Review of God's Favorite Prayers
by Professor Naomi Cohen

Review of: Tzvee Zahavy, God’s Favorite Prayers, KDP, USA, ISBN 978-0-615-50949-5, 157 pages (soft cover, hard cover, Kindle). Available at Amazon.

By Dr. Naomi G. Cohen, Haifa University

The book makes for fascinating reading. It is an intelligent, sometimes amusing, and always highly readable essay addressed first and foremost to those who know “everything”, those who are so familiar with the prayers that they don’t really need a Siddur to follow the service. At the very same time the book can also serve as an appetizer, as a first introduction to the synagogue and its most significant prayers, for those who come entirely from ‘outside’, or in any event have not been inside an orthodox synagogue, a shul, since their Bar-Mitvah.

It is livened by autobiographical reminisces, that include how shul felt as the son of the Rabbi of what was then Zichron Ephraim, and later the Park East Synagogue. The combination of growing up as the Rabbi’s son of one of the most prestigious Orthodox congregations in New York City, and the intellectual honing provided by being part of Academe for many years, well prepares him for the writing of this unique presentation of Jewish prayer as practiced in the synagogue. Indeed, his background and credentials make him eminently qualified for this undertaking. He received his B.A. and M.A., as well as rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University, where he spent four years studying with Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik. He then earned a Ph. D in religious studies from Brown University and went on to pursue an academic career at the University of Minnesota, where he was a Professor of Jewish Studies, and was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award.

In G-d’s Favorite Prayers Zahavy describes the prayer service as it is encountered in real-life synagogues, defining it as a series of discrete and somewhat diverse elements that have their own internal coherence, at the same time somehow synchronizing and creating a rewarding whole. The book’s title is somewhat enigmatic. I understand it to be a reference to the major rubrics of Jewish Synagogue Prayer. The chapter headings refer to different prayers, at the same time serving as a typology personifying different types of people for whom one or another prayer mode is particularly felicitous. The spirituality typical of these different personalities is portrayed with a light brush.

The major thrust of the book is what, lacking any better term, I shall call the psycho-emotional dimension, not the literal meaning of the prayers, but rather the impact that their recitation should or could have on regular synagogue goers. It is particularly successful in evoking a renewed spiritual dimension respecting texts whose essence sometimes tends to fade through their constant use.

The prayers are categorized typologically, a separate chapter being devoted to each: The Performer’s Prayers, The Mystic’s Prayers, The Scribe’s Prayers, The Priest’s Prayers, The Meditator’s Prayers, and The Celebrity’s Prayers. The chapter headings are not intended to indicate either their authorship or their history, both of which Zahavy considers to be largely unknown, and in any event irrelevant for his purpose.          

Following these chapters there is one on the Kiddush, both as a special blessing recited several times during the Sabbath or Holiday, and as the social event held in many synagogues immediately following upon the Sabbath morning service. This adds an additional perspective, not merely because it is a customary event in many synagogues, but particularly because it reflects the aspect of the Synagogue as the social focal point of the community – that it is not only G-d centered, but at the very same time an expression of community. Might I note in this context that the very name Synagogue reflects the concept that it is a meeting place, for this is a very ancient term. Already at least 2,000 years ago it served as the Greek rendition of the Hebrew term Bet Knesset.

Finally, the book closes with a short epilogue that portrays the emotional experience accompanying the blowing of the Shofar, particularly, but not only, at the close of the Yom Kippur service.

While the book will ‘ring a bell’ for regular synagogue goers in all countries, it will have particular resonance for those used to the American experience. A single example especially worthy of note: particularly American is the endeavor to be inclusive respecting women and the Synagogue experience. Zahavy has, I think, succeeded in relating to women and addressing them ‘at eye level’ as real and active participants in the prayer experience, without “moving the curtain aside”, or giving them an active part in the pageantry of the prayer-service that in Orthodox Judaism is considered to be an exclusive male domain. In the book he has somehow managed to provide his women readers with a feeling of being included, without their intruding into the traditional male domain of the Synagogue service.  

He achieves this first and foremost by choosing women as the archetypes in several of the chapters. He not only uses the biblical Hannah to introduce his discussion of The Mystic’s Prayers. He doesn’t hesitate to introduce a contemporary woman in the ensuing narrative to illustrate his point. So too, Zahavy places a lady at the center of his description in his chapter on meditation. Though I personally have somewhat of a problem with several facets of the personality projected, it is not because she is a woman, but inter alia because she had come to Jewish meditation via the Far East. On second thought, nowadays this may well be true to life.

Because women’s place in the Synagogue is today a very live issue, I permit myself a single, but telling, anecdote that contrasts Zahavy’s description of little Tzvee’s experience of Simchat Torah as a little boy, with mine as a little girl. He writes that what made the day very special for him was that on the day of Simchas Torah he was permitted to sit on his father’s seat on the Bima. For me, a little girl, this day became seared into my consciousness as the day when I was kicked out of the men’s section – something that hurt enough to make me swear that when I grew up, if I had a daughter, she would never enter the men’s section – ever. For it is one thing to be comfortably ensconced in the women’s section of a modern orthodox synagogue. But it is quite another to be driven away on Simchat Torah from where all the fun and action is. And in those days, there were neither fun nor action in the women’s section on Simchat Torah. That event on Simchat Torah was the defining moment that made me into a feminist, long before I had any notion of what feminism was all about.

The book is replete with thought provoking insights. An example that I like particularly because it speaks both to my intellect and to my soul: Explaining what he means by Mythical Discourse – a term that jarred me, and probably not only me at first reading – Zahavy distinguishes between ‘mystical’ and ‘mythical’ (pp.62-66).  “In the study of religions”, he writes, “a myth denotes a narrative that is truer than true…” And then after brining several illustrations, such as the Exodus from Egypt and the revelation of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, he explains, “By calling them myths, I mean that these are accounts of events that I deem to be more than historical, true or factual… historical myths are referenced and relived frequently in the synagogue and in the rituals of the Jewish home.” He also makes this an occasion to point out that “the mythical is most often a horizontal means of imagining backwards and forwards in history. The mystical, by contrast, is usually a form of vertical visualization upwards to another dimension, towards the heavens.”  The prayers discussed in the book plug into both modes.

An important insight that in and of itself makes the book worthwhile, is that it illustrates one of the major axioms of the nature of Jewish Prayer – that it is the davener, the one who prays, who, in the last analysis, determines the content of the prayer that is recited. The words of the prayers provide the common denominator that make it possible for communal prayer to take place, but it is the individual prayer of each one of us, and even our own prayer at different times, that provides the common and virtually timeless text with contemporary and personal meaning.

To sum up:  While I too have taught prayer in university classes, and hopefully was interesting and informative, this book is entirely different. While I concentrated on content and sources, Zahavy’s aim here has been to re-evoke dimensions of meaning in texts whose familiarity has caused their sharp meaning to fade. For all these, as well as other reasons, the book is an enjoyable ‘read’ and well worth the time.

A final remark: the illustrative excerpts from the Prayer Book that Zahavy brings in good, modern, English translation, has for me provided them with a fresh flavor, reawakening an awareness of their beauty and majesty.