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Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer

This is an archive of diverse thoughts on the significance and practice of Jewish prayer as a spiritual practice in general but also as expressed in certain specific contexts.

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Meaning What We Pray, Praying What We Mean: The Otherness of the Liturgy, by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Gutoff (1989)

A discussion of the nature of truth and belief in Jewish liturgical prayer, suggesting that fixed liturgy is less a vehicle for conveying theological or philosophical outcomes than a practice for developing an emotionally religious personality. Shabbat musaf is used as an example. “Meaning What We Pray, Praying What We Mean: The Otherness of the Liturgy” by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Gutoff was first published in Conservative Judaism, Vol. 42(2), Winter 1989-90, pp. 12-20. . . .

Categories: Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer, Davvening

Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., Conservative Judaism, Essays on Prayer as Praxis, liturgical theory, why prayer

Contributor(s): Joshua Gutoff

Blessings and Ethics: The Spiritual Life of Justice, a dvar tefillah on berakhot by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Gutoff (1997)

An article looking at the questions of why there aren’t brakhot for ethical mitsvot, in which an approach to the function brakhot as part of a spiritual and imaginative discipline is proposed. At the same time, it is argued that all ethical practices are first exercises in listening. . . .

Categories: Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer

Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., ברכות brakhot, Essays on Prayer as Praxis, liturgical theory, liturgy and ethics, צדקה tsedaqah

Contributor(s): Joshua Gutoff

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To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain the sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live. Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time? Amid the meditation of mountains, the humility of flowers—wiser than all alphabets—clouds that die constantly for the sake of beauty, we are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly we feel ashamed of our clashes and complaints in the face of the tacit greatness in nature. It is so embarrassing to live! How strange we are in the world, and how presumptuous our doings! Only one response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the gift of our unearned right to serve, to adore, and to fulfill. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great. --R' Abraham Joshua Heschel, "The Holy Dimension" in Moral Audacity and Spiritual Grandeur, p.341

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17

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