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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

This is the Catholic English version of the "Lord's Prayer." Its direct antecedent can be found in the New Testament and according to their tradition, was basically said by Jesus as a prayer to God.

Would a Jew be permitted to say this as a prayer?

Tzvi
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    I don't know Greek so I don't know what the original says or what "Thy kingdom come" means but it looks to my untrained eye like some of the things we do pray for every morning before p'suke d'zimra. It also looks very fishy to that same eye to ask that God emulate us in the "as we forgive..." line. – WAF Apr 01 '11 at 03:49
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    I t does not seem fishy to me : ״ותאמר רבא כל המעביר על מדותיו מעבירין לו על כל פשעיו in TB Yoma 87b. http://hebrewbooks.org/shas.aspx?mesechta=6&daf=87b&format=pdf – Yahu Apr 01 '11 at 20:43
  • Brought by Kesef Mishnah in Hilchos Teshuvah 2, 10 http://hebrewbooks.org/rambam.aspx?mfid=81892&rid=402 as reason to not be cruel and to forgive. – Yahu Apr 01 '11 at 20:45
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    @Yahu - Does that mean that in a literal, practical sense the Kesef Mishna would necessarily endorse asking for such treatment? And more importantly, Rava used the plural as the implicit subject of the statement specifically to avoid ascribing such direct causation to God. Given the tone of our prayers, which incorporate this indirectness across the board (e.g. y'hi ratzon mil'fanecha...), deviating from that standard remains fishy in my opinion. – WAF Apr 05 '11 at 17:17
  • Good points. As it is, the plural may be to denote famalia shelo and not God Himself. – Yahu Apr 06 '11 at 19:56
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    @WAF, Christians generally don't take the line "forgive us as we forgive..." to mean, "God, emulate us!" Rather, we take that to mean, "God forgive us, and we will also forgive others." – Judah Gabriel Himango Jul 06 '11 at 02:10
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    Regarding the line "forgive us as we forgive others...", it may not be so foreign. Consider Gamaliel II's philosophy: "Whoever has mercy on other people, Heaven will have mercy upon him; whoever does not have mercy on other people, Heaven will not have mercy upon him." – Judah Gabriel Himango Jul 20 '11 at 14:52
  • When you said Heaven, do you mean God? The chinese also have a habit of calling God heaven? I am just curious about whether Heaven is like Hashem. Jews know what it means but confused the hell out of others. Some gospels write kingdom of God and some wrote kingdom of heaven. Then christians may have pick that up and think that there is an actual heaven. – user4951 Nov 16 '11 at 03:44
  • @Jim Thio: Yes, Hebrew shamayim is a circumlocution for the Tetragrammaton and other ascribed titles/ "names" of the Creator. cp. Dan. 4:26 (KJV; 4:23 Masoretic). –  Dec 18 '12 at 19:51
  • I have a vague recollection of the Chief Rabbi of Cape Town saying this at a civic event in the mid-1970s. But I was young and it was a long time ago, so my memory may have misled me. – Henry Apr 26 '14 at 10:43
  • The historical Christian understanding of God's fatherhood includes certain elements that are not accepted by traditional Judaism; specifically, the belief that that He is, first and foremost, the Father of Christianity's founder, and, furthermore, that it is primarily through this direct sonship that Christians indirectly become sons of God (by partaking of the bread and wine of communion, believed to be the flesh and blood of Jesus, and by being anointed with fragrant oil, since the Greek word Christ is the translation of the Hebrew term Messiah, meaning anointed). –  Sep 09 '19 at 08:01

5 Answers5

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To add to Jeff's and Josh's points, we find that there are in fact practices in prayer (kneeling, raising our hands) that are attested in Tanach but were later abandoned as Jewish practices, precisely because non-Jewish religions made these parts of their own rituals. How much more so, then, that we shouldn't adopt prayers that they originated!

