Prayer

            The contemporary teacher Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz writes that just as we swing daily between sleep and waking, so too we need to move regularly between the two opposing modes of study and prayer.  

            In study, he says, we question, we critique, we analyze.  We ask and ask and every question is not only permitted but encouraged.  In prayer, on the other hand, we let go of our questions and step out of our critical minds.  In prayer we become simple and whole-hearted.

For many of us, simplicity does not come easily.

We have been raised to always question both others and ourselves, and find it almost impossible to turn off the inner voice of doubt and disbelief.  But Rabbi Steinsaltz teaches us that a balanced Jewish life allows and even requires us to move constantly back and forth between the two equally essential modes of doubt and faith.

  Each of us will find our own doorway into the mode of prayer: for many, music has the power to move us from doubt to faith.  For others, silence.  For yet others, the ancient poetry of our Hebrew prayer book has the power to shift our consciousness from the eager, vital, hungry mode of questioning to the still, quiet, deep mode of simplicity.