Well of Living Insight: Comments on the Siddur

Rabbi Pinḥas simply said: “People think that you pray to God, but that is not the case. Rather, prayer itself is of the essence of divinity.”

great privilege and blessing in my life that I am able to express the longings of my soul in the rich and ancient language of our people.

What, then, can it mean to come into that presence, since it is always there? To pray is to choose a particular time and place to notice that presence, when I stop everything else I am doing,

We ask ourselves to enter into authentic relationship with the words of the siddur. We invite them not only to speak for us but also to speak to us,

What happens after prayer is the most important question to address to your life as a praying person.

“The power of prayer” is its power to call on me, to demand a response from me, to make me shape myself into a vessel for God’s service.

Y-H-W-H is with me always. When I say that I am a religious person, that is what I mean.

Each day, as we tie these straps around our fingers like rings, we recall that we are all baʿaley teshuvah, returnees who have been invited back into this relationship of great trust and intimacy, even though we may not feel that we deserve it. The One who knows us better than we know ourselves believes in our penitence more than we do.

The specter of Nadav and Avihu, Aaron’s two young sons who approached the altar with too much enthusiasm, is never entirely absent from the Jewish imagination.