 Talmud says in Tractate Brachot, the Tractate Brachot is the first volume of the Talmud and it deals with prayer to a great extent and blessings and it says on the sixth page side B that prayer is one of the loftiest things in the universe. It stands in the highest realms of the universe yet the Talmud says people treat it very lightly. They don't take it seriously, they take prayer for granted, they often disparage prayer and they don't give it its due. So we're told that even though prayer is just about one of the greatest things that exists people do not really treat it with the proper respect and care. We have so many statements in our literature about the greatness and loftiness of prayer. Many of you have studied Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, which very early on says that all of existence, the whole world, stands on three things. Torah, Avoda, and Gamilut Chassadim. Torah, we know what Torah is. Gamilut Chassadim is Acts of Loving Kindness. Avoda, according to many, refers to prayer, worship. So it's one of the things that if we didn't have it the world would not be able to exist. The Kuzari, who was a very brilliant and wonderful poet and philosopher, wrote a very wonderful book basically explaining Judaism. About a thousand years ago, wrote that prayer is the laev hayom vipirio, that it's the heart of our day and the fruit of our day. Meaning that look at our day, what we've accomplished during the day. The Kuzari says that the times we pray, that's the fruit of the day. So we have these incredibly lofty statements about prayer and its importance, and yet the truth is that for many of us prayer is difficult, it's frustrating, it's sometimes seen as boring, we don't connect with it. Certainly it's a difficult area, and I think that we often have great problems with it. What I'm going to begin with tonight is a short catalog, not exhaustive. I didn't want to spend all of our time tonight detailing all the problems that people have with prayer. I just wanted to share a few problems I think that exist when it comes to prayer. First of all, many of us live, even if we think we don't, many of us live with the illusion that we are in control of our lives, and that everything has been figured out, and that today science understands everything, and they have a solution to everything, and our governments have solutions to everything. And there's a pill for every problem and complaint. We live in a world where so much seems to be understood and so much progress has been made that we think that we don't need God. We say to ourselves that prayer might have been necessary for ancient people who didn't really know and understand how the world works, but we are living in the 21st century. We understand everything from genomes to what have you. We know so much that we have figured everything out. We're in control. We can solve all our own problems. And therefore we feel that we don't need prayer, and we see, we look around and we see in our world that many people seem to get by perfectly fine without ever praying. So I think that's one of our problems with prayer. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov used to say that when it comes to people's problems with prayer, one of the major sources of that problem are what he classifies as problems with emunah, problems with faith. He says that if a person was really solid and clear in terms of their faith in God, prayer would be much, much easier. But I think that this is a significant problem that we don't think that we have to have God in our lives. We think that we control basically everything. Number two, we often don't really think that prayer works. We've all had so many unanswered prayers in our lives, and it's just difficult to believe that sometimes the creator of every atom in existence really cares about my gout or my car. So we both have difficulty believing that prayer works because we see so many of our own prayers unanswered, and we sometimes just can't imagine that God really cares about little old me. Number three, some of us have a difficult time relating to the forms and the words of prayer. They're in Hebrew, the language is arcane, it's often difficult. We don't understand the structure of the prayer service, what it's all about, how it's organized, and so we have a difficult time simply grasping the mechanics of prayer. Some people are just turned off by the repetitive nature of prayer. You know what, meatloaf again, right? Thursday night and Wednesday night and Thursday night, and we say the same prayers every day, three times a day practically, so people are often turned off to that. It seems boring, monotonous. I read that yesterday, I don't have to do it again today. It's hard for many people today to focus and pay attention. That's just the nature of reality. If you want to read a fascinating book on the way our brains have changed over the past 20 years, there's a book I recommend called The Shallows, and it's true that attention spans have been diminishing. And so we have a difficult time focusing, paying attention. We are easily distracted and our minds wander frequently, and so we get frustrated and therefore we rush through our prayers and therefore often don't feel very inspired. It's almost a vicious cycle. As well in our very high tech world today, we become very accustomed to background noise in our lives. We're always plugged in. We're always having our senses engaged. We're always online, and therefore we have a very, very difficult time being with ourselves and spending