Answer

I completely agree, and I have written this several times on my site (and I expand on it in the theology book I am currently writing).
For now, see a related discussion here.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
So what, in your view, is the real meaning of prayer? (If any at all.)
And does that same hiding of the divine face that you discuss in the article also imply that in the future there will likewise be less heavenly and spiritual revelation for us (the World to Come, the coming of the Messiah, etc.)?
I have to thank you again that even though you are busy writing a book, and presumably with a wide variety of other things as well, you still make time to answer everyone who asks.
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
I also discuss this at length in the book. In general, one should distinguish between requests and the rest of the prayer service. Requests assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, will intervene and help us—that is, deviate from nature. That usually does not happen, although one cannot rule out the possibility that sometimes it does. Therefore I would not pray for things that have an ordinary solution, but only for acute situations for which I have no natural solution. And even then, don’t count on it, because it seems to me that usually it is not answered.
I do not know what will be in the future, but as far as I understand it, the direction of the process is a gradual withdrawal of the Holy One, blessed be He, from the world. Perhaps in the future there will be a different situation, and His revelation, once we have already matured, will not be disruptive. I do not know.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
Do you think that even in recent years we are witnessing a process of gradual distancing?
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Obviously, you cannot sense a change on the scale of just a few years. This is a historical process. In general, my feeling is that during the years I have been conscious, there has been no divine involvement in the world. That is what I can say from my own impression.
——————————————————————————————
Shlomi:
On the margins of the issue of prayer, for which Temple do you pray, if at all? Does this religious experience seem to you compatible with the description of the world’s maturation and the believer’s “difficult freedom”?
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
This issue was discussed in several answers that just went up on the site around the Nine Days. I said there that from my perspective today, the Temple seems far from the dream I long for (a slaughterhouse where the priests walk in blood up to their knees), but perhaps when I am there and experience it, I will understand that it has great spiritual significance that I do not grasp today.
Therefore I do not really pray for the building of the Temple except within the framework of the fixed prayers, and there I intend the kind of Temple that will have meaning in the eyes of one who experiences it (a conditional prayer in the Litvak style, like the condition the Avnei Nezer made regarding the afikoman). And above all I pray that I should understand what there is to pray for here—that is, to understand its importance, if indeed it has any.
Beyond that, if there is a commandment to build the Temple, what place is there to pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, about it? “Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the children of Israel, that they go forward.”