Imaginary Prayer

Don't miss an episode! Subscribe to the Madlik podcast: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts

and Join Madlik on Clubhouse every Thursday at 8:00pm Eastern so you can participate in our weekly live discussion of the Parsha

פָּלַל Transliteration pālal pronunciation paw-lal' Part of Speech verb

Root Word (Etymology)

A primitive root

Dictionary Aids

TWOT Reference: 1776

KJV Translation Count — Total: 84x

The KJV translates Strong's H6419 in the following manner: pray (74x), made (3x), judge (2x), intreat (1x), judgment (1x), prayer (1x), supplication (1x), thought (1x).

Outline of Biblical Usage [?]

1. to intervene, interpose, pray

   1. (Piel) to mediate, judge

   2. (Hithpael)

      1. to intercede

      2. to pray

see Strong's Biblical Concordance

The Hebrew word for "to pray" ("hitpalel) does not mean “to ask" or "to petition" God. It is derived from a stem, pll, that is closest in meaning to the last of these four types of prayer. It means to judge; therefore l'hitpalel, ("to pray"), could also be translated as "to judge oneself." Here lies a clue to the real purpose for engaging in prayer. Whether we petition God to give us what we need, or thank Him for whatever good was granted, or extol Him for His awesome attributes, all prayer is intended to help make us into better human beings.

To Pray as a Jew: A Guide to the Prayer Book and the Synagogue Service Paperback – August 13, 2019

by Hayim H. Donin p. 5

The Hebrew word for prayer is “hitpallel” – which is a reflexive verb literally meaning to pray to oneself. In prayer we do not only pray to God. We equally look inside ourselves – deciding what our true needs and goals are. We must ask ourselves what we want in life and why. Do we want X because it is truly our soul’s need, or because someone else has it? Is this something we can really stand before God and say this is a need? Or is it just a vain fantasy, something either not appropriate or not realistic for us? God wants us to pray to Him not because He needs to be reminded what our needs are, but so that we can understand this ourselves. Prayer is an exercise in coming closer to ourselves as much as to God.

At the end of Jacob’s life, Joseph brings his sons Ephraim and Manasseh for blessings. Jacob exclaims to Joseph “I did not even imagine seeing your face, and behold, God has also shown me your offspring (Genesis 48:11). The word Jacob uses for “imagine” is “filalti” – of the same root as the word hitpallel. Prayer is thus not only asking God for something. It is imagining becoming whom I’d like to become. Prayer is envisioning myself becoming a greater person – and asking God for the Divine assistance to help me get there.

See: How to Pray Well. by Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld

St. Igantius

These are the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, a plan of contemplation to be carried out over about a month. St. Ignatius of Loyola (1419-1556) was the founder of the Jesuits, and was canonized by Pope Gregory XV in 1622. He published the Spiritual Exercises in 1548. The Exercises were intended for use during a retreat; and are a central part of the first year training of Jesuit novitiates. However, one does not have to be a Jesuit-in-training to take advantage of the Exercises: Increasingly, lay people and even non-Catholics follow this path. see

Ignatius was convinced that God can speak to us as surely through our imagination as through our thoughts and memories. In the Ignatian tradition, praying with the imagination is called contemplation. In the Exercises, contemplation is a very active way of praying that engages the mind and heart and stirs up thoughts and emotions. (Note that in other spiritual traditions, contemplation has quite a different meaning: it refers to a way of praying that frees the mind of all thoughts and images.) See

Ignatius would never have thought of himself as a highly educated intellectual. He had an advanced degree from the University of Paris, the finest university in Europe at the time. He was well-acquainted with the ideas of leading philosophers and theologians. He was an excellent analytical thinker.

But the mental quality of thought that drove his spiritual life was his remarkable imagination. His imagination played a central role in his conversion. Through his many years of directing others he discovered how useful the imagination could be in fostering a deeper relationship with God. Imaginative prayer is recognized as one of the hallmarks of Ignatian spirituality.

1. Pray with Scripture imaginatively. Imagine the sights and sounds of a biblical story, either as an observer or as a participant in the scene. Begin with imagining a particular sound or sight, or how something in the environment might feel to the touch, and then let the scene unfold. Let God speak to you through the unique way that you experience this scene. ..
2. Take inspiration from an object that sparks your imagination.
3. Have a conversation with God We not only speak but also listen for replies. ... Does the conversation lead to any insights or help me to arrive at greater peace, love, or forgiveness? If so, then I know that God is speaking through this kind of prayer.
4. Imagine another person’s point of view. Ignatius suggested that we always try to put a good interpretation onto another’s actions and assume that person’s best intentions. My own view is not the only one; another person may be experiencing the situation differently than the way that I assume.
5. Give thanks. Bring to mind a series of pictures of people, relationships, communities, pets, or others for whom you are grateful. Give thanks as you imagine each person, place, or thing. Savor the gifts as you imagine each one.
6. Remember the saints in heaven. Both formally recognized saints and loved ones who have passed before us are supporting us and still in relation to us, whether we feel it or not. We can remember their love for us by imagining moments of past love, as shown through deeds, and so retaining their presence in our hearts.
7. Let go of old images of God and allow new ones to emerge. Scripture contains many images of God: God as a loving father (Psalm 68:5), spouse (Song of Songs), a mother eagle protecting her young (Deuteronomy 32:11–12), a rock or fortress (Psalm 62:6), and so many more. Throughout our lives, old images of God may fade or break, but new ones are there too. God is beyond any single image. When we allow a new side of God to emerge in new images, we expand our understanding of this great Mystery.

see

Here’s a method for using images in a new way to connect with God in prayer.

Pick an image and imagine yourself in that place — make it come to life in your mind. Then invite God to join you. Spend some time with God, maybe sharing your day or whatever is most pressing on your mind, and then, just enjoy being in God’s presence (this is contemplation! At least, that’s the hope!).

