Asked what he liked best about the worship service, a youngster replied, "The Silent Medication." [Samuel Silver, Temple Sinai, Delray Beach, FL.]

How many of us have a favorite part of the service, except perhaps the end, or the coffee and cake afterwards? How many of us find ourselves confused, bored, or even angry because we have little or no understanding of why we pray or what we're doing when we do it?

I think we can do something about that by looking at the meaning of two English words and one Hebrew one:

· RELIGION, the larger context in which prayer occurs,

· WORSHIP, that which we value and adore,

· TEFILLAH, the Hebrew word for prayer.

In spite of the seeming mistake, I think that child got it exactly right. In many ways our prayer is actually re-pair, medication to heal the deepest wounds and hurts of our souls.

Prayer of some sort seems to be part of every religion, and the word "RELIGION" is actually composed of two words: the Latin ligere, meaning "to tie or connect" (our word ligament, that which ties the bones together, comes from the same root), and the prefix "re" which means "again or anew". Do we come apart, come untied that we need to use our religion to put ourselves back together?

Absolutely, and it can happen in an instant. If you'll permit me a personal example… At the beginning of the summer I had a rare Sunday with no obligations: no weddings, no funerals, no unveilings, nothing. Marian and I spent a wonderful day together with some friends. We had lunch, puttered around the mall, went to a late afternoon movie, went out to dinner, and got home about 10:30. The message light on my answering machine was blinking. It was my brother. He'd taken my mother to Nyack Hospital earlier that evening and called me when he knew what was going on.. They did a CAT scan. It showed multiple brain tumors. The diagnosis was metastatic melanoma. There was no doubt and no hope: it was terminal. A little over four weeks later, she was gone. Poof! Just like that, in an instant, everything changed. The thread of my life became unraveled, untied.

Cancer is just one of the terrible tragedies that plague us. There are accidents of all sorts, stillbirths, terrorist attacks, sudden deaths by heart attack, strokes, suicides, rapes, marital breakups, job losses, financial reverses, muggings, robberies… a list that seems to have no end of things that untie us from the moorings of our lives.

Then there are the smaller things that unglue us, untie us, not just once a day, but many times there are the dirty looks, the muttered criticisms, the direct insults, the social snubs, the misunderstandings, the anger and disappointment and jealousy over the recognition that goes to others when we think we are the ones who deserve it, the thousand insensitivities we experience every day. There are "big deaths" and "little deaths," but reality takes us apart, unties us, all too often:

The therapist, author, and Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl, tells how he entered Auschwitz one black night, stripped of possessions and clothes, and separated forever from his wife and children. Finally, he was left alone and naked and told to proceed to the next room-a shower room.

Throughout his ordeal, Frankl had kept with him a copy of the manuscript he had been working on before his capture. This manuscript meant everything to him; it was the only thing left now that mattered. Now he was being told that he would be killed if he tried to take anything with him into the next room. He wrestled with this terrible choice-to leave behind the only shred of meaning in his life, or to forsake life altogether.

Finally, sadly, Frankl parted with the manuscript and walked into the shower room. After showering, he obtained a new suit of clothes once worn by a Jew who had not been so "lucky," and who had not been selected for work but had been sent directly to the gas chambers.

Sorrowful over the loss of his manuscript, Frankl slowly dressed in his new clothes, trying to accept the fact that the last element of meaning had been taken from him. As he dressed, he felt something in his shirt pocket. He reached in and found a piece of paper with writing on it, and he began to cry. At that moment, when it seemed that life had lost all meaning, here was new hope and new promise. For here, in the clothes of a dead man, he found what one person had chosen to take with him into death's portals.

It was a page from an old prayer book and on it the words: Shma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheynu Adonai echad. Frankl understood, since we live in the presence of the angel of death, it is faith in the meaning of human existence and God, that gives us the will to go on. [American Rabbi, April, 1987, pg. 46]

Religion, then, is our attempt to keep ourselves together in an often hostile world. Prayer is the means we most often use to try and put ourselves back together when reality takes us apart.

Our prayers also remind us of what we WORSHIP, which is another way of saying that through our prayers we express the ideals we serve:

An elderly grandmother came to a Rebbe to seek his blessing. She waited in line for hours in order to receive an audience with him. In all of the awe and splendor that surrounded the Rebbe, the little woman seemed even smaller than she was, so the Rebbe bent down and quietly, ever so softly asked, "So nu, how are things with you?"

She responded, "Baruch Ha-Shem, Thank God." The Rebbe continued, "And how is the health of your family?" "Baruch Ha Shem, Thank God," the woman answered again. The Rebbe pressed on, "And your husband, is he making a good living?" "Baruch Ha Shem, Thank God," the lady whispered. "And so nu, how are you feeling?" the Rabbi asked. "Baruch Ha Shem, Thank God."

