OzTorah

Prayer plays an important role in Jacob’s life.

He prayed when he left home as a lonely young man, full of apprehension. He prayed on his way home twenty years later, still fearing his brother’s wrath.

From his prayer on this occasion is derived a basic liturgical principle, that one should praise God before proceeding to pray to Him.

This explains why the Amidah, central to each of the daily services, opens with blessings of praise before continuing with petitions.

In Jacob’s case, the praise first acknowledged God’s mercies and then came to the point: “Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau” (Gen. 32: 9-13).

But there is a problem with the principle of “praise, then pray”, since God is not likely to be susceptible to flattery, nor can we imagine Him waiting for us to praise Him before deciding whether to respond to our petitions. He can hardly be a God who can be bought.

Telling Him how great He is will in itself not influence His answer to our prayer. And yet we still echo Jacob and praise Him first.

Jacob himself provides the key, in one simple word, katonti – “I am not worthy of all Your mercies” (Gen. 32:11). So much is summed up in this one word.

What do we do when we pray? Two things, both suggested by Abraham Joshua Heschel in his celebrated essay, “Two Types of Prayer”.

The first is amazement at God’s world, awe at being in the Divine presence. In the light of God’s greatness we are overtaken by humility. We say katonti. In the scheme of things we are so small. How can we have a claim on God? Our praise is our recognition that He is so great and we are so small.

But then we pray. And “genuine prayer,” says Heschel, “is an event in which man surpasses himself. Man hardly comprehends what is coming to pass… What is happening is not always brought about by the power of man.”

Despite our smallness we are lifted up beyond ourselves to be able to speak to God and to find a place in the Divine plan.

God’s answer to our petition may be “no”, a “no” that is said by His silence: we have sought too much, or the wrong thing.

It may also be “yes”, the “yes” that comes when we turn back to our earthly concerns and find ourselves blessed and guided on the right path.

When Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, she was buried under an oak that was called allon bachut, “the oak of weeping” (Gen. 35:8).

We know that Rebekah had been accompanied by Deborah when she went to marry Isaac (Gen. 24:59).

Rashi says that it was the nurse whom Rebekah sent to bring Jacob home after Esau’s anger died down (Gen. 27:45), but she died en route. If it is the same Deborah throughout the story, she must have been very old when she died.

Why her burial place was allon bachut is explained by Nachmanides on the basis that Rebekah herself had died and the weeping associated with the oak tree was for Rebekah. But why is Rebekah’s death and funeral not reported more fully?

Perhaps because it was unlikely that the family would have attended her burial. Isaac was old and unable to see; Jacob was away from home; and Esau was impatient with religion (the sages say that his quarrel with Jacob began on the day of Abraham’s funeral, when Esau resented giving up his hunting for the sake of a funeral). So Rebekah’s funeral must have been very modest.

Q. How can we allow infants to be converted to Judaism when they can’t yet think for themselves?

A. When the mother of an infant is converted to Judaism, the child’s conversion is usually carried out at about the same time. A conversion is also carried out when a Jewish couple adopt the child of a non-Jewish birth mother.

The validity of a small child’s conversion depends on whether being Jewish is regarded as an advantage for the child, in which case there is a presumption of consent.

However, when the child reaches the age of Bar- or Bat-Mitzvah he or she has the right to repudiate the conversion, though cases of repudiation are rare and highly unlikely if the child is brought up in an observant Jewish home and given a Jewish education.

This entails kashrut, Shabbat observance, Torah study and synagogue attendance; Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled that at the very least the parents must commit themselves to an orthodox Jewish day school education for their child.

The purpose is not to impose Judaism upon someone who may not want it, but to share the conviction that a child will find that Jewishness makes such sense and is a rich source of inspiration and a great blessing.

Q. If Chanukah is about freedom of religion, what is religious freedom?

A. The individual should be free to believe or not to believe, to practise or not to practise.

These days that is a given, but it wasn’t always so when religious and political regimes decided they could pry into people’s inmost thoughts and to punish them if they were not prepared to commit themselves to a particular type of faith.

The Marranos are evidence that Jews tried to maintain their own beliefs in private whilst publicly professing what their tormentors wanted. If the regime found out, the Jews were punished. Since the Enlightenment, religious belief has become a private affair of the individual conscience.

Freedom of religion has a wider ambit, however, in terms of the right to function in the public arena. To function – unmolested. To erect and maintain houses of worship – in safety. To teach children and adults – without interference.

Again a given in the modern democratic context, but we remember the days when Judaism was proscribed or persecuted in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The right to freedom of religion in democratic societies even extends further, to being seen and heard in the market place of ideas.

In all these senses, freedom of religion owes a great deal to the Maccabean struggle.

It’s a well known idea that when the Torah says (Gen. 28:11) that Jacob “encountered the place”, it means that he prayed.

HaMakom, “The Place”, is one of the names of God, who is in every place. (HaMakom can also be understood as the holy site of the Temple).

What was the nature of Jacob’s prayer?

The essence of his words is, “If God will be with me and guard me, then He will be my God” (Gen. 28:20).

It appears to be selfish: if God looks after me, then I will accept Him as my God. There is an implication: but if He doesn’t look after me and guard me, then He will not be my God.

Before giving a serious answer, let me recall an incident.

A bridegroom told me that he would not come to the synagogue service on the Shabbat before his wedding because Shabbat was his busiest day and he would lose a lot of money if he had to close the shop. Only if God promised to make up the money would he come for an Aufruf.

I couldn’t make that promise on God’s behalf, though I did persuade the young man that his bride was worth it and he should come to shule for her sake.

Think about his argument: “If God does something for me, I will do something for God; but if God doesn’t co-operate, neither will I”. Is that what Jacob was also saying?

Maybe the rabbis are registering a protest against the making-a-bargain theory when they say that what Jacob was doing was praying.

Note what precedes Jacob’s words. Before he speaks God says, “I am with you and I will guard you” (verse 15), and Jacob responds, “Surely the Lord is in this place!” (verse 16).

He doesn’t need to talk about HaShem being his God: he has found this already. Nor does he need to make a bargain (“If God will be with me…”): he already has God’s promise.

So what is Jacob really saying?

His “if” is not conditional, but a prayer: “Please, God, may it be thus, that You will be with me, guard me and be my God”.