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THE PRAYER BOOK: A WINDOW ON JEWISH THEOLOGY
Instructors: Barbara and Reuven Sutnick

WHAT IS PRAYER? 2/12 ORIGINS OF JEWISH PRAYER: SERVICE OF THE HEART

- Sacrifice as Antecedent -

"And to serve him with all your heart" -- is there such a thing as 'service' with the heart? And what might such a thing be? This is prayer.
Jerusalem Talmud, Berachot 4a

As modern readers, most of us do not find the expression "service of the heart" to be an odd choice for describing prayer. However, at the time that the above-quoted text was written, just after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (70 C.E.) the word "service" (AVoDah) had a specific technical meaning. It referred to the sacrificial rite that had been central to Judaism for hundreds of years. Because of the destruction of the Temple, and the prohibition against performing the sacrificial rite in any other place, the rabbis of the Talmud felt forced to redefine Jewish ritual. They endeavored to define an alternative ritual which would be both relevant and authentic to the religious purposes that had been fulfilled by the sacrificial service. Thus a system of prayer services, codified gradually over time, was built up, using the sacrificial service (AVoDah) as a basis. The identification of prayer with "service of the heart" was at the time, a not-so-subtle transfer of religious meaning. Prayer, in all its variety of mood -- thanks, petition, penitence, praise, expiation -- became essentially a replacement for the system of animal sacrifice outlined in the Bible. (The specifically HISTORICAL process that this transformation represents will be the subject of the next Lecture.)
The above idea should surely give the modern reader pause: are we really suggesting, through the wonders of the INTERNET, the retrograde theory that animal sacrifice relates to a wide range of human religious expression as does prayer today? Not even the most ardent fundamentalist would claim that animal sacrifice is the PHILOSOPHICAL antecedent to prayer. However, after taking a brief look at the biblical Jewish sacrificial system, the conceptual relationship between it and prayer should become clear. This in essense is the focus of the present Lecture.
First, it should be understood that biblical figures expressed themselves religiously in rituals involving the slaughter of animals. (There are also examples of biblical prayer, and we will examine some of these below.) When Abraham made a covenant with God, for example, he severed animals in half and the essenceof God passed between the pieces as part of the covenantal ceremony (Genesis 15). Beginning with the book of Exodus and continuing into Leviticus, sacrifices are incorporated into a larger framework of fixed ritual sacrifice that served many functions. Whatever its specific purpose, the sacrifice was prescribed by the Bible as a way of "setting right" the relationship between the worshipper and the Divine. Sacrifices were brought by individuals, both men and women, and offered up by the priests, whose inherited job it was to serve in the Temple. There were sin offerings and guilt offerings connected with both individual and community atonement. There were also offerings connected with dedications, Thanksgiving Offerings, Holiday Offerings, offerings pertaining to rites of passage, offerings connected with purity and impurity and many more. There were also regular daily offerings that were brought by the priests morning, afternoon and evening. The most valuable sacrifices involved animals of the herd; however birds, grains, fruits, vegetables, oil and wine were also included among the sacrifices. For each type of offering, the Bible clearly prescribed its reason, what was to be brought and the method of sacrificing. In each case, bringing a sacrifice required the worshipper to give up something important to him/her in service of and in obedience to the Lord. Later Jewish legal texts spelled out in even further detail the specific requirements of each offering. It should be pointed out that much more clearly than with modern prayer, there was a sense that properly executed sacrifices were EFFICACIOUS. In other words, if one brought the correct sacrifice at the correct time and offered it in the correct way ("correct" = commanded by God) the belief was that IT WORKED. The worshipper could be reasonably sure to have accomplished the desired result of the sacrifice.
Without digging any deeper we can see that there is remarkable overlap between the CATEGORIES of sacrifice and the CATEGORIES of prayer (see definitions of prayer in Lecture I). If we remove the peculiar ritual exercise of killing an animal (or handing over produce) from sacrifice; and if we think of prayer without the peculiar ritual exercise of reciting words, we find a startling symmetry of concepts and functions. Prayer is "service" (AVoDah) of the heart, precisely because it serves the same religious roles as did sacrifice. As a substitute for dedicating our living possessions to the "service" of God; with prayer we dedicate our time, intentions, and intellectual/emotional efforts. Furthermore, the Jewish practice of praying three times a day -- morning, afternoon and evening -- is directly parallel to the set of regular daily sacrificial offerings mentioned above.