time in silence. Very, very hard. I remember years ago, I went to a three-day meditation retreat, and we were told that we will not be talking for three days. We were told we wouldn't communicate in any way for three days. And I said to myself, I'm very afraid I'm going to go crazy. I couldn't imagine having three days, no input, no radio, no newspapers. Just basically we sat and we would sit and meditate. We'd walk and meditate, we'd meditate while we were eating, and that was it for three days, and I was afraid. I was literally afraid I was going to go out of my mind. It was interesting, by the way, that I was at a place that was an eight-hour drive from here, and on the drive home, I realized that what I would have normally have done would have been to immediately turn on the radio of the car and have the radio noise blaring for eight hours. I didn't do that after these three days. I enjoyed being able to sit in the car with no noise, no background noise, and just sit in the silence. But I believe that today it's become very difficult for us to be with ourselves and to experience silence. By the way, the Bible says, the Torah says, that the greatest praise is silence. It's almost the greatest prayer. Another problem is that many of us are not in touch with ourselves and who we are, and therefore who is praying? In order to pray, you have to have a prayer, and if we're out of touch with ourselves and who we are, the whole experience of prayer becomes a very difficult enterprise. Another problem which hopefully isn't that common, but I have seen this, is that today people, and part of the problem is the technological world we live in, where it's so easy to just spend your whole time in front of your computer or phone, but often today people do not nurture relationships and they have often very shallow relationships, and it's very difficult, therefore, to relate to the transcendent to the ultimate other when we've cut so many other people out of our lives. It makes prayer more difficult. And even if we want to pray and we seek to have good prayer experiences, we wonder, why do I really have to ask God for what I need? Why do I have to tell God what I need? God created the whole world. He knows everything. There's nothing that He doesn't know. So what's the purpose of me telling God, look, God, my car broke. I need help. He knows that we need a job. And so why do I have to stand in front of God and tell Him I need a job? Furthermore, if God has not provided me now with a job, or with a spouse, or with a bigger house, if I don't have those things now, God is perfect, and He knows exactly what I'm supposed to have. And so if I don't have these things now, it must be what God wants me to not have. God wants me to have now what He thinks I need and what I should have, and what I don't have now are things that God does not feel I either deserve or I should be having. And therefore, doesn't it seem arrogant or chutzpidic or almost a little bit strange to think that I'm going to come to God and say, God, I know better than you. You think that I don't need a bigger house. Well, let me tell you something. I know better than you. And so does prayer mean that I'm coming to God and I'm going to try and get God to change His mind because I know better. And I'm going to explain to God what He doesn't know. So the entire enterprise of prayer seems strange. Number one, why do I need to tell God anything? He knows everything. And number two, it seems a little bit bizarre that I'm going to try to change God's mind. It's obvious that He knows best for me anyway. Many of these difficulties, and I could have gone on for many, many more, but many of these difficulties can be resolved if we truly understand prayer, what it is, and how it works. The more we understand what prayer is, how it works, the more some of these problems, or many of them, disappear. So let's begin. The Hebrew word for prayer is tefila. Tefila. And one of the best ways of understanding something is to understand what the word means. And it's not a simple word. According to many of our sages, the one at least, at least one of the root meanings of this word tefila means bonding, or attachment, or connection. And therefore, what we're taught is that the essential purpose of prayer, what we're doing when we're praying is to connect with God, to attach ourselves to God, to get close to God. That's what prayer is all about. This is what we would call the white fire. A number of weeks ago we spoke about the black fire and the white fire, the form and the content. So we know that the form of prayer, the black fire, is expressing our requests to God for stuff that we need. That's what we're doing. That's the black fire. That's the form. But the content, what it's all about, is the subtext. The white fire is that these of this experience, this activity, is there to connect us and bring us closer to God. That's ultimately what prayer is about. So it's important to look beyond the surface and to see what is really going on. What's really happening when we pray? Give me an example. You can have children that nudge their parents forever. I want that toy. On television, their friend has a toy. I want the toy. I want the toy. And they can drive their parents crazy. But the truth is, does the child ever really get totally satisfied by getting more and more toys from their parents? We know so many children who are unhappy and they could have all the toys in the world. And their parents make the mistake sometimes of thinking they can buy their children off