Question: I have Christian friends who pray informally, more like free-form, like they are just talking to someone, a friend or maybe a minister. Do Jews pray like this as well?
When I was in rabbinical school, I spent a summer as a hospital chaplain as part of an interfaith cohort. In a series of carefully crafted conversations, I learned a lot about other faith traditions — and also, of course, my own. In a discussion about prayer, I remember one of the Jewish interns saying that Christians are very good at prayer and that we Jews are good at liturgy. In other words, we have beautiful, powerful and relevant words for many of life’s moments, but as a people we are perhaps less comfortable speaking to God off the cuff.
Jewish prayer is, as a whole, structured. Our prayer book is called a siddur, meaning order, and there is indeed a very specific order of what we say and when we say it. The Talmud, which sets out much of this tradition, spends a lot of time worrying about what happens when you do not say what you are supposed to say, or if you miss the time you are supposed to say it. We call this work the keva of prayer, meaning the fixed commitment. These are the requirements, what we would call formal prayer.
But as is also true in other areas of Jewish tradition, something that is not required is not necessarily forbidden, and our strict keva is balanced out by the concept of kavannah. From the Hebrew root meaning “direction,” kavannah refers to the intention we bring to our prayers. And it’s within the concept of kavannah that we can find the space for spontaneity. For some of the sages, this more free-form experience is central to prayer. Rav Nachman of Bratslav, a well-known 18th century Hasidic teacher, encouraged his followers to make time each day for just this sort of prayer, which he called hitbodedut.
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Overall, I would suggest going back to a concept that I learned in high school math — necessary, but not sufficient. The spontaneous and free-form version of prayer might be necessary — for our own spiritual needs, for our relationship with the world and with the Divine — but it is not sufficient to fulfill our obligation to tradition. The set structures of prayer are a key part of a holistic Jewish life, but within them, we are invited to find individual moments of connection and conversation.
Rabbi Sari Laufer is the chief engagement officer at Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles.