- Can Prayer Ever Be Good Enough? -

An important question is raised in the words of a quote from the special Additional Service for Rosh Hashanah:

And because of our sins (the main religious explanation in Jewish sources for the destruction of the Temple)...we are not able to fulfil our obligations in the Chosen House (Temple), the great and holy House, which is dedicated in your Name.

According to this prayer excerpt, the Jewish people find themselves in a Catch-22 predicament. The Temple was destroyed because of our sins (a type of confession). Yet this also means that our traditional AVENUE FOR EXPIATION for sin (the Temple) became lost to us too. (Remember, the Bible tells us that sacrifices will help us atone for sin; we find no similar biblical statement about verbal prayer.) The author of the prayer above wonders if prayer can help us achieve atonement with the same degree of certainly that was ascribed to the sacrifices. Can the "service of the heart" adequately replace the Temple service? In other words, is there a level at which prayer can accomplish the original intent of the Torah's ritual system?
The great Jewish legalist and philosopher, the Rambam (Moses Maimonides), grapples with this question. It should be noted that to this 12th century rationalist, the sacrificial service was just as foreign as it is to us today. He points out:

It is a positive commandment to pray every day, as it is written (in the Bible) "And you shall serve the Lord, your God." We learn from the oral tradition (which comments on the Bible) that this "service" is prayer...But, there is no number of prayer services specified in the Bible, no set text and no set time for prayer."
(Laws of Prayer 1:1)

On the one hand, the Rambam reassures us here: prayer is to be counted among the 613 MiTZVot (commandments of Jewish law). This gives it religious weight independent of any connection to the sacrificial service. After all, if prayer is one of God's commands, we can logically conclude that prayer is considered worthwhile and even efficacious in Judaism. However, Rambam alarms us somewhat by pointing out that all the details of prayer (i.e. its content, time, how to do it, etc.) are not specified in the time-honored Bible. Unlike the sacrifices, spelled out in exquisite detail, the Bible leaves us in the dark about how to do prayer right. Later Jewish legal texts, which comprise the Oral Law, provide all the detail one could want about how to pray. Yet nobody will argue that they are just as authoritative or as close to the Source (God) as are the biblical commandments concerning sacrifice. (N.B. Nonetheless, Orthodox Jews hold that the Oral Law is to be observed as faithfully as the biblical Written Law.)
In the end, Rambam helps us with our present predicament (Can Prayer Ever Be Good Enough?) in his major philosophical work, Guide For the Perplexed. He argues that God recognized that the ancient Hebrews became a nation at a time when sacrificial rites were the norm in the world around them. God allowed them to maintain the forms with which they felt comfortable, while trying to wean them over to a different understanding of what communication between humans and the Deity was supposed to be like:
...the general mode of worship in which the Israelites were brought up consisted of sacrificing animals...It was in accordance with the wisdom and plan of God...that He did not command us to discontinue these manners of service...The sacrificial service is not the primary object of the commandments about sacrifice. While supplications, prayers and similar kinds of worship are nearer to the primary object, and indispensable for obtaining it...
(Guide, III, 32)