by giving them more things. Today, the kid does not want the toy. What the kid really wants is their mommy and daddy. The kid wants their parents. They want their parents' attention. They want their parents' love. The toy is not the love. What the child really wants is their parents. They don't want the presence. They want their parents' presence. And one is a means to the other. One is a means of facilitating and expressing the other. The gift, the present, is there because it represents. It facilitates the presence of the parents. The child begins to connect with their parents through the medium of this gift. But the gift does not end unto itself. And so in the same way, what we really want is not the toy, but we really want our parents. It's not getting the car. It's not getting the job. What we really want is to connect with God. We connect with God through this experience of expressing our needs, asking for what we would like and coming to God in prayer. The Zohar, the famous Kabbalistic text, teaches that Jacob's ladder, which was connecting heaven to earth, is a symbol for prayer. That's what Jacob's ladder symbolizes. It's the bridge that we have to God. And we're able to connect with God. How come we're able to do this? Because we have a divine godly soul. By nature, we are godly. God breathed our soul into us. Part of us is not only physical. Part of us is spiritual. We have a spiritual core to who we are. We have godly souls. And therefore, as it says in the book of Psalms, chapter 42, verse 3, My soul thirsts for God. Because I have a soul that is godly. And my godly soul wants to connect to its source. It's like a small flame that when you put it closer to a large, large fire, it becomes absorbed into the larger fire. So our souls naturally seek to be connected to their source. And that's what we're doing when we pray. Other commandments that we perform, almost everything else in the Torah and in Judaism, brings us close to God. But prayer is intimacy itself. Prayer doesn't bring us close to God. Prayer is closeness itself. Every relationship that we know is based upon communication. That lies at the core and the heart of all relationships. When we speak directly to God, we speak directly to God, we pour out our hearts, it's very much like a couple having a close intimate personal conversation. That is one of the most close kind of activities they can experience, to sit together and just talk and to be in each other's presence. And so having that time with God when we're in his presence and we speak to him directly, that is the experience of closeness itself. Prayer is the most direct way of bridging the seemingly infinite gap. We spoke about this already. That when we think about God being eternal, transcendent, totally spiritual, totally beyond our physical world, how do you bridge the gap between God and us puny little physical, finite, transient, temporal human beings? It says in the book of Psalms, we recite this every day in our prayers three times a day, Psalm 145 verse 18, Karov Adonai Lakol Korav. God is close to all who call upon him in sincerity and truth. When we call out to God, that establishes closeness and intimacy. Prayer is basically when you think about it a declaration and involvement in our faith when we pray, we're expressing our faith in God. Nachmanides, the famous Bible commentary in Exodus chapter 13 verse 16 says when we pray, we're coming before God and we're proclaiming, we are your creatures. Hacently we're saying I'm your child. We call God, our father in heaven. So when we come to God in prayer we're expressing our creature creator relationship. We're acknowledging that God created us. God's our parent in heaven so to speak. And so it declares our faith in God. The Maralph and Prague, the famous mystic said that the whole concept of prayer is an expression of our total dependency on God. When we pray, we're expressing that we depend on God for everything. We have no independent existence. We wouldn't be here if God didn't want us to be here and we wouldn't get anything in the world if God didn't want us to have it. So when we express our dependence on God, when we do that, we're drawing closer to him. We're getting closer to God when we acknowledge God, I depend on you for everything. In the same way again that a child understands intuitively that's their relationship with their parent. The little baby understands that they have to turn to their parents for everything. So having a clear appreciation of our relationship with God depends upon understanding that we turn to God and ask for what we need because we depend on him for everything. However, as we said the real goal of prayer is not to get what we're asking for. That's not the real goal. That's just a means to the end. The real goal is to experience the closeness to God that is engendered when we turn to him with these requests. So God in effect uses this mechanism of us having to turn to him to pray to him as a way of us developing closeness with him. That's why the Kusari said that prayer is the fruit of the day. We would often think that the fruit of the day is when you pull the lever and you get from the machine what you want. We would think that the fruit of the day is the $1,000 or the $500 or the $100 we made at the end of the day. Or it's the fact that I got my tooth capped and my tooth feels better. Or it's anything else that we get. Spiritual, material. I was able to be able to pay my bills on time. Whatever I got I often think, oh, that's I got my prayers answered. No, all of