What Are We Doing When We Pray? A Rationalist Interpretation of Jewish Liturgy [based on a shiur given by R. Jason Rubenstein]

(A) My Problem: So much of the liturgy is literally false

(B) Their Problem: What some Prophets think of the Torah's descriptions of G-d.

(C) The Solution: The Action of the Men of the Great Assembly

8. Jewish Virtual Library, The Great Assembly:

According to traditional Jewish historiography, the Great Assembly (Anshe Knesset HaGedolah) was an assembly of 120 rabbis that ruled in the period after the time of the prophets up to the time of the development of rabbinic Judaism in 70 CE. They bridge a period of about two centuries. The tradition teaches that they redacted the books of Ezekiel, the twelve minor prophets (The Trei Asar), and the books of Daniel and Esther. They also composed the Shemonah Esreh, the standing prayer (Amidah) of 18, later 19, prayers that are still recited by Jews today. They canonized the Tanakh. Most important, they enacted a democratization of Jewish education, making the Torah the possession of all, instead of just the priestly class.

10. JZ Smith, “The Bare Facts of Ritual”, pp. 59-64

The Nivkhi say that “in order not to excite the bear’s posthumous revenge, do not surprise him but rather have a fair stand-up fight,” but the same report goes on to describe how they actually kill bears: “a spear, the head of which is covered with spikes, is laid on the ground, a cord is attached to it and, as the bear approaches [the ambush] the hunter [by pulling up on the cord] raises the weapon and the animal becomes impaled on it.” As this last suggests, not only ought we not to believe many of the elements in the description of the hunt as usually presented, but we ought not to believe that the hunters, from whom these descriptions were collected, believe it either.

There appears to be a gap, an incongruity between the hunters’ ideological statements of how they ought to hunt and their actual behavior while hunting… one is obligated to find out how they resolved this discrepancy…

I would suggest that, among other things, ritual represents the creation of a controlled environment where the variables (i.e., the accidents) of ordinary life may be displaced precisely because they are felt to be so overwhelmingly present and powerful. Ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are in such a way that this ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled, course of things…

Such a ceremony performed before undertaking an actual hunt demonstrates that the hunter knows full well what ought to transpire if he were in control; the fact that the ceremony is held is eloquent testimony that the hunter knows full well that it will not transpire, that he is not in control.

(D) New Problem, Old "Solution"? Maybe the Torah was always meant to be read this way:

11. R’ Shai Held, On Leviticus, 2015, available at hadar.org

Leviticus presents another, alternate reality to inhabit. Worship in the mishkan is “intended [as] a counterworld to Israel’s lived experience, which is dangerous and disordered. The counterworld offered in the tabernacle holds out the gift of a well-ordered, joy-filled, and peace-generating creation.”7 Bible scholar Samuel Balentine captures beautifully the point I am trying to make: “Who among us does not yearn for that one place, however small and difficult to find, that invites us to believe the ‘very good’ world God created and the world in which we scratch out our frail existence are in fact one and the same?”8 Leviticus attempts to describe and thus to evoke that place. In reading and studying Leviticus, we are invited to imagine and inhabit just such a space—if only for a brief moment. What happens to a person who has visited the mishkan—and by extension into our own time, who has imaginatively entered the mishkan through close study of the book of Leviticus? Having partaken of, or merely glimpsed, the counterworld that the mishkan represents, a person is changed (at least when the practice “works”). After the glimpse he has been afforded, nothing looks quite the same anymore. He sees that another reality is possible, that the chaos and suffering he observes all around him are not ultimately all there is.

(E) Some Implications: How A Rationalist Might Pray

12. Robin Le Poidevin - Agnosticism: A Very Short Introduction, pp.105-107:

There is, then something of a puzzle as to why fictions are capable of provoking the emotions that they do. But the phenomenon itself is incontestable. Now translate this to the religious sphere. Perhaps we are watching one of the York Mystery Plays, portraying the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus. It would be odd if such a performance did not evoke strong emotions. But now suppose, instead of being passive spectators, we were to engage in a religious ritual, or narrative, as a game of make-believe. Perhaps 'game' has the wrong kind of connotations here, as the language and images that typify religious ritual are not particularly game-like. But the point is that we engage in it as we would were we to take part in a play. Now, if we are sufficiently caught up, not only in the drama that is unfolding around us, but in our own roles in that drama, would our emotions not be aroused as deeply, if not more, as when we were merely onlookers? Perhaps, in order for us to immerse ourselves entirely, we have to forget that it is fiction that we are engaging in. But whatever the mental mechanism, there is every reason to suppose that participating in religion as fiction would be capable of evoking the same kind of emotional response as does our participating in other kinds of fiction.

Now let's take a further step, and suppose that, while engaged in the fiction, we realize that we don't know whether it is fictional or not. Or rather, although we are pretty sure that some elements will be fictional, there are other, perhaps more central, elements that may not be. What effect will that have on our emotional engagement? It can't, surely, diminish it. The hold that fiction has on us could only be increased if there were a sense that elements of it might correspond to reality. But this is precisely the agnostic position. There are parts of any religion which are fictional embellishments. But, at least in the case of the great religions, it cannot be demonstrated that the whole is a fiction. Would acceptance of a religion on such terms count as a genuine religious response? There seems no reason why not. After all, the theist will typically be agnostic about certain aspects of their religion: perhaps this particular component is true, perhaps not. And yet the whole religious fabric, with its distinctive language, history, morality, and images, is embraced as a seamless whole, not merely partitioned into the parts the theist is prepared to say he knows are true (and which evoke the strongest responses) and those about which he admits uncertainty (and towards which he consequently feels a certain detachment). The emotional commitment is towards the whole. So, even for the theist, such commitment is compatible with a degree of agnosticism. The religious agnostic is simply extending the area over which that attitude is taken.

13. Sam Lebens - The Epistemology of Religiosity: A Jewish Perspective, p.14

V. S. Ramachandran is a renowned neuroscientist and physician. He is the first physician to have cured the pain of amputees’ phantom limbs. Phantom hands are often clenched so tightly that the phantom fingers and finger nails inflict unbearable pain upon the phantom palm. Many of these patients can’t escape the pain because their phantom fists are paralysed in this eye-watering clench. Ramachandran discovered a surprisingly low-tech solution. He got his patients to put their remaining hands into a box, mimicking the position that they felt their phantom hands to be in. Inside the box was a mirror. When the patient looked down, he didn’t merely see his actual hand; he saw its reflection as well. This looked just like seeing his actual hand and his phantom. By slowly opening his only real hand, he could make it look as if he was opening both of his ‘hands’. And, sure enough, this deceived the brain into thinking that the phantom hand had opened. This relieved the pain.

These patients aren’t mad. They know that they only have one real hand. They knew that the box contained a mirror – they must have worked that out! But the illusion (even though they knew that it was an illusion) was what the brain needed to behave appropriately in the real world.