Maimonides' (Rambam's) conclusion is unmistakable: prayer replaces sacrifice totally. In fact, prayer is for the Rambam closer to an ideal form of Jewish worship. In other words, "service of the heart" is not meant to be merely a nostalgic recollection of the sacrifices: it comes closer to "proper" service than do the sacrifices themselves. Why, then, do the details of the sacrificial service remain so important to us that they are studied to this day in institutions of advanced Jewish learning? It is because these details establish the times, categories, content, etc. of prayer -- elements that are actually more essential than the fact of killing offerings.
While Maimonides may have made friends among the animal rights groups; among the non-rationalist schools of Jewish thought he rubbed some fur the wrong way!!! The primary objection to his analysis is that if God wanted to command us in the Bible to have a prayer service, He would have. It is hard to believe that an entire network of commandments (and there are very many which deal with sacrifices) would be so detailed, if it were God's intent to replace them with prayer. Furthermore, animal sacrifice prevailed up until the destruction of the Second Temple, nearly 1400 years after the Torah (first five books of the Bible) was given at Mount Sinai. This means that this practice was retained long beyond what could be considered a reasonable transition period. Finally, if the Temple had not been destroyed, would animal sacrifice have been abolished? I think that even the Rambam would have to answer not. Thus, without a program for phasing sacrifice out, other than the calamity of the destruction of the Temple, Maimonides does not explain how the Torah's primary purpose is to be served.
However, Maimonides does direct us to one inescapable conclusion: there are many places in the Torah in which people are directed to worship verbally -- to pray. One is the commandment to "serve God with all your heart"; another is the commandment to bless after meals (Deut. 8:10). Others are connected to sacrifices but retain their independence of origin, such as "and he shall make atonement for himself and for his family..." (see Leviticus 16). Here the High Priest is directed to recite the confessional over the sacrifice for the Day of Atonement. Expiation is at the core of both the sacrifice and the prayer, the lattter being no less important. The recitation accompanying the bringing of the First Fruits (Deut. 26:5) also belongs in this list as does the commandment to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 13:8). There are many others described just as directly.
There is an amazing story in chapters 33 and 34 of Exodus which is told in the aftermath of the Sin of the Golden Calf. The children of Israel have offended God horribly by building an idol, so their leader Moses sets out to discover the secret of Divine forgiveness. He begs God:

"And now, if I have indeed found favor in Your sight,
make known to me Your way, that I may know You, and
that I might find favor in Your eyes, for this nation
is Your people."
(Exodus 33:13)

The purpose of his request is to learn the way that one who is out of favor with God can find the way back. In essence, Moses asks God how to effect one of the primary functions of prayer (and sacrifice): expiation from sin. Moses' request is met. God passes before him reciting:

"The Lord, the Lord, God, manifest and gracious, long suffering, full of mercy and truth; He is gracious to the thousandth [generation], forgiving iniquity, sin and transgression, but who will by no means clear guilt." (Exodus 34:6-7)

An interesting midrash connects this event to an important section of the Jewish prayer service:

R. Yochanan said: The Holy One, blessed be He, revealed [the thirteen attributes of Divine mercy] in the verse...This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, descended from the mist like a "leader of prayer", enveloped in His prayer shawl, and stood before the ark and revealed to Moses the order of Selichot, the penitential prayers.
Tannah d'Vei Eliyau Zuta, ch. 23

These famous "Thirteen Attributes of God" (Ex. 34:6-7) are recited as part of the penitential service, both on fast days and during the High Holiday Services. According to the midrash, God modeled for Moses the secret of appealing to His attribute of Divine Mercy. In other words, according to Rabbi Yochanan, God revealed His essence by teaching Moses to pray. Thus we see documented the ancient rabbinic view that the revelation of the penitential prayer service is a biblical PARALLEL to the expiative sacrifice, and NOT an outgrowth of it.
To summarize, the origins of the Jewish prayer service can be traced to antecedents both in the sacrificial rites and to biblical prayers. The functions served by biblical prayers is ideally served by verbal worship today. On the other hand, there are cases in which verbal worship adapts to functions served previously by sacrifice in the Torah. In such cases, it is questionable whether verbal worship can serve as well. As the passage cited above from the Rosh Hashanah service indicates, prayer is actually only second best if we seek GUARANTEED expiation from sin.

Regarding our discussion of Maimonides, my personal inclination is to accept his analysis in large part. This is admittedly because he speaks to me as a modern person. I have to wonder, however, if other parts of his analysis reflect an element of wishful thinking. Let's consider a few questions to see what you think:

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT

1. If the Temple in Jerusalem were rebuilt, do you think Maimonides would advocate reinstituting animal sacrifice? Would you?

2. We have seen that the Torah contains elements both of a sacrificial system and a system of prayer. I could also argue that since God commanded both, there must be some lack that one fulfills in the other. What does prayer give us that sacrifice doesn't; what does sacrifice give us that prayer doesn't?

3. What do you think of God's answer to Moses when Moses asked to know His "way" and to "know" God? Do you think a modern religious leader would be satisfied with that answer?

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