Berakhot 154

10:
The last item in our present mishnah is concerned with what I have translated as "a vain prayer". This refers to a prayer uttered in vain, not one uttered in pride. The English word "prayer" conveys two separate meanings: it can mean "to ask for something" and it can mean "worship", praise of God. In our discussion on this mishnah we are using the noun "prayer" and the verb "to pray" in the former sense. As Jews we can pray (ask) for almost anything our hearts can imagine – except for one thing: we may not pray to God to change history, to undo what has already been done. This applies equally to the general and to the personal. The examples that our mishnah gives illustrate the idea very well. "If one's wife were pregnant and one prayed 'May it be Your pleasure that she give birth to a son' – that would be a vain prayer." The reason is that the sex of the fetus has already been determined, virtually from conception; so what possible meaning can there be to a prayer that the woman give birth to a male child? This is like asking for what's done to be undone, and such a prayer is a prayer uttered in vain, it is useless and meaningless. It is asking for the impossible. I can almost hear people demurring and saying that surely this "prayer" has meaning for the person uttering it – even if its sole purpose is psychological, even if it only makes them "feel good". This is to completely ignore the meaning of the word prayer. We do not pray in order to "feel good" – though that may well be a legitimate side effect of our prayer. We pray to ask God for something, and we may not ask God to do what cannot be done. Regardless of whether we view the determination of sex as the will of God by divine intervention ("this child shall be a girl and that child shall be a boy") or whether we view the determination of sex as the will of God through the natural processes of nature – God's will has already been expressed. It's a girl-child, and even millions of prayers will not change the sex of the fetus into a man-child.

11:
The other example given by our mishnah serves the same purpose: "if one were returning from a journey and hears screams coming from the town and says 'May it be Your pleasure that these not be my family' – that would be a vain prayer" – because whoever is involved in that tragedy is already involved in it, and that is a fact that cannot be changed. Judaism does not look upon God as some celestial magician who can wave a magic wand and make everything the way we want it. God's will, once effected, is irreversible, since God is unchanging (despite biblical metaphors and literary imagery to the contrary). In the very first chapter of his magnum opus "Mishneh Torah", Rambam states that "concerning all such biblical statements our sages have determined that 'the Torah speaks in the language of man'… and if God were sometimes angry and other times happy God would be changing, which is in direct contradiction to the words of the prophet [Malachi 1:6] 'I, God, do not change'."

12:
When we are facing crises in our lives we are very tempted to utter a vain prayer. For instance, what prayer can one utter when waiting for the results of a biopsy? We may not pray that "it be benign" or that "it not be malignant" – for the quality of the problem has already been determined. Far better would be to pray for the strength and steadfastness that are needed to face the outcome, whatever it may be. Several months ago Jim Feldman sent me a message about "prayers by us and for us". I did not think that it was appropriate to post it at the time, but made a mental reservation to do so when we reached this point in our study of the tractate. Here is the message that Jim sent me:

I was struck by the impossibility of resolving the problem raised by David Bockman and Amelia McNellis [see Berakhot 110 and Berakhot 113]. In essence, good and bad things happen whether we pray or not. If one really prays to avoid bad things, one is doomed to disappointment and maybe even a crisis of belief. I think that there are two other more substantial reasons for prayer, one of which you touched on well in today's shiur. These are:

1. We partake of good things. Good things do happen to us as well as evil. We should thank the Creator for his marvelous creation. This is the point you made on the berakhot before partaking of food, but it applies equally well to enjoying everything from spring to grandchildren.
2. We do many things to define who we are. Jews study Torah and Talmud, not as abstract activities but because they help to mold the life experience into something we are proud of. Prayer has many of the same properties. None of us can recite the "inscribe us in the book of life" prayers on Yom Kippur without knowing that one year we won't make it. But getting the blessing of another year is not what Yom Kippur is or should be about. It is to make the next year a better year, to do next year "right".

Prayer is about what we do. It is our respect for Creation. It is about our own self respect, civilization, purpose. With that in mind, I have always found the prayers which call for direct action by God as childish. For example there are those that call down God's wrath on the evil doers and those that ask special blessings for us. Prayer books are the works of mankind. Great thoughts are mixed with some quantity of nonsense.