If you don’t struggle with this problem, then chances are your spouse does, or, if not, then one of your children. And if not, then a niece or nephew. If you think nobody around you has this problem, then you’re probably not paying attention.
I don’t think we would be exaggerating if we called it a CRISIS that our community is facing.
I’m talking about the widespread loss of interest in prayer.
Several decades ago, there were many families in our community who drove on Shabbat, but every man put on tefillin and every member of the family prayed. Today, we find just the opposite. We have families that would never dream of driving on Shabbat, but the fathers and sons do not put on tefillin – or, if they do, it’s for just a few minutes – and many people simply do not pray.
Why do I call this “crisis”? Isn’t that a bit too drastic a word for this problem?
No, it’s not too drastic!
Prayer is the glue that keeps our community together. Plain and simple. Without prayer, we don’t have a community. For that matter, without prayer, we don’t have a religion. There is no Judaism without prayer.
The famous Mishnah in Pirkeh Avot lists prayer as one of the three “pillars” upon which the world stands (along with Torah study and acts of kindness). It is indispensable to Jewish life.
Prayer is what connects us to G-d, and it’s what connects us to each other. It is our direct link to our Creator, the way we build a relationship with Him. And, it is what makes us a community. We come to shul, we connect to a Rabbi and to friends, we gain inspiration, we get involved, we attend classes, we make friends who help us when we need help and whom we help when they need help. The institution of prayer in shul is what makes a Jewish community.
So if people do not pray, or hardly ever pray, or sometimes pray, it threatens the fabric of our community. And it also threatens the future of our community.
This subject is that urgent.
Let’s begin by looking at the reasons why this has become a problem today, why people are so less motivated to pray than before.
We will examine this topic based on the insights of the Ben Ish Hai in explaining the special role of the menorah in the Bet Ha’mikdash. The Ben Ish Hai taught that the menorah corresponded to prayer, and the various details of the menorah teach us about what prayer is supposed to be.
1) Focusing has never been harder
One of the unique features of the menorah is that it made from מקשה – a single block of gold. It did not consist of several different pieces attached together. Instead, it had to be a single block of gold that was chiseled to form a menorah.
The Ben Ish Hai explained that this symbolizes the fact that prayer is to be a single zone of focus. When we pray, we need to be single-mindedly focused on what we’re doing. We need to be like a single block of gold, concentrating exclusively on the act of prayer.
This is one reason why prayer is so much more difficult nowadays than ever before. Today, it is so hard to focus. Life today is so fast-paced and complicated. We all have a zillion things to tend to, and a zillion things our minds. We are racing from one place to another, from one thing we need to get done to another. Modern life has wired our minds to be distracted. No wonder so many people find it difficult to pray! It is so hard to focus our minds on just one thing.
2) We don’t understand
Many people have told me that they’re not interested in praying because they simply don’t understand the words.
The Ben Ish Hai remarked that the oil lamps of the menorah, which contained the oil that sustained the candles, represent the words of our prayers. The words contain the sanctity which are to experience when we pray.
But this is very hard to feel when you don’t understand what you’re saying.
And, it’s very hard to teach people the meaning of the words, because this study is boring and tedious. People today don’t have the patience to be taught the meaning of words. They need to be entertained, and translating ancient Hebrew words is not entertaining. And so people are left with “empty oil lamps,” with words of prayer that mean nothing to them, and thus cannot bring them inspiration or feeling.
3) The glitter of screens
When I bought my first smartphone, the first thing I noticed was how “glittery” the screen was. It’s bright, shiny, clear and captivating. It’s not just the endless flow of messages and notifications, and the infinite material on the internet, that make smartphones so difficult to put down. It’s also the screen. For many people, especially kids, it is awfully hard to put down the phone and pick up a prayer book.
The menorah contained כפתורים – knobs, round balls at the place where every pair of branches joined at the middle. The Ben Ish Hai explained that these knobs represent the brain. In order to pray, we need to have the right thoughts, the right mindset of prayer. It is awfully difficult in today’s day and age to get into that mindset when we have something far glitterier and more appealing in our pockets!
4) A weak foundation
The menorah was set upon a firm base, which represents our faith in Hashem and in the power of tefilah. Without this firm foundation, we are unable to pray. The menorah could not stand without a strong base, because prayer cannot be sustained without a strong base of faith.
Today, many people’s faith is weak. They are far more skeptical than people were in our parents’ generation. People today are less convinced that there is a G-d who wants to hear us pray and listens to our every word. And if this foundation of faith is shaky, then quite obviously, it is very difficult to be motivated to pray.
There are several reasons why this is happening, but the main reason is exposure. Many more kids today go to college, where they are exposed to professors and classmates who dismiss religion as nonsense. And whereas we had television with 13 channels, people today have television with 500 channels, and the infinite universe of the internet, where everything – everything!!! – is up for debate. Many people today cannot be certain of anything anymore, because anything and everything is discussed, challenged and debated somewhere online.
