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