This is a sermon I originally shared on Rosh HaShonah, 2005.

Rabbi Hamnunah says (Brachos 31a), “Many important laws about how to pray are derived from the narrative of Chanah,” which is the narrative we read as the Haftorah on the first day of Rosh HaShonah. In other words, every time we pray, we imitate Chanah’s prayer for a child.

But aren’t there other prayers throughout the Torah we could use as models? Aren’t there other examples of poignant needs? Aren’t there other barren women who pray for a child? Why is this prayer the paradigm? What is it about this prayer that we are required to reenact every time we pray?

There are several answers. Here is one.

There is a fascinating lesson in the Talmud (Sotah 22a – this section is based on the writing of Dr. Aviva Zornberg). It concerns a rather technical issue, but underlying it is an inspiring message. If there are two synagogues and you walk to the more distant one, you receive a reward for the journey, even if you could have prayed more conveniently in the nearer synagogue.

So, on this, Rav Yehuda Lowe, the Maharal, asks the following question: We generally assume there are two parts to performing a Mitzvah - the Mitzvah itself, and the preparation for the Mitzvah - Hechsher Mitzvah. For example, there is a Mitzvah to eat Matzah on Pesach. Before Pesach, if you actually bake your Matzah, you are involving yourself in the Hechsher or preparation of the Mitzvah of eating Matzah. Or when you go shopping and buy the Matzah, that is the Hechsher or preparation of the Mitzvah of eating Matzah.

That would seem to be analogous to walking to synagogue. It is the Hechsher Mitzvah, the preparation for praying with the congregation.

Now let’s go back to the lesson of two synagogues. Asks the Maharal, Why should I be rewarded more for walking to a further synagogue? There is no analogous teaching that if I shop for Matzah at a store which is further from me I have increased the Hechsher Mitzvah. If the benefit of a Hechsher Mitzvah is only preparation, to enable me to observe the Mitzvah, why should going beyond the minimum be rewarded?

Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner explains the answer as follows: traveling to synagogue is not a Hechsher Mitzvah. Coming closer to a synagogue - to the place where we as a community approach God, is not a preparation for prayer – it is an actual part of prayer.

Taking three steps forward to begin the Amidah is only the end of a journey we began earlier, at home. It is doing with our feet what in prayer we do with our hearts and our lips - moving closer to God - and the more we do of that, the better.

Chanah’s prayer is unique in that it begins with a journey. As the Haftorah tells us, it begins in Romosayim Tzofim, a village in the southern part of Israel - the province of Efriam, the home of Chanah and her husband Elkaneh. That’s where the prayer starts. And it continues northward, to the town of Shiloh in the north, where the Mishkan is located. The words Chanah utters in the presence of Eli, the High Priest, are only the conclusion of this prayer.

Now, you can choose to walk to any synagogue you wish – though I hope you will choose the Adath. But what every one of us must remember each time we begin to pray is that prayer is a journey towards God – we end up in a new place from where we begin. We imitate Chanah when we pray in order to remind ourselves that we too should be traveling.

Listen to how dramatically the prophet Jeremiah expresses it. In describing the redemption and in-gathering of the exile, and the re-establishment of a relationship with God based on peace and closeness and hope, he says:
And you will call out to Me, and come to Me – travel towards Me – to pray to Me, and I will listen to your prayers. You will seek Me – and you will find Me – if you seek me with all your might. (29:12,13)

Long ago, in Poland, there were two friends who had not seen each other in many years. One became a successful businessman and the other became a rabbi known for his scholarship and his spirituality. One day they met each other after many years, when the businessman came to the shul of the rabbi. He noticed that the rabbi prayed very slowly, with uncommon feeling and emotion. So he asked his friend, “Why is it that your prayer takes so long? We were raised and educated together. I also try to pray carefully.”

The rabbi said to him, “You’re a businessman, right? How do you do your business?” “Well, twice a year I go to Leipzig, which is the largest city in the region, and I buy merchandise, and I bring it back home and sell it for a profit.” “But, why do you go to Leipzig? Why don’t you just sit at home and imagine that you are in Leipzig, and imagine that you are bringing the merchandise home, and then sell it, and you won’t have to waste all that time traveling to Leipzig.” “Are you crazy? What good does it do to imagine I am in Leipzig? I have to actually go there.”

