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April 14, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
06:59
The Difference Between Christian and Jewish Prayers
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There are many forms of prayer.
The one that most people think of is petitionary.
I pray to God for something.
That my child get well, that I get well.
Usually it's health.
Sometimes it's for circumstances to change in one's life for the better.
But most people think of prayer.
I will pray for you.
Which is a beautiful, by the way, a beautiful sentiment.
But it overwhelmingly does mean that I will pray that something good happens to you.
That's a petitionary prayer, but it's not for yourself.
And so there's a real nobility to it in most cases.
In Judaism, which is my religion, the vast majority of prayer, I would say, 99% is not petitionary.
So this is sort of new to me, or was new.
I mean, now it's most of my life I'm aware of it.
But the notion that prayer is overwhelmingly asking God for something was new to me when I learned of, basically, religion in the Christian world.
In my 30s, when I was the moderator of a program with a priest, rabbi, and minister, different ones each week, and I learned a lot, and of course spoke to so many Christians for decades.
And for most people, it seems, that is what prayer is.
God, please do the following.
That does exist in the Bible.
There's no question about it.
But those are rare individuals.
They had a particular role to play, and I do believe that where God has a large role to play, a prayer may be answered.
I believe that a prayer may be answered even in a regular person's life.
I'm not opposed to petitionary prayer, but I don't assume it will happen.
Although, I have to be honest with you, I have done petitionary prayer literally twice in my life.
That's it.
In my entire life, I've asked God twice for something.
And in both cases, those things did materialize.
One was pretty silly.
I was about 10 years old, 11 years old, and I broke my parents.
Most expensive single item in the house, a very expensive vase from Italy.
And I was sure I would get killed, figuratively, not literally.
And I sort of went in the upstairs bathroom, locked the door.
They were not home yet.
And I prayed to God that my mother not kill me.
I did not think he would yell at me.
She got angry with me.
To my shock, she didn't.
And I thought, whoa, that seemed to work.
But I did not learn the lesson to ask God for things as a result of that one time.
And the next time I did was probably 50 years later, maybe more.
Let's see, maybe about 55 years later, when I asked for something.
Family related, and that turned out well as well.
I don't know if God intervened in either case, and it is not my belief that it is good for people to walk around thinking God will answer their petitionary prayer, because if it doesn't happen,
that is the cause for many people losing faith in God.
Because God didn't answer their prayer the way they wanted, or answer it at all, if you will.
And so they lose faith in God.
That's why I'm not a fan of advocacy of petitionary prayer.
More often than not, it leads people to a disappointment and even alienation from, a disappointment with and alienation from God.
Jewish prayer, as I said, is 99% non-petitionary.
It is in books of prayer, known as the Sidur, the Order of Prayer.
And it's overwhelmingly quotations from the Bible.
And it's mostly praise and thanksgiving.
But it is not petitionary.
And when there are petitions, the rare prayers that are petitionary are, interestingly, All in the plural.
So there is a prayer, God please heal, as in medically heal, us, but not me.
In fact, the word I almost never, again, less than 1% of Jewish prayer has the word I in it.
It is all collective.
With many people.
So, yes, it's not that I don't believe in prayer.
I believe deeply in prayer.
One final word which will really fascinate you all, and certainly you, Kathy in Arizona, the word to pray in Hebrew is a reflexive verb.
Now, most Americans don't understand that term because English is one of the only languages that does not have reflexive verbs.
Almost every language does.
I do to myself this action.
So in French, you don't say, I wash my hands.
I wash myself the hands.
It would be similar in Spanish.
Hebrew has reflexive.
Russian has reflexive among languages that I've studied.
And it means, again, you do it to yourself.
Isn't it odd that the word to pray is reflexive?
As if you pray to yourself?
Well, literally speaking, and even most Jews don't know this, the word lehitpalel, for those interested, that word means to examine oneself.
That's what prayer at best is.
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