Beth Shalom
Oceanside Jewish Center

Prayer: Bargaining, Begging, or Believing
November 16, 2002  -  11 Kislev 5763

Parshat Vayetze
by Rabbi Mark B. Greenspan

I sometimes wonder what people expect to get out of prayer, or if they expect anything at all. I started thinking about this question as a teenager. During my high school years in an Orthodox Yeshiva prayer was a regular part of our daily routine. Each morning upon arriving at school we would put on our Tefillin and daven Shacharit. One morning, however, I noticed my dear friend, Marty, putting some money in the Pushke following Minyan. Impressed by his generosity, I asked if he did that ever day. "No," he told me. "I only give Tzedakah on those days when we have a big test….."

My good friend Marty was bargaining with God - or better yet, maybe he was trying to bribe Him. Of course, Marty was a diligent student who also studied for exams. Still he always hedged his bets on test days by davening a little harder and making a 'good will offering'. My friend's actions made me wonder: what can we realistically expect from our prayers? For what is it we should be praying?

Nowhere is this problem more dramatically illustrated than in this week's Torah portion, the story of Jacob's flight from his father's house. After receiving his father's blessing through deception and cheating his brother out of his birthright, Jacob flees from his home to escape Esau's wrath. Alone, possibly for the first time in his life, Jacob has an amazing dream in which he sees, "a ladder (or better yet, a staircase) set upon the earth reaching up to the heavens."

God appears at the top of the ladder and promises Jacob that he will inherit the land of Canaan. He tells Jacob, "Remember I am with you; I will protect you wherever you go and will ring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."

Jacob wakes up and realizes the significance of the place he has been resting. He sets up an altar and offers what may very well be the first recorded prayer in the Bible: "If God remains with me; if He protects me on this journey that I am making and gives me bread to eat and clothes to wear, and if I return safely to my father's house - the Lord will be my God and this stone which I have set up as a pillar shall be a house of God, and of all that You give me I will set aside a tithe for you."

As our Bar Mitzvah, David, has pointed out there's something troubling about Jacob's prayer in Parshat Vayetze. It sounds more like 'let's make a deal' than the exalted theological language we would expect from our forefather. Jacob bargains with God, saying in effect, "You scratch my back O Lord I'll scratch yours!" But more than that, his vow is strange because he seems to be asking for the very things that God has already promised him! So what was the point of offering this prayer in the first place? God had already told Jacob that he would protect him and bring him home.

One possible answer to these questions is that while bargaining is bad theology, it's human nature. I suspect that there are few people who haven't bargained with God at one time or another. In times of crisis and uncertainty, we're all prone to make promises and place conditions on the things we want or need.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, author of the classic work On Death and Dying, claims that bargaining is one of natural stages through which people pass when they are terminally ill. Bargaining, she writes, is an attempt to make a deal with God or with life to gain some desired outcome. It's often an _expression of quiet guilt; an awareness of our shortcomings and failures in life. By the way, Kubler-Ross also suggests that few people ever live up to the bargains they make with God. Once granted, they often begin bargaining all over again or simply forget about what they promised.

Our forefather Jacob certainly had reason to feel quiet, or maybe not-so-quiet, guilt. He had deceived his father, cheated his brother, and now he was deserting his parents. It's not hard to understand why he would feel the need to bargain with God. But why ask for the very things that God had already promised?

I believe that Jacob is unfairly criticized for bargaining with God and for showing so little faith in God's promises. I think the point of Jacob's prayer is that he asks for nothing new. He simply reasserts the promises that God has already made to him. In a sense what Jacob is doing here is drawing a course of action for himself. He looks at his most basic needs: food to eat and clothes to wear. He asks God to watch over him. And he expresses his hope that he will be given the opportunity to return home and be a better person. Jacob asks for nothing new - simply for the opportunity to be self-sufficient. And he sets some life goals for himself - to be a believing man and to serve God faithfully. He wants to be worthy of making God, "his God."

What we learn here is that prayer is not about begging or even bargaining. It's about acknowledging our most basic human needs and recognizing that they can't come from us alone. Rather, they are a product of a partnership with God. Prayer is not an opportunity to ask for what we want but rather a chance to recognize what we need. And if we know what we truly need in life, then we can strive to accomplish these goals with a little help from our 'Friend.' It's never about being passive recipients of God's blessings.

Let me offer just two example of how this works. If I had to pick the quintessential example of a Berachah it would probably be the Motzi, the prayer over bread. What is it that we say? "Praised are you Lord our God Sovereign of the Universe, who brought forth bread from the earth." While there are other prayers for food, this one is considered the most important. And yet it is unlike the other Brachot, such as "…who created the fruit of the tree," or "…created the fruit of the vine." The blessing for bread is different because in fact it's incorrect: God doesn't make bread and bread doesn't come out of the earth! Wheat comes from the earth. And there are a whole series of steps that go into the creation of a loaf of bread. So what is the point of this blessing? The point of this berachah is that God's blessings are not what God does for us but what we do with the raw materials in God's world. Bread is God's blessings only if we create it! He doesn't give it to us! And yet we acknowledge that it comes from Him!

Consider the thirteen intermediate Brachot of the weekday Amidah. These blessing are the first petitionary prayers that we say in the daily service. We ask for a whole variety of different things: food, health, protection form our enemies, and the opportunity to return and rebuild the land of Israel. What is especially interesting is the first of these petitions which we recite three times every day: "You graciously endow mortals with intelligence, teaching wisdom and understanding. Grant us knowledge, discernment, and wisdom. Praised are You, Lord, who graciously grants intelligence."

How interesting that the first thing a Jew asks for from God is sechel - intelligence and common sense. Once we have that, all the rest is given. To have intelligence, then, is to become self-sufficient and independent. Prayer then is not about asking for stuff, but striving for the ability to take care of ourselves.

Of course, there are things which we ask of God. But there is far less petitions in Jewish prayer than there is praise, and thanksgiving. Even the word for prayer in Hebrew, Lihitpallel, does not mean to beg or ask of God. Lihitpallel means to judge oneself. We turn to God to discover our own inner strengths and abilities.

Jacob spent the early part of his life wanting what he could not have. He wanted to be the first born. He wanted the birthright. He wanted his father's blessing. As he received each of these things he discovered that he was no happier than he was before. As he stood alone on the road to Haran, Jacob said, "Help me survive O Lord. Let me live my life so that I can return home to my parents and so I can serve you. You have already promised this to me, Lord. Now help me do it for myself." For the first time in his life he offered an honest self appraisal - not of his wants but his needs.

We Jews spend a lot of time in synagogue. What ought to ask ourselves - what are we really doing here? We often think of prayer as petition. Jacob's prayer suggests other purposes: It is a means of self actualization, an opportunity to formulate our dreams, hopes, challenges and our fears. It is an attempt not to change the world but to change ourselves.

Most of all prayer reminds us that we can do all by ourselves. We need God. Not to give us what we want but to help us see what it is we really need. God can give us the strength to do for ourselves.

Shabbat Shalom