"So," the Rebbe asked, "if all is well, then what shall we pray for, you and me?" The grandmother replied, "Rabbi, pray, Halevai, that all this shall not be taken away from me." [Torah Fax, 5754, Rosh Hashanah Day, 1993, by Rabbi Dannel I Schwartz.]

What was she praying for? Notice the agenda: her general well-being, her family's health, her husband's livelihood, her health - all of the things that matter to us the most. Who was she praying to? To God, of course, because we see God as the source of all that is highest and best. As Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed it so beautifully, "Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view." [Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance."]

But some people don't always reach for the highest, like the man who said:

When I was young I used to pray for a bike. Then I realized that God doesn't work that way.

So I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness. [Ed's Jokelist]

When we offer a prayer we are concerned with how God works, and the Hebrew term for prayer is tefillah." As a noun, the word is nothing unusual. But if you want to use it as verb, something very strange happens. Then it becomes l'hitpallel, a reflexive verb, a verb in which the action is turned back at the subject, as in: I hurt myself, or, I washed myself. A literal translation of the Hebrew, then, might be "I prayed myself." Now what in heaven's name, pun intended, does that mean?

Since the root meaning of the word tefillah is "to judge," when we pray, one of the most important things we're doing is judging ourselves. We're judging ourselves against a divine standard, against what we worship, what we serve, against the highest and the best that we can imagine. We do this not for the frustration of always coming up short, but to stay focused on what we're striving for. A girl named Bella certainly did:

Bella was the only Jew in her class at an exclusive prep school in Scarsdale. Quite rightly, she considered herself a lucky girl since, in those days, almost no Jews were admitted.

Bella's closest friend was Cynthia, a Greek Catholic. When the girls took their final examinations, Bella passed with straight A's but Cynthia failed miserably.

"I just can't understand it," complained Cynthia. "Just before the tests I lit candles to St. Peter, St. Barnabas and several other saints, and look what happened!"

"I lit a candle too," said Bella.

"What! You're Jewish. You lit a candle? To whom?"

"To nobody. I lit the candle and stayed up all night, studying." [Oy Vey]

Prayer starts with us, not God. It is active, not passive. Prayer is not a free pass to some divine candy store in the sky. As a matter of fact, unless we act on what we pray for, tefillah, is useless:

A rabbi and a congregant were out golfing together, and the latter noticed that every time the rabbi was about to putt he muttered a bracha, a blessing. And every putt went right in!

After four holes of that, the congregant asked, "Rabbi, does that really work for you?"

"Oh, yes indeed!" the rabbi replied. So on the fifth green the congregant recited a bracha, drew back the putter, tapped the ball, and missed the hole by a good foot and a half.

"I thought you said it works," the frustrated golfer complained. "Ah, it does," the rabbi replied, "but you also have to know how to putt!" [King Duncan, Mule Eggs and Topknots, Seven Worlds Corp. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1987),"Prayer, with emendations]

It is also important to be realistic, or our prayers become self-defeating. As fervently as I might pray to be able to slam dunk a basketball, and as much as I might practice, it's not about to happen. So here's the most realistic prayer I know:

Dear God,

So far today, I am doing all right. I have not gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent.

However, I am going to get out of bed in a few minutes, and I will need a lot more help after that. Amen. [Gagler's Joke of the Day]

The prayers, then, that are part of our RELIGION are to help us bind up our wounds, to repair the damage done by a thousand small slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and by the great and terrible ones of suffering and death.

We WORSHIP those standards, those ideals, those qualities that we call God. We try and serve the best and the highest we can conceive of, understanding that prayer without action is empty, useless, and self-defeating.

When we offer our prayer, our TEFILLAH, we measure ourselves against a divine standard to keep our goals clearly before us, and to motivate ourselves to keep trying to reach them.

So let this be your goal whenever you pray: find some words, just some words in each service that move you, motivate you, console you. If you can do that, it will be enough. If you can do that, you will have really prayed. If you can do that you will be able to answer that your favorite part of the service was the part that called you to become a better person.

Let me leave you with one other very brief prayer that I and anyone addressing a congregation, or any other gathering, ought to recite to themselves:

"God, fill my mouth with worth-while stuff,

And nudge me when I've said enough." [King Duncan, Mule Eggs and Topknots, Seven Worlds Corp. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1987),"Oops".]

I'm sure a moment ago I felt a nudge, so I'd better stop. I just hope that what I've said this morning is in some way worthwhile.