Soon, there will be thoughts and feeling rushing to claim your attention. Don’t work at stopping them, let them come. But instead of focusing on those thoughts that come, focus your attention on your breathing, focus on its rhythm, and return to what you’re seeing. Allow all these things to help you let your thoughts pass through but not stay. Stay with that for a moment.

Finally, imagine that God comes to join you — in whatever shape that flows for you. Imagine God quietly sits next to you and then just allow your prayer to unfold. Whatever happens next is up to you and God. From your end, it will be shaped by who you are — your personality and your current relationship with God. Maybe you’ll sit in awkward silence for a few minutes before going your separate ways, no words exchanged. Maybe as soon as God sits, you start talking about what’s uppermost in your mind. Maybe God speaks to you or asks you questions.

After you’ve spent some time with God, turn to say goodbye.

See: One Way to Bring Imaginative Prayer to Life, Amanda Roberts

The Saving Grace of the Tragedy

AND yet the interruption of the historical development of enlightened Judaism after the thirteenth century, the rejection of Maimonides’ philosophy as an integral element of Judaism, was not without its special blessing. It has saved us from an additional set of intellectual fetters. I can easily understand the glee and rapture of such a devoted, far-sighted Jew as Samuel David Luzzatto at the successive defeats of the Maimunists in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. For imagine our present embarrassment if the Moreh Nehukim had been accepted as an authoritative work of dogmatic theology as the Shidhan Aruk was later accepted as the authoritative code for practical religious guidance. We would then have a fixed philosophy to fetter our thinking as we now have a fixed ritual to fetter our acting. Combative orthodoxy would have to the present day insisted upon the scrapped doctrines of Aristotle and Avicenna because they had been taught by the great master. With Maimonides’ philosophy rejected, those of us who relish this kind of pastime are at liberty to synthesize our Judaism with philosophies of a later date. Happily Maimonides is our precedent; he is not our arbiter. How much more fortunate we are than the Catholics. They, too, had their Maimonides in Thomas Aquinas. It happened that the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas became the official philosophy of the Church. Ever since, the Catholic church has had to defend it, has had to retain its medieval scholasticism under the guise of neo-scholasticism. Catholicism not only has to defend its scriptures and its traditions against the onslaughts of the modern inquiring spirit ; it also has to defend the Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas against the heresies of modern science and philosophy.

The Craving of Reform for Modernity

BUT there is one note of warning that should be sounded. As theology by its very nature must be constantly changing, to maintain the continuity of religious thought, we must not be too prone to change the form in which theology seeks to express itself. We should endeavor to retain the old familiar forms of expression and be satisfied with merely reading some new meaning into them. It will not do to coin a new term for God every time we change our conception of him. Achad Ha-’Am has quite wisely pointed out in his essay “Sacred and Profane” the importance of having old forms retained in things sacred. And for this reason I cannot tolerate the many breaches in theological good taste on the part of our liberal Jews. Especially offensive in this respect is the Union Prayer Book which is used in most of the temples of liberal Jews throughout the United States. I do not mind the entire omission of certain passages which to my mind should not have been omitted, for this is their own belief, or rather their own misbelief. But I cannot bring myself to look with composure upon the mutilation of certain ancient phraseologies, where a mere change of meaning and new interpretation would have served the purpose. It always jars upon my sense of propriety when I hear the rabbis read “Praise be to Thee, 0 God, who hast implanted within us immortal life” in place of the old, familiar, traditional “Praise be to Thee, O God, who quickenest the dead. [בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה הֹ' מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים] ” What noble bravery, forsooth, to flaunt openly, in so many words, their rejection of the belief of bodily resurrection ! What a petty display of intellectual freedom ! There was once Maimonides and with him probably a host of others who did not follow the common interpretation of resurrection as the rising to a life which is to last forever. There is none among us today, I believe, who. has greater conscientious objections than had Maimonides and his followers to uttering a belief in eternal physical life as the ultimate destiny of man, and yet they were quite satisfied to repeat three times daily the old prayer unchanged, with its undoubted traditional connotation of a belief in the rising of the dead to an eternal bodily existence. And we today, with our vague and vacillating notions about all things eschatalogical, dodging the issue whenever we are called upon to declare ourselves, drowning our ignorance and indecisions in torrents of meaningless verbiage, believing in ghosts and in spiritism,—we are objecting to the utterance of the phrase “quickenest the dead” as something blasphemous.

All this must be said because, after all, liberal Judaism is the Judaism of the future; it is the only type of Judaism that is valiantly grappling with the intellectually religious problem ; it is the most active, the most energetic spiritual force in Judaism today. It enjoys a worldly prosperity unequalled in the history of any other Jewish religious body; it has an admirable organization and an efficient, capable, contented clergy. But unfortunately it has prematurely lost its spirit of adventure, of revolt, and of experiment. It begins to look upon the youthful indiscretions of its young past as reverent precedents to bind it for all times in the future. It is afraid of changing its mind. So young, and already the opinionation of its elders prevails in its councils over the ardor of its younger men. It has set itself up as a sect, instead of remaining what it really is, a stage in the process of Judaism’s adjustment to the world. It preaches about a mission to humanity, forgetting its great mission to the Jews. It has destroyed its unlimited power for good and usefulness by alienating itself from the common strivings of the Jewish people. It affects the sanctimonious liberalism of a pharisaic Christian and the haughty pride of a decadent breed of blue blood. While Judaism is calling, it wastes itself in fighting imaginary phobias. Above all, it suffers from an excessive craving for modernity, formality, and respectability.

Wolfson, Austryn Wolfson (1923). Escaping Judaism. United States: Menorah Press, Intercollegiate Menorah Association.