“The Experience of Prayer”–An On-going Journal of Thoughts and Reflections on our Study

“Prayer Hurts” by Reb Mike Feuer

This Shabbat a friend quoted a talmid chacham to me, saying ‘if you’re a ba’al teshuva and you still like to pray, you just haven’t been doing it long enough.’ When I responded in horror, she defended him – ‘he just meant that prayer is hard.’ We discussed the source of its difficulty. Above all, the sense of unchanging repetition was central.

Is it the routine of prayer that makes it hard? Is it painful to say the same words every day? But the words were meant to help us. One hundred and twenty sages, elders and prophets chose them.[1] It was an act of compassion toward the future in which our words were fail the needs of our hearts[2]. Didn’t they know the difficulty of binding us to them?

Is it the repetition of the words that hurts, or the sameness of self seen in their reflection? If the words are a standard of measure, where is the pain in checking myself every day? The fact that I haven’t changed. Change may hurt, but conscious stagnation is agony. Maybe that’s the pain of the unchanging in prayer. We’re just blaming it on the words.

But why should it hurt at all, isn’t repetition numbing? Maybe this is the challenge of prayer. The callous built up by daily service of the lips. But prayer should sensitize, not numb. We are recalling our needs and the brokenness of the world. How could prayer fail to awaken the heart?

Maybe the problem of prayer is that we don’t let ourselves feel. We don’t hold the lack before we ask for fulfillment. We ritualize our requests to avoid their frightening reality. If the sense of brokenness isn’t real in our hearts, is the Gd to whom we turn for fixing?

When it hurts, we cry out. If not, it doesn’t really hurt. Or we don’t believe anyone is listening. The Ramban[3] says this type of cry is an essential aspect of avodah. And the only place to look for the Torah’s obligatory prayer.

Am Yisrael is saying that prayer hurts. For whatever reason. My question is – what do we do about it? Consciousness of pain is a threshold definition of life. There are signs of life, as painful as they may be.  May we merit together to find avenues in prayer that will replace the tears of pain with those of joy.