Facing the Holy and Each Other in Prayer
For some, prayer is free-flowing, meandering from one topic to another, like a summer breeze, a living dialogue, or a musical improvisation. For others, prayer is something more formal, organized, and structured with care. It's not that one approach is superior to another, but there is room for both practices. I personally see the need for both approaches, which is why I use the Siddur and pray extemporaneously as well. If you were to ask me what I think Rabbi Jesus and the apostles' prayers were like, I would say they also blended some formulaic communal prayers with personal supplications voiced in their own words. But there was something in their prayer lives that many of their modern followers often lack. Direction. They oriented themselves in a very specific way.
For thousands of years, Jews have been speaking to God while facing Jerusalem. Muslims today have a similar custom, only they bow toward the city of Mecca. Such cultural practice may seem a bit unusual for many Christians who direct their gaze elsewhere, to the church altar in front of them or to the heavens above. But for Jews, turning towards Jerusalem during prayer is an ancient custom etched on the pages of the Bible (Daniel 6:10; 1 Kings 8:29-35). Of course, it's not about the city itself, but about the holy mountain, the spot God himself chose for his house three thousand years ago (1 Kings 8:44, 1 Chron 22:1-10). Jerusalem is a special place where God manifested himself in the past, and people have not forgotten it.
This tradition of orienting oneself, praying "towards God's house," has a long history, and I wanted to share a quote from an ancient Jewish source - Tosefta on Berachot 3, to expound on the exact reasons behind this unique custom. If you are wondering about how far back these words go, the text of Tosefta is quite ancient. It contains discussions of various Jewish traditions put into writing around the 3rd century CE. Of course, many of those traditions existed for much longer in oral form before they were finally fixed in writing in the second and third centuries CE. When Mishna was compiled, some of its content was redacted and set aside, and that body of text became known as "Tosefta," which means “supplement" in Aramaic. So here are some sentiments from the sages about the direction of prayers from a supplement to Mishnah, a document that preserved much of Jewish tradition followed in the first-century Israel.
Pinchas Shir
