|
|
The Unofficial Prager Encyclopedia Prayer: In a 10/31/89 lecture on Maimonides, Prager said: "God doesn't need your prayer whatsoever. What? God sits up there and says, 'Oh wow, what a wonderful day. Harry Ginzberg has prayed to me and called me great. Now I feel much better because Harry thinks I'm great.' "If you think that you don't need to pray, I ask you to consider on the rare occasions that you have gone to an organized prayer service in your religion, how have you felt afterwards? Identical to the way you felt before you went? I doubt it. "I am bored by most of the services. Yet I go every Saturday morning, without exception. I go 99% out of obligation and 1% out of desire. But every single Saturday walking home from synagogue, I am very happy that I went. "And most of the time, I don't pray as is notoriously known already. I read books on Judaism in my synagogue... And it is in good Jewish tradition to do that. I was raised in an ultra-Orthodox schteibl (a Hasidic little room). No cantor. No sermons. And these bearded elderly gentlemen would be sitting at tables during the prayer services studying Talmud." Joseph Soleveitchek In a 10/31/89 lecture on the Rav, Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchek, Prager said: "I don't plan to give a course on Soleveitchek. I could not give a course on someone I didn't agree with. It would not be fair. His greatest work is "Halakhic Man." I don't believe in halakhic man. That is too Lithuanian for me."
|
|