Prayer
A Message for Parashat VaYishlah 2016
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The
opening episode of last week’s parashah introduced us to a “changed”
Yaakov. A mysterious encounter with God brought him to recognition of a realm
that lay beyond his comprehension. Yaakov woke up from his dream “afraid,” and
immediately recognized the inexplicable “awesomeness” of his resting place. It
was a turning point in the life of a patriarch whose early life was pronounced
by rational perception and intellectual manipulation.[1]
Twenty years pass by in
Yaakov’s life before we learn of his next significant “God encounter,” at the
onset of this week’s parashah. This time in came in the form of a
struggle with an unidentified “man” and Yaakov’s ultimate victory. Its
preceding act, however, is perhaps most significant:
And Yaakov was greatly
afraid, and he was distressed … And Yaakov said: “God of my father Avraham and
God of my father Yitzhak! … O save me from the hand of my brother, from the
hand of Esav, for I fear him, lest he come and strike me, mother with sons. And
You Yourself said, ‘I will surely deal well with you and I will set your seed
like the sand of the sea, multitudinous beyond all count.’” (32:8-13)
Momentarily
relinquishing self-control of the situation, Yaakov begged God for help in his
upcoming encounter with Esav. He admitted his human finitude and turned to Him
in an act so foreign to the rational-minded folk: prayer.
It
is worth contrasting Yaakov’s response in this instance to his specific actions
and words following his earlier vision of the ladder.
Yaakov responded then by
erecting a memorial pillar, renaming the location, and vowing:
“If God will be with me
and guard me on this way that I am going and give me bread to eat and clothing
to wear, and I return safely to my father’s house, then Hashem will be my God.
And this stone that I set as a pillar will be a house of God, and everything
that You give me I will surely tithe it to You.” (28:20-2)
The memorial pillar and
place-renaming were Yaakov’s attempt to exert control of the situation. His conditional
vow followed in a consistently “controlled” fashion, as he sought God’s
entrance into a deal that granted him continued security in return for his
pledged acts of respect.
Though
the pesukim clearly describe Yaakov’s extreme fright in both instances,
his particular reactions differ greatly from one to the next. With the conditional
vow, he sought to be an “equal party” in the deal, pledging his own
sacrifice in return for that of God. In prayer, however, he simply
screamed for help. Gone was the man whose every action and decision were driven
by intellect and rationality, as he poured out his heart to a Being greater
than he could ever fathom or comprehend.
Eminent Jewish thinker R.
Norman Lamm once responded to the “major complaint of contemporary man” that
they cannot bring themselves to pray. Accepting it as an honest objection, R.
Lamm argued that the complaint is based on the faulty premise that “the
cognitive affirmation of religion must precede its affective relationship.” He
explained:
When
we are convinced, however, that confrontation precedes cognition, that the
existential encounter and the sense of trust have priority over the
propositional belief-that aspect of faith, then we shall realize that it is
possible by an act of will to locate ourselves in a situation of prayer.
While
admitting that prayer will not answer philosophical questions nor resolve
theoretical doubts, R. Lamm posited that the force of relationship latent in
prayer will nonetheless “take the sting out of them,” and transform the
substantive doubts into methodological ones. [2]
The
late R. Shimon Gershon Rosenberg z”l similarly remarked:
God’s presence in my
prayers is as tangible to me as the presence of a human interlocutor. That is
not a proof but rather an immediate experience. Similarly, I do not
assert that the sight of someone standing in front of me is proof of the
person’s existence. That would be foolish: After all, I see you.
Rav
Shagar’s conception of God’s presence in his prayers matched his broader understanding
of faith, which lay not in the realm of “proof” but in that of “experience.”[3]
Yaakov’s
emotional outpour to God prior to his encounter with Esav must serve as a guide
for our approach to prayer. It must remind us of the necessary encounters with
God in realms beyond our comprehension, and force us to seek an experiential
relationship with Him that will sometimes defy our cognitive capacities.
[1] Recall our broader
analysis of the experience and its significance in last week’s devar Torah,
“Mystical Moments.”
[2] R. Norman Lamm, Faith and Doubt: Studies in Traditional Jewish Thought (Jersey City, NJ, 2006),
pg. 27.
[3] R. Shimon Gershon
Rosenberg, Faith Shattered and Restored: Judaism in the Postmodern Age (New Milford, CT, 2017), pg. 23-4.