Jewish Philosophy: Rational & Mystical

Videos:

Kabbalistic energy-channels: Tapping into the cyclical spiritual energy of Jewish holidays

Two sides of the coin:

1. Mystical Engineering: How prayer affects the universe

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2. Can Prayer get us what we ask for?

The central point is that God refused Moses' begging to enter the Land - but God accepted Moses' request to establish contact: Perhaps prayer is 'accepted' only in this sense - we can get what we want from prayer only if what we want is a connection to God. But that is a tremendous gift.

Exercise, Love & Prayer: Activities Whose Effect is Inevitable vs those whose effect is NOT guaranteed

Some goals depend only on us, some on others. If we exercise every day, we are guaranteed (except in exceptional circumstances) to achieve tone or muscle growth, it is a goal which depends basically on us. However if we put all our energy into becoming President of the USA or the richest person in the world or the most muscled person we are not at all guaranteed of achieving our goal –others are trying to do so as well, and this goal depends not only on our own effort.

In some sense spiritual development is dependent only on us. In what category is love - are we guaranteed that we will get what we want? For example can a couple follow a path which guarantees they will love each other, or fall in love with each other? Is it within our power to cause ourselves to fall in love with someone? In what category is prayer? Can prayer bring us what we pray for? Note that in the context of this article this means help us directly, personally, and detectably in the ways that we think we want to be helped, getting us specifically what we want/asked for. For example, combining the two: can prayer bring us a life-partner with who we'll have a mutual-love and great life-long relationship?

Some claim that indeed prayer can bring us that which we pray for (I have heard rabbis and other religous teachers say this). In this article I wish to determine what they mean when they say this, whether it is indeed true based on real-world facts, and what the normative Jewish attitude (as oppsode to their personal Jewish attitude) is to this issue.

When trying to establish whether or not prayer works in that way, I will reject any argument assuming that those who fail in achieving what they pray for are simply not trying as much as they should, or not praying as they should, since this type of argument makes any claim impervious to disproof..

What about in a universe with an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-compassionate God: Will prayer and the fulfillment of mitzvot help us directly, personally, and detectably in the ways that we think we want to be helped, getting us what we want/asked for?

However, "God is Hidden", as discussed previously (see link on Jewish Philosophy page)"

and so we are led to conclude that:

We can NOT get what we ask for

These assumptions therefore imply that even though the ultimate reality is spiritual and prayer and mitzvoth access this ultimate reality, prayer and mitzvoth do NOT cause a non-naturalistic effect in the natural universe. We are NOT necessarily granted things that we are desirous of in this world as a result of our prayer and doing mitzvoth. We can NOT attain specific things that we want, in this world, via praying for them, and by doing mitzvoth for merit.

What DOES Prayer Accomplish?

The Divine Hotline: Try to get an appointment with the President of the US, try installing a hot-line which the presindent answers whenever you call. When we pray we are picking up the phone to call God. We are requesting communication with the creator of all. And we are perhaps requesting the God fulfil our shopping list. What is guaranteed is that God will acept our request for communication. But not necessarily give us the items on the list. However if we are truly highly developed, having that hot line with guaranteed communication is not only sufficient, it is actually what is highest on the list of requests!

Prayer can also perhaps help us with merit in the next world; one can also acquire merit via praying for the deceased (saying kaddish).

What we want or think we want may be to our detriment spiritually etc, and what we get as a result of prayer and mitzvoth is good for us and/or for the world only in the ultimate spiritual sense, and of the unfolding of God’s plan for the universe and for us specifically, and therefore need bear no relationship whatsoever to that which we want or ask for in our prayer.

We could then postulate that (some of) the sages agreed with this view but wanted to encourage people to pray and do mitzvot and therefore deliberately fostered the impression that one CAN achieve one’s own agenda via prayer/mitzvoth. (Just as (some) sages held that a Biblical 'rebelious child' (ben sorer u’moreh) never existed, but that the torah included it on order to frighten people away from behavior patterns that would lead to such a child.)

According to Jewish belief our prayers accomplish many things in the spiritual realm, things that are necessary for the proper working of the universe. Effects in the spiritual realm also affect the physical realm.

However even in terms of the purely material world, within a naturalistic system of cause and effect, there are beneficial effects to prayer: during or after praying there may be a feeling of well-being since one feels that one is discharging one’s religious obligation, there may be a sense of hopefulness if one believes that God will answer the prayers by sending us what we requested, and there are even studies which showed that hospital patients who have pets, or are made to laugh a lot or pray or who know that others are praying for them have a slightly higher recovery rate. All this is explicable within a purely naturalistic system.

