by Shelley Singer
The baby rabbi, a young man of twenty-six — fresh from seminary, the most junior of the four in our vast congregation — delivered the sermon on Rosh Hashanah morning. At first, he spoke of creation and destruction, judgment and mercy as the messages of the festival. This day, he said, we are created anew through an act of God’s mercy. I connected with none of it, and in a sanctuary filled with nearly two thousand people, I wondered who was listening and who, like me, was waiting for lunch. I suspect that, many Jews, like me, don’t spend a lot of time thinking about God except when we are in the proverbial foxhole.
When I try to imagine God or to pray, I lose focus, and even get a little embarrassed over whether I am doing it right. I recite the incantatory words of prayer I have memorized, but I don’t understand them. It is hardly ever a moving experience.
But then, right there on the morning of the birthday of the world, the baby rabbi invited us to pray, really pray. This old soul, the age of my younger son, ignited the electrical system in my body with these words: “Prayer is the act of faith that opens us up to communication with a power we do not begin to understand. A stable belief in God is not a prerequisite for prayer; it is the result of prayer.” Or, as I took it to mean, one does not need to be certain that God exists in order to pray. It is fine not to understand. All one needs is the willingness to open up to the possibility. Belief might follow.