Pray Tell!

This week’s Torah portion repeats the instructions for and the events concerning the building of the Mikdash; as Rabbi Plaut points out, while this repetition might feel tedious to modern readers, it would have been reassuring to ancient listeners: the more clearly version A and version B connect, the more likely those facts were to be true.

The repetition also underscores the importance in the building of the Mikdash of a partnership; God cannot live among the people if the people don’t create a place for God. Moreover, the children of Israel can’t build the Mikdash individually. It’s up to all of them to work together to create the Mikdash. Partnership therefore works two ways: on the one hand, it takes a partnership of Jews to create a sacred space, and the relationship between Jews and God also requires a partnership.

What is it that makes a partnership successful? No matter what sort of pairing we’re talking about, communication forms the most important aspect of partnership. You can’t work together if you don’t know what the other party wants, right? Certainly the relationship between B’nai Yisrael and God might not be an equal partnership, but we still need to communicate with the Divine. To me, that’s where prayer comes in.

To pray with sincerity, as the Talmud exhorts us to do, is to pray with the belief that God hears us. Prayer is therefore an inherently affirmative, optimistic act: the very act of praying implies that we believe someone is listening—that God is listening. So pray with sincerity. Converse with God. Communicate with your partner. Allow prayer to be transformative. God is listening, so you might as well have something to say.