Jewish Men Pray: Words of Yearning, Praise, Petition, Gratitude and Wonder from Traditional and Contemporary Sources

Praise for Jewish Men Pray

Beautiful, heartfelt, uplifting ... will provide inspiration and guidance to anyone seeking a more intimate relationship with the Divine. I hope this spiritually elegant book is read by people of all faiths.

—Larry Dossey, MD, author, Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine; executive editor, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing

Offers graceful interpretations of formal prayers and creative writing of soulful ‘rebbes’ who transform prayer into what it is intended to be—a service of the heart.

—Rabbi Avi Weiss, senior rabbi, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale; author, Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World

A rich collection.... Many men will find themselves resonating deeply with these meditations, which are certainly not for men only.

—Harry Brod, professor of philosophy and world religions, University of Northern Iowa; editor, A Mensch Among Men

Remarkable—a book of prayers to live by and turn to in good times and in challenging times.

—Rabbi Naomi Levy, author, Talking to God; spiritual leader, Nashuva

Heartfelt, enlightening, irresistible. Part siddur, part encyclopedia, there’s something here to nourish the soul of every Jewish man. I can’t put it down.

—Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH, university professor of epidemiology and population health, Baylor University; coeditor, Judaism and Health: A Handbook of Practical, Professional and Scholarly Resources

This is not a book about how Jewish men pray; on the contrary, it is a meaningful, thoughtful, spiritually uplifting book of prayers composed by men ... for anyone and everyone who seeks to be inspired at any moment of the day.

—Rabbi Charles Simon, executive director, Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs; author, Building a Successful Volunteer Culture: Finding Meaning in Service in the Jewish Community

[A] rare book whose execution is as skillful as the need is deep. We need to learn how to pray as men and here is the guidance that will help us along this sacred path.

—Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, California; author, Why Faith Matters

What? Me, pray? Open this book and see if you connect. Here is help finding your voice.

—Rabbi Joseph B. Meszler, author, A Man’s Responsibility: A Jewish Guide to Being a Son, a Partner in Marriage, a Father and a Community Leader

Beautifully done. I hope it will be used extensively by individuals and organized Jewish men’s groups.

—Doug Barden, executive director, Men of Reform Judaism

Gives you the most sensitive, poignant and powerful words of men at prayer. It will shatter your stereotypes and lift your soul. You’ll want to bring it with you to synagogue!

—Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, editor, The Modern Men’s Torah Commentary: New Insights from Jewish Men on the 54 Weekly Torah Portions

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If to believe in God means to talk about God in the third person, then I do not believe in God. If to believe in God means to be able to talk to God, then I do believe in God.

Adapted from Martin Buber (1878–1965)

To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972)

For Miryam Tzipora Olitzky, may all your prayers be heard on high.

KMO

For Antoinette (Rut bat Avraham v’ Sarah), the answer to my prayers.

SMM

Contents

How to Use This Book

Foreword: Men at Prayer

Introduction

Part I

The Purpose of Prayer in Judaism and Its Structure: Praise, Petition, and More

Becoming a Prayerful Person

Does God Hear Prayer?

Tefillah/Script

The Technology of Prayer

Prayer as Art

The Essence of Prayer in Jewish Tradition

Prayer

Who Can’t Pray

Part II

Words from the Heart

Yearning for God

Guidance for How to Live

A Man’s Role

Our Physical Lives

Grief

Protection

Gratitude

Legacy

Acknowledgments

Index of Contributors

Index of First Lines

About the Editors

About the Contributors

Copyright

Credits

About Jewish Lights

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How to Use This Book

This is not a traditional prayer book, so it is not designed to be used in place of a siddur (from the Hebrew word for order, that is, the order of prayers), the traditional Jewish prayer book. However, it is a book of prayers, reflective of male yearning for a relationship with the Divine. Thus, it can be used in a variety of ways in traditional and nontraditional settings. If you attend synagogue regularly or infrequently, we encourage you to bring this book along with you. We also recommend that you keep it by your bedside, on the nightstand, and on your desk, wherever you might find yourself at prayer or looking for words that may express how you feel at that particular moment when you reach out to the Divine. Stick it in your briefcase or backpack. Take it with you in the car, on the train, in the subway, and on the airplane. Use it as a place to begin your meditation or to initiate your formal words of fixed prayer. There are few places where prayer—a dialogue with the Divine—is not welcome.

You can open the book and randomly choose a prayer, using the words as a way to initiate your prayer. Or you can use the table of contents and select a specific section that reflects how you feel at the moment, allowing the words to guide you. You can also browse through the book and choose a phrase or sentence that speaks to you and carry that idea with you throughout the day, allowing its sentiment to help you establish a prayerful posture for your day.

Foreword

Men at Prayer

Another book of Jewish men’s prayers? What could possibly justify such redundancy? After all, the Book of Psalms is a book of Jewish men’s prayers. The siddur (prayer book) is overwhelmingly a book of Jewish men’s prayers. Most piyyutim (medieval rhymed prayers) and most liturgical poetry have constituted Jewish men’s prayers. Do we really need yet another?

Let’s loudly affirm the need to welcome Jewish women’s voices, and joyously celebrate the growing and superb body of poetry, song, and prayers that skilled Jewish women create with such art and depth. Still, something has shifted for men in our culture. Deep tectonic changes have distanced men from their spiritual core, estranged many of us from our own deepest yearning, our own desperate hopes. In the dull cacophony of social station and the relentless grind of economic production, men have surrendered their harps, stifled their capacity to feel, forgotten to sing.

