What is Prayer in Kabbalah?

Posted by Mark Zimmerman May 27, 2007

VIDEO: What is Prayer in Kabbalah? (04:01)

Continuing the Perceiving Reality series of questions and answers, a young man asked the following question regarding prayer:

"A lot of people around the world pray, and I don't see the world getting any better. So my question would be: What does prayer have to do with Kabbalah? Does it help? Are our prayers even heard?"

Perceiving Reality went on to define what people actually do when they pray, why prayers are so rarely answered, and described how Kabbalah approaches prayer.

In order to best introduce Kabbalah's approach to prayer (which is fundamentally different to most known conceptions of prayer), Perceiving Reality drew a comparison between prayer in religion to prayer in Kabbalah, presenting where and how they are fundamentally different.

Essentially, the difference presented was that of an external approach to prayer in religion, where one prays to the Creator to make Him change something from Himself for the person's benefit, to an internal approach to prayer in Kabbalah, where one prays that the Creator would change the person to understand what the Creator is doing, and see it as good.

VIDEO: What is Prayer in Kabbalah? (04:01)