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Filling Words with Light: Hasidic and Mystical Reflections on Jewish Prayer

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For Jews, finding meaning in prayer can be difficult, depending particularly on one's personal theology.

But who better to turn for help than to Lawrence Kushner, who teamed with another writer to produce this book.

That said, the key to reading this book may be to keep expectations low. It will not transform your prayer experience. Only a fraction of the book resonated with me.

"Filling Words with Light" offers Kushner's and Nehemia Polen's commentaries on about 70 snippets of prayers. And the commentaries themselves are based on Hasidic and other mystical sources.

In some cases, the commentaries seem only tangentially related to the prayer. In some other cases, the mystical insights are inaccessible.

But there are a few gems in this book that will enhance your prayer experience. Your gems may be different than mine. But I know I appreciated the insight into Psalms 150:6, which is: Without some intervening force, our souls would leave us in a split second. And you know Who is doing the intervening.

I'm so glad I have this book on my bookshelf. I have learned some important things about the meanings of prayers, which makes my life more meaningful to me.

When you are depressed, you are not only unhappy, your will is weakened. You are unable to act. You have lost the 'good fight.' Sadness is a confabulation of an evil side. Sometimes it leads you astray, causing paralysis which results from sadness and depression. This is manifested by our self-destructive side, our own personal internal enemy. This book explains how to overcome the darkness to see the 'light.'

LIGHT means life, the ultimate awareness. The tree of life corresponds in mystical imagery to "the One without end." The tree of good and evil corresponds to a world of multiplicity, division, corporeality, and tangible reality -- 'the world of action.' The goal is to balance the two trees. To balance our power to act, our self-assertion with the humility of being selfless, then we can perform wonders.

Rabbi Kushner of San Francisco and Rabbi Polen of Boston break down the Yiddish words into multiple meanings and interpret the Jewish liturgy so that even a Christian can appreciate their concentration on prayer, and each day being a renewal of life, a new beginning. They have both written for the Jewish Lights, and Polen is the author of THE HOLY FIRE about Warsaw. Both are professors of Jewish spirituality and thought.