Fertility of Prayer

Heschel, Towards an Understanding of Halacha in Moral Grandeur

In those months in Berlin I went through moments of bitterness. I felt very much alone with my own problems and anxieties, I walked alone in the evenings through the magnificent streets of Berlin. There were concerts, theatres and lectures by famous scholars about the latest theories. Suddenly I noticed the sun had gone down, evening had arrived.

From what hour is the Shema recited in the evening.

I had forgotten God – I had forgotten Sinai – I had forgotten that sunset is my business – that my task is “to repair the world under God’s dominion.”

How grateful I am to God that there is a duty to worship, a law to remind my mind that it is time to think of God, a time to disregard my ego for at least a moment. I am not always in the mood to pray, I do not always have the vision and the strength to say a word in the presence of God. But when I am weak, it is the law that gives me strength.

Franz Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption

Love cannot be other than effective. There is no act of neighbourly love that falls into the void. Just because the act is performed blindly, it must appear somewhere, [and this is the effectiveness of prayer]. Prayer, though it has no magic powers as such, nevertheless, by lighting the way for love, arrives at possibilities of magic effects. It can intervene in the divine system of the world. It can provide love with direction toward something not yet ready for love, not yet ripe for endowment with soul. Thus the prayer of the individual, when it enlightens the supplicant, is always in danger of - tempting God.