40 | DECEMBER 1 • 2022

T

his week’s parshah
relates a powerful,
primal vision of prayer.
It is one of the great images
of the Torah: Jacob, alone and
far from home, lies down for
the night, with
only stones for a
pillow. He dreams
of a ladder set
on Earth but
reaching heaven,
with angels
ascending and
descending. This
is the initial encounter with the
“house of God” that would one
day become the synagogue, the
first dream of a “gate of heaven”
that would allow access to a
God that stands above, letting
us know finally that “God is
truly in this place.
”
There is, though, one
nuance in the text that is lost
in translation, and it took the
Hassidic masters to remind us
of it. Hebrew verbs carry with

them, in their declensions,
an indication of their subject.
Thus, the word yadati means
“I knew,
” and lo yadati, “I did
not know.
” When Jacob wakes
from his sleep, however, he
says, “Surely the Lord is in
this place ve’anochi lo yadati.
”
Anochi means “I,
” which in
this sentence is superfluous. To
translate it literally we would
have to say, “
And I, I knew it
not.
” Why the double “I”?
To this, Rabbi Pinchas
Horowitz (Panim Yafot) gave
a magnificent answer. How,
he asks, do we come to know
that “God is in this place”?
“By ve’anochi lo yadati — not
knowing the I.
” We know
God when we forget the
self. We sense the “Thou” of
the Divine Presence when
we move beyond the “I” of
egocentricity. Only when we
stop thinking about ourselves
do we become truly open to the
world and the Creator. In this

insight lies an answer to some
of the great questions about
prayer: What difference does
it make? Does it really change
God? Surely God does not

change. Besides which, does
not prayer contradict the most
fundamental principle of faith,
which is that we are called on
to do God’s will rather than ask

When the ‘I’ is Silent

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION

• 1. What are the positive reasons to practice a
movement away from being self-centered? Are there
any potential negatives associate with this?
• 2. If, as we believe, God is a loving and caring God
who acts in history for our benefit, why do you think
Rabbi Sacks is arguing that it is necessary to negate
ourselves to some extent to connect to Him?
• 3. Have you — or anyone you know — ever had an
instance where you have prayed and felt that your
prayers have been answered — what Rabbi Sacks
calls the mysterious dimension of prayer?
• 4. What is the linguistic message behind the
grammatical form of the verb “to pray” (lehitpallel)?
• 5. Do you feel prayer changes you?

continued on page 41