Precisely in an age in which Jewish women are finally raising their voices with renewed strength, Jewish men have accepted the muzzle and anesthetized our own sensitivity.

Resurgent Jewish women’s voices deserve living respondents. Jewish men can grasp the moment to add their contributions to the living waters of Jews at prayer. The rising tide surges now, and it invites us to swim. It will not do to simply recycle the old words—as beautiful as they are—at the expense of our own outpouring. We cannot sing in someone else’s voice, nor can we petition, praise, cry out, or thank with someone else’s sentiment.

This lovely collection is a response to that invitation. An extraordinary gathering of men—diverse in their ages, their lives, their convictions—have convened in this collection to offer contemporary, compelling, and personal prayers. The words published here are not the recitation of established liturgies, but the direct address of today’s Jewish men to ha-Shomea Tefilla, the Ancient One, who has always heard, and who remains eager to receive, the prayers of our hearts.

These brave Jews are bucking the tide of popular convention: they are strong, but not as Western convention portrays male strength. If warriors, then these men are warriors of mind, heart, and soul. If titans of industry, then these men are stimulating a demand for integrity, spirit, and wonder with a contemporary supply. These men are tough in courage and candor, and swift in joy, anguish, and aspiration. They are resolute in gratitude and powerful in love.

Dare we follow them into a dawning light of men who can cry and laugh, sing and dance? Of women strong and sure in their vision and their leadership? Ours is a time in which the One shines forth in new ways through people previously overlooked and marginalized. We are invited—each of us—to add our own distinctive notes to the symphony of prayer, to sing unto God a new song.

These men lead by offering their prayers, speaking for no one but themselves, yet somehow restoring to each of us our own voice. Care to join them?

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, DHL

Vice President

American Jewish University

Introduction

Both editors of this book believe in prayer. Both of us have active prayer lives and advocate such a life for others. And while our personal spiritual disciplines may look different from one another to those observing us from the outside, both of these spiritual practices have the same purpose: to develop and nurture an ongoing relationship with the Divine, what religious Judaism refers to as God. Stuart’s day begins in prayer-filled meditation; Kerry’s day begins in a traditional synagogue minyan. Both are powerful and equally valid forms of Jewish spiritual expression. Both are practices that help us in our quest to lead lives imbued by holiness. And both can be enhanced by the prayers in this book.

We prepared this book to help men establish or cultivate a life of prayer, because we believe that prayer is a primary vehicle to access the Divine, to establish and maintain a relationship with that which is beyond the self, with all that is holy. And we are fearful that a life that is enriched by prayer—and the divine relationship that is presumed by it—may be slipping from the grasp of many. Prayer enhances the life of our every day. We want it to do the same for you.

Thus, this book is for those who want to start a prayer life or for those already deeply enmeshed in one. It is for the novice at prayer, as well as for the one who regularly and routinely prays according to the traditional Jewish formula of three times a day: evening, morning, and afternoon. This book is for those who pray occasionally or when spontaneously motivated to seek out a relationship with the Divine because of an event—happy or sad—in their lives or in the life of their community.

Readers may notice that this book has few explicit references to men’s issues. Some might even argue that there is no need for a book of men’s prayers, because the entire traditional siddur is a book of men’s prayers. After all, the Rabbis who composed the traditional prayer book—and even liberal prayer books until the last quarter of the twentieth century—were almost exclusively men. And it is true that much of the material is as applicable to women as it is to men. However, the prayers in this book were intentionally composed and collected through a male lens, through the way men navigate their way in the world. Some of this navigation is explicit and easy to discern. But much of it is implicit and much more difficult to see unless you are looking for it. Thus, this is not a book of macho prayers. Rather, it is a book out of which men can build a relationship with the Divine.

The twentieth-century German Jewish theologian Martin Buber wrote a great deal about relationships, including the relationship between the individual and God. Buber categorized relationships as either I-It or I-Thou. The former type of relationship reflected those most of us have with inanimate objects, things that we use to enhance our personal well-being. They are things that serve us. The ideal form of the I-Thou category of relationship may best be described as covenantal, the kind that Moses enjoyed at Sinai with God. Our goal, argues Buber, is to attain the I-Thou level in all of our relationships. The gimme relationship that some see as their primary relationship with God will remain at its I-It level unless the individual strives to enter into a continuous dialogue, primarily accessed through prayer. Otherwise, people think that God is there to serve us, to provide for our needs when asked. But it is the I-Thou relationship that we endeavor to develop with God that should emerge as the model for the relationships we have with others, as well.

While this book is not a traditional prayer book, it can be used as a companion to any one you may find in a synagogue. It is also not a commentary on the prayer book that would serve to explain the meaning of the traditional prayers. Nor is this volume a how-to for traditional forms of Jewish worship. Thus, while this collection includes a brief introduction to the salient forms of prayer, its focus is on the collected prayers themselves.

You will find new prayers and old prayers in these pages. Regardless of their source or the time period in which they were written (many for this collection alone), they were written by those who are also looking to develop Buber’s I-Thou relationship, those who affirm the importance of a prayer life for the individual.

A Prayer for Prayer

Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman

O my God

My soul’s compassion

My heart’s precious friend

I turn to You.

I need to close out the noise

To rise above the noise

The noise that interrupts—

The noise that separates—

The noise that isolates.

I need to hear You again.

In the silence of my innermost being,

In the fragments of my yearned-for wholeness,

I hear whispers of Your presence—

Echoes of the past when You were with me

When I felt Your nearness

When together we walked—

When you held me close, embraced me in Your love,

laughed with me in my joy.