Alex
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  • I seem to recall a halacha that we may not sing as part of prayers tunes from churches. (I've no time now to find a citation.) This sounds like that. – msh210 Apr 01 '11 at 16:21
  • I would add: ספר שכתבו מין נשרף עם אזכרות שבו. – JNF Oct 01 '12 at 21:31
  • Can you provide sources to your assertion that those practices were abandoned for the reasons you stated? – Seth J Jan 01 '13 at 15:12
  • @JNF I don't see the relevance. – Double AA Apr 27 '14 at 01:03
  • @DoubleAA Even things originally Jewish are to be treated as מינות when coming from a מין. Though I don't know about actually abandoning things they imitated (see Seth's comment) – JNF Apr 27 '14 at 06:29
  • @JNF More like: מינים who do Jewish things don't actually make anything of value. It's not like we would stop writing Torahs because they do (if they did). – Double AA Apr 27 '14 at 06:31
  • @DoubleAA נשרף isn't applied to just anything "not of value" – JNF Apr 27 '14 at 06:32
  • @JNF Ok. But who cares? It doesn't change the Jew's ability to write another Torah and it to be Kosher. – Double AA Apr 27 '14 at 06:34
  • @DoubleAA, yes, I was referring to the question more than the answer. – JNF Apr 27 '14 at 06:35
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Prayers are composed with different attitudes, and reference different Scriptures.

I am certainly not paskening here, but it is essentially a sectarian prayer, and gives credence to that religion. What is the motivation in saying it? Breaking down boundaries in this area is surely a slippery slope, when dealing with a religion that actively wishes to convert Jews. So it is, at the least, a very bad idea.

One could pick apart various parts of this prayer. For example, "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us". This seems akin to Jesus saying "judge not, lest ye be judged." But there are places this applies and where it does not. The gemara in Bava Kamma 50a states “Kol HaOmer HKB”H Vatran Hu, Yevatru Chaiyav”, “Anyone who says Hashem is a pushover, Hashem will push over his life”.

"But deliver us from evil" is translated in Matthew 6:13 as alternatively "from the Evil one". Catholic doctrine, as affirmed by the Pope (from what I recall from a shiur by Rabbi Tendler, when the Pope made this statement) considers Satan to be a separate power wholly apart from God and His influence. This is a problem of shtei reshuyot, and the reference to the Evil One may then be one of avoda zarah.

Why go looking for trouble? But again, consult your local Orthodox rabbi.

Seth J
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josh waxman
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Ḥukath HaGoyim. Next question?

Seriously, though, according to those who hold that Christianity is not 'Avodah Zarah (lit. "foreign worship", aka idolatry) for gentiles, it is still 'Avodah Zarah for Jews. Why? Either it's idolatry or it's not, right? No, say some (not all) of those who hold this opinion. According to them, it's not idolatry. If it were, it would be 'Avodah Zarah for gentiles, too. The Zarah (adj., lit. "foreign") is not (always) a modifier on the entity to which the 'Avodah (worship) is directed, but it can also be a modifier on the nature of the 'Avodah itself.

In other words, even if you hold that Christians worship HaShem in some ludicrous way and aren't worshiping an idol, it still is not the Jewish way of worshiping. As such, Jews may not participate, join, copy, or in any way emulate this practice.

It's at best Ḥukath HaGoyim, at worst 'Avodah Zarah.

Community
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Seth J
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It has a funny sense to it that's hard to pin down, like a piece of shellfish that's gone bad. The "arting in heaven" for one thing seems a step away from anthropomorphism to me.

Why does anyone need such a prayer, anyway? The Torah has everything that's needed. Saying this 'prayer' would seem to be conferring tacitly some legitimacy on the entire concept of a so-called 'new testament'. Like the shellfish, it's much better imo to avoid.

jeff rez
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If one prayed this prayer, a Jew may think that he is a christian or crazy. The prayer in itself is fine, but the problem is in that it identifies too strongly with another religion, that only Christians recite it.

But then again, many prayed the shmonah esreh together before the added a 13th bracha, "lameshumadim,,,:

Then one might ask, are we not allowed to pray because goying pray?

Harsimrat Kaur
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  • Who cares what another Jew thinks that he's crazy or not. That's why "go in private close the door and pray to your father in heaven" .. or go pray "in the garden." – Nissim Nanach Jan 26 '24 at 08:07