blogs/brentspodek

Every language is a lens, an optic, through which we see the world. 

Some things carry more or less the same meaning in one language as in another. There's not any real difference between a Spanish mesa, a Hebrew shulchan and an English table.

Sometimes though, there is a big difference in what languages call things. The English word prayer connotes asking, requesting, even begging. But this thing we call prayer is not an eloquent form of begging. 

In Hebrew, the verb for prayer -??????- is reflexive. It's something you do to yourself. That doesn't mean that there isn't a notion of talking to the Divine in Jewish thought. But it's not the only - or even primary - understanding. 

The Hasic master known as the Kedushas Levi offered an incredible understanding of what we do to ourselves when we pray. Asking the seemingly obvious question of why Israelites sang after crossing the Red Sea, he writes:

You have to understand, joy is experienced primarily in the heart. When we feel joy, we need to speak and sing it because joy in the heart ends after a short time; but when we put that joy into words, those words affect us and expand us more and more. This was the experience of the Israelites when the Sea split. They wanted to increase their joy and remain delighting with their Creator, so they opened to the realm of speech… to increase their joy. They spoke words so that they might be able to access that joy in the future.

In other words, we pray to expand our own capacity to feel joy.

We've all had moments of joy, of exultation so real and intense that it defines who we are. Those moments pass and other things rise to the top of our consciousness. But our souls are like vinyl records before music is etched on them. We cut the grooves in our own souls. 

Will you, can you, take the most sublime moments of your lives and meditate on them once a week, every day, three times a day?

This is what prayer is about. It is work we do on ourselves to shape how we see the world, how we see each other and how - or perhaps, if - we see the Divine. 

It's not that I believe and therefore I pray; just the opposite. Because I pray, I remember the sublime moments I've experienced and believe there can be more, even today. 

So come, I pray you, ?????? - to use words and music to cut grooves in your own heart, to expand our own capacity for joy. Our calendar of services is here.