Q&A: Prayer as Engagement with the Prophets
Prayer as Engagement with the Prophets
Question
Thoughts that occurred to me בעקבות the Rabbi’s lessons on the difference between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah:
Prayer was instituted by the Men of the Great Assembly.
Some of them were prophets.
The words of the prayer therefore have value as written prophecies (the wording is sanctified by virtue of prophecy, somewhat like what was written in Nefesh HaChayim).
The value in reciting the prayer is a segulah-type value for us (since we are not prophets), like the very reading of the prophecies in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) itself (perhaps by virtue of the holy tongue?).
And this seems to fit the method of the kabbalists, that prayer is not an appeal to the Holy One, blessed be He, but a rectification in the worlds and an action a person performs through the words established by the prophets.
And perhaps the kabbalists’ intentions are that same value of the Torah before it was constricted into words (the Rabbi called this in a recorded lecture “the second contraction”).
In essence, prayer as request has no meaning according to this, but prayer as something that acts, like any commandment, does have meaning.
Does the Rabbi accept that prayer can have meaning as engagement with the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)?
Answer
Absolutely. Why not? Like any other commandment.
Discussion on Answer
One should also bring the other opinion:
Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel says: Be careful with the recitation of Shema and with prayer. And when you pray, do not make your prayer fixed routine, but rather mercy and supplication before the Omnipresent, blessed be He, as it is said: “For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and relenting of evil.” And do not be wicked in your own eyes.
This is also connected to the command of religious feeling. But it is not the Jewish law ruling.
The kabbalists, as usual, are talking nonsense. If you’re already looking for rectifications, then the only rectification here is that a person trains himself to do what he is told, and not what he thinks is right to do.
Prayer can also have significance as engagement with Greek wisdom!