DECEMBER 1 • 2022 | 41

God to do ours? What really
happens when we pray?
Prayer has two dimensions,
one mysterious, the other not.
There are simply too many
cases of prayers being answered
for us to deny that it makes a
difference to our fate. It does.
I once heard the following
story. A man in a Nazi
concentration camp knew
he was losing the will to live
— and in the death camps, if
you lost the will to live, you
died. That night he poured out
his heart in prayer. The next
morning, he was transferred
to work in the camp kitchen.
There he was able, when the
guards were not looking, to
steal just a few potato peelings
each day. It was these peelings
that kept him alive.
I heard this story from his
son. Perhaps each of us has
some such story. In times
of crisis, we cry out from
the depths of our soul, and

something happens. Sometimes
we only realize it later, looking
back. Prayer makes a difference
to the world — but how it does
so is mysterious.
There is, however, a second
dimension which is non-
mysterious. Less than prayer
changes the world, it changes
us. The Hebrew verb lehitpalel,
meaning “to pray,
” is reflexive,
implying an action done to
oneself. Literally, it means
“to judge oneself.
” It means
to escape from the prison of
the self and see the world,
including ourselves, from the
outside. Prayer is where the
relentless first-person singular,
the “I,
” falls silent for a moment
and we become aware that
we are not the center of the
universe. There is a reality
outside. That is a moment of
transformation.
If we could only stop asking
the question, “How does this
affect me?” we would see

that we are surrounded by
miracles. There is the almost
infinite complexity and beauty
of the natural world. There is
the Divine word, our greatest
legacy as Jews, the library of
books we call the Bible. And
there is the unparalleled drama,
spreading over 40 centuries, of
the tragedies and triumphs that
have befallen the Jewish people.
Respectively, these represent
the three dimensions of our
knowledge of God: creation
(God in nature), revelation
(God in holy words) and
redemption (God in history).
Sometimes it takes a great
crisis to make us realize how
self-centered we have been.
The only question strong
enough to endow existence
with meaning is not, “What do
I need from life?” but “What
does life need from me?” That
is the question we hear when
we truly pray. More than an act
of speaking, prayer is an act of

listening — to what God wants
from us, here, now. What we
discover — if we are able to
create that silence in the soul
— is that we are not alone. We
are here because someone, the
One, wanted us to be, and He
has set us a task only we can
do. We emerge strengthened,
transformed.
More than prayer changes
God, it changes us. It lets us
see, feel, know that “God is in
this place.
” How do we reach
that awareness? By moving
beyond the first-person
singular, so that for a moment,
like Jacob, we can say, “I know
not the I.
”
In the silence of the “I,
” we
meet the “Thou” of God.

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan

Sacks served as the chief rabbi of

the United Hebrew Congregations of

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His

teachings have been made available

to all at rabbisacks.org. This essay was

written in 2008.

continued from page 40

Looking in the Right Places
J

acob, the homebody,
is in a very bad place.
His twin
brother, Esau, has just
threatened to kill him
in the not-too-distant
future; he has been
forced to flee, not
knowing when and
if he will ever see his
parents again, and he
is trying to make his
way to stay with an
uncle he has never
met in a town that is
totally foreign to him.
He spends his
first night in the middle of
nowhere by himself out in the
open. Did he have enough

supplies for the trip? He even
had to gather some of the
hard stones about him as
a pillow. He must have
struggled to fall asleep as
memories of the recent
events crowded his
troubled thoughts. Should
he have listened to his
mother’s plan? Did he
regret tricking his father?
Was he sorry that he had
lied to his father to steal
his brother’s birthright
and blessing? While the
Torah does not tell us
what Jacob was feeling at
that moment, he must have
been plagued with feelings
of anxiety, fear and possibly

hopelessness.
At this moment of utter
despair, when his life was at
a new low, he suddenly has a
dream. He was flooded with a
vision of angels all about him,
ascending and descending
a heavenly ladder. He then
perceives the voice of God
assuring him that everything
is going to work out. He can
escape the abyss. God will be
with him.
“Surely God is present
in this place, and I did not
know it.” He is filled with
new understanding. “How
awesome is this place” that
he now finds himself in.
Allowing God to be part of

his life, Jacob is filled with
new hope and optimism.
Knowing that he is no longer
alone, that he has a partner,
Jacob arises first thing in
the morning to take the first
steps to begin the next phase
of his life’s journey.
When he was 5 years old,
the future Kotzker Rebbe
asked his father, “Where is
God?” His father answered,
“God is everywhere.” The
precocious young sage,
responded, “No, I think God is
only where you let him in.”

Rabbi Mitch Parker is the former rabbi

at B’nai Israel Synagogue in West

Bloomfield.

Rabbi Mitch
Parker

Parshat

Vayetze:

Genesis

28:10-32:3;

Hosea

12:13-14:10.

SPIRIT
TORAH PORTION