All in Good Faith

Author(s): Jean Potter, Marcus Braybrooke
Publisher: World Congress of Faiths

Page 59

10. A JEWISH VIEW OF PRAYER AND INTERFAITH SERVICES
Rabbi Rachel Montagu
The most important form of prayer in Judaism is the 'Amidah' or 'Standing prayer'. The destruction of the temple caused the enforced cessation in 70 CE of the offerings required as the service of God in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The rabbis therefore declared that the prayer services which had begun to be held in the prototype synagogues at the same time as the offerings in the temple, should replace the sacrifices, and this 'service of the heart' became the approved form of worship of God.
The prayer starts with three blessings of praise of God, and ends with three blessings of thanksgiving. In the middle on weekdays are thirteen blessings of petition, asking God for knowledge, the ability to repent, forgiveness, individual redemption, healing, prosperity, freedom for all, a just world, the passing away of evil from within us, the well-being of the righteous of the community, the peace of Jerusalem, Salvation, the coming of the Messianic Age and for a response to our prayers. This prayer is also called the 'Sh'moneh Esreh' or 'Eighteen'; originally it consisted of eighteen blessings; a nineteenth one praying for an end to sectarians was added early in the Middle Ages, and that has since been replaced by the prayer calling for an end to the evil within us.
On the Sabbath this prayer is said in a very abbreviated form; the prayers praising and thanking God remain, but the petitionary prayers are felt to be inappropriate on the Sabbath, God's day of rest, and are replaced by a single blessing thanking God for the gift of the Sabbath.
There was debate in rabbinic times as to whether there should be a fixed written form for this prayer; the rabbis usually felt that it should be a spontaneous outpouring of the heart and the ordinary people felt that they needed help and inspiration and a written liturgy would provide that. In the centuries since, the written form has become so fixed that a text is provided even for the moments of private meditation at the beginning and end of the prayer.
This prayer is said in the morning and afternoon services where it replaces the temple offerings and also in the evening. Because it is said facing Jerusalem, it has generated an art-form, the provision of embroidered or painted texts to hang on the wall most nearly facing Jerusalem.
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