Ever yell at a golf ball to make sure it goes into the hole? Ever do a little dance so a bowling ball doesn’t go into the gutter? Ever lean and stretch to make sure the fly ball doesn’t go foul?
Welcome to the world of sympathetic magic. In this, you are no different from the cavemen(women?) who painted those beautiful scenes of the hunt in the caves at Lascaux—the very first art we know about. The art, the passionate exhortations, the bodily contortions, are all examples of what Carl Gustav Jung referred to as the “participation mystique.” This is the belief that we are somehow mystically tied to things outside of ourselves (from a wooly mammoth to a Titleist Pro V1 golf ball—pick your poison); and with the right form of manipulation (“participation”) we can get them to do what we want them to do (die in the hunt or drop in the hole for a birdie). Cantor Rockman reminds me of Carlton Fisk waiving the ball on for his walk-off home run to win Game 6 of the 1975 Series.
Great “body English” notwithstanding, I seriously doubt that leaning to the side will change the course of flight of a ball, or that reciting “Cmon, c’mon, c’mon” will keep a kicked football between distant goal posts. But in our prayers, we have some examples of “participation mystique” that really have had an effect. One we have already studied: the gathering of our four tzitzit, the fringes on the corners of the tallit, when we pray right before the Shema, “Bring us from the four corners of the earth and lead us honorably to our land.” This isn’t hocus pocus. It’s not like waving a magic wand. Instead, the very fact that we have said this prayer at a dramatic moment, and with “choreography,” every single day for centuries is a striking reinforcement of the idea that we will indeed, someday, be gathered from the four corners of the earth and return. In other words, it has had a practical impact.
So, too the prayer right before the Amidah, tzur yisrael. “Rock of Israel, rise in defense of Israel…”. At precisely the time we ask G-d to “rise in defense of Israel,” we rise in preparation for the Amidah (literally, the “Standing Prayer”). Again, no hocus pocus. G-d doesn’t arise for us just because we arise for G-d. There is instead something awesome about the image of Jews “arising.” If history has taught us anything, it is that we must “arise” if we are to survive. Menachem Begin wrote, “When a Jew anywhere in the world is threatened or under attack, do all in your power to come to his aid. Never pause to wonder what the world with think or say. The world will never pity slaughtered Jews. The world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.”
Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff