In Preparation for Rosh Hashanah: Thoughts on Hannah's Prayer

We Jews, when we think of prayer, we think of something fixed -- words written down for us in the siddur and times designated for us – the morning, the afternoon, the evening, shul on Shabbat. But there is also another type of prayer, one that is less talked about. It is the spontaneous prayer of the heart in moments of intense need or joy.

This is the prayer of Hannah (I Samuel 1), and indeed the type of prayer we hear throughout the Tanakh (think Yaakov in his terror before he meets a brother who he thinks wants to kill him). Hannah is a suffering soul, sad and bitter and lonely. Years have gone by and she still has no child, though her co-wife does. Each year, when the family travels to Shiloh to bring sacrifices, she is reminded anew of what is missing and of the pain of being a childless woman. What is her response to this suffering? She goes to the sanctuary and cries out to God in her distress.

She is sad and so she turns to God. What do we do when we are sad? Do we turn to prayer in this way, try to find solace in pouring out our hearts to the Eternal Ear, to the One who will always listen? The Piasetzner Rebbe recommends just this. He says that moments of intense emotion, whether sadness or joy, anxiety or fear, these moments are openings of the soul – opportunities to access our soul and connect to God in a real way that is normally blocked to us.

And it also feels good. It feels good not because our prayers are always answered. They aren’t. Hannah’s is indeed answered; she goes on to have the child, Shmuel. But the text is very specific in saying that even before she became pregnant, immediately when she left the sanctuary after her encounter with God, paneha lo hayu lah od, literally, “she no longer had the same face.” She was changed in some way, less sad and lonely, full of optimism and also, I imagine, full of a sense of the presence of God. Whether or not our prayers are answered, if we pray earnestly in these moments – from the depths of our hearts and souls – if we can really cry and pour out our sorrows, no matter how small—then we will feel better, not because the situation that is bothering us is necessarily resolved, but because we have connected to God; we feel heard; we feel connected; we are no longer alone.

On Rosh Hashanah we will read Hannah’s story. We will read her story in the midst of long days of prayer. As we prepare for these days, we can practice opening our hearts like Hannah, learning to turn to God in all types of moments – when we feel embarrassed and ashamed, proud and capable, insecure and unsure. We go through so many emotional states in a day, triggered by little events in our lives or just by the shifting clouds of our emotions. Each of these states is an opportunity to connect to God in prayer, to learn to actually cry in prayer like Hannah, to feel the connection and know that we are not alone.