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Yisrael Motzen

The World of (Unanswered) Prayer

The post below was delivered as a sermon at Ner Tamid Greenspring Valley Synagogue of Baltimore, MD, on the second day of Rosh Hashana. 

On this sacred morning, I want to share with you one of the deepest Kabbalistic secrets known to mankind. Have you ever wondered why our shul has the letter shin coming out of the center Bima? [There are three large shins built into the Bima at Ner Tamid]

After much analysis and consultation with the great spiritual gurus of the world, I have come to the conclusion that the letters Shin, Shin, Shin, spell, shhhhhhh!

These shins were placed here centuries ago as a reminder to stop talking during services.

Just in case anyone is taking me seriously, I actually have no idea why those shins are there. But in all seriousness, we do have a talking problem in our shul, which I do not understand.

It’s only 3-4 hours holding a book in a language you don’t really speak, with an English translation that is not really English, filled with phrases like, “Rule over the world in your majesty,” when your only real prayers are that the roast you left on the fire at home does not burn.

Okay, fine, it’s hard.

You’re in good company. The Gemara in Berachos (32) tells us that prayer is exceptionally difficult. Tefilah tzarich chizuk. Personally, I love davening, sometimes I completely lose myself in tefillah, and yet, I too, if I could be completely transparent here, more often than not struggle with prayer. Despite knowing what the words mean and even knowing many of the commentaries, my mind wanders. And there are times when I just don’t feel like praying.

Some people think that if only we shushed a little more, our davening would be so much better. Some people also think that Jews have a space laser.

What we need is not more silence; what we need is to recognize that there is an entire world out there, a world of prayer, that we are complete strangers in. If we could access that world, I think our relationship to prayer, and our relationship with G-d, would be so much better.

So allow me please, to take you on a short tour of the world of prayer. It’s different than any place you’ve been before, and so if I could ask you to hold your judgment and come along.

Before we even open the siddur, which is the portal, the entryway, into the world of prayer, I want to tell you a story about a prayerbook that will help us understand the significance of the book that sits before you.

It’s a story of young man by the name of Eli Moshe Zimbalist, a cousin of our members, the Jandorf’s. Eli Moshe was bright, beloved, ambitious, and kind. He was studying in Yeshivat Shalavim, a Hesder Yeshiva, where the boys are able to study Torah and serve in the IDF. When the war in Gaza began, he was called up and he served as part of a demolition squad, destroying Hamas’s tunnels. On June 21st, his truck was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Eli Moshe’s pure soul returned to his Creator.

After shiva, the family came to pick up his items from the yeshiva, they found an old siddur with his belongings. They didn’t recognize the siddur, it didn’t even have his name in it, and so they asked one of the administrators who told them the following story:

Eli Moshe volunteered to be in charge of the lost objects in the Yeshiva. Whatever was found was sent to him, and he would try to find the owner. If they could not track down the owner, the objects would be displayed at the end of every month, at which point anyone could come and take what they desire. One day, Eli Moshe came to this administrator with an old blue book. He could not explain why, but he had found the siddur, and he fell in love with it, he wanted to keep it for himself. He tried finding the owner, but the name did not ring a bell. The administrator took a look at the name and said it’s fine, you could keep the siddur, and he did. He treasured it, davening from that old blue siddur every day.

It turns out that the previous owner of the siddur had a whole lot in common with Eli Moshe. Like Eli Moshe, the previous owner was a bright, beloved, ambitious, kind soul. Like Eli Moshe, he volunteered to help the yeshiva and his friends whenever he could. And like Eli Moshe, he was killed in battle while defending the land and people of Israel. The owner of that siddur was my uncle, Avremi Motzen.

When my family and I heard this story, we were so moved, but we were also so comforted. Because we realized that Eli Moshe did not find my uncle’s siddur. I have a feeling that Avremi, my uncle, left it there for him.

It’s not just that siddur that they connected over. And it’s not just them. Every time one of us pick up a siddur and merely say the words, whether we understand them or not, we are attaching ourselves to the richest history known to mankind. Those words you say were uttered in the lower levels of slave ships shipping your great-grandparents off to exile in Rome. They were whispered behind closed doors in Spain. They gave courage to your Bubbies and Zadies who started new lives in Poland, and they gave comfort to future generations as they were herded into cattle cars. These same words were shouted from the rooftops in 1948 and in 1967 and again, today, all over the Jewish world. The siddur and the words of prayer are the glue that holds Jewish history together.