But does Judaism believe that prayer help us directly, personally, in ways that would not exist in a purely naturalistic system, and in the ways that we think we want to be helped, getting us what we asked for? And could this be backed up by statistics?

Praying for specific things

When you pray for something specific, a car, or your health, a shiddach, a good marriage, or the safety of someone else there is no guarantee of getting what you ask for, in fact it rarely occurs for most people. (Whether during the Holocaust, or before serious operations, religious people who pray do not necessarily have significantly longer lifetimes than atheists). Of course one can claim that all those who did not receive what they prayed for were not sincere in their prayer etc, but this is an empty logic. [Empty because one could make the claim for anything, saying magic/telepathy/prayer works, and when it doesn’t it is not a disproof but rather it means you didn’t deserve that it should work.]

Furthermore, if you ask for a specific thing and get it, it may be that this is a punishment eg getting that terrific job in the WTC beginning on September 10. That which you requested may be harmful to you in a physical or spiritual way, or it may block something good which was to happen… Maybe you were to suffer but it was necessary for your spiritual growth or for the Jewish people or humanity and your safety means that this mission cannot be accomplished etc; guaranteeing Yoni Netanyahu’s safe return from Entebbe might have necessitated the failure of one of the greatest acts of kiddush hashem in modern times; so it may be a punishment to the Jewish people or to humanity to have your prayer for safety answered.…

What Prayer Accomplishes

Many rabbis imply that if one prays for something (health, success, finding a spouse who one falls in love with etc), there is a greater likelihood of obtaining it. However this may not be so. Although prayer accomplishes much in the metaphysical realm, and is mandatory, it is not (at least in the scientifically measurable sense) a self-serving physical-reality-affecting mechanism. Instead, in the sense that it helps us directly, prayer helps develop an awareness of, and relationship with, God, and develop the belief, feeling, confidence, that everything that happens is part of a plan; this is comforting. The fervor of prayer can lead to a connection, and the concentration on the words and intents can help develop the belief that it is all for the good, that eventually one will understand why it is all happening (either in this life or in the afterlife), and that God cares and is aware of your suffering and loves you and etc. The connection that is established is valuable in of itself, as any deep relationship, but it also can help one achieve the perspective from which to view events and suffering, whether one’s own or that of others.

One can even pray to God that one should have the strength to bear the suffering, that one should be able to draw closer rather than farther etc – this expression of desiring to be closer can cause us to get closer, as in relationships with people.

Also, by elevating the spiritual level of the universe, the path of history continues on a preferred course to what it otherwise would have been – but there is no guarantee that this preferred course of events involves less pain.

Self-Development:

It is not a good strategic situation to have your happiness dependent on that which is not in your control. You are in trouble if you can't get what you want, and you have what you don't want. The way to resolve this: change what you want! ie change yourself so that what you have is what you want and what you don't have you don't want. Then you'll be happy. In this sense happiness depends only on yourself.

Perhaps we can develop ourselves sufficiently so that we want what God sends our way, and just as whatever happens is God’s Will, it becomes our will too, ands so by definition we get what we pray for. But although all can theoretically obtain this high a level, realistically it is a level that will be reached only by the very few.

Prayer and good deeds (besides affecting the universe in the spiritual plane of existence in a deep way) can help defocus one from one’s self and focus on others and on a greater picture. Seeing events in this way can help in developing relationships with others and oneself, and in diminishing one’s ego, and reduce the impulse to see the universe (or even a relationship) as a platform for the realization of one’s desires and ambitions and needs; as a result prayer and good deeds can help us accept and even embrace what occurs, including the personally painful, perhaps can raise us to the point where we see it as a gift, an opportunity rather than as a seeming punishment, and then de facto prayer has brought us to the point where we have what we want.

When troubles befall us, we often sense our vulnerability and turn to a higher power. This is a good response. Our nature is to then request specific things, health if we are sick etc. The prayers are structured to reflect these feelings, and to channel them, helping us see the troubles we face as opportunities for growth, or as part of a divine plan (and not as punishment) and therefore at least to accept them with equanimity. Our feelings of vulnerability are reflected in and channeled by all the prayers referring to God as great and powerful and merciful. The suffering we experience and the anxiety that we have are reflected in and channeled by the prayers which are effectively supplications for God’s mercy and for specific benefits such as health, success, redemption etc but they are not to be taken as implying that indeed prayers for physical health or success or redemption now for me are answered by the granting of these now for me.

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Bad Things/Good People

Bad things happen to good people, as made so very clear in the Biblical book of Iyov (Job). So no one can ever assume that a “bad thing” is a punishment; maybe the person is so holy and perfect that God is directing challenges to them as with Iyov, or as with Abraham and the sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac, maybe to have them bear some burden for the rest of the world, or for their descendants. Pain is not necessarily a punishment, it can be a gift in order to bring about growth. But it is not usually an appreciated gift.

