How do you pray? When do you pray? What do you pray about? Does prayer work for you?

Prayer includes all the conversations we have with God. Some of these conversations are personal; some are communal. Jewish prayer includes both. A number of members in our community tell me that prayer for them is most intense in the situations that they face in life…which is to say that prayer works best for them when they are concerned for the health of a loved one, when they are worried about their children or parents, when they are worried about the real problems they face. And it is also to say that, for many of us, prayer in the synagogue is often not what works best.

This is not only understandable, it is commendable. What it means is that we are true enough to ourselves to know when we really mean our prayers and to know when, conversely, we are just reciting words. At first glance, it might seem that something is wrong in this picture, if some or many of us have the most intense prayer experiences when we do not happen to have a siddur in our hands. But I think it means that we intuitively understand that real prayer is…well, real, and that we haven't experienced enough of that real praying in shul.

The Talmud, in tractate Berakhot, addresses this question head-on. Rabbi Eliezer says, "whoever makes their prayers a fixed task, it is not a genuine supplication." He means that if we pray by rote, we are not praying. It's as if we were checking our emails and our text messages while pretending to take part in a conversation. Rambam, living a thousand years after Rabbi Eliezer, comments on his words: "By 'rote,' he means if we pray as if fulfilling an unwanted task in order to be done with it and remove a burden."

For many of us, who were never taught the richness of the Jewish prayer tradition, the siddur can be a closed book. Now, with the introduction of our new siddur, called Or Hadash -a new light - we can begin to open this book. Our new prayerbook has a beautiful running commentary on every page, explaining where our prayers come from, what they mean, why and when and how we say them.

We dedicated these new prayerbooks on the first Shabbat of Hanukkah, and as I wrote last month, Hanukkah - which means "dedication" - is from the same Hebrew root as "education." Our new siddurim will help us begin to answer some questions we've always wondered about…and help us begin to start asking questions again that perhaps we have long suppressed because we didn't know that we could ask them.

Using these new prayerbooks is not like reading a homework assignment on prayer. When you find yourself "in the zone" as you pray, you can stick with the text in Hebrew or English in the middle of the page. When you find yourself curious about a prayer, or needing a little inspiration, or wanting to know what others think about a prayer, have a look at the commentary on the margins. Then come back to the prayer itself and rejoin us, knowing something you didn't know before, better able to use the text of our prayer tradition to work with as you talk things over with God. Instead of a burden, prayer can be…a blessing.

So, come to shul next Shabbat morning. And get ready to start a whole new prayer life, one in which you'll be better prepared to pray about life.

Rabbi Steven Schwarzman