Prayer I think is sometimes effective. But I think it has to go along with general life style. That is ones's actions and words and thoughts should also be prayer. Prayer by itself does not work if it is unrelated to one's actions.
There were times that in my own life I think prayer was effective.
I broke my leg fending off vicious dogs. And I had prayed before that for help from God. For the month in was in the hospital I was wondering what good was my prayer? Then the last day there it occurred to me that this business with my leg got me out of a much worse situation than I had been in ever before. But I could not escape until the event of the broken leg.
This maybe is not very much of an inspiring lesson but it does help me get to my point. That Rosh Hashanah is about teshuva repentance. But since moral obligations are obscure what I think is a good idea is to spend time praying to merit to repent. My logic is that at least a few times in my life when I prayed or something, the prayers seemed to get answered.
I was in Safed in Israel and I remember one time my wife was asking me about parnasa [money]. I told her I would go out and pray about it. So I went out [not by kivrei tzadikim but rather in the forest] and for one hour I prayed only about parnasa--nothing else. After that in fact there was a kind of help n that direction.
There were other times when things were more desperate. There was a time I was in the shiloach [underground steam] in Jerusalem which is at the bottom of along flight of stairs. The Arabs on the top of the stair case were throwing large stones down the stair case in order to kill me so I prayed then a short prayer. "God, if they succeed, my children will never know who I was. I have no army and no weapons. But I have You." And then I started walking up the stairs. The shower of rocks stopped. When I reached the top the Arabs were there and one called out to the others "Here he is," and they started throwing rocks again. They were in point blank range. But not one rock hit me. As I was walking away, I saw a stream of rocks flowing by my head, but not one hit me.
So I definitely feel prayer is sometimes effective; but in some way that is not clear. It is not just a matter of how hard one prays or sincere one is.
What I am trying to get at is that moral obligations are so inherently hard to know -the best approach is to pray to be put on the right path. At least one day in the year that is Rosh Hashanah.
It is not that the laws of Torah are ambiguous, but rather their application in everyday life. Another problem is people that make money supposedly teaching Torah are liars.That makes it difficult to know what the Torah really says. [So to have a decent idea of what Torah says you have two choices, (1) either find a straight normal Lithuanian yeshiva like Ponovitch or the Ivy League NY Litvak Yeshivas. Or (2) learn Talmud and Musar and the Avi Ezri at home. I should mention that even though I have no first hand knowledge, but Mizrachi or Bnei Akiva kinds of Yeshivas also seem pretty good to me. I do not know ll the names they go by. One name I have heard is דתי לאומ (religious Zionist) and these places seem very good to me. They seem to have "balance."
The basic premise of the great Litvak yeshivas is that virtue can be learned and taught. And they seem to come to that goal to a large degree. But the kind of approach I think that brings to virtue is to learn Musar, Physics, and survival skills.
There were times that in my own life I think prayer was effective.
I broke my leg fending off vicious dogs. And I had prayed before that for help from God. For the month in was in the hospital I was wondering what good was my prayer? Then the last day there it occurred to me that this business with my leg got me out of a much worse situation than I had been in ever before. But I could not escape until the event of the broken leg.
This maybe is not very much of an inspiring lesson but it does help me get to my point. That Rosh Hashanah is about teshuva repentance. But since moral obligations are obscure what I think is a good idea is to spend time praying to merit to repent. My logic is that at least a few times in my life when I prayed or something, the prayers seemed to get answered.
I was in Safed in Israel and I remember one time my wife was asking me about parnasa [money]. I told her I would go out and pray about it. So I went out [not by kivrei tzadikim but rather in the forest] and for one hour I prayed only about parnasa--nothing else. After that in fact there was a kind of help n that direction.
There were other times when things were more desperate. There was a time I was in the shiloach [underground steam] in Jerusalem which is at the bottom of along flight of stairs. The Arabs on the top of the stair case were throwing large stones down the stair case in order to kill me so I prayed then a short prayer. "God, if they succeed, my children will never know who I was. I have no army and no weapons. But I have You." And then I started walking up the stairs. The shower of rocks stopped. When I reached the top the Arabs were there and one called out to the others "Here he is," and they started throwing rocks again. They were in point blank range. But not one rock hit me. As I was walking away, I saw a stream of rocks flowing by my head, but not one hit me.
So I definitely feel prayer is sometimes effective; but in some way that is not clear. It is not just a matter of how hard one prays or sincere one is.
What I am trying to get at is that moral obligations are so inherently hard to know -the best approach is to pray to be put on the right path. At least one day in the year that is Rosh Hashanah.
It is not that the laws of Torah are ambiguous, but rather their application in everyday life. Another problem is people that make money supposedly teaching Torah are liars.That makes it difficult to know what the Torah really says. [So to have a decent idea of what Torah says you have two choices, (1) either find a straight normal Lithuanian yeshiva like Ponovitch or the Ivy League NY Litvak Yeshivas. Or (2) learn Talmud and Musar and the Avi Ezri at home. I should mention that even though I have no first hand knowledge, but Mizrachi or Bnei Akiva kinds of Yeshivas also seem pretty good to me. I do not know ll the names they go by. One name I have heard is דתי לאומ (religious Zionist) and these places seem very good to me. They seem to have "balance."
The basic premise of the great Litvak yeshivas is that virtue can be learned and taught. And they seem to come to that goal to a large degree. But the kind of approach I think that brings to virtue is to learn Musar, Physics, and survival skills.
