Culture Post 2 - Prayer

[Nicolas Dacey]

The Hebrew word for prayer is tefilah. It is derived from the root Pe-Lamed-Lamed and theword l'hitpalel, meaning to judge oneself. This surprising word originprovides insight into the purpose of Jewish prayer. The most importantpart of any Jewish prayer, whether it be a prayer of petition, ofthanksgiving, of praise of God, or ofconfession, is the introspection it provides, the moment that we spendlooking inside ourselves, seeing our role in the universe and ourrelationship to God.
Jews believe that one purpose of prayer is to increase your awareness of God in your life and the role that God playsin your life. If you only pray when you feel inspired (that is, whenyou are already aware of God), then you will not increase your awarenessof God.When you say the same prayers day after day, you might expect that theprayers would become routine and would begin to lose meaning. While thismay be true for some people, this is not the intention of Jewishprayer. The mindset for prayer is referred to as kavanah, which is generallytranslated as "concentration" or "intent." The minimum level of kavanahis an awareness that one is speaking to God and an intention to fulfill theobligation to pray. If you do not have this minimal level of kavanah,then you are not praying; you are merely reading. In addition, it ispreferred that you have a mind free from other thoughts, that you knowand understand what you are praying about and that you think about themeaning of the prayer.
The Talmud states that it ispermissible to pray in any language that you can understand; however,traditional Judaism has always stressed the importance of praying inHebrew. A traditional Chasidic storyspeaks glowingly of the prayer of an uneducated Jew who wanted to praybut did not speak Hebrew. The man began to recite the only Hebrew heknew: the alphabet. Herecited it over and over again, until a rabbi asked what he was doing.The man told the rabbi, "The Holy One, Blessed is He, knows what is inmy heart. I will give Him the letters, and He can put the wordstogether."Any language other than Hebrew is laden down with the connotations ofthat language's culture and religion. When you translate a Hebrew word,you lose subtle shadings of Jewish ideas and add ideas that are foreignto Judaism. Only in Hebrew can the pure essence of Jewish thought bepreserved and properly understood. For example, the English word"commandment" connotes an order imposed upon us by a stern and punishingGod, while the Hebrew word "mitzvah" implies an honor andprivilege given to us, a responsibility that we undertook as part of thecovenant we made with God, a good deed that we are eager to perform.