From Chapter 7: Why Pray?

The Truth about Prayer

First, we have to understand that in Judaism we do not pray. Prayer is an English word, which actually comes from the Latin word precari, meaning "to beg"—exactly what most people think about prayer. They imagine a big king in the sky who is getting a big ego boost from watching his subjects beg. This is a terrible image of ourselves and of God. What Jews do when they come to pray is l'hitpallel—a unique experience, which as with most Jewish things today, has been distorted by the wrong Western connotation.

L'hitpallel has nothing to do with begging God to change His mind. L'hitpallel is a reflexive verb, and it means to do something to yourself, not to God. When you are praying, your question should not be, "Is God listening to my prayers?" Rather, you should ask yourself, "Am I listening to my prayers? Does what I hear impact me? Have I changed?"

If you are under the impression that praying is communicating to God information that He does not already know, then the whole prayer experience becomes ridiculous. God knows that your business is falling apart. God knows that you desperately want your soul mate. God knows exactly what is going on in your life.

L'hitpallel is not about getting God to listen. It is about you hearing your prayers. You need to say these things to God, because you need to hear yourself saying them. In fact, the main requirement of praying the Shemoneh Esrei, the primary prayer in Judaism, is to pray softly enough so that you are the only one who can hear it.

In short, l'hitpallel means to do something to yourself. Precisely what you are doing is palleling yourself. And what exactly is that?

We see the word pallel in the story of Jacob and Joseph. When Joseph learns that his father Jacob is nearing his death, he goes to his father for a blessing for his two children. Jacob says, "I never palleti that I would ever see your face again, and God has allowed me to even see the faces of your children." What do you think the term means here?

I never hoped? I never imagined? I never dreamed? I never anticipated?

The great eleventh-century Torah commentator Rashi explains the verse to mean, "I never filled my heart to think the thought that I would ever see your face again." Therefore, when we l'hitpallel, we are actively, intentionally trying to fill our hearts to think the thoughts with what it is that we want to see in this world, and how we want to change ourselves in order to make these things happen. It is not God whom we are trying to change. It is ourselves and our relationship to God we are trying to change through prayer.

Will Power

The Kabbalah teaches us that our will is really like a ray of God's will. Before God created the universe, all that existed was an endless light. Our interpretation is that the endless light is really endless divine will. And human beings are given a thin ray of that endless divine will.

Whatever we do is a result of our will. Without will nothing happens. (For example, you must have the will to read this book.) Will is your life source. When people have tremendous will, they have tremendous life power. Conversely, when people lose their will to live, they can die. I have heard stories about people who have died one day after their spouses died. Their meaning in life centered on their spouses, and when they lost their life's meaning, they lost their will to live. So the will to live is life itself.

One of the most important things that we must do for our children is to give them will power. It is the source of everything. Without will, it is not possible to succeed—or even to proceed—in life.

Prayer is an exercise of will. If you do not use it, you lose it. Ultimately, what we should be doing with our will is exercising it. Kavanah is not only sincere intention but attunement of our will to the source of all wills—God's will.

In a book called Shaarei Orah, the great thirteenth-century master of Kabbalah, Rabbi Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, wrote that people do not succeed in their prayer because they have not come to know the true source of all will. When a person really understands and connects with the source of all will, his or her prayers are answered.

But who is answering whom? When we pray we are attuning our will to God's will. Our goal in prayer is to channel God's will, not change it. Our will, in fact, becomes a channel for God's will so that it can become manifest in the world.