Is there more good or bad in the universe, is it better that a person was created, with all the suffering involved, or not? A poll of the bet midrash as recorded in the Talmud records the impression of the majority that existence is not convenient overall.

God will send our way whatever it is that God decides is needed, and praying to God to do what God wants to do is absurd, since of course God does what God wants to do. God will not send our way what we want if it is different than what God wants. We can however develop ourselves to want what God wants and therefore to accept with joy whatever comes our way. And of course as we grow, what God wants for us can change. For example, if we become stronger and more highly-developed, we may be able to bear higher levels of pain and so greater challenges will be sent to us as a result of our growth.

Judging Others

A person may be perfect relative to what they could have been expected to do – Job (Iyov) was perfect (God testifies to this) without keeping the mitzvot, he was not Jewish, so one cannot equate perfection with mitzvoth. Indeed one cannot even deny perfection to the practitioner of great anti-social behavior: a child born among thieves and murderers who knows no better, but struggles mightily against the overwhelming forces of environment and conditioning can be a holy murderer.

One cannot look at a person’s pain in life, and then hear of their mistakes and transgressions, and say that the pain is a result of their transgressions, whether as a punishment or as a result, since it may well be that the transgressions occurred as an unavoidable result of their life situation (child born among thieves), the external facts of heredity environment life-history (twisted parents), and the internal ones of innate inner psychology etc. Even if they do things that if you did them you would consider yourself an evil person deserving of punishment, you cannot make the same assumption about others. (Nor should you about yourself.) Maybe they acted with great courage and self sacrifice all along, and the pain is the result of suffering they do not deserve (from the human moral perspective).

Why do mitzvoth?

According to Jewish teachings there is a metaphysical effect of mitzvoth; every mizvah we do can raise us, and can help the universe achieve its purpose. Furthermore, God is the creator and the Torah laws are mandatory; also there is a reward in the world to come. There may also be a feeling of well-being upon discharging what one believes to be one’s obligations; also the ethical mitzvot lead to greater harmony between neighbors, between children and parents, between spouses etc. But doing mizvot does not necessarily accomplish for us anyhting directly in a way that is not explicable within a purely naturalistic universe, and that is backed up by statistics.

Religion Provides Support

Religion cannot claim that if one is ‘religious’ and does all the mitzvot only good will happen (although this is implied in various places,”vehaya im shamoa” etc). Statistics will not bear this out. Instead, religion provides frameworks for people to live within while experiencing joy and pain, it helps them channel their experiences so that their pleasure and their pain will lead to growth rather than emptiness/hedonism and bitterness etc.

Shabbos helps, having a community helps, shiva helps, gmachim helps, davening helps etc. Not that the torah and God are pain killers: rather: in some respects the purpose of existence is to achieve higher levels: Inasmuch as the purpose of life is growth, and growth can be catalyzed by pain, then all the above help produce the desired result, where life’s inevitable pain when experienced within the guidelines of a religious life helps people grow.

Postscript

The above was an attempt to construct a model which conforms with:

1. what we know about the way the natural world works;
2. the working assumptions about nature made by scientists;
3. the assumptions/beliefs about the workings of the universe made by atheists;
4. the fundamentals of Jewish tradition.

Here we will accept the honesty, integrity and openness of scientists and philosophers in that we do not assume they are ‘blind’ to truth, or deliberately evading the acceptance of evidence for the existence of God etc.

The model is intended to be intermediate between the following two paths:

1. The universe is purely naturalistic or there is a God but in respect to the issue here the universe is just the same as it would be if there was no God: prayer and mitzvoth can help psychologically, socially etc but cannot help one in any metaphysical sense. The only sensible way to deal with the inevitability of pain is to embrace it as an opportunity for self growth. [A religious Jewish person deals with this by reading this psychological insight into the Torah and to turn the tables and declare that this world is not a bad one because of the pain, but in fact the world is as it is because god loves us and wants us to grow etc.]

2. The ultimate reality is spiritual and prayer and mitzvoth access this ultimate reality. Prayer and mitzvoth can cause an effect in the natural universe. We are granted things that we are desirous of in this world as a result of our prayer and doing mitzvoth. We can attain specific things that we want, in this world, financially, healthwise, romantically etc via praying for them, and by doing mitzvoth for merit e.g. learning Torah in the merit of a sick individual, in order that they will recover. Bad things befall people individually, and the Jewish people collectively, due to non-observance of mitzvoth.

May 26, 2015 old site

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