Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

The emphasis in Judaism tends to be on communal prayer. We need a “minyan”, a gathering of ten adults, in order to recite the mourner’s kaddish and other prayers in our liturgy. Jewish law states that one should make every attempt to pray in a synagogue with the community. The rabbis even maintain that one’s prayers are more likely to be accepted by God when one prays with others.

Yet the practice of solitary prayer is also deeply rooted in Judaism. The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidism, told this story from his childhood. “I was drawn to walk the fields and the great, deep forest near our village. Often I would spend the night in the field or forest. One morning in the forest I heard a human voice- a Jew in tallit and tefillin, praying with a passion I had never heard…’Aren’t you afraid to be alone in the forest?’ the man asked me. I answered him: ‘I like the field and the forest, because there are no people…’” Chassidism teaches that aloneness can help us to explore the mysteries within and above us.

In our Torah reading for this week, (Genesis 32:4 – 33:20), Jacob returns to his homeland and prepares himself to meet his estranged brother, Esau. The night before this meeting, Jacob separates himself from his family, his servants, and all that he owns and crosses the river Jabbok to sleep alone. He encounters a stranger, with whom he wrestles throughout the night. Who is this stranger? Some think it is Esau. Another commentator thinks that Jacob separated himself from his family that night because he planned to run away before dawn.  G-d sends an angel to wrestle with Jacob and force him to stay! Others maintain that the “stranger” is Jacob himself, wrestling with his conscience and with his past behavior. Jacob’s tendency throughout his life was to meet life’s challenges with trickery, deceit and evasion. Here he decides to meet a challenge directly and honestly. It is not easy, and, according to this view, Jacob wrestles with himself by engaging in solitary prayer throughout the long night. “G-d answers a person’s prayers if the person prays by searching himself, becoming his own opponent,” explains Rabbi Benno Jacob.