Before we talk about this kavannah and that kavannah, before we get into any discussion about how to elevate our prayers, recognize what you are doing simply by saying those words. You are connecting yourself to your parents and their parents and their parents and their parents; they are standing here with you.

If the siddur is the portal, the doorway, to this magical world of prayer, perhaps we can imagine the world of prayer to be a tremendously large edifice with endless floors, each floor representing a different concept of prayer.

Our time is short so let’s just skip ahead to where we all want to be; there is a floor titled, the Purest Form of Prayer. That sounds great, right? Let’s go up to that floor.

The doors of the elevator open and the first thing that hits us is the smell, or more accurately, the stench. It smells like human waste, the air is musty, and there is barely any light. We grope along the walls of what seems to be a tunnel. And then we hear it, the unmistakable cry of two children.

As our eyes become accustomed to the darkness, we see them. Two redheads crying in a corner. Yes, the two redheads you and I never met, but know so well, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, the one- and five-year-old who were taken hostage from Nir Oz.

What are they doing here on the floor of The Purest Form of Prayer? What could two children, one who cannot even speak, who did not grow up in an observant home, teach us about prayer?

Apparently, the purest form of prayer has nothing to do with the words. The purest form of prayer is the sincerity of one’s cry. Rachmana liba ba’i.

A cry, writes Rav Nachman of Breslov, even if we think we are just crying to ourselves, our soul knows that it is actually directed at G-d.

So to those of you who think you don’t have the tools to pray, and to those of us who sometimes hide behind all the tools that we do have, the Bibas children on the floor of The Purest Form of Prayer can remind us that as long as we have a beating heart, as long as we allow that heart to express herself, we are capable of reaching this elevated floor.

Armed with that knowledge, I’d like to invite you to the basement of the World of Prayer. I am going to warn you, it is not a pretty place.

If we were to go down to the bottom floor of this prayer edifice, the elevator doors would open to a cavernous room that seems to never end. This room would put any Amazon Warehouse to shame. The name of this floor? Unanswered Prayers.

There is a section of prayers dating back to the 1st century, begging G-d that He not destroy the Holy Temple. All unanswered.

There is a section of prayers pleading with G-d for protection, from Crusaders pillaging villages, from Spaniards kicking us out of our homes, from Nazis throwing us into gas chambers. All unanswered.

There is a new section; a section of 331 days of prayer for Hersh Goldberg. At the top of the pile are the heart-wrenching prayers of his mother. Unanswered.

And then there are the prayers that look familiar; our prayers. Prayers for a shidduch. Unanswered. Prayer for help reconciling with a spouse. Unanswered. Prayers that the load we bear is just a little but lighter. Unanswered. For work, for love, for acceptance, for the health of our loved ones. Unanswered. Unanswered. Unanswered.

It’s a devastating and stifling place to be, this floor of unanswered prayers. It’s hard to stay here for too long. And so we quickly exit, back to that elevator, confused and weighed down by the question – why? Why are so many prayers left unanswered?

Perhaps we can try to receive an answer if we go to the top, the final stop of our tour of this strange and complicated world of prayer.

We go up the elevator one last time. We go up and up, past floors filled with all forms of prayer; perhaps at some other time in our lives, we can visit them all.

And finally, the doors open. But what meets our eyes makes no sense. This top floor, called G-d’s floor, looks identical to the basement, to the floor of Unanswered Prayers. Why? How?

But before we can start to understand why the unanswered prayers are here, we see Him, G-d Himself. We only see His back, but it is undoubtedly Him.

Now I don’t know about you, but after spending some time in that basement, coming face to face with the infinite number of unanswered prayers, I am overwhelmed. Hopefully, G-d will excuse me for my chutzpah but I cannot contain myself and I address Him:

“Master of the Universe, I don’t know how to say this, But WHY?

Why do you allow so many tefilos to be left unanswered?

