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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