Parashat Toldot and Praying for Others

The Talmud says that if you pray for someone else who has the same problem as you, your own needs too will be answered. So if you need a job and so does your friend Reuven, you should pray that Reuven will find one. Same holds if you need a spouse or success or contentment and so does someone else you know. Pray for them. The art of prayer is bound up in reaching out toward others.

The Slonimer Rebbe, author of the Netivot Shalom, writes that to pray just for your own needs is to act like a dog, barking for food. He cites a famous rabbi who used to say the phrase, VeAhavta Le’Re’akha Kamokha, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” just before beginning the Amidah prayer, in order to get into the proper prayer mindset. Prayer is a stepping out of oneself, a stepping out toward God, but also a stepping out of oneself toward others.

This week’s parsha begins with such a prayer for another. “Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord responded to his plea, and his wife Rebekah conceived.” That’s it? It was that simple? Avraham and Sarah went through a long drawn out process, including the conception of a child through another woman, Hagar. What’s the difference here? Avraham never prayed for Sarah. He wanted a child, and by all accounts, Ishmael was good enough for him. Yitzhak, though, Yitzhak’s primary motive in praying was to pray for his wife -- Lenokhan Ishto¸ translated by JPs as “on behalf of his wife,” literally, “in the presence of his wife.” Rivkah was present for Yitzhak; she was on his mind, and his prayer was for her. Not just for a child, but for this wife to have a child.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the communal nature of prayer lately as I attend communal services more regularly in order to say kaddish. Hearing the words of prayer uttered by others around me, I wonder to myself: What is that one worried about? What is that one praying for today? I find this mental act to be a tremendous relief from my own worries and anxieties. For a moment I can step out of myself. And then, when the kaddish rolls around, my own private mourning becomes a communal mourning, my own sorrow is bound up with all the sorrows experienced by each person in the room. Suddenly the world seems to be filled with people who have lost a loved one, and all of their grief is somehow part of mine, and mine part of theirs.

Yitzhak’s reward for praying for another was not just that his prayer was answered. It was also great intimacy with God. The Torah uses the same root for his prayer and for God’s response,atar, and the midrash explains that Yitzhak was digging a tunnel on one side, and God was digging one on the other side to meet him. Stepping out toward others is at the same time stepping out toward God and feeling how God is stepping out toward us.