And the rabbi said, “Of course I understand. You see when I pray, I don’t just imagine I am traveling closer to God. I go there. I go to Leipzig. And that takes longer.”

But the fundamental question is, how does it work? Why does God answer prayers? For example if someone is sick and they pray to God to be healed, why should it help? If God decides that a person should get well, they should recover even without prayer. And if God decides they should not recover, why would He change the outcome because of a prayer?

There are several approaches to this question. Rabbi Yosef Albo answers because through prayer I become a different person. The decree of illness was against another, who was further from God. But I have brought myself closer. I am in a different place. I have moved myself.I have transformed myself through my prayer, through my contact with God. I am, now, someone else, entitled - perhaps - to a different outcome.

Of course, sometimes, sadly, the answer is no. And the answer can be no even if our prayer is perfect. But how can you tell if you have prayed effectively – if you have really prayed?

If you feel you are different when you finish.

We have a problem today with prayer. Rabbi Saul Berman has written “So, having alienated God from our work and our problems, from our risks and our accidents – is it any wonder that people sit for three hours in Synagogue on Shabbat morning with nothing to talk about with God? Prayer feels like a forced conversation with a distant uncle, trying to elicit fragments of ancient family history, yet grateful for any possible interruption.”

Rabbi Yisroel Miller tells of a husband and wife who are driving, and the husband has his hands on the steering wheel. His wife asks, "I remember 25 years ago, when we used to drive, we sat much closer. Why are we so far apart now?" Her husband, with his hands on the wheel answered, "I haven't moved."

I’m not sure that’s a good answer to your spouse. But it precisely describes our problem with prayer. We need to move. We need to come closer to God. Like Chanah – we need to begin a journey.

I learned this lesson from my dear friend, a friend of many of us - Rabbi Mordechai Glick. You may remember part of this story from about 5 years ago. Mordechai and his wife Nina have a daughter and son-in-law in Rochester. His name is Dr. Boruch Eisenberg. At the time he was 44 and they have 7 children. On a Sunday morning in May, Boruch collapsed and stopped breathing.

By the time I managed to reach Mordechai that afternoon, he was in his car driving to Rochester. He told me it didn’t look good, he understood from the doctors that his son-in-law was brain dead. People in different parts of the world gathered to pour out their hearts in prayer – in Rochester, in Jerusalem, in Montreal, including here at the Adath.

That was Sunday. On Wednesday, Boruch walked out of intensive care into a regular hospital room. Within two weeks, he was home and fully recovered. It was an absolute, inexplicable, open miracle.

A couple of weeks after this I was speaking to Mordechai, we were talking about the power of prayer, and he said, “Do you know what the most remarkable thing is?”

Now, I never would have thought to ask him that, because it was pretty obvious the most remarkable thing is that Boruch recovered from virtually certain death. But that’s not what Mordechai said. And what he said is so amazing I asked him for permission to tell this story.

He said, “Boruch has a neighbor in Rochester – a Jewish man, very secular, so much so that he scoffs at religion – but they are friends. A few days after Boruch came home from the hospital he was taking a walk outside, and this neighbor says to him, ‘I know why you got better!’

Which is rather strange considering that no one else has any idea why Boruch got better – on that Sunday night his doctors gave him a 5% chance of making it through the night.

But this secular neighbor says, ‘I know why you got better. Because I prayed for you. And God was so shocked that I, of all people, would be praying – He had to do something.’

So Mordechai said to me, “The most remarkable aspect of this whole story is the way it drew people closer to God through prayer.”

That’s Chana’s prayer.

May God grant each of us this year the alacrity and the consciousness to remember – each time we pray - starting now – that we are imitating Chanah. We are beginning a journey towards God. And that is the kind of prayer, as Jeremiah reminds us,
where God comes towards us. “Come closer to Me with prayer, and you will find Me.”

No more imagining. Let us all go to Leipzig.