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God Talk Session #1
April 14, 2018 @ 12:15 pm - 12:45 pm
A Series on God for Skeptics and Believers
With Rabbi Rosenbaum after Shabbat services
Session One: April 14
Prayer Without God
How discussing the purpose of prayer without referencing God can actually lead us to an understanding of God.
Every year, Nance Adler at JDS invites me to give one of the series of God Talks to her eighth graders. It occurred to me that this would be a valuable experience for adults, too. So, at Shabbat services on April 14, May 5, and August 4, I will be giving a series of three God Talks after services.
Here is how it will work. Services will go from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM without a dvar Torah. At noon, we’ll have 15 minutes to get our food at the Kiddush table and come back to our seats for a 30 minute study session on God. “Prayer Without God” will be the April 14 topic.
So, why would I choose to begin a series of God Talks with a session entitled “Prayer Without God”? My experience has taught me that when speaking about prayer, strange as it may seem, discussing God is best left to the end. In fact, it can be very useful to imagine what the experience of saying the words of the prayerbook might be like if we were to temporarily remove God from the picture. After all, today we are very familiar with spiritual practices that do not depend on God at all, like yoga and meditation.
These practices have well defined goals. They relieve stress, they center us, and they help us to experience our day less impulsively, more mindfully. Ask a meditator what she hopes to achieve and she will tell you how useful her spiritual practice is. But ask ‘is what use is daily prayer?’ and many of us will draw a blank.
So, what are the goals of prayer? How might saying the specific words of our prayer book be useful to us in the way we experience our day? Come on April 14, and we will talk about that! And, we may just find that answering this question will lead us to a deeper understanding of God.
Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum