Prayer is the pathway to G-d, the experience of a dimension of our lives which transcends the day-to-day, and reminds us that we have a place in eternity.

Sounds great, but we live at a time when talent for praying is not our strongest suit.

To pray well, we must get in touch with our deepest selves. That is no easy task.

To pray well, we must “know before Whom we stand.” No easy task, either.

To pray well, we must overcome the gap between ourselves, limited human beings with all our failings, and the Divine, Who will hear our prayers if we could only articulate them. Even harder.

And yet, we do pray. And one of the reasons we pray is that prayer is a way to get in touch with our deepest selves, of knowing before Whom we stand, and of overcoming the gap between ourselves and the Divine.

In other words, prayer helps us become capable of…prayer. No wonder the great rabbis of old used to pray for an hour each day that they would be able to pray.

And we don’t just pray as individuals. At best, we pray as a group, as a community, as a minyan. And in minyan, there is mystery.

Something special happens when we come together. By being together, we create something unique. Anchored in the history of our faith, we create something that brings us closer to G-d than any of us, individually, could ever come.

That is why, when davening in a minyan, we can say prayers (like the Kaddish) that we can’t say when we are alone. Coming together in a minyan is a crucial part of our Jewish identity. It is a concrete reminder that a Jew is never really alone. Consequently we urge people to pick a day a week or a day a month to go to minyan; to come for the yahrzeits of people they know, and for the yahrzeits of people they don’t know; to come before a meeting or a class at your shul; to come for a reason, or for no reason at all; to come just because you’re Jewish. Because this is what Jews do.

Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff