Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Good evening. This is Simon Jacobson and this is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. We’re on every Sunday from 6-7pm on WEVD 1050am. Tonight’s show will end at approximately 6:35, due to a preemption by the radio station. The topic for tonight is “The Power of Prayer.” I’m really glad to see that after mentioning that topic last week, I received several excellent emails, questions and thoughts from the listeners.

This is a very powerful and important topic, because prayer is something that has become part of our culture, part of people’s lives; something that touches upon hope, faith, the amount of control we have over our lives, the question of whether we can we change destiny, and on and on.

It would take several shows to do justice to many of these topics, but I want to begin by reading some of emails I received, because I think that can set the tone—hearing what you folks out there have to contribute. A show like this is really a partnership between myself and you: a meaningful life definitely implies life—which is the life that you live, the life I live, the things we share, so I really appreciate your input.

A mother writes to me, “How can a person explain to a child that prayer does, in fact, have power, even though we (including the child) don’t see results right away or even at all.”

That’s a very practical and important question—not just for ourselves but for our children as well.

Another email I received was, “If G-d controls all of life so things seem to be pre-destined, how can prayer make any difference?” In other words, if someone is ill in the hospital, or when doctors have given up hope, G-d forbid, or some other similar situation, where is there really room for prayer?

That’s also an important question, which really touches upon the bigger question: Is prayer really just some sort of psychological soothing for ourselves or is it real?

So using these two questions as a springboard, it’s a good way of getting into the topic of what prayer means to us in our lives. But what I really want to accomplish here is not just to address and analyze the subject of prayer, but also to come away with some type of empowerment—how each of us can use prayer as a vital tool. Because I really believe that prayer is an underused and underappreciated tool in our lives.

Let me address the actual questions: Does prayer help, what role does it play in our lives, are things predestined, and what about when we pray and we don’t seem to see any answers or results?

I’d like to cite, just at the outset, a statement from the Shaloh. (The Shaloh was a great Jewish scholar of the Middle Ages who, addressing this question about the power of prayer, whether it achieves results and why we don’t see the results, in addition to the question of how one little person like me or you can really change the cosmic destiny of things, he says something very powerful and interesting in response to this.) He says that prayer should be seen as a collective effort. When we pray for something, it’s not just our own energy and our own investment, it also gathers momentum and becomes a cumulative energy of others who have prayed for the same objective or others who continue to pray.

He explains that prayer pierces the layers between material life, and a truer, more real spiritual life, meaning that there are many layers in between the two states of being. For instance, when things aren’t working in our lives, that means that the flow of blessings, or the flow of energy, is not being channeled into our system in a way that we would appreciate, whether it’s a prayer for health, or livelihood, or for a good, healthy relationship, or for love.

So when something’s not working, there are, in a sense, obstacles, impediments in the way. But those impediments might be multi-layered. So one of the things that prayer achieves is that it pierces those layers. So sometimes when we pray, one layer may be pierced, two layers may be pierced, and we may not see the results yet, because many others layers may still be there impeding the way.

So when we pray, we have to see it as a process: the results will hopefully happen immediately, but they may take some time, and this also teaches us to look at the bigger picture.

Now, the issue of prayer has always intrigued me as being, in a way, a form of chutzpah, you can even say nerve, that when G-d, for instance, plans for things to happen in a certain way, what gives us the ability or the right to go ahead and pray that we change the course of history?

If a person is, G-d forbid, ill, why not say faith should dictate: “Hey, this person fell ill, and if that’s what G-d wants, I submit myself to G-d’s will and surrender. What right do I have to challenge that?”

Yet, the fact that G-d gave us the power to pray, and insists that we pray, and you find consistently that G-d insists that we pray, tells us about the power we have to affect destiny. It tells us about the type of relationship G-d wants us to have with Him. And finally, it tells us what life is all about. Prayer is a partnership with G-d. It is a joint responsibility, so to speak. And when we see injustice, or we are unhappy, or we feel that there is something that can be better in our lives, it’s not just an option, it’s required of us to actually challenge G-d and say, “Please give that to us, we demand it, we ask it of You, we implore You.”

Now faith doesn’t mean a passive state of accepting the status quo. Faith means that even though there may be a status quo, we still challenge and say to G-d that we do not want it to remain this way. That faith is the belief in a dynamic energy between us and G-d, and that we have the power to change things.

Faith also means that after you’ve prayed—and you may have pierced several layers, which you definitely believe you have achieved—it also means that you submit yourself to G-d’s will and say to G-d, “I’ve done my part, now You do Your part,” and then we expect and hope for the best. But if it doesn’t happen exactly the way we want it to, or the way we appreciate it, we still have the faith that we accept what G-d intends, but we can say to ourselves, in good conscience, that we have done everything we can on our part.

I must cite the story that always moves me, the story of Mrs. Waxman who lost, G-d forbid, her son, a soldier in the Israeli army who was taken hostage by Hammas terrorists. As a woman of faith, she prayed and had the entire country praying at the Kottel (the Western Wall) and in different synagogues for her son after the terrorists had taken him hostage. Afterwards, when the Israelis stormed the place where he was being held, it was unfortunately too late and her son was killed. One of the reporters asked her (an insensitive question, but it was asked of her nevertheless), “So what about your prayers? You prayed to G-d, and what do you have to say now?”

At that moment, this grieving mother had the presence of mind and the strength—that can teach us all something—and responded, “I prayed and G-d answered.”

“G-d answered?!” asked the reporter.

“Yes,” she replied. “G-d answered. He said no.”

In other words, G-d did respond, and He responded in His own way. And this is what true faith is.

So faith and prayer are not magic tricks. Prayer is faith in G-d, that G-d in His mysterious ways may plan things in a certain way, but He always has an “escape hatch” that allows us to challenge Him and go beyond what was meant to be, and even change the course of destiny.

So let me take a little break here to tell you how you can get in touch with us. We are the Meaningful Life Center at 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11213. You can call us at 1-800-3MEANING (1-800-363-2646) or email us at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com or find us at our website: www.meaningfullife.com, where you can find transcripts of this show and all our past shows.

Now, the Talmud puts it this way, that prayer is the service of the heart. It’s actually an experience of “emoting” with G-d. Whereas study and scholarship are essentially an intellectual and cognitive experience, prayer is an emotional one. And how one prays has bearing on the results one has. Lip service, just doing it by rote, is not what it’s all about. Prayer is an emotional reaching, a yearning, a demonstration of faith in the One who we pray to, which is not an easy thing to do. We have enough problems having an emotional relationship with visible things, with human beings. Imagine how difficult it is to emote with G-d.

Yet we clearly have that ability, and it’s one of our most underappreciated and underused tools; a tool that really requires a sense of focus. Anyone can open up a book and read the prayers quickly, but to have that kind of emotional experience where you say, “I am now speaking to G-d; I’m having some relationship to my soul,” where there’s a deeper force coming through, in a material world like ours, is not an easy thing to do.

Yet, unfortunately, most of us wait until we’re desperate to pray, or until things are hopeless or in a situation where everything else hasn’t worked.

But prayer is not just for desperate moments. Prayer is something that’s healthy. It’s a form of exercising your heart, a form of reaching outside of your own self, a sense of bittul (a word I often use meaning a sense of humility, of subjugating yourself, suspending yourself, to something greater than your own personal needs); and the results are directly commensurate and proportionate to what we invest in it.

So to get back to the other question that I mentioned earlier, whether all prayers are answered, well, the answer is that every prayer is answered. The result may not be exactly the way we intended to be, and it may not be something that we see immediately, but every prayer is responded to.

Prayer is not just a human being’s cathartic need to heal and to express him or herself, it also reaches and connects to a greater place.

The story that I’m reminded of is about three individuals, chassidim, followers of their respective Rebbes. They were all sharing different miracles that had occurred in their lives. One of them said, “The miracle in my life is that I had a little money and I asked my Rebbe where I should invest it. He made a suggestion, and I became a millionaire.”

And the second fellow said, “My miracle is that I had a child who was very ill and the doctors had given up hope. My Rebbe gave a blessing, and my child was healed miraculously.”

The third one looked at them and said, “My miracle is this. I had a lot of money, and I was considering investing in several places. My Rebbe made a suggestion which I followed, and I lost all my money.”

The other two looked at him and said, “So what’s the miracle?”

So he said, “The miracle is that I remained faithful to my Rebbe and to G-d.”

Okay, we have Marcia on the line.

Caller: My story of faith is when my Dad needed a very serious operation several years ago, and I prayed that my Dad should do as well as he could with surgery. But I thought that my prayer was more on a level of G-d being a vending machine: one day I get a package of M&M’s, another day I get a two-seater sports car. Do you know what I mean? You know, just asking G-d for “stuff.”