those things I was praying for I sometimes get those are just a means to an end to really experience the closeness with God. And therefore the Kusari says the fruit of the day is the prayer itself. Not what we get from the prayers. Because ultimately connection to God is far more important and pleasurable than getting into dental school. Not there's anything wrong with that. Perfectly good thing to do. But it's a matter of perspective. What really is the ultimate pleasure? What is the ultimate thing to experience? It's not getting anything physical in this world. It's being able to draw ourselves closer to God. Obviously praying to God builds faith in God. And it deepens that faith. The Naseevah Shalom the former Slalom Arabi said quoting a verse in Psalms, chapter 116 verse 10, it's from the Halal that we recite many times during the year the Psalmist says Ha-Emanthi Ki Adaber Ha-Emanthi I have faith, Ki Adaber because I'm speaking it. I mean that one of the ways to build faith and develop faith is to speak about your faith. To speak of matters of faith, to express your faith. It works. When you tell someone you love them that's a way of drawing closer to them. The words themselves impact the emotions inside. It impacts what happens between people that hear those words. And so speaking to God asking God for what we want and what we need, that action itself of speaking to God builds faith. It deepens our faith. That's why by the way, we make a blessing one of the blessings we recite after eating certain foods we say We bless God for what? For creating souls and their lax, their deficiencies. We're saying to God, God, thank you for making me a needy person. Thank you for giving me needs and because I have these needs and lax I have to turn to you. That's by the way, the explanation for why in the Garden of Eden story the snake was cursed. Because when you read the story it seems like the snake is making out like a bandit. God says to the snake, look used to walk upright now you're going to crawl on your belly and you're going to crawl on your belly and God says your food's going to be the dust of the earth. When you think of a bandit, the food is going to be the dust on the earth, he's going to crawl on his belly he's going to have an open refrigerator that's stocked full 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The snake will never lack for food wherever he crawls is going to be the dust of the earth right in front of him and the Kutskerebi said that's the curse because the snake will not have any needs, will never have the need to turn to God and express I need food I need something. Obviously the point of this teaching is not to learn about animals, it's teaching us that the worst position to be in as a human being is to feel we don't need God. I've got it covered. So the fact that I have needs and desires and wants and I turn to God to fulfill them, that's the greatest blessing and we bless God for our lacks and deficiencies. Now we saw that one etymological meaning of the Hebrew word for prayer, Tefilah is bonding. That's what we just discussed that prayer is bonding is attaching ourselves to God but there's another implication of the Hebrew word Tefilah. According to Rabbi Shem Shin Raphal Hirsch the famous German rabbi and thinker from the 20th century, he says that the root of Tefilah is Palal which means to judge, to clarify and when we say to pray prayer is Palal but to pray would be Lahit Palel and Hirsch explains that this is the reflexive form of Hebrew and Lahit Palel therefore means that you're judging yourself. It's an act of self judgment self assessment but according to Hirsch the activity of prayer he's not negating what we discussed but he's saying when you're praying you're engaging in a self reflective act of judging yourself. When we pray we clarify many things. For example when we're praying we should be asking ourselves this is what we should be doing asking ourselves are we asking for the right things what am I asking God for? I come with my shopping list but maybe I can upgrade my shopping list I'm asking for a greener lawn maybe I can ask for world peace I have things that are important to me but really what's important to me what am I really asking for am I really asking for the right things we can clarify do we want to use these things for the correct purpose when I'm asking for a bigger house is it because I want people to think I'm successful or do I want to do important things in my big house or do I want to have many more guests for Shabbat do I want to make gatherings where people can study Torah together my wife and I just had a program in our basement we wanted to have someone come and do a beautiful talk tying in Jewish thoughts to his trip to Nepal with his kids and we were bothered because we can only fit 15 people in our basement would have loved to have had 50 people not 15 so when we ask the question God I would like certain things prayer helps us clarify what do I want to use these things for what's my purpose in asking for these things number three do I really deserve what I'm asking for have I been living in a way that God expects me to live have I been actualizing my potential do I deserve these things so the act of asking and requesting puts us in a situation where I'm forced to confront myself and evaluate myself and judge myself and Hirsch and others say that that's really what we're doing we're praying so prayer doesn't really seek to change God prayer is not trying to change God prayer we're trying to change ourselves by