Over Shabbat, I read a good book The Godfile: 10 Approaches to Personalizing Prayer by Aryeh Ben David.
He writes on page nine:
Many of us walk into a synagogue with the expectation that a spiritual experience will descend upon us, regardless of how much or how little we have written in our personal Godfile. We expect that the setting, prayer book, or maybe even the singing, will elicit spiritual feelings. But in truth, neither the synagogue nor the prayerbook can create a spiritual connection.
During the time of formal prayer, it is practically impossible to create a relationship with God. The synagogue can only serve to create a relationship with God. The synagogue can only serve to remind you of a relationship that already exists. Praying in a synagogue can certainly eclipse many of life’s distractions, and help focus a relationship with God, but it is very unlikely that it will actually create the relationship.
