Q&A: Why Pray for Health
Why Pray for Health
Question
Hello and blessings,
I wanted to ask about your position on prayer, which, according to you, is not answered. If I understood correctly, we pray only because that is God’s will, and nothing more (which is certainly a convenient and good approach for a believing and upright person who knows that most of his prayers, and those of the people around him, are not accepted).
According to this view, it is clear why we recite Pesukei DeZimra, the blessings of the Shema, etc., since these are blessings and expressions of praise and thanks to the Holy One, blessed be He. But why does the main prayer—the Amidah—contain a significant percentage of “personal” blessings? After all, if the whole point comes from the commandment that I simply pray, and the connection between prayer and my health is completely incidental, then why mention it in prayer at all—not merely mention it, but actually ask for it? Why not just the first blessings of the Eighteen Benedictions and that’s it?
P.S. I remember there was already a discussion like this on the site (in the responsa or maybe in an article), but I couldn’t find it. Sorry for the repetition…
Answer
You did not understand my position correctly. That is Leibowitz’s position, and it is implausible precisely because of what you argued. I maintain that one can make requests only because there is some chance they may be answered sporadically (though I do not see that happening). If I become convinced that divine involvement does not exist at all, then indeed it would not be possible to make requests in prayer.
Praise and thanksgiving are possible, and I explained this when I discussed prayer as I conceive of it, and in the second book of the trilogy. You can search for it.
Discussion on Answer
What’s the problem with that? I wrote that I do not mean cases where I have a natural solution for them, and I also do not ask for more than what is required in the prayer. But in prayer I have in mind those cases where there is no natural solution—maybe He will answer, “for I am poor and needy”; perhaps He will have mercy.
The ratio between the monthly hours spent praying and the likelihood that it will be answered approaches zero. Wouldn’t it be better to do something more useful?
What about the ratio between Sabbath observance and the ability to do more useful things? Why do you keep the Sabbath? There is an obligation to keep the Sabbath, and there is also an obligation to pray.
Is that really a comparison?! After all, those who instituted the prayer filled the words of the Sages—and also in later periods—with sayings, embellishments, and stories about the greatness of prayer and how prayers are accepted. If they were mistaken in their assumption, what is the point of praying?
Unless you say that even if the reason has lapsed, the enactment has not lapsed? But there never was a reason—it was apparently a mistake even then.
And in general, to pray when you don’t believe that prayers are accepted is exactly like keeping the Sabbath without believing in the Torah.
You’re just being stubborn. I have nothing to add.
Why does it seem implausible to you that the Holy One, blessed be He, commands us to make requests in prayer for some religious purpose, even though they will not be answered?
Just as commandments that appear moral may have a religious rather than moral purpose, maybe with prayers too the goal is “to repair the eternity within splendor” (as you put it regarding seemingly moral commandments), and not necessarily what appears to us to be the point—the answer.
First of all, because He did not command that. The content of the prayer is an enactment of the Sages. Second, we are not required to lie. On the contrary, it says, “Keep far from a false matter.” And indeed, when the Sages saw that the words of the prayer were false in their eyes, they did not say them (the well-known Talmudic passage in Yoma, that the Holy One, blessed be He, hates being falsely described).
So according to your view, three times a day—in the central part of the prayer—we make requests whose chances of being answered are extremely small, bordering on rare, just because maybe someday it will happen. How is that different from what you said about Leibowitz’s position? On that scale, your position also isn’t really plausible.