And then I thought to myself, well if G-d is so great, maybe I can get something like equanimity. I didn’t know what the results would be at that moment. It could have been terrible. And when you said prayer is a kind of exercise of the heart, that was kind of the moment of “conversion” when I said, “Give me the strength, give me the peace, give me the ability to have comfort. I don’t know what the results are going to be.” Before that I only looked at G-d as a “vending machine.”

Jacobson: I understand. So how does it work in your life today?

Caller: My father’s fine. It turns out that I have a chronic illness, I have MS. I can’t walk anymore, but when I got sick, nobody said, you’ll have your hands, your arms and your vision, you’ll just do the best you can. It was kind of similar to it, but the moment where my perception about it shifted was when I said, “You do the best you can, and that’s about it.” Equanimity is a word that keeps popping up for me.

Jacobson: Well, let me ask you this. How did you come to the more sophisticated or more mature approach to prayer that you came to? How did you reach that?

Caller: Well, so many times in our world (I don’t like to say “Judeo-Christian” because I’m not aware enough of the differences), people say, “Oh, I prayed that I’ll get a good grade on an exam, or I’ll get this job…” If G-d created this fantastic thing, this existence that we have, be it bad or good, I find it very stimulating, very wonderful. Even with bad days, it’s interesting to be alive. G-d is just on a higher plane than getting good exam grades or getting M&M’s or sports cars. So maybe unconsciously I was observing people around me who had something together with their lives, and perceived that…my word is equanimity.

Jacobson: Well I really appreciate your call. It’s very encouraging to hear. And I want to wish you health and that you’ll be able to deal with your issues in the best way, and that G-d should bless you.

Okay, Leah, you’re on the air.

Caller: Good evening, Rabbi.  I really believe in prayer. I am totally blind. I became blind five years ago (which came on very suddenly with no warning due to a stroke) and my life is more fulfilling now than it has ever been, although I’m doing everything I can to give back to others some of what I’ve gotten of a wonderful life, and great family.

My question to you is that you pray and you pray for certain things and suppose it doesn’t happen? Suppose you pray for someone’s life and that person dies. It’s wonderful when your prayers are answered, and I love Hashem above, but what happens when they’re not? A lot of people might lose faith. You hear about the power of prayer, and that Hashem is always with you, but sometimes it doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to. I think you told a story about that, with the man who lost everything but kept his faith.

Jacobson: Well, the thing that ultimately works, and the only thing that I can say under those circumstances, is that prayer is part of a holistic approach and a relationship with G-d that even on a sophisticated level is not just of a Father in heaven who watches over His little children. It’s a dynamic relationship that’s reciprocal—it goes both ways.

Life is complicated. We don’t understand the mysterious ways of G-d. And when prayer is looked upon as a crutch for a child, just to reach out, it may serve that role for some, but that’s not what it’s all about. There is a deeper thing going on, and sometimes it doesn’t work out the way we want it to. That doesn’t take away from the fact that the prayer had its effect on us, on life in the next generation, and on the bigger picture.

You have to look at life like a film. If you walk out in the middle of the film, you obviously don’t see the entire picture, and there are a lot of loose bits and pieces.

All I can say is that when a person is in a situation where what they prayed for was not fulfilled in a revealed, tangible, concrete way, we have to be there for each other, and reach out, and hold that person’s hand, in a calm, peaceful way.

The dignity of faith is that you do not give up even when the script is not the way you intended it or wanted it to be. My heart goes out to the people out there who do pray and it doesn’t work out exactly the way they intended it to be. Obviously we live in a world that is not always going to work the way we would like it to, but to say that the prayer did not have its effect is wrong. It did have an effect and it does change the world.

Part of faith is knowing that the world is going to come to a greater destiny, but it requires us all to see it as building blocks. I mean, when you pray today, and when you do a good deed, to say that prayer doesn’t work is like saying my good deeds don’t work. It’s like saying, what’s the point of being a good person if there’s so much cruelty out there anyway?

The answer is that it’s a cumulative process, a cumulative process of building blocks that leads to a greater place. I appreciate your call.

Caller: Thank you. Every day I count my blessings. They are so numerous in my life, and my life is so joyful and peaceful and terrific, it’s never been this way. But it was always good.

Jacobson: You should have so many blessings that you won’t be able to count them!

Caller: I counted 200 in one day!

