Prayer in Community: Identity Politics for Messanic Jews

Prayer in Community: Identity Politics for Messianic Jews David Nichol Introduction If there is one statement that would garner broad, if not unanimous, agreement in the Messianic Jewish community, it is likely to be “prayer is important.” Beyond that basic statement, however, there is a considerable diversity of opinion about what prayer is, what it looks like, and its role in our spiritual and communal lives. In this article, I present for discussion a small part of the significance of prayer. I argue for a higher valuation of traditional, Siddur-based, communal forms of