Q&A: The Prayer of Desire
The Prayer of Desire
Question
With God's help,
Hello Rabbi, I assume you are familiar with Rabbi Kook's approach to prayer. I’ll present my immature and abbreviated understanding: his approach sees prayer as influencing desire, and thus affecting reality either in a spiritual way or directly through the change in the person; by changing, the person changes his actions, and naturally reality changes and his request is granted. Have I understood correctly?
A – Have we seen earlier sources for this?
B – Would the Rabbi also say about this kind of prayer that in our time it does not work at all??
C – If you do not accept this approach, then why not? (This section is not mandatory, just optional.)
Thanks in advance,
Yehuda
Answer
Hello Yehuda. All of that could be correct. Even the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, acts in response to prayer could be correct. What I have against these views is that I am not impressed that this is what happens.
Discussion on Answer
See here:
https://mikyab.net/%d7%91%d7%99%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%9b%d7%a0%d7%a1%d7%aa-%d7%9b%d7%96%d7%99%d7%a8%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%98%d7%a4%d7%94-%d7%9c%d7%a7%d7%94%d7%9c-%d7%a9%d7%91%d7%95%d7%99-%d7%9e%d7%91%d7%98-%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%a1/#comment-5511
I read it in the past. It talks mainly about synagogue culture and our attitude toward prayer, and not about what, in his view, is the objectively “correct” attitude toward prayer.
Sorry, I meant my comment there (the above link points directly to it).
In short, I wanted to show you that I think like you.
The fact that you get the impression that it does not happen could be because the usual understanding of prayer as a request that God Himself change is incorrect, and then indeed prayer does not work.
But if we look at prayer as transferring and processing intellectual knowledge into emotion, and from there into a change of desire, and from there into a change in a person's practical actions in the world, then this approach seemingly appears very rational, and really ought to change things in the world—not everything and not on every scale, but….