"Prayer is not meant to change G-d's will. Prayer is a door for the soul… elevating a person from defilement to purity, bringing him closer to G-d." So wrote Rabbi Meir Aldabi six centuries ago in his Shevilei Emunah. He spoke not only for himself, but for all saint and scholars, mystics, philosophers, Hasidim, and Misnagdim from the time of our father Abraham to today's tape-recorded shiurim. In this wide-ranging anthology, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan has provided us with a key to the vast literature on Jewish prayer. How can I pray? How should I pray? How can I pray with proper concentration? Why is the Siddur arranged the way it is? Why are there so many different rites? Why do we need a synagogue? Set times for prayer? Why do we need a minyan? Each of these questions has its allotted place in this volume. Rabbi Kaplan has answered them in the ways that only the four-thousand-year-old Jewish tradition provides. The contribution of Aryeh Kaplan to Jewish thought and Jewish feeling has not ceased with his untimely passing. In his life he produced a prodigious number of original works, translations, commentaries and anthologies, all designed to raise the "Jewish consciousness' of all kinds of Jews from all sorts of backgrounds. One of his primary concern was prayer, and A Call to the Infinite may be his greatest work on the subject. All of us have something to learn from it.
by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan