Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on Parashat Vaetchanan 5784
How many of you have ever had an experience of thinking of doing A, and despite being really devoted to do A, you did B, and regretted that after the fact? How many of have you had an experience of planning to do some work but under the suggestion or pressure of another person we decided to choose pleasures instead and then didn’t get the work done? And the last question: how many of you have had an experience in which you passionately prayed for something, with enormous devotion and you were left with the feeling that your prayer had not been heard?
Moses was the greatest spiritual figure in the Jewish history; he communicated with God directly the entire time since he was chosen. But as we read in our parashah for this week, his prayer, a very passionate prayer for something he longed for so much – entering the Promised Land – was either not heard or only partly accepted:
I pleaded with יהוה at that time, saying, “O Lord יהוה, You who let Your servant see the first works of Your greatness and Your mighty hand, You whose powerful deeds no god in heaven or on earth can equal! Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan, that good hill country, and the Lebanon.” But יהוה was wrathful with me on your account and would not listen to me. יהוה said to me, “Enough! Never speak to Me of this matter again! Go up to the summit of Pisgah and gaze about, to the west, the north, the south, and the east. Look at it well, for you shall not go across yonder Jordan. Give Joshua his instructions, and imbue him with strength and courage, for he shall go across at the head of these people, and he shall allot to them the land that you may only see.” (Deuteronomy 3:23-28)
Either not heard or heard and only partly accepted – that can be a summary of rabbinical responses to this story. Moses’ prayer didn’t change the Divine decision regarding excluding him from entering the Promised Land but at the end of the day it resulted in something: God at least showed Moses the entire Eretz Israel. From this our rabbis derived a rule that under some circumstances prayer accomplishes half, which by no means means that it is not worth praying.
Even if prayer doesn’t make us accomplish the exact thing we dream about and aim at, it always works in a certain way and from my personal experience I can tell you there are three remaining options here: 1. We achieve some part of what we want to achieve. 2. Prayer redirects our attention and leads us to achieving something that at first seems to be a substitute of what we aim at but it ultimately turns out that this ‘substitute’ is actually better for us than the initial “object of our desires”. 3. We don’t get the thing we prayed for at all but we at least grow spiritually – prayer strengthens us spiritually and the communication with God gives us the answer why the desires of our hearts and minds have not been met. In all of these instances we achieve something and we get something we often don’t notice and take for granted, namely, staying focused and motivated.
Yes, helping us to stay focused on what is important in life is one of the fundamental functions of prayer. This is implicitly implied in our Shema: we have to love God all the time, perform mitzvot all the time, teach our children all the time, namely, we are obligated to focus our entire attention at every moment on God and His Torah. We have to follow the Commandments in every decision we make. The same, core prayer of our tradition tells us also that if we indeed fulfill this obligation we will be rewarded (and it is important to mention that rewarded means ‘rewarded in the long run’ – as it is with almost everything – achieving anything significant requires being focused and patient).
However, prayer that is not followed or accompanied by purposeful, meaningful actions doesn’t mean a lot practically, and there are those in our tradition who would say that it means nothing or even the opposite – it might cause us to sin. The good news is that purposeful, determined, goal oriented action fulfills a function similar to prayer – keeps us focused and motivated, and according to recent research fulfills these functions even more effectively than all kinds of spiritual training or practices. That may be the reason many people in the broad Jewish community and in the human community at large are entirely focused on their everyday accomplishments, careers and all kinds of life responsibilities without particularly focusing on prayer and similar spiritual practices. If you have a job, family and small children to feed and take care of, you typically don’t need special motivational training or prayer to fulfill your responsibilities – you simply get up in the morning and do what needs to be done. But it doesn’t mean we don’t need prayer at all – even if we don’t feel like we need to pray every day, prayer is very important – it always gives us a sense of direction in life and keeps us focused on true values – things that are always worthy of pursuing. This is a lesson that almost everyone learns at some point in life, some sooner, some later.
We need to be productive as people to live, to survive and thrive. There is no mentally and socially healthy person in the world that could just do nothing meaningful forever and succeed in life. Both prayer and life responsibilities take us away from all kinds of unproductive activities. They both, especially consistent with each other, keep us focused, motivated, lead us forward in our life and make us achieve what we aim at. All we need is to always have a proper balance between these two realms – spiritual and practical. As it is stated in Ethics of our Fathers:
Rabban Gamaliel the son of Rabbi Judah Hanasi said: excellent is the study of the Torah when combined with a worldly occupation, for toil in them both keeps sin out of one’s mind; But [study of the] Torah which is not combined with a worldly occupation, in the end comes to be neglected and becomes the cause of sin. (Pirkei Avot 2:2)
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Mirski
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