaning to judge, so Jewishly, when we are engaged in services, we are judging ourselves.

When I daven in synagogue in the most authentically Jewish way, I create a space where I force myself to take an honest look at who I am and what I am doing in the world and where I think I can do a bit better, and a really successful davening experience is one where I leave knowing that something inside me is different than when I arrived, especially when it motivates me to do something different than before.

As Americans we have been socialized to think of public prayer as a performance.

We go home from synagogue and someone says, "how were services today?" WE respond, "The rabbi was brilliant, the cantor in beautiful voice, the choir sang my favorite piece." We rate services like they were opera, or theater, and they never measure up. If we think of it as a performance, then it's up to the performers to determine whether or not we had a successful experience.

How different an experience would we have if when we went home our spouse asked, "So honey, did you have a meaningful moment in services today?" we answered, "You know, there was this moment in one prayer that really reminded me of the miracle and fragility of nature, and I thought, it's really time for me to take more responsibility for the energy I'm using in the world.. It was awesome." But usually, for many of us, that doesn't happen often enough.

Often, we don't get much out of synagogue because we don't expect much or demand much.

Today I want us to imagine together a new model of synagogue services. I want to move away from the idea of prayer as someone else's performance, and suggest a new model of t'filah as a partnership, a three-way partnership. A triangle as it were - half of a Jewish star.

The first leg of the triangle is the partnership between us and God. When we engage in t'filah, we refer to God as YOU (Baruch Atah Adonai - Praised are You, Adonai). There's a lot of chutzpah, nerve, that goes into calling God, You. To call God You means that at some level we acknowledge God as being present here and now. When we have conversations, we never use the second person to talk about someone who isn't here.

Saying You also implies that a relationship exists, more than the sovereign-to-subject relationship that we describe in the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayers. No mere subjects of a king or queen would ever be permitted to address their ruler as You. Saying You says we have a relationship in which we are allowed to communicate directly. "When I pray, I talk to God," said Rabbi Louis Finkelstein. "When I study, God talks to me." T'filah is a two-way street. We pray, we demand, we complain, we praise, we promise, and we allow ourselves to receive the guidance, the comfort, and the assurances, that comes from our tradition in return.

Even if we struggle with the idea of a divine You, we still have a need to daven. In that same Harris poll, only 30% of Jewish respondents said they are absolutely certain there is a God. That's really not surprising. Doubt is an important part of being Jewish. The name of our people, Israel, literally means one who struggles with God.

It turns out that this isn't an issue only for Jews, or only for those who classify themselves as "non-religious." A new book, published last week, of letters written by Mother Teresa, gave voice to profound moments of doubt and struggles with her faith. Despite all that, her actions over that same period of time reflected a person of almost super-human will to do good in this world. It turns out that for many of us, faith is a luxury that we only get to enjoy for brief passing moments of our lives. The question we must ask is how to we sustain the kinds of actions that faith demands of us, even in our moments of profound doubt and disillusionment?

I would suggest that using t'filah as a process of self-reflection goes a long way toward helping us act even in the face of doubt.

That brings me to the second side of the triangle. The second partnership that we need to be creating in t'filah is a partnership with ourselves.

We are exceptionally busy, over-programmed, over-committed, and over-extended. We take care of businesses, families, school commitments, sports, health, and more. We don't need one more thing on our over-full plates. How often do we find ourselves during the week just wishing for a time-out, a few moments to just be with ourselves, to just think, just a few minutes of quiet time? Howard Schultz, a nice Jewish boy from Seattle, converted that idea into a multi-billion dollar enterprise we all know as Starbucks Coffee. So the bad news is that we can't do much for your caffeine addiction, but the good news is that for a lot less than $3.45 a cup, t'filah can provide that spiritual time-out an opportunity for introspection and reflection.

I want to propose something radical here. When you come to services, come prepared to do your own thing. Do not feel obligated to keep up with the pace of the service leaders. Read the English prayers. If that doesn't work, bring a different book to synagogue with you and read it instead of the siddur. You owe it to yourself because you know that if we don't come to services, 90% of us won't take the time to nourish our spiritual side otherwise.

