c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Michael Fischer is a 46-year-old Los Angeles resident whose yearly synagogue attendance is generally limited to a few hours on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the Jewish High Holy Days. It is not a particularly edifying experience.

Fischer, the son of a Conservative rabbi, goes to synagogue “basically because I’m afraid of how I might feel if I didn’t go.” Despite his familiarity with the Hebrew liturgy, meaningful prayer is beyond him.

“I don’t even try. Honestly, I wouldn’t know where to begin,” said Fischer, a manager for a computer software manufacturer.

Fischer is not alone among American Jews, most of whom are virtual strangers to regular synagogue worship. Only about 11 percent of the nation’s nearly 6 million Jews attend weekly Sabbath prayer services, according to the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey.

The High Holy Days are a different story, however. Like Fischer, large numbers of Jews who rarely visit a synagogue at other times of the year show up on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, a 10-day stretch that constitutes Judaism’s most sacred period. The 1990 survey, still the most comprehensive statistical analysis of American Jewry, found that about 60 percent of the community attends synagogue on the High Holy Days.

This year, Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, begins at sundown on Sept. 10. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins the evening of Sept. 19.

Traditional Jews believe the High Holy Days are when God judges their actions of the past year and seals their fate for the coming one _ giving prayer added meaning. But for Fischer and other Jews ambivalent about or unaccustomed to synagogue services, this added urgency often means even greater conflict over the act of pray.

“Prayer is a discipline, and if you don’t practice it you lose some of the meaningfulness of it,” said New York Rabbi Lawrence Raphael, who oversees adult education programs for the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations. “You shouldn’t expect to come to services and get anything out of it if you’re not prepared for it.”

Jewish literature is replete with stories of pious Jews spending an hour or so in meditation to put themselves into a proper state of mind prior to beginning formal prayers.

“Prayer involves some kind of change in intention or consciousness from the way we usually feel,” said Rabbi Miles Krassen, an associate professor of Jewish studies and religion at Oberlin College in Ohio.

“Preparation is very important to prayer. You can’t just turn it on and turn it off. You have to quiet the mind so you can turn it in the direction you want,” said Krassen, a leading exponent of the spiritually inclined Jewish Renewal movement.

Short of an hour of contemplation, where does one start?

Rabbi Shlomo Porter, who directs Baltimore’s Etz Chaim Center, an Orthodox Jewish outreach facility, suggested that those unfamiliar with synagogue prayers start by attending a “beginners” or “learning service.”

Such services _ generally shorter in duration and involving more English than Hebrew _ often are available at larger synagogues or at centers like Etz Chaim that cater to more assimilated Jews.

At Etz Chaim, discussions “that focus on the inner experience and what prayer means” are incorporated into beginners services, said Porter. Helping newcomers feel at ease is of primary importance, he added.

“We tell people to go at their own rate and not worry about keeping up with others. It’s more important to feel something than be on the right page,” he said.

In Los Angeles, Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz runs beginner services for as many as 3,000 people on the High Holy Days, renting theaters and hotel ballrooms to accommodate the crowds. He calls the services “prayer effectiveness training.”

“It’s like everybody can be a daddy, but to be a father is different,” said Schwartz, a Hasidic Jew who directs the outreach-oriented Chai Center. “So you go to parent effectiveness training. Why should prayer be different?”

Traditionally, Jewish prayer “is rooted in the belief that man is able to communicate with God, individually or collectively, and that God hears and responds to man’s approach,” notes the Encyclopedia of Judaism.

Among Jews, personal prayer developed at the end of the sixth century B.C. following destruction of the first Jerusalem Temple as a substitute for the Temple sacrifices that no longer could take place. After the second Temple was razed by the Romans in 70 A.D., prayer was institutionalized.

Today, traditional Jews pray formally three times each day. On Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, formal worship spans most, if not all, of the day.

The prayers are highly structured, leaving little room for personal improvisation, even in many liberal congregations that employ a rewritten version of the traditional liturgy. This often presents difficulties for synagogue newcomers who find the flowery language and biblical imagery outside their frame of reference.

Schwartz believes it’s important to at least try to get something out of the formal liturgy.

“They’re time-honored prayers and they have been proven to push all the buttons. Push them and they open the gates. The liturgy of the sages is a springboard to take you to another realm,” he said.

However, Krassen believes that “if you’re heart isn’t into (formal prayers), then it’s better to make up your own prayer.” Despite the formality of synagogue prayer, he added, Judaism is supportive of informal personal prayer.

“If it doesn’t touch you, fixed prayer is of little value. A deeply felt personal prayer has much more value,” he said.

Rabbis often encourage worshippers to include personal prayers during the recitation of the “amidah,” a lengthy silent prayer of praise and thankfulness to God that is part of every synagogue worship service. The amidah begins by urging God to bestow upon the petitioner the ability to pray: “Open thou my lips and my mouth shall declare thy praise.”

At Temple Beth Israel in Eugene, Ore., the prayer book includes non-traditional readings from Jewish and non-Jewish sources as part of the amidah. Joan Bayliss, the Reconstructionist congregation’s lay cantor, or prayer leader, said she and her husband, who co-developed the prayer book, included the readings to appeal to those unmoved by more traditional liturgy.

“They’re to help people focus during the amidah when the amidah itself is not enough,” said Bayliss. “Making use of the silent time to go inside and ruminate on the purpose of prayer is itself worthwhile.”

Porter agreed that informal prayers can be more meaningful for those not moved by formal liturgy. However, he noted that it’s often those most alienated from the liturgy who have the greatest difficulty summoning up meaningful prays on their own.

“When a person prays out of earnest meaningful will, laden with `kavvanah’ (Hebrew for intention), it really works. But many times people are not at the level of being able to do that,” he said.

“That’s when we can rely on the formal prayer.”

For Bayliss, the purpose of prayer _ formal or informal _ is “to facilitate a sense of connection to the divine.” And even though she does not adhere to traditional beliefs concerning God’s judgments, she considers it important to pray with other Jews in a formal worship setting during the High Holy Days.

“It’s a vortex. Jews all over the world are paying attention to this process at the same time,” she said. “That creates what I call a cone of intention that rises upward. If you can latch on to that communal force, you can use it to go deeper into yourself. That’s prayer.”

DEA END RIFKIN