Abraham Twersky said that prayer is not so much to get what we want but to become who we should be that's what prayer really is about now we do ask for health we do ask for finances we do ask for success we do ask for peace we make these requests so the question is how can I change God's mind he's giving me what I have right now because he's determined that's what's right for me so if I have what I have right now because God has already determined this is what's go back should be having so what does it mean I'm going to ask him for other things doesn't God know better so the truth is that he does know what we deserve and God does know what's best for us and it's not absurd for me to pray why Rav Yosef Albo the famous Jewish philosopher of the medieval ages said that this is not what prayer does in prayer we're not trying to change God's mind we're not trying to do that when we pray we're seeking to change ourselves and once we change ourselves and become different people then God's evaluation of what I should have changes so therefore moment A God sizes me up and God evaluates that at moment A I should be having these things before God the next day and I'm a different person then the evaluation is totally different so I haven't changed God's mind I've changed myself and now God is looking at a different person and therefore I may be able to get different things it's not an activity of changing God's mind perhaps now I'll use things for the proper purpose and that's why I might be able to get it but here we have a question if the basic purpose of prayer is to change ourselves that's what it's all about to change ourselves so why is the essential action of prayer directed towards getting closer to God meaning why don't we say that the focus of prayer is myself that why isn't the whole activity geared towards to speak about me not inside of me but we don't really do that the prayer experience as I've described before is essentially geared to getting close to God so if we're here really in prayer to change ourselves why focus on getting close to God well the answer is quite simple because focusing on our relationship with God can be the most powerful catalyst towards changing who we are and to growing as people because if God is real and I see God as real in my life and I'm striving for closeness to God if that's what I'm doing then the rest of my life has to be different think about it this way how many times we go through life and we experience something and we say my life has to be different now how many people after September 11th that incredible moment in history said now realizing that maybe life is uncertain it's going to be a different ball game for now on my life is going to be totally different how many people have that kind of wake up call when they almost go through their own brush with death or they go through a Yom Kippur and they say my life has got to be totally different well that kind of reaction can happen when we encounter God when we put God front and center in our lives the rest of our life has to be different what am I living for if I'm not a person whose main focus is in the world of the material and the world of the physical the main focus on getting close to God so what am I really living for what's really important to me what are my priorities all those things change when we put God front and center in our lives I've got to become more aligned with God I certainly have to become less selfish more generous when we feel I'm close to God I'm going to have to be much less arrogant if I have God front and center in my life much more humble if you see someone on a boat and they're trying to pull themselves to shore by a rope it can look like it can look like that they're pulling the shore closer to themselves it can almost look like that if you don't know how things work they're pulling themselves in and it looks like the shore is being pulled closer to their boat obviously that's not what's happening and so when we pray we're not changing God and we're not really moving God closer to us when we pray we're moving ourselves closer to God the Torah it says in our Bible we're told you shall worship serve God with all of your heart what does it mean to serve God with all of your heart so the Talmud says the service of the heart is prayer that's how we work it's a work it's a labor it's a service we work throughout our lives with the raw material that God gave us of who we are and we try to convert this raw material into a finished product we're here basically polishing God's diamonds and we're here to purify our diamond and to improve it and prayer becomes part of this process of polishing ourselves of improving ourselves Rabbi David Aaron further explores another root meaning of Tefilah and how change is affected by understanding this meaning of the word Tefilah we all know the famous very tragic story of Jacob to his son Joseph he thought for so many years that Joseph was killed and he mourned silently for his son Joseph not realizing Joseph was alive all these years and became the vice president of all of Egypt and years later when Jacob is finally reunited with his son Joseph he goes down to Egypt so at the end of the book of Genesis in Genesis chapter 48 Joseph asks Jacob to see his two children Joseph has two sons and he wants his father to see his two sons and Jacob comes he's very old and in chapter 48 verse 11 Jacob says to Joseph I could never have imagined I would never have imagined that I would ever even see your face and here God is showing me even your offspring