No matter how a religious an environment a person is raised in and lives in, this exposure has an impact. And so we have people today who would never dream of stepping into a car on Shabbat, but they don’t see the point of praying, because they don’t truly believe that prayer is significant.
5) The “Shema-Amidah Disease”
Finally, there’s what I call the “Shema-Amidah Disease” – the mistaken assumption that all we really need to say in the morning is Shema and the Amidah. Many people feel that instead of spending the time needed to recite the entire prayer, they can just quickly throw on their tallit and tefillin, and mumble the morning berachot, Shema and Amidah.
This would be akin to figuring we could do away with the entire body except the brain and the heart. After all, the brain and the heart are the two most important parts of the body – just like Shema and the Amidah are the two most important parts of the tefilah. But they are important only because they have a whole body around them. And the same is true of Shema and the Amidah.
One of the unusual features of the menorah is the פרחים – a series of elaborate “flowers” that adorned it. These flowers served no practical function, but the menorah needed to be built with flowers, because they created the beauty of the menorah. The Shema and Amidah prayers receive their beauty and meaningfulness from the context of the entire tefilah.
Not What We *GET*, But What We *BECOME*
So what do we do to inspire the people around us – and, most importantly ourselves – to pray?
I once sat with a boy from a strong religious background who explained to me why he does not feel like praying. He told me, very simply, that he doesn’t feel praying does anything. He told me that if you look at the lives of two people – one who prays each day, and another who doesn’t – their lives would be no different from one another. And so there’s no point.
I gently explained to him why I thought he is wrong.
The reason he is wrong is not because when we pray Hashem gives us everything we want. We know this is not true. There are very devout people who pray three times a day but suffer illness, financial struggles, or other problems. The two most famous prayers in the Torah are Avraham’s prayer for Sedom and Moshe’s prayer to be allowed to enter the Land of Israel – two requests which were both rejected!
What’s beneficial about prayer is not what we GET, but rather what we BECOME.
Prayer, if we pay attention, gives us what is likely the most important thing we need in life – PERSPECTIVE. Prayer shows us how to see things the right way. And perspective is everything. Our joy and satisfaction in life is not a function of what happens to us, but a function of how we perceive what happens to us. Nothing is more important than perspective, and nothing gives us a more beautiful and positive perspective on life than prayer.
Here are some examples:
1) We get the Jaguar back each morning!
The first prayer we recite when we open our eyes in the morning is מודה אני, thanking Hashem for restoring our souls after our period of sleep, for giving us life for another day. This short prayer concludes, רבה אמונתך – “Your faith is great.”
What is G-d’s “faith”? Aren’t we the ones who are supposed to have faith??
The answer can be understood through the following analogy.
Imagine I approach a wealthy member of the community and ask if I could borrow his brand new Jaguar. He is a bit surprised, to say the least, and, of course, hesitant. But he likes me and respects me, and so he agrees.
I take the car for a joyride and have a blast. I drive up and down Ocean Parkway waving to people, who can’t believe their eyes. It’s great.
After a couple of hours, I return the car to its owner – with two scratches on the side door.
The fellow is upset, but he’s also really nice, so he doesn’t say anything. He takes it to the auto body shop to have the car repainted.
The next morning, I go back to him and say, “Thanks so much for lending me the car yesterday. I loved it. Is it ok if I take it again today?”
Looking kind of uncomfortable, the fellow agrees, but respectfully asks that I be more careful this time around.
“Sure thing!” I exclaim with a huge smile, as I grab the keys…
After another exciting day of driving, I come back to the fellow with the car – with the bumper broken off.
The fellow is frustrated. I apologize, he accepts my apology, and brings the car to the shop.
The next day, I show up again, with the same request.
“Look, Rabbi,” he says to me, “I’m happy to lend you the car…but, please, please, you need to be careful. Make sure you bring it back to me in perfect condition.”
“Of course!” I say. And I’m off once again.
I come back later to bring back the fellow’s Jaguar…with two smashed headlights.
The next morning…you guessed it: I have the GALL to return to the fellow and ask to borrow the Jaguar for another day. What would his reaction be?
We can reasonably assume that it won’t be: “Ok, just please be careful” – or anything remotely resembling that! It would be more like: “ARE YOU CRAZY?!?!? NO WAY!!!!”
Every morning, Hashem gives us a beautiful “Jaguar” – actually, something far more precious and far more beautiful than any car or anything we can possibly own: our soul.
We take our soul each morning and do a lot of different things with it. For the most part, I think we can all safely and proudly say, we take good care of it. We use it for good things – for our family, for our friends, for our community, and for mitzvot.
But each night, when we go to bed and return our precious soul, it has a few “dents” and “scratches.”