Professor David Ariel, President of the Cleveland College of Jewish Studies put it this way:

Prayer is not the words we recite from the prayer book but an experience of the soul. If the words of the prayer book, someone else's words, are not adequate, we can find our own words. Even if we sit or stand silent in the synagogue while everyone around us is reading, reciting, or chanting, the thing that truly matters is what we experience in our privacy. The only prayer that matters is the one that comes from our heart. If our heart is not touched by the written words of the prayer book, we can turn inward and listen to the inner voice. Then, we can turn that voice into a chant, a movement, a melody until it burns in our heart.

Synagogue time is a time for inner reflection, for reviewing in our minds the events of the past week, for making commitments to ourselves about what we'd like to keep doing and what we'd like to do differently. It's a contract with ourselves to spend some quality time getting in touch with not only what we need and want, but an acknowledgment of what we've already got, and a chance to express our gratitude and contentment.

The third kind of partnership is the one which exists between you and our community here. Jewish tradition teaches us that there are certain prayers and rituals which must be performed only in the presence of a community - at least 10 adult Jews. Why? Because the rabbis of old understood that we can't really live out the demanding ideals that a covenant with God calls for without the support of others who share our beliefs and our values. Jews need other Jews to be Jewish in any meaningful way. We share meals at holidays, we share our joys at the birth of a child, a bar or bat mitzvah celebration, the marriage of a loved one, new jobs, new homes, and welcoming newcomers. And we offer support to each other in times of sickness and grief. I have to tell you, as a congregation we are much better than most in terms of being there for each other for simchas, times of joy, and tsuris, trying times. But to be part of this extended family, we need to get to know you, and that only comes from spending time with each other.

Finally, I want to acknowledge that if we're really going to talk about t'filah as a partnership, then as partners there has to be some give and take. I know that many people have felt alienated from our services here in the past, and we are taking some major steps this year to help us all become more comfortable both with traditional modes of davening, and to also bring a number of innovations to Kol Ami that will help us to become more user-friendly.

• First, as you all know, we have added special services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur mornings for those who desire a specifically Reform service. The service is shorter, and we are using the Reform mahzor.
• We now offer an option to our families to have a Saturday morning Reform bar or bat mitzvah service. We have held two such services in the past two weeks, and the families have been delighted.
• Starting in October, our monthly Reform Shabbat morning service will be held in the main sanctuary, and the Conservative service will move to Pepper chapel
• Third, we will be offering more opportunities to learn about prayer, as we inaugurate a learner's minyan program on the first and third Shabbatot of the month at 9:30 a.m. Led by Bill Shackman and Emily Michelson, they will be helping you, even if you have no Hebrew skills or t'filah experience, to bit by bit learn about the structure, meaning, and ritual of t'filah.
• One of our congregants, Debbie Leaman has written a more extensive guide to Shabbat morning services, which we will be publishing soon, and which will be available to all of us weekly.
• We have begun a process of evaluating and purchasing siddurim, prayerbooks that are more user friendly for non-Hebrew readers. We welcome your input as we undertake this review process.
• Cantor Loeb and I have also committed this fall to each week to spending a few minutes in each service sharing a d'var t'filah - a brief explanation of one of the prayers, in addition to our weekly d'var torah.
• Finally, based on the success of the Reform and Conservative Town Hall meetings we held last year, we want to continue to hear from you about how to make our congregation, and our t'filah experiences strengthen that sense of partnership. Once a month, after kiddush on Shabbat mornings, we'll be hosting a series of sacred conversations, and we invite your input helping us together make this truly a place for all our people.

I want to conclude with a poem which reflects this morning's message:

On these holy days,
  each person
    should try to reach
      in three directions
        inside, outside, and upwards.

Inside - to discover who he or she really is,
  outside  - towards other people
    upwards - towards God.

And the wonder is:
  that whenever we reach
    in any one direction,
      we make contact 
         with all three.

L'shanah tovah u'metukah - A good, sweet year.