4. My Prayers

When I was growing up in my family I was taught set forms of prayers as a means of communion with God in my parents’ home and at the synagogue school. I could not understand this path. I would ask my parents as to why it was necessary to talk with God not the way I talked with my own father, why it was necessary to talk with Him by only set forms of prayers. How could I express to Him my thoughts, my love, my petitions that my mind was feeling and that could not be expressed by the words of those set prayers for they did not include such petitions that my mind did strongly desire to present all the same? These speculations of mine frightened my parents and my teacher in religion. These were solid and painful speculations both to my parents and my teacher for they had not adapted their mind to the freedom of such considerations. Therefore they did not know in what way to deal with me, and they merely sharply retorted: “We follow the law of Moses. He is our prophet and he communicated with Jahve and received teachings from him and he left his regulations over to us as to how it is allowed to commune with Jahve and how it is not allowed. That is why we pray the way we are instructed by the Holy Scriptures for it is only they that have truth. You are not the one who would be wiser than Moses to abrogate the laws he has left over to us. God shall punish every one who will attempt to equal Him. Thus, do it the way our ancestors were doing and the way we do.“

However this explanation was not convincing. It was beyond my understanding as to why it was not allowed to talk with God with love and the way one would like to talk with one‘s most beloved friend, with one‘s most beloved and closest father, or mother. I did desire such a real and live communion so that my own inner self was boiling with a protest against such a concept of God I was being offered both by the scripture and my parents – to address the God of Israel, Jahve, by a set form of address only. Therefore I would revolt at home that it was not true. God wants our sincerity and not these very same words that are repeated daily. I would ask my father, Joseph: “Father, would you be satisfied if all your children repeated you these very same words every day. How could you know us better, how could we love you more if all our communication were always the same words; and all of us were speaking the same words. And not only in our family but in all the Jewish families all the children were talking with their parents using the very same words. How could you know, then, our wishes? How could you know what we have already achieved, and what we do not need to reach out for at all?“

However, neither my father nor my mother could explain to me anything. They would get irritated and command me not to bother them with such blasphemies. And asked me not to tell such things to others for I would run into big troubles.

But how could one being a child would begin to listen to the word of one‘s parents. The more so that the parents could not provide me a single convincing answer to any of my questions that I was unable to answer myself either. Therefore I would discuss even these issues with my friends. I would put these questions to my teacher at the synagogue school. But nobody could ever give me an answer. They were feeling my sincerity, they were feeling that their uniform answers that I would also hear from my parents at home, did not convince me. And at times it aroused their strong irritation that I was still searching something else all the same, that I was not feeling satisfied with what I would hear from them. By no means I could fit within the frame offered to me by the so-called Holy Scriptures. Therefore I was left alone with these very questions to ponder upon: “Why do I have to commune with God only by the established forms of prayers? Why does Jahve punish people for sins if God is a merciful and loving Father of Israel? Why do people have to suffer and be sick? Why is there so much evil? Why are not we alike? Why are not all the people reasonable and good? Why does God allow to kill?“ and many others.      

Since my sincere desire to pose questions caused irritation to many I noticed that people lost their temper merely because they did not know the answer. And once the question would lead them out of an established framework of thinking, then, they would feel like losing ground under their feet and would get frightened as if I had told them something bad. And then out of fear, automatically, they would begin to defend themselves by attacking me.

This is common to all people of a low spiritual level – frightening, fear, automatically commands a self-defensive reaction which is always an attack against that person who has caused this reaction. And instead of thinking about the question itself they snap out right way: “What nonsense are you talking? Have you lost your common sense?“