JEWISH PRAYER: Why Do Jews Repeat the Same Prayers Three Times A Day? with Rabbi Yisroel Blumenthal

We tend to think of prayer as an outpouring of emotion. Perhaps an emotion of thanks, an emotion of feeling helpless before God, joy, pain, bringing out my emotion in words before God. That's what we think about prayer. And the more emotion I'm able to pour into the prayer, the more sincere my prayer is, the more real it is. So what's this business that in Judaism we have, reciting the same set of words three times a day, every day, day in, day out. We have three daily prayers that we say the same words, the morning, the afternoon, the evening. Tomorrow, the next day, we do the same thing. The day after, we do the same thing. Where's the emotion? Where's the sincerity? Where's the truth in that prayer? I will give the primary answer first. The primary answer to this question is simply because as Jews, we relate to God on two different levels. On the one hand, each one of us has an individual personal relationship with God. That's one aspect of our relationship with God. On the other hand, there's another aspect of our relationship with God, and that is as a nation before God. We interact with God and we pray to God and we serve God as, not as individuals, but as members of a nation. We do both at the same time. So the three daily prayers are not our individual expression of subservience or submission to God. Rather, it's the national subservience to God. And when you're talking about the national subservience to God, the national submission to God, you have to bring out not your personal emotions, but the emotions of the nation. You have to pray the same prayer that your father prayed before you, that your grandfather prayed before you, and that your grandchildren will be praying after you. You have to pray the same prayer that all the Jews around the world are praying at the same time, because this is the nation's prayer. And our job and our work when we pray those three prayers is to identify with those emotions and make those emotions part of ourselves. And that's the primary reason that we have these three prayers, because they are national expressions of submission to God. They're not your individual expressions of submission to God. And indeed, we are encouraged to pray our own personal prayers in which we pour out our own emotion to God. At our own time, that's not the three daily prayers. That's not the function of the three daily prayers. There are two other answers to this question, two other points I would like to bring out. I had actually a situation where I was having a conversation with a fellow who doesn't belong to the Orthodox Jewish community. In fact, he doesn't belong to the Jewish community altogether. He comes from a different religious background. And in his religious background, prayer is all about spontaneous emotion. And he came together with me, and we were having a talk. And in the place we were having a talk, an afternoon prayer session was taking place. And he watched how the men were praying. This was not a place which is a very intense religiosity. It was a simple prayer of maybe 15 people coming together. They had a quiet meditative prayer. And then the leader of the congregation said the prayer out loud, and there were the responses. And he told me after he watched this, he said, this looks very mechanical to me. This doesn't look sincere. Where's the truth? Where's the outpouring of emotion? So I told him like this. I told him, you know, it's beautiful when you have an outpouring of emotion and sincerity and crying and just feeling overflowing. That's beautiful. But if a person goes into such a prayer session, and he didn't come into contact with the idea, he didn't come face to face with the idea that God is the king, he's the boss, and I am his servant, then he didn't pray. No matter how much emotion there was and how much crying there was, that's not prayer. The first foundation of prayer is the acknowledgment that God is the boss. So someone comes to a synagogue, a place of worship, and he follows the rules. He does what is considered appropriate in this place in reverence towards the God of this place. Then he got the message. He got the message. Maybe he didn't do the other aspects of prayer, the feeling and the emotion. And yes, he should have. It should have been part of it. But at least he came into contact with the primary idea of prayer, which is God is the king, I am his subject. And if a person comes to a place, and all he does is pour out his own emotions, and he didn't come into contact with the idea that God is the king and I'm his subject, then he missed the boat. Because it could end up being that God is the subject and you're the king. Prayer, to some people, is all about getting God to do what I want. That's missing the boat on prayer. That's the second thought when we look at the three daily prayers. And the third thought is relevant to people who are more meditative and want to get to the core and the heart of prayer. The truth is the heart of prayer is even the emotional prayer. Forget about even the net. Even your personal relationship with God is a deep connection to God on a soul level, on the level of your spirit, the deepest part inside of you. If you're going to be spending your energy focusing on what words to say, emotions, emotions are not the deepest part of yourself. There's a deeper part of yourself that's quiet, that's still. If everything is lined up, all the emotions are lined up, and all the words are lined up, then your energy can be focused on the still, silent part of yourself, and that can flow towards God. So as a meditative exercise, having the same words again and again is not a contradiction to connecting to God on the deepest level. On the contrary, it's actually a vehicle. It's a method of connecting to God on a deep and sincere and true level.