Over the course of the day, we probably missed a few berachot, a birkat ha’mazon, or a prayer. We probably wasted time on our phones or computers. We probably got angry at somebody, or at several people, and said something inappropriate. The soul we bring back to Hashem at the end of the day is not quite as pristine as it was when we received it that morning, and might even be far less pristine.
But the next morning, we get it back, newly “repaired” and restored to its original state of perfection.
Why?
Why does Hashem keep entrusting us with our soul, knowing that the previous day, and the day before that, and every single day before that, we brought it back it to Him damaged?
The answer is רבה אמונתך. “Great is Your faith.” Hashem’s faith in us is incredible. It knows no bounds!
It doesn’t matter how much, how often, or how badly we’ve messed up. He still believes in us!!!
If we can imagine somebody continuing to lend out his Jaguar to his friend each and every day, knowing that each and every day his friend brought it back damaged – then we can imagine the extent of Hashem’s faith in us.
How amazing is that? How beautiful is that?
Can there be anything more empowering, than knowing that when we wake up in the morning, it means that Hashem trusts that we can be *perfect*, that we can turn around every single mistake we’ve made until today?
This is what reciting just one line of prayer – מודה אני – does to a person. It changes his whole day. It changes his perspective. He wakes up invigorated and enthusiastic. He wakes up energized. He wakes up knowing that Hashem believes in him – and so he has to believe in himself!!
2) We are all kohanim!!
That’s the first line of the siddur. Let’s move onto the second.
The first thing we do after reciting מודה אני is wash our hands and recite a berachah. Why is there a mitzvah to wash our hands in the morning?
According to one opinion, we wash our hands in the morning just like the kohanim were required to wash their hands before entering the Bet Ha’mikdash.
Let that sink in for a moment. We wash our hands when we begin our day just as the kohanim washed their hands when they began their day of serving G-d in the Bet Ha’mikdash.
This means that Hashem sees everything we do over the course of every day as something sacred – like the kohanim’s service in the Bet Ha’mikdash!
When we wake up on any ordinary day, no matter who we are and what we’ve done or haven’t done the previous day and previous days, Hashem considers us His kohanim. He wants us to serve Him. He believes we are worthy of serving Him.
He believes we have something precious and important to achieve. He has chosen us – yes, us!!! – to be His servants!
When I wake up in the morning, Hashem is telling me: “Joey! Go wash your hands and get ready. I need you to serve Me today! There is so much I need you to do!”
This is how a Jew starts his or her day!!
We’ve only gotten through literally the first two lines in the siddur, and we’ve already gained a whole new perspective on how to approach every new day!
3) We and the rooster…
The morning prayer service begins with a series of berachot thanking Hashem for various phenomena, the first of which is the crowing of the rooster: הנותן לשכוי בינה להבחין בין יום ובין לילה – “…who gives the rooster the ability to distinguish between day and night.”
At first glance, this blessing seems wholly irrelevant to us. When was the last time any of us were woken in the morning by the crow of a rooster?
However, the Tur explains that this blessing does not refer only to the rooster – but to the human heart, and the human intellect.
G-d has granted us an incredible talent – the ability to distinguish between “light” and “dark,” between right and wrong, between good and bad. We are the only creature in the entire universe with this special power. Hashem has enabled us to make good decisions, to determine what’s right and what’s wrong.
First thing in the morning, we remind ourselves that Hashem trusts in our ability to make the right choices, to do the right thing. How special is that?
Once we understand the content of our prayers, why would we not to pray???
The prayers are so empowering. They give us a whole new mindset and whole new way of looking at life.
We All Need Inspiration!!
My wife and I once went on a vacation in South Africa, and there was a fellow named Michael who was in charge of caring for our needs in our villa. At the end of our stay, I left Michael a tip and wrote a letter thanking him for all he did for us.
The next year, someone from the community vacationed at the same place, and met Michael. He discovered that Michael – who is not Jewish – listens to my classes on the internet. He was touched by the tip and the note, and so he searched my name online, saw that I teach classes, and he started listening to them. Michael told my friend how much he enjoys and gains from these lectures.
Inspiration is a natural human need. It is something all people want.
If we pay attention to what we are saying in our prayers, we will receive inspiration. We might not get the job or business deal we are praying for, but we will *definitely* get inspiration and a sense of meaning and purpose in life.
As mentioned earlier, sitting and studying the Hebrew text of the siddur is tedious for many people. But we can start by discussing one word or phrase at a time at every Shabbat meal. Or by trying to focus on a different passage in the siddur each day. If we take it slow, one step at a time, we will uncover and experience the richness of the siddur, and gain a whole new perspective on life.
Prayer in the 21st century is a real challenge. But this challenge can be overcome, by realizing that there is nothing as beautiful, as rewarding or as empowering as prayer.