so Jacob says he says I would never have dreamed I would never have hoped to have been able to see your face and Rashi explains that the word Pilate here what Jacob is saying is I never had filled my heart to think the thoughts of seeing you again I gave up on those hopes and therefore I would never have dreamed I would never have hoped to have been able to see your face and therefore prayer is basically an activity an avoda a work a service of filling our hearts with how we really want to see our lives and our world that's what we're doing we're praying we're filling our hearts with the proper kind of thoughts this is the avoda of prayer the work of prayer and to try and align our vision with God's vision so prayer basically when you think about it is allowing godly thoughts to enter and penetrate our minds and our hearts that's what it's an activity of it's filling our hearts to think the thoughts godly thoughts the katsgarabi he was a student of a very famous story a very famous story katsgarabi where is god and he says god is everywhere he asked him again no where is god and the katsgarabi says malochoharith kvado god's glory fills the entire universe and he said no he said god is wherever you let him in and so prayer is our time during the day to let god in and to fill our minds and our hearts with godly thoughts the question is therefore not whether god hears our prayers that's not the question of course he hears our prayers the question is whether we are hearing our prayers that's the question about prayer we need to hear ourselves saying certain things before god each day it's important for us to say certain things before god each day it's important to tell people it's important to say certain things before god each day to realize our dependence on him and understanding there's no other address for our needs it's important for us to state that and to fill our hearts with that understanding to ask god for what we need to thank god for what we have to acknowledge god's kindness and generosity and to understand what is important to god how does god see the world what are god's priorities god looks at the world much differently than we do god's vision for the world is sometimes much grander than our small visions for the world and so we want to fill our hearts with these thoughts the balshempt have said you are where your thoughts are you want to know who you are you want to know where you are it's where your thoughts are you want to be more in tune with god's thoughts changes us that's how this works once we cultivate a desire to receive god's blessings and we pray for them we become a vessel to receive those blessings god wants a relationship with us that's god's desire god wants to be in relationship with us and so god created the world in this way that bonding with him comes through prayer and therefore prayer creates the vessel for us to receive those things we're asking for the capacity to receive the blessings of god and in that to be able to bond with god Rav Moshe Chaim Lutzato in his famous work the Derek Hashem the way of god wrote that living in a physical world where we're living now believe it or not a materialistic physical world tends to pull us down into the material and into the world of the superficial it's just part of the danger of living in this world and it distracts us living in a physical world distracts us from the spiritual we begin to forget who we really are in this world as a famous story many of you have heard who's just not able to support his family he's just so frustrated he's so broken and he hears that there's a very very far off island and he hears on this island it's just covered with precious jewels and he's got to be able to get there somehow and he'll be able to make a ton of money and support his family so he manages to get all the way to this island very very far away and he sees the island is covered with jewels there's diamonds and rubies everywhere it's all you have and he quickly stuffs his pockets and he's got them coming out of every little tiny of his garments and he's holding them and everyone looking what are you doing he's saying I gotta get these diamonds and then people are laughing at him they're saying what's the big deal these things aren't worth anything this whole island is full with these diamonds so he was very upset he said oh my goodness I thought these things were very valuable he said not here they're not so he said what is valuable here he said well there's a little teeny fish that is very very hard to catch very hard to catch but it's a big delicacy here on this island and if you can manage to learn how to catch these fish it's not easy you can make a killing so he saves up and he buys a little boat and he takes lessons and whatever he's figuring out the best way and he finally managed to catch some of these fish and after a lot of practice he gets pretty good at it and he starts getting a lot of these fish and he's got now the thing on this island that's worth more than anything else in the world he's got a big boat filled with these fish anyway after he catches a huge huge load of this fish he realizes wait a second my family I got to get back to my family so he quickly gets in the boat he goes back all the way home and the family they've been waiting for him and they see the boat and they get all excited and then as the boat gets closer they're smelling and they say what in the world is this guy bringing back we didn't think the diamonds smelled anyway the smell is becoming very powerful because the boat is