From the heart of Jerusalem: The davening point

Davening was by far my greatest problem with Judaism. The number of hours spent in shul was staggering. Of course it wasn’t davening per se that bothered me but rather my inability to have meaningful davening experiences that was so frustrating. During my high school years, barriers to meaningful davening included my shamefully childish refusal to “submit” to administrative rule-makers who used detention threats as leverage to force me into minyan each day. Another obstacle was my failure to understand even the literal translation of the Hebrew words in the siddur. These two issues were resolved rather easily when I grew up a little and understood that teachers only want to help. I was ready to give davening a chance so I bought a new siddur with English translation printed under each individual word.

But those were only the simple problems. I also struggled with issues surrounding how a person can relate to G-d through davening. What is the point of davening? It is unreasonable to think that G-d has a certain plan for how to run the world, and it is the davener’s task to convince Him to do otherwise. Man’s words cannot change G-d. Therefore, the goal of davening must be to change something else, namely the davener himself.

Then, what is the point of davening to G-d? It seems more reasonable to meditate than daven to G-d. The wording of the davening service clearly treats G-d as an engaged, invested, even human listener. Reciting the texts therefore enforces a logically impossible portrait of G-d. I found that in order to daven sincerely I needed to imagine that I was trying to convince G-d. I had to imagine what I knew to be inaccurate. I had to pretend. And of course this troubled me. But as I continued to contemplate the theological principles at work, I came to realize that such an approach was very much consistent with underlying ideas in Jewish thought.