Tefillah 001

1:
The two opinions quoted in this midrash illustrate very well the dichotomy that exists in halakhah concerning prayer. On the one hand the sages recognized that prayer can be a spontaneous outpouring of human emotion; as such it can be bound by very few halakhot, because when the heart is full the thoughts just come and it would be very difficult to limit them or curtail them by rules and regulations. However, the sages also recognized that there is another kind of prayer: prayer that is said at fixed times and in a fixed manner. The midrash of Rav Anan represents the former, spontaneous prayer, while the midrash of Rabbi Yosé bar-Ĥalafta represents the latter, organized prayer. In English it is perhaps easiest to didtinguish between the two by calling the former 'prayer' and the latter 'worship'.

2:
Prayer – the spontaneous outpourings of the human heart in times of ecstatic happiness or desperate misery – is limited in halakhah by one consideration only: it may not be what the sages called 'a vain prayer'. By that they meant that the prayer must not ask for the impossible. The Mishnah Berakhot 9:3 states this one rule and gives examples

The term 'vain prayer' refers to a prayer uttered in vain, not one uttered in pride. As I have already hinted, the English word 'prayer' conveys two separate meanings: it can mean 'to ask for something' and it can mean 'worship', praise of God. This mishnah is 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.

3:
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.

4:
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 waves a magic wand and makes 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'."

5:
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.

6:
In this shiur I have written at some length concerning "prayer" as a "plea", a personal ourpouring. I have done so, not only in order to clarify the halakhah in this matter as best I can, but, more importantly for our present purposes, in order to distinguish it from the other kind of prayer: 'worship'. For in this series of shiurim our topic is the halakhah of worship: what is said, when it is said, how is it said, why it is said, and all the details of text and custom that make up the rich tapestry of our liturgy.

7:
In this series of shiurim we shall investigate the halakhah of that liturgy and we shall use the Shabbat morning service for illustration. This service will serve our purposes mainly because, rightly or wrongly, we may assume that most people following these shiurim will find greater practical use and greater familiarity from such a choice. However, where necessary, we shall refer to divergences and significant differences in other services of worship.

For the benefit of the curious I append here a brief note about the voting for our present topic. This time the voting was very close indeed. With the close of the original deadline there were two topics that had exactly the same number of votes. The extension of the deadline gave three more votes to "Prayer" than to "G^emilut Ĥasadim". (These were the other topics in order of the number of votes for each: "Rites of Passage", "Kashrut", "Government". However, "Government" received only 33 votes less than "Prayer".) Maybe we can study one of the other topics next time.