Timeless Torah

The image of Isaac, “Out into the field towards evening to meditate,” is highly appropriate for the introspective, quiet Patriarch. Biblical Isaac often appears withdrawn, inward, even passive. In his marriage, Rivkah is more often the active partner. Thus meditating in a field quite fits Isaac’s character.
The Talmud however, more concerned with halachah than psychology, draws its own inference from the verse. Isaac’s recorded ‘meditation’ refers to a prayer, while ‘towards evening’ means afternoon. Thus Mincha was born.
But as to the exact origin of our daily prayers, the Sages differ. “Rabbi Yose said, ‘The prayers were instituted by the Patriarchs.’ Rabbi Yehoshua said, ‘The prayers were instituted to replace the daily sacrifices’… in accordance with Rabbi Yose…Abraham instituted the morning prayer…Isaac, the afternoon prayer, and Jacob, the evening prayer.”

        In this disagreement more is at stake than mere history. At issue is the very nature of prayer itself. Two distinct spiritual traditions abound in biblical Judaism;  <strong> patriarchs (succeeded by the prophets) & priests.</strong> The patriarchs were shepherds. They wore no robes of office. They lived far from the cities of their time, and away from the noise of urban civilization they perceived the word of G-d. They prayed as the situation demanded, and no two prayers were the same. They spoke from the depths of their being to the One who is the depth of all Being. That is patriarchal prayer.

The other religious personality is the priest. He did have special robes of office. He was a ‘holy’ man, set apart. For him, divine service primarily meant the offering of a sacrifice. Everything about the Temple offerings was subject to detailed prescriptive rules and precisely defined ritual, never fluctuating, always the same.
Spontaneity, essential to the patriarch, is disastrous for the priest. Aaron’s two sons, Nadav and Avihu, seized by the mood of the moment, made their own offering, and died as a result. Both prophet and priest speak to the soul, and are necessary for Judaism. Without spontaneity, the spirit withers; without structure, it lapses into chaos.

The Talmud’s question was to which of these traditions did prayer belong: To the patriarch or the priest; to supplication or sacrifice; to the personal dialogue of the individual; or the collective worship of the nation?

To this day we maintain both practices. We recite each <em>amidah </em>(standing prayer) twice: once privately and silently as individuals, and then a second time publicly and collectively as a community (the chazzan’s repetition). The silent prayer belongs to the world of the Patriarch. It is private, personal and can include (within certain halachic parameters) individualized requests. The chazzan however follows a set ritual as unchanging as the ancient sacrifices. We thus preserve both traditions.

Equally significant is the different character of the prayers, due to the patriarchs’ different personalities and histories. Abraham is morning: the dawn of a new faith. It was he who broke his father’s idols and journeyed away from home and birthplace to a new and unknown destination. Abraham represents beginning, a new chapter in the religious history of mankind.

        Isaac is afternoon. There is nothing spectacular about the afternoon; there is no qualitative change from dark to light or day to night. Instead there is a slow transition, an almost imperceptible shift towards the lengthening shadows. Yet it is the bridge of continuity that joins the generations.

Jacob is night. His great vision of the ladder and angels occurs at night. He struggles with an unknown adversary at night. He ends his life in exile, heralding the long, dark night of slavery. Jacob’s great strength is that he does not let go. He is born holding his brother’s heel. He refuses to let go of the stranger wrestling with him. Jacob represents tenacity…even in the dark.

    The verbs associated with each are also different. Abraham “rises early” and “stands.”  He initiates prayer. Jacob, by contrast, “encounters.”  It is not he who seeks G-d on his flight from home but G-d who seeks him. The phrase used <em>“Vayifga ba-makom,”</em> could also be read to mean, “He bumped into G-d.” These are the spiritual experiences we have when we are least expecting them; when we are alone, afraid, thinking of something else altogether. Jacob prays because he understands that not everything in life is under our control. The great transformative experiences; love, a sudden sense of beauty, an upsurge of happiness, all happen unpredictably. The glory of Jacob’s epiphany is that it happened at night, in the midst of fear and flight.

The third kind of prayer is Isaac “meditating” which in modern Hebrew primarily means, conversation. Indeed, all prayer is a conversation between heaven and earth. Genuine prayer (like all conversation) opens one to another perspective. As a result, one can change and grow. Prayer is not monologue but dialogue.
Thus there are three modes of spirituality that we each experience in the course of a single day. There is the human quest (Abraham, morning prayer), the divine encounter (Jacob, evening prayer), and the dialogue (Isaac, afternoon). These three events are not just episodes of our glorious past. They represent permanent possibilities for us who follow in their footsteps, so that we can be lifted by their example, enlarged by their spirit, and summoned to their heights.

So go daven ,/strong> (a term borrowed from the Aramaic word, d’avuhon, meaning from our Fathers). In other words, do what your forefathers did; search, converse, and who knows what you will encounter.