Praying for our Team to Win
Sermon, October 26, 2007
Rabbi Bruce Kadden
One of my favorite passages in Gates of Prayer is found in a short
meditation which precedes the t'filah in one of the Shabbat evening
services. It reads:
“Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, nor mend a broken bridge, nor
rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart,
and rebuild a weakened will.”
The purpose and power of prayer have long been an interest of discussion in
Judaism. The Mishnah offers this observation: “To cry over the past is
to utter a vain prayer. If a man’s wife is pregnant and he says, [God] grant
that my wife bear a male child, this is a vain prayer. If he is coming home
from a journey and he hears cries of distress in the town and says, [God] grant
that this is not in my house, this is a vain prayer.” (Berachot 54a)
On Shabbat, the petitionary prayers in the t'filah are replaced by a
prayer for Shabbat. However, we still include the Mi Sheberach prayer
for healing every Shabbat.
Recently, my colleague and friend Rabbi Paul Kipnes was asked by a student if
it was all right to pray for the Yankees to win the World Series. This was, of
course, before they were eliminated from the playoffs by the Indians.
On the surface it sounds like a fairly silly question; as one rabbi
suggested, “If prayers work, which I hope they do, I wouldn’t waste them on
weather or sporting events.” But do prayers work and how do they work? These
are serious questions worth examining.
Rabbi Harold Schulweis points out the difference between prayer and magic.
“Magic is not prayer and prayer is not magic. In magic you are concerned with
getting the end and you don’t care about the meaning or character of the means.
Magic is impersonal. In prayer you have to be concerned with the means to
achieve that end and those means that achieve the end invariably depend upon
you, your attitude your mind, heart and soul.”
He gives the example of a child who wants to know about praying for an “A.”
Schulweis argues that while one should not pray for an “A,” it is appropriate to
pray “for the means for getting that A. Indeed, he points to one of the morning
prayers as doing just that. It says, “Imbue us with the will to understand, to
discern, to hearken, to learn, to teach and to obey….” Schulweis continues,
“The child must be taught that prayer must be worthy. The worthy end is not
getting the A. The important thing is the growth and learning for which you may
receive the sign of accomplishment. Just get an A, just to get on the Dean’s
list without any effort, without any growth, without any maturity, without any
knowledge, is to miss the whole point of life and education…. [Such] prayers are
not “worthship,” the original spelling and meaning of “worship.”
Schulweis concludes that we “pray to move God” but “the way you move God is
through moving the divine in yourself….Prayer is meant to move you.”
Another rabbi, who is quoted anonymously, points out that Jewish prayer is
really intended to be more like Eastern prayer than Western prayer. “Western
(read Christian) prayer is ‘gimme-gimme-gimme-now-now-now,” the expression of
what we want, need, as if God cannot know without our asking.” In contrast,
Eastern prayer is more like a mantra meant “to change the one who prayers, not
to change the mind and actions of God. Prayer is used to focus, so that we can
transcend that moment and that place.”
That does not mean that there is no place for petitionary prayer in Judaism.
We can and should pray for those who are ill or suffering, as well as for such
lofty ideals as bringing peace and justice to our world. We can pray for the
strength and courage to face adversity, for patience and understanding to deal
with a difficult situation.
When we offer such prayers, though, we should not offer them as if we were
putting money into a cosmic vending machine which will give us what we want if
put in the right prayer. Neither should we think that having offered the prayer
our part is over and we can now leave it to God.
Rather by offering the prayer we are acknowledging to ourselves that this is
something that we really care about something that is worthy of our time and
attention, let alone God’s. Our words of prayer should motivate us to action.
If we are praying for one who is ill, we might then call them or make a meal
for them, or ask about their well-being the next time we see them. If we are
praying for peace and justice we might become part of a group which is working
for these lofty goals or write our members of congress about a bill that
addresses one of these issues. And if we are praying for strength and courage
or patience and understanding we should keep those thoughts in our mind when we
face the particular challenge.
When we pray as a community, we acknowledge that there are things that we
care about and should commit ourselves to working to achieve. Indeed, our
prayers should, in great part, reflect what is most important to us.
To return to Rabbi Kipnes’s question about praying for a sports team, I think
it becomes obvious that such a prayer is not appropriate. We need to
distinguish between prayer and rooting. We can certainly root for our team to
win, yelling and screaming at the top of our lungs in hopes that together with
the other fans our noise will encourage our team and perhaps even distract the
other team. Of course, if we are sitting in front of the television at home the
yelling and screaming will only amuse or annoy our spouse, as I have been guilty
of a number of times.
Praying for our team, however, as if we really believe that God pays
attention to such insignificant entertainment and would interfere in the outcome
trivializes the meaning of prayer. Just because one believes –as some Jews
certainly do—that God hears every prayer and can intervene in human affairs at
any time, does not mean that it is right to offer prayers to God about such
trivial matters and expect God to intervene.
Perhaps someone who has exhaustively prayed for peace and justice, for
healing for the ill and freedom for the enslaved, for the cure of every disease
and the end to all pain and suffering might be forgiven for offering a trivial
prayer now and again. But for the rest of us, who barely scratch the surface of
offering prayers for these most important issues, let alone begin to do
something about them, we should be embarrassed to offer such a trivial prayer.
Prayer can indeed “water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a
weakened will” and so much more, but only if we are willing to take prayer
seriously and allow the prayer experience to inspire us and to change us.
Praying for our favorite sports team to win makes a mockery of this important
practice and is therefore something we should refrain from doing.
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