full of fish and the boat and he looks like he's very happy he's got a big smile and he says I became very rich I became a gazillionaire on that island and they said really? he says yeah look at all this fish and he said you mean this smelly fish is what you brought back and he realized oh my god where I'm living now these little smelly fish are not worth too much he was devastated the story usually ends with him finding one or two little loose diamonds in his pocket that he left there from the very first day on the island but the parable is that we come into this world our souls come from a spiritual realm connected to God connected to the world of spirituality connected to who we really are and we're told that for 70, 80, 90, 100 years we put on an earth suit and we come down to live on planet earth for just a short period of time and we're here to work on ourselves and to grow spiritually and we're here to pick up diamonds real diamonds what are the real diamonds that we're supposed to be picking up enlightenment refinement of who we are closest to God learning Torah praying there's a whole world of valuables that we can in this world there's a lot to get and what happens we're in this physical world and we begin to get distracted and what becomes very important to us now are more dollar bills and more stock holdings and a bigger house and more cars and more yachts and more vacations this becomes what we're after and so people can live 70 years in this world 90 years and at the end they've got a huge portfolio and maybe they'll give some of it to grandkids but they didn't end up getting in this life what they were supposed to be getting in terms of growing personally or spiritually nothing we get very distracted here because we don't see God and when we don't see God out of sight out of mind and we begin to forget God and we begin to trust in our own accomplishments God says this in the desert by the way in the desert 40 years we have Jewish people directly they only had Manah and they had this miracle war to come out of well and you read the book of Deuteronomy and God says look you're going to go into the land of Israel and you're going to big build houses there you're going to big build double you know mansions you're going to big build houses you're going to have lots of stuff and you're going to forget about me that's what God tells him exactly in the book of Deuteronomy he warns them that's what happens in this world and so what prayer helps us do is to lift us out of this mundane world and reorient us to true reality to what's truly important our divine soul gets occluded gets covered up by being placed in a physical body with physical drives and materialistic preoccupations prayer is that avoda that work that service to reveal our true inner self King David said in the book of Psalms va'ani tefila I am prayer that's who I am really deep down inside that's who I am we said last week that the Talmud says that one of the words for the human being is and the root of which means to pray meaning that the Talmud says what defines us as human beings is we are the creature that prays that's who we really are deep down inside Rufzadeqa Cohen of Lublin in his famous work that he died in the year 1900 I believe he said it's not only important for us to believe in God he said we have to believe in ourselves as well he says we have to remember that we have a godly soul and that we have huge spiritual potential and so prayer helps us get in touch with who we really are the Torah tells us at one point that Isaac Abraham's son went out he went out to meditate in the field what is meditation R. A. Kaplan in his book Jewish Meditation says that meditation basically is the directing and focusing our mind in a focused manner it's just the focusing and directing of our mind on something when you think about it formal prayer when we open up a prayer book three times a day we say the prayer is in the liturgy that can be a meditative experience not if you're going at 95 miles an hour but prayer can be a meditative experience when you're focused on the words when you're focused on the experience when you go through prayer slowly our rabbis say we should pray like we're counting money right when you get a big pile of money you count it very carefully every dollar you want to make sure you don't miss one not rushing through it quickly and so prayer can be a meditative experience if we're focused, if we have attention if we have what we call Kavanaugh intention on what we're saying prayer can be an important meditative experience however it's very critical to remember that prayer is not only formal prayer Rabbi Nachman of Breslov would recommend a practice called heat bododut heat bododut literally which means to seclude yourself and to be alone and to just speak to God in your own words you don't need a prayer book it means coming before God every day he would recommend an hour, half hour whatever it is you can do it for 10 minutes but he said it one of the most healthy things to do and in terms of building closest with God just about the most powerful thing you can do it's just speak directly to God with your own words like you would speak to a close friend it's the way Tevye lived in Fiddler on the Roof he would just speak to God like God was the most real thing in the world oh God my horse broke his leg and he would just talk to God we are grandmothers spoke to God what Rabbi Nachman of Breslov recommends you can have many prayers throughout the day just throughout the day something comes up you pray