Jacobson: Okay. Be well, Leah. There are still have a few minutes left. We’re speaking about prayer, and it definitely deserves another show, so we hopefully will have another one. It’s quite an emotional and moving topic to speak about when you really get into it, because prayer is not a gimmick, it’s a real way of speaking to a higher force in our lives, G-d, and seeing the results in how that affects us and so on. So when things are not exactly the way we want them to be, and we pray, it definitely has an impact.

We have to have a firm belief that it does and will have an impact. We hope we will see it immediately, but sometimes it has to take some time.

Okay, we have Gladys on the line.

Caller: I must tell you, Rabbi, you speak of faith, and I have it quite strongly, but only through traumas that have happened in my life. But rather than get bitter, it just reinforced my faith and my trust. Faith, if you don’t have trust, is not enough. I lost a daughter of 36 years old. She had cancer. And on the last day of her life, I just prayed to G-d that He take her. I wanted to see her out of her pain and misery.

Now that He has her, she’s in good hands, and fortunately, through my faith, He gave me the strength to live these years without my child. I was then married (for the second time) very happily—we found each other and were married for a year and a half, and at 52, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died. There again, my faith gave me strength. People didn’t know how to approach me, they were so sorry for me, and I said, “Don’t do that. Don’t console me, because G-d had given me such a beautiful gift.” It’s 26 years that Len is gone and he’s still with me, I still live with those beautiful memories.

So if anyone has lost a child, and believe me, it’s the worst thing that can happen to a parent, please don’t get bitter. Keep strong with your faith and thank G-d that your child is in safe hands.

This is how I feel Rabbi, and I speak to G-d every day. I just retired and my life is very, very lonely and strange, but each morning I ask Him to please plan my day for me, and He does! So I have not only faith but a friend.

Jacobson: Well, Gladys, you leave me speechless, and I assume all our listeners as well. Your words speak for themselves, and I do not want to in any way weaken the effect of your words by making any comments. All I can do is thank you for having the courage to share it with us, and I know that gives each of us strength. Thank you very much.

Caller: Well, if I can share these things with people and help them, it would help them so much.

Jacobson: Well, perhaps you can leave your phone number with our engineer, and if someone is in need of speaking to someone like you, maybe you can offer some words of consolation.

Okay, we have Helen on the line.

Caller: This has something to do with Kaddish. I had a twin brother who died last year. He was married quite a while back to a European refugee who went through the Holocaust, and in 1968 she died. They were married only 18 years. G-d was good to me. I was married for 48 years before my husband passed away a few years ago. My brother could never say Kaddish for his wife, and I used to get really angry because my husband went to say it for her. We lit the candles and everything, but he could not forgive G-d, as he said, for taking away his wife after such a short while. He translated this Kaddish to me quite a number of years after about how we’re giving G-d praise—I really don’t know for what He did or what He didn’t do—but he wasn’t about to do that. Could you just comment on that? And no matter how I spoke to him, please don’t, he never remarried either.

Jacobson: Okay, Helen. Thank you for the call. Essentially prayer is not just about praising G-d. Prayer is for ourselves, for our souls, for the souls of the departed. So in a way, I feel really bad that he was unable to get beyond his own grief and his own bitterness, as we just heard from Gladys, and get beyond it at least for the benefit of his own wife. Because the soul lives on, and the prayer (Kaddish) is there for that soul to travel on, for the soul to go to the right place, and the prayer is also for himself.

So I really see it as him doing a disservice to himself by not being able to open himself up. I don’t know him myself personally, but if I did, I would try in some way to not impress upon him the power of faith and prayer, but rather, to try to get him open to his own soul and realize that there’s much more happening here than his own pain. At the same time we need to be compassionate about that. Briefly said.

Now, we’re here at Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. I want to thank Barry Hartheimer for sponsoring this show and we welcome your sponsorships and your donations. This show is made possible by you, the listener. Please call us at 1-800-363-2646 and make sure to ask us to send you a free newsletter called “Meanings.”

Just as a closing thought, I would like to say that our heart has to go out to anyone who has issues and any difficulties in life. Prayer is your tool, your power to access your soul, to get beyond the layers, the shrouds, the walls, the curtains, that obscure material life from a deeper spiritual life. So it’s something that we should appreciate and embrace, and remember, through prayer you get closer to G-d and closer to yourself. This has been Simon Jacobson with Toward a Meaningful Life. I thank you.