In this small shul in Baltimore alone, how many times have you said, no, to these precious people, to Your children?! 

Why is she so lonely? Why does no one understand him? Why must he never get a good job? Why does she face so many challenges? Why, G-d, why?

Are you trying to make us into disbelievers? We cried so much this year. For ourselves. For Israel. We’re in so much pain. Why do you ignore us?

Of course, people struggle with prayer, G-d, it’s Your fault!

G-d motions for us to sit near Him, and we notice that G-d is holding a prayer book Himself.

He holds up the siddur for us to see what’s inside. It’s shocking.

All those unanswered prayers, G-d is praying for them to be answered; He is praying for us. G-d is praying that she not be so lonely, that he stop feeling so misunderstood, that he get a job and that all those friends and family who are ill recover. Hashem is davening more than anything, that we find Him in our lives. He’s davening for peace in Israel; for the soldiers and hostages to come home safely.

 

And then He turns the page. And we find all our unanswered prayers merging together into one. Our personal concerns for our family blend into a prayer for all of the Jewish People, and the prayers for all of the Jewish People blend into one prayer – a prayer for all of humankind, a prayer for world peace and inner peace, a prayer for a moral world order, a prayer for ultimate redemption.

I don’t know about you, but standing there near G-d, seeing the world through His eyes, I find myself transcending my own needs, my own worries, and if I’m honest with myself, what is at times, my small-mindedness. Because that, my friends, is the central goal of tefilah; to pull us out of our myopic worldview and to dream big; not just for our health, but for the health of the world, not just to be saved from our difficult situation, but for the redemption of all the Jewish People and all of humankind.

And maybe in a different year this would be too foreign of a concept to wrap our heads around. How could I ignore my own needs and just think of the needs of our nation? But this year, after having connected ourselves to so many absolute strangers, the faces on the back wall, the names on our bima cover, I think we know exactly what it means to think big, and to see the world through G-d’s eyes.

Before I get a chance to ask G-d why; why does He not just snap His fingers and bring about the change we all want, I notice a tear. As our Sages teach us in Meseches Taanis, even G-d cries. Even His prayers are not always answered.

 

I don’t think I will ever understand how and why some prayers are answered and some are seemingly ignored, but I can still appreciate the fact that He welcomes us in every day to pour out our soul, to speak to the Creator of the world, and to try to see the world from His perspective.

 

It’s a mysterious world, the world of prayer. But it’s a beautiful world. A world that connects us to our ancestors, a world that connects us to our deepest yearnings, a world that lifts us up beyond our own self-centeredness to think about everyone around us, and a world that connects us to G-d.

Last year, we, as shul committed to learning a little more Torah every day, and we did. We didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into, but we transformed ourselves from a shul that is dedicated to chesed, kindness, to a shul that is also dedicated to Torah study. Just this past Shabbos, over 85 additional people signed up for daily learning!

If I may, I think it’s time to broaden ourselves once again, this time with prayer. I want to invite you to participate in what I am calling The World of Prayer Project. Every month this year, we will be focusing on one prayer – Modeh Ani this month, Shema Yisrael the next month. The commitment is to say that one prayer and if you say it already to say it with more kavannah. I’ll be sending material out weekly to help us. One prayer a day is something we can all fit into our schedule. Honestly, we cannot afford not to. There is a magnificent world out there beckoning for us to enter, it would be a tragedy for us to ignore her.

 

We do not need to shush to get into this holy place. We need to open ourselves up to an experience radically different and radically richer than anything we’ve ever experienced before. Whether our prayers are answered or not, I look forward to journeying with you further and further into this beautiful and mysterious world of prayer.

Sign up here to receive a weekly email with a short commentary on one prayer. Each month we will focus on a different prayer:  https://forms.gle/SXjAmtGwmykA7g6Z6

About the Author
Yisrael Motzen, a native of Montreal, Canada, serves as rabbi of Ner Tamid Greenspring Valley Synagogue in Baltimore, MD. He is also the Special Assistant to the EVPs of the Orthodox Union and Director of ASHIVA, a project of the Orthodox Union. Rabbi Motzen is a graduate of Ner Israel Rabbinical College and holds an M.A. in Clinical Community Counseling from Johns Hopkins University.
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