Q&A: The Concept of Prayer
The Concept of Prayer
Question
To the honorable Rabbi Michael Abraham, may he live long and well,
Some time ago I spoke with the Rabbi about a close friend who crossed over to the “other side.” I spoke with him at length in an attempt to understand what was bothering him.
I asked him to put it in writing, and I told him I would send it to you, and we would be very happy if you could respond to it.
In any case, I would be glad if you would look over this letter, and if the Rabbi can, it would be very helpful if he would send him a response by email.
Prayer
Premise A:
God judges a person justly solely according to his deeds—that is, his choice. It cannot be that external factors affecting a person’s choice for good or evil should influence his reward and punishment. “Will God pervert justice? Or will the Almighty pervert righteousness?!” (This assumes, of course, that there is reward and punishment in this world.)
Premise B:
God “hears” a person’s prayer for himself and for others; prayer works in a metaphysical way (aside from psychological effects, etc.) to bring about fulfillment of the requested need.
This premise can be based on many verses in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), such as: “And it shall be, when he cries out to Me, that I will hear, for I am gracious”—regarding a poor man praying against his creditor; that is, one person’s prayer for another.
Also: “And the Lord heard their cry,” “And God heard her,” and many others.
The Talmud as well is full of this idea, such as: “He prayed for mercy and revived him,” “The prayer of the righteous overturns the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He” (Yevamot 64a), and also Avodah Zarah 8a, and many more.
Seemingly, these premises contradict one another.
If according to the judgment of a person’s deeds he does not deserve the requested need—how can we assume that prayer will help him?! Would prayer operate against justice?!
And if we try to answer and say:
A: Prayer makes a person better, and afterward he deserves the requested need.
B: A person receives reward for the very act of praying, and afterward he deserves the requested need.
We can reject this with three main difficulties:
A: What shall we say about a person’s prayer for his fellow (which I proved above, based on verses in the Hebrew Bible, also has an effect), where certainly the one being prayed for does not become better and does not receive reward for the prayer?!
B: If the person became better / received reward for the prayer, that reward could come in any form—why do we assume that prayer works specifically to obtain the requested need?
C: There are many things besides prayer that make a person better / for which a person receives reward. Why shouldn’t we say that a person should engage in Torah study or ethics, and that will bring about fulfillment of the requested need?
Regarding “heavenly calculations”
I can accept the answer “heavenly calculations” when there is some unknown factor relevant to the matter. For example: (In the example I will simplify the abstract notions of reward and righteousness into variables, to make the explanation easier.)
A righteous person at a certain level, whose reward = X. I have no ability to know how much reward he deserves (what his challenges are, etc.), and therefore I will not ask why something particular happened to him; that is “heavenly calculations.”
In our case, a righteous person at a level whose reward is X (which indeed is unknown), and his fellow prayed for him. Let us define the requested need in the prayer as reward worth Y. If the prayer is accepted, it comes out that the righteousness-reward equation is: X = X+Y, (where, as stated, Y equals the requested need that was granted) = an incorrect equation. Instead of: X righteousness = X reward—the correct equation, justice.
Summary: in our case, there is no relevant unknown datum, and therefore here I do not accept the answer “heavenly calculations.”
Regarding “mutual responsibility”
Some claim that the merit of the prayer / its positive effect on the one praying is credited to his fellow and inclines his judgment favorably—that a person’s prayer for his fellow works to obtain what is requested by virtue of the mutual responsibility among the Jewish people.
This argument describes the phenomenon nicely, but it does not at all make it just, nor does it reconcile it with Premise A above.
Answer
Hello,
A few general comments, because it is hard to elaborate here.
1. If we are discussing crossing over to the “other side,” it seems to me that issues of prayer cannot be the focus of the discussion. First one must discuss whether there is a God, and whether He revealed Himself and gave commandments. If so, then everything else (such as difficulties regarding prayer) are questions that require answers, but they are not decisive. And if not—then the whole system is mistaken, and again there is no point in discussing prayer.
2. Regarding conceptions of prayer, one must distinguish between what is written in the Torah and what the Sages wrote. What the Sages said was their own reasoning, and there is no necessity that they were right. In my personal opinion, in many matters they were not right. In other matters they wrote based on their own reasoning without a basis. Maybe it is true, but they had no way of knowing.
3. On the margins, I will note that the Holy One, blessed be He, has become less involved in the world over the generations, and in my opinion today He is not involved, neither for good nor for bad. I elaborated on this in my book No Man Rules the Spirit and on the website. It follows that these difficulties relate only to the past, when the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved. Now I will address the questions themselves:
A. When you ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for something, He can answer even if you do not deserve it. The same is true when you ask a human being for something. Seemingly, he should have given it to you even without your asking, but he gives only if you ask. So too with the Holy One, blessed be He. The reward of a righteous person is that he has the privilege that his requests are answered. As in the stories where one finds that a person saved a fish or a demon from a bottle, and it tells him in return that it will grant his requests.
B. Indeed, other actions can also help a person be answered, not only prayer. Who says that only prayer does this?
C. Prayer really can also bring other results. Who says that prayer is necessarily answered דווקא through fulfillment of the need for which the person asked? On the contrary, Tosafot in several places writes regarding “concentrated analysis of prayer,” that there is a contradiction between passages: one sees it as something negative and the others as positive. They explain that the positive “concentrated analysis of prayer” is intention in prayer, whereas the negative “concentrated analysis of prayer” is when a person expects his prayer to be answered.