The widespread view is that prayer is the center of religious existence and that understanding the meaning of prayer requires that we assume God is its sole destination. This book challenges this assumption and, through a phenomenological analysis of the meaning of prayer in modern Hebrew literature, shows that prayer does not depend at all on the addressee--humans are praying beings. Prayer is, above all, the recognition that we are free to transcend the facts of our life and an expression of the hope that we can override the weight of our past and present circumstances.