Q&A: Prayer in Our Times
Prayer in Our Times
Question
Hello Rabbi,
You argue that prayer in our times (at least the part of prayer that consists of requests) is not relevant, because one should not pray for divine intervention in nature.
So far, that is the argument. (Correct me if I’m mistaken.)
Seemingly, it could be explained like this (I don’t remember the source):
In essence, there is a law of nature that allows us to affect reality through our prayers.
So seemingly there is no direct divine intervention at the time of the requests in prayer, but prayer still helps with the requests, through us.
Do you think this explanation is valid? If not, why not?
Thank you very much.
Answer
The effect of prayers is not a law of nature, unless it operates in a fixed and uniform way and can be observed. And even if it were, we should have discovered this experimentally and incorporated it into our laws of nature. Our laws of nature ignore such an effect and still describe the world correctly.
For example, medical experiments do not take the effect of prayers into account, nor do they control for their effect between the sample group and the control group. I have never heard of anyone doing this, or anyone refusing to use experimental results because this was not done. For example, acetaminophen lowers a fever whether you prayed or not.
Beyond that, if prayers were part of nature, then what would the prohibition against praying for a miracle mean? The result of prayer would not be a miracle but nature.
Maimonides proposes such a way of understanding miracles: that they are embedded in the nature of the world from the six days of creation. See the Maharal in the introduction to Gevurot Hashem.
Discussion on Answer
So what exactly am I praying for in “Grant us from You wisdom, understanding, and knowledge”? According to what you’re saying, am I praying for a miracle?
I don’t know. If you pray that, ask yourself what you are praying for. Either way, it is clear that every request without exception is a prayer for a miracle.
By the way, that request is no different from any of the others. This is a question about all requests.
Maybe one can pray on the chance that there is sporadic involvement (without counting on it), for yourself or for others in situations where they need it. And of course that is a prayer for a miracle, like any request.
Questions about the approach of Maimonides that you mentioned:
1. When do we call something a miracle? When it is outside the nature familiar to us? After all, there is no deliberate divine intervention here in response to a certain event (prayer or distress, for example) if everything was determined at creation.
2. Isn’t this determinism? Why couldn’t free choices change the course of events so that the miracle would not happen? And if they could, then God, who planned the miracle in the act of creation, is “gambling” that it will not change?
1. That is just semantics. There is the nature familiar to us, and when there is a deviation from it, that is what in his view is called a miracle. The fact that it was embedded in creation from the outset does not mean that it appears frequently.
2. It seems to me that the miracles he is dealing with relate to nature and not to human beings.
Rabbi Michi, personally, as a naive and simple believer, I pray because I was educated to believe that God hears prayers and fulfills them.
According to the Jewish law you mentioned, it is forbidden to pray for a miracle, so how does that fit with your statement that prayer is for a miracle?
Thank you very much.
The Talmud in Berakhot 60 says that “one who prays that his wife should give birth to a male while she is already pregnant—this is a vain prayer.”
The intent here is a case where it has already happened, so changing it would fall under the category of a miracle. Because the natural law of prayer basically gives us the ability to change things in reality, and thus in the future the things we intend will happen. But if something has already happened, then changing it would fall under the category of a miracle (a deviation from the laws of nature, including the law of prayer).
It seems to me that my question still stands.
2. Even so, a person’s free choices can affect nature and change the “scenario” that was fixed at creation. Take, for example, the splitting of the Reed Sea (which is commonly thought of as a miracle). If it was already fixed at creation, then were all the choices that led to the descent to Egypt, the plagues of Egypt, and the Exodus only apparent choices, just so that the miracle determined in Genesis would occur?
And what does the Rabbi think of an answer to the question I raised that says that God determined in Genesis a number of possible scenarios in nature, and the scenario that would be chosen is a function of free choices? A bit speculative, no?
Yair, every change is a change of something that has already happened; otherwise there is no change here. The very involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, is supposed to change something in reality now into something else. Once He changes the cause, the result changes accordingly.
By the way, regarding a fetus, why not pray that the Holy One, blessed be He, perform a sex-change operation in the womb? After all, even a flesh-and-blood doctor can do that in a natural way.
N’,
I don’t know which question you mean.
Clearly people’s choices affect nature, and in that sense it is possible that just as nature changes, so too the miracle embedded in it changes. One is no worse than the other in that respect. But that does not mean that the “miracle” that was embedded is not part of nature.
The claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, established several scenarios from which choice selects is what happens in practice. What is speculative about that?
I understand, thank you very much.
In the original question where I saw this argument, I saw that you said it applies only to our times.
Seemingly, it should apply at any time, no? Were the laws of nature different then?
The question is whether the involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the past was different. After all, back then there were clear miracles and prophecy and the like. So even if the laws of nature were the same, there was involvement. Today, it seems there is none.
But even if there was greater involvement, there is still no possibility of praying in order to ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to intervene in nature.
By the way, I claim that usually there is no intervention. That does not mean there is none at all, even in very rare and specific circumstances (sporadic involvement). I cannot rule that out, although I am not aware of any indication that this exists.