A story. It’s Rosh Hashanah. A guy comes to the door of a temple and tries to get in. As you know, many synagogues require tickets. So the security guard says, “Hey, where’s your ticket?”
The man shakes his head. “I don’t have one.”
But the guard knows the rules. “Sorry, pal, you can’t get in without a ticket.”
“No, no, you don’t understand, I need to speak with Dr. Goldberg.”
“Sure, pal. No ticket, no dice.” The guard starts to close the door.
“No, It’s an emergency. They need the doctor in the hospital, and his phone is off for the holiday. I need to go get him!”
The guard thinks for a second, and then, “Ok pal, you can go in…but if I catch you praying….”
It’s a decent joke, but that punchline…phew!
If I catch you praying…
The thing is, that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem in the Jewish community today. Let me pause for a moment to say I know that tonight I am preaching to the choir. All of you are here to join in prayer. Many of you come every week. This is not a critique of anyone here tonight or even of those who aren’t.
That said, the news last month about the state of the Jewish community and prayer is grim.
A Pew study published in February found a sharp decline in regular prayer among American Jews. Asked how often they pray, 58% said seldom or never. They did not break it down by denomination, but we can assume the Orthodox are praying daily. So the number of non-Orthodox not praying must be extremely high.
And this is not a new thing. In 2014, asked the same question, 45% of Jews chose seldom or never. But ten years on, the number is at 58%, an increase well above the margin of error.
What’s more, this 58% is far higher than percentages among other religious communities. For Muslim Americans, it was only 18%. For Evangelical Christians, it was 7%. On a general level, four in ten Americans report that they pray once a day, and 23% say they pray weekly. Nu? What is going on with us?
Perhaps American Jews don’t understand the purpose or power of prayer. Maybe they don’t even know how to pray. So, why DO we pray? Understanding this is critical. If we aren’t taught the reasons to pray, why bother?
In Genesis 2:5, we read that trees and vegetation finally sprout under the blessing of rain. That’s odd as they were created way back on Day 3 in Genesis 1! Rashi teaches that God did not cause rain to fall when vegetation was created in Chapter One because there was no one to till the earth, meaning there was no one to appreciate the rain. There was no one to draw down the blessing. It was Adam who first knew that rain was needed, and it was his prayer that opened the heavens.
What is the lesson in this? Blessings are woven into creation. They wait for the prayer of humans before descending into this world. Our prayers bring the rain, feeding the trees and plants, bringing the harvest.
But what about when the rain isn’t falling? Every one of us struggles, every one of us is vulnerable. Adam felt the need and through its expression created growth. The great 20th century thinker Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik understood that we live in a strange world that can feel scary. He wrote about the “terror of the night” he perceived as a young boy when reading Psalm 91. He went to his tutor and asked what this was. But the tutor had no answer. He went to his father, a great rabbi, and asked what it was, and again, no answer. He finally went to his mother, and she said, “Say the Shema and go to bed!”
And maybe she was right. In a simple prayer, we can somehow find comfort and protection from a world that can feel threatening whether at night or even during the day.
Remember, studying the Torah is how God communicates with us. But prayer is how we communicate with God.
The Medieval scholar Nachmanides believed that daily prayer was a rabbinic command, not a Torah command. It’s a command either way, but in Jewish law, the difference is important. He based his judgement on the fact that in scripture, prayer is only called for in times of crisis such as a time of war or famine.
Rambam, Maimonides, disagreed. He said basically every day is a crisis. It’s almost as if he was living in 2025! Existential, sure, but no less harmful or serious than a raging battle or piercing hunger. For some of us, every day can be a battle. Every day can be a famine of love, care, resources, or health. Where do we go to find comfort?
Prayer is a home, a refuge, and yes, a comfort. It’s where we keep an appointment with God. There are three daily fixed prayer times, but you might not know that originally all Jewish prayer was spontaneous and personal. Over time, this became too challenging for most people, and they stopped praying all together. Despairing over this, the 120 Men of the Great Assembly decided it was a good idea to write fixed prayers so that everyone would have something to say whether the spirit moved them or not. The siddur grew exponentially over the centuries to what we have now.
But look, the fact that we have a siddur and fixed prayers does not preclude personal and spontaneous prayer! There is nothing stopping us from praying at the drop of a hat.
I pray continually through the day, but what I do is, I latch onto one line or phrase that resonates with me in that season. This is a Hasidic technique. It could be as simple as, “God is good and His mercy is forever.” A prayer I had on my lips for several months was, “God make a way where there is no way.” A dear friend of mine learned this from his mother, “Lord, come into my heart, keep me in Your heart always.”
Hasidic scholar Yitzhak Buxbaum teaches that the repetition of a holy phrase or sentence is a critical way of cleaving to Hashem. It’s called d’veikut. Unlike study, this repetition can be done at every free moment. It can be as simple as a single word such as “help” or a phrase like “thank you.” It can be something simple enough to say even if you are fatigued or tired. The key is that it is always at the front of your mind.
I want to offer you a single Hebrew word tonight, “Shiviti,” from the phrase, “Shiviti Adonai l’negdi tamid,” in Psalm 16:8. “I have placed God before me always.” Shiviti translates as, “I have placed.” Powerful words. You are keeping God in your thoughts and heart. Traditionally, this is said every morning.
And yes, this one word is a prayer. You don’t need a book. You don’t need a long, drawn out poem. You don’t even need a rabbi! We aren’t substitutes for your own prayers! Some people think we are. I promise you, we’re not! Shiviti. Let’s say it together. Shiviti. That’s it. Try it.
In Psalm 27, we learn a critical element of Jewish prayer. From the midrash in Devarim Rabbah we read, “Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba said: It is written: “Put your hope in the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage, and put your hope in the Lord” (Psalm 27:14). Why is hope written twice? He taught, “Pray, and pray again, and there will be a time when it will be granted to you.”
So. Hope and hope again.
58% of our people don’t pray. Nothing. They have no prayer life, no sense of the comfort or the hope it brings. Maybe no one taught them. Maybe no one explained it. I feel sorry for them. Their rabbis and educators have failed them.
So pray today. That’s easy, especially here, now, together. The next day is the hard part. Then the next and again the next after that. With your prayers, you come to know your needs. You open a dialogue with Eternity. You discover who YOU are.
Prayer isn’t a vending machine, you don’t just pay a dollar and get a KitKat bar. (When did they get so expensive?) No one can know why many prayers are not answered. We can’t pretend to understand the enormity of God’s way in the world. But I can tell you this from the old Reform Gates of Prayer that I learned as a child: “He who rises from prayer a better person — his prayer is answered.”
Shabbat Shalom