Petitionary Prayer in Early Hasidism

Summary

Both historians and philosophers of religion have stated as an iron rule that mystical prayer is never petitionary. The naive prayer of the unsophisticated worshiper for help and deliverance appears to the mystic as a demonstration of vulgar egotism. Augustine's advice, nolite aliquid a Deo quaerere nisi Deum, expresses the genuine attitude of the mystic who despises petitionary prayer. Consistent mysticism refrains from addressing supplication to God, since this would be the expression of wish and desire, and the mystical ideal insists on the pursuit of desirelessness as an integral factor in the extermination of selfhood. The attitude of early Hasidism to petitionary prayer will now be examined in the light of this position.

If Hasidism did not wish to be divorced from Jewish tradition—as it patently did not—the statutory prayers of Jewish liturgy, which are all of nonmystical origin and character, could not be tampered with textually. But the communal prayers had to be reinterpreted in private contemplation in order to suit the mystic's stern spiritual requirements.

Israel Baalshem was not an extremist in this matter and his position of balanced compromise became the unchanging legacy of many a Hasidic master. His basic view was that unambiguously egotistic tendencies in prayer are to be avoided, and he made no differentiation between private and congregational prayer in this respect. Nevertheless, if it were possible to subsume the private necessity under a higher, more universal, and indeed Divine necessity and to see the private need sub specie Divinitatis, by tracing any need in oneself to its origin in a corresponding need in the Shekhinah, then prayer should concentrate on the Divine and not the personal aspect of this particular need.

With much reluctance, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye gives the following summary of Israel Baalshem's comments on a certain passage from the Zohar (vol. 3, f. 240a). The disciple is obviously hesitant to commit himself by a verbatim report of his teacher's words, possibly because of their strong leaning toward pantheism:

And I have already heard my master's explanation of this [Zoharic] passage and it is a basic principle in the service of God. But at the moment I have forgotten it all. Nevertheless it is fitting to put [in writing] a little bit. And I do not know whether this is the meaning of his words or not. May God protect us from error.