to God you're going to a meeting pray to God for wisdom I should say the right things you're going to a doctor pray to God that your doctor should be skillful or that you should be okay you're going to a meeting anything you do during the day driving up Bathurst Street God help me get there safely shouldn't get stuck in too much traffic you can take these little breaks during the day many meditations throughout the day singing can be a meditative experience just to sing a spiritual song to chant I mean Nachman of Breslov used to just repeat over and over and over again he would say he would just call out God's name just calling out the name the way people who were in love call out the name of the beloved so that's a meditation if you're focused because you want to get close to God you call out on God's name prayer is called the formal prayer we have is called Amida which means to stand and it's interesting that this is the core consciousness that we're supposed to have when we're praying not so much on the words but just on the fact that we're standing many synagogues right here in the Talmud in Tractate Brachot Rabbi Eliezer is about to die and his students are asking him please give us some wisdom before you leave for the next world he said to them when you pray when you pray he said know before whom you are standing and the core basic consciousness of prayer is just to realize I'm standing in the presence of God the words are less important than just knowing I'm in the presence of God this Shabbat we're going to read Prashasvara when God comes and appears to Abraham doesn't tell you what God said to Abraham all the Bible says is that God came and appeared to Abraham we know that Abraham was not well he just gotten circumcised the Talmud says God came to visit the sick the critical is not so much what was exchanged it was that God appeared to Abraham the presence being together and so an incredibly powerful meditation is just to spend some time every day just imagining that you are in the presence of God we said before that the entire world is filled with his glory there's no place that God is absent and so just to sit and to feel that you're in the presence of God or stand that you're in the presence of God is a very powerful meditation we're going to end by asking one final question what if you're not able to pray what if you're not sure you believe in God I mean it sounds like my whole talk tonight goes out the window if you don't believe in God so we quoted a few weeks ago the Nisiva Shalom the Slana Marebi who said that the mitzvah to believe in God is really the mitzvah to yearn for God to seek God so what everyone can pray for is for God to make himself real to us for God to make himself clear to us even if we don't believe in God we can pray and say God please or whoever you are to whom you may concern I want to get to know you that's what Rabbi Abraham Tversky calls a prayer for a prayer pray to be able to pray there's a famous story that's told after I think the Six-Day War the Yom Kippur War, I forget which one it is there were, I think it must have been the Six-Day War a bunch of Israeli soldiers were at the Western Wall in Jerusalem amazing, they haven't been here in so many years and they're all religious soldiers except for one so there were a whole bunch of religious soldiers and what are they doing at the Western Wall now that they finally have conquered it they're standing there crying in front of the Western Wall and they turn to look at their friend who's totally not religious and he's crying as well and they can't, what is he crying about this guy doesn't believe in God, he's not religious he doesn't have a spiritual bone in his body and he said, you know why I'm crying I'm crying because I don't know why I'm not crying he knew that he should be crying everybody else is crying so he was crying and that's a prayer when you cry you're really praying I want to end with a beautiful story if you want to read some of the most beautiful material on prayer, Abraham Joshua Heschel was descendant of the Opter Rebbe he wrote so many beautiful books about prayer this is called Quest for God but he tells a beautiful story here that applies to all of us whether we believe in God we're not sure if we believe in God but some of us we just have a hard time praying sometimes he says about a hundred years ago by Isaac Mayor Alter of Gehr, it's my namesake Mayor, the Gehrer Rebbe, the first Gehrer Rebbe he pondered over the question of what a certain shoemaker of his acquaintance should do about his morning prayer because his customers were poor men who owned only one pair of shoes the shoemaker used to pick up their shoes at a late evening hour work on them all night and part of the morning in order to deliver them before their owners had gone to work when should the shoemaker say his morning prayers pray quickly the first thing in the morning and then go back to work and just shoot off the prayers very quickly or should he let the approaching hour of prayer go by and every once in a while raising his hammer from his shoes utter a sigh, woe unto me I haven't prayed yet and the Gehrer Rebbe said perhaps that sigh is worth more than any prayer itself we too Heschel says face this dilemma of wholehearted regret or perfunctory fulfillment many of us regretfully refrain from habitual prayer waiting for an urge that is complete sudden and unexampled but the unexampled is scarce and perpetual refraining can easily grow into a habit we may even come to forget what to regret and what to miss