The Ladder of Prayer
At the opening of Parashat Vayetzeh, having “gone out” of the familiar world of his parents home in Be’er Sheva, Jacob, finds himself in what is known as liminal space – the space between1.On liminality, see Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (London: Routledge & Paul, 1960); Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (London: Routledge & Paul, 1969). Liminality is the space between two states or territories, between where you are coming from and where you are going to. It represents transition, and is marked by uncertainty and vulnerability. Turner argues that liminality sheds light on the basic distinction between society – a place of structure and hierarchy where everyone has their roles – and “communitas” – a community and communion of equal individuals. Liminality is an experience of communitas, where role, rank, status and office, fall away and we are left bereft of externalities, as souls, selves, without masks or ascribed identities. Hence liminal experiences tend to combine humility and sacredness, a beautiful description of Jacob’s encounter with God, and of our experience of prayer.
– between the home he is escaping and the destination he has not yet reached, between the known danger of his brother Esau from whom he is in flight, and the as yet unknown danger of Laban from whom he will eventually suffer great wrongs.
As will happen again twenty-two years later on his return, when he encounters and wrestles with a stranger, Jacob has his most intense experiences alone, at night, in the middle of a journey. It is in these transitional travels, when he is most open to the unexpected, that Jacob is defined, through liminal encounters that border dream and reality. On his journey home he emerges a new man, injured and limping, yet with a victorious new name. In this, the first of his visions:
He dreamed, and behold a ladder resting on the earth, with its top reaching heaven. God’s angels were ascending and descending on it. And there above it stood God… (28:12–13)
What does this vision signify? There are many interpretations given by the sages and commentators, but the simplest is that it has to do with the encounter between the human soul and God, the encounter that later generations would know as prayer.
Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “God is truly in this place, and I knew it not.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven.” (28:16–17).
The House of God came to refer to the synagogue, for prayer is the gate of heaven. And when we have truly prayed, the most profound result is that we too are conscious of the feeling: “God is truly in this place, and I knew it not.”
The Zohar (I, 201b) identifies the ladder in Jacob’s vision with prayer: we who pray stand on earth, yet our prayers reach heaven, as is said: “May You hear from heaven, Your dwelling place” (I Kings 8:39) – Solomon’s prayer about prayer at the dedication of the Temple.
I would like to suggest that this primal vision did not merely give us a paradigm of prayer: its impact extends to influence the very structure of Jewish liturgy. If we examine Jewish prayer carefully, we will see that its shape precisely reflects the model of a ladder on which angels ascend and descend.
A close study of the liturgy reveals a prevalent symmetrical three-part structure, A-B-A, which has the following form: (a) ascent, (b) standing in the Presence, (c) descent. For example, shaḥarit, the morning service, begins with (a) pesukei dezimra, a series of Psalms which constitute a preparation for prayer. It moves on to (b) prayer-proper: the Shema with its three blessings, and the Amida, standing prayer. It ends with (c) a series of concluding hymns including Ashrei, itself a key element of pesukei dezimra.
The basis of this threefold structure is a statement in the Talmud (Berakhot 32b) that “the early pious men used to wait for an hour before praying, then they would pray for an hour, and then they would wait for another hour.” The Talmud queries the basis of this custom, and answers by citing the verse Ashrei itself: “Happy are those who sit in Your house.” Clearly this is what is known as an asmakhta, a supporting verse, rather than the origin of the custom itself (this passage, though, is undoubtedly the reason that Ashrei is said in the first and third sections).
The three-fold pattern of shaḥarit is repeated in the microcosm in the structure of the Amida. It too follows a three-part pattern: (a) shevaḥ, praise, the first three blessings; (b) bakasha, request, the middle blessings, and (c) hodaya, “thanks” or “acknowledgement,” the last three blessings. On Shabbat and Yom Tov, the middle section is replaced by usually one – on Rosh Hashanah three – blessings relating to “the holiness of the day” on the grounds that we do not make requests on days of rest.
Shevaḥ is a preparation. It is our entry to the Divine Presence. Hodaya is a leave-taking. We thank God for the goodness with which He has favoured us. Bakasha, the central section, is standing in the Presence itself. We are like supplicants standing before the King, presenting our requests. The spiritual form of the first and last actions – entry and leave-taking – are dramatized by taking three steps forward, and at the end, three steps back. This is the choreography of ascent and descent.
This pattern appears yet again in the kedusha – a prayer formed around verses taken from the mystical visions of the prophets, which makes explicit reference to angels. Its key verses are the words Isaiah and Ezekiel heard the angels saying as they surround the Throne of Glory. We speak of the angels at this point: the Serafim, Cherubim, Ofanim and holy Ḥayot. The kedusha is said three times in the morning service.2.On Shabbat, the third kedusha is transferred to the afternoon service, because the morning service is more than usually long. However, its proper place is in shaḥarit.
The first, known as kedushat yotzer, appears in the blessings before the Shema; the third, Kedusha DeSidra, is said in the concluding section of the prayers, beginning Uva leTzion. The middle kedusha is in the reader’s repetition of the Amida.
There are obvious differences between the first and last versions of the kedusha, on the one hand, and the second on the other. The first and third do not need a quorum, a minyan. They can be said privately. They do not need to be said standing. The second requires a minyan and must be said standing.
Maimonides explains the difference. In the first and third, we are describing what the angels do when they praise God. In the second, we are enacting what they do. In other words, the first and third are preparation for, and reflection on, an event. The second is the event itself, as we relive it.3.Cited in Ḥiddushim at the beginning of Ma’aseh Roke’aḥ, 1. See R. Nahum Rabinovitch, Yad Peshuta to Rambam, Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot Tefilla 7:17), Sefer Ahava, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Maaliyot, 1984), 294–5; also cited in Rambam LaAm (Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook, 1958), ad loc.
There are other examples, but these will suffice.
The daily prayers, as we now have them, evolved over a long period of time. The sages tell us that the first architects were the men of the Great Assembly in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, the fifth century b.c.e. There was a further intensive process of composition and canonization in the days of Rabban Gamliel at Yavneh. Shaping and reshaping continued until the first prayer books, those of Rav Amram Gaon and Rav Saadiah Gaon, in the ninth and tenth centuries c.e.
What we see from the above examples is that there is a basic shape – a deep grammar – of prayer. It consists of ascent – standing in the Presence – descent. The inspiration for this cannot have been anything other than Jacob’s vision.
Prayer is a ladder stretching from earth to heaven. On this ladder of words, thoughts and emotions, we gradually leave earth’s gravitational field. We move from the world around us, perceived by the senses, to an awareness of that which lies beyond the world – the earth’s Creator.
At the end of this ascent, we stand, as it were, directly in the conscious presence of God – which Maimonides defines as the essential element of kavana, the intentional state essential to prayer.4.Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Tefilla veNesiat Kapayim 4:15–16.
We then slowly make our way back to earth again – to our mundane concerns, the arena of actions and interactions within which we live. But if prayer has worked, we are not the same afterward as we were before. For we have seen, as Jacob saw, that “God is truly in this place, and I knew it not.”
If the first stage is the climb, and the second standing in heaven, then the third is bringing a fragment of heaven down to earth. For what Jacob realized when he woke from his vision is that God is in this place. Heaven is not somewhere else, but is here – even if we are alone and afraid – if only we realized it. And we can become angels, God’s agents and emissaries; we can ultimately even struggle “with God and with men” (32:28), if, like Jacob, we have the ability to pray and the strength to dream, and the openness to see the transformations that can happen in the difficult spaces between.