What is the difference between praying and complaining to God?

Rabbi Landau teaches that if you believe God is listening, “stop whining and start asking.” Whining doesn't only mean complaining. “Whining means small-minded prayer.”

It means standing in front of an unlimited God while all you can think about is your tiny craving. That, he explains, was the sin of the misonenim, the complainers in the desert. They had Hashem, they had manna from heaven, they had miracles every day, and they were craving meat.

There's nothing wrong with asking for meat, he stresses. “You can ask Hashem for anything.” The problem is when the whole prayer is “just give me this little thing so I can stop feeling uncomfortable.” Real prayer sounds different: “Hashem, You are unlimited, open my life, give me the prosperity I need, make me who I'm meant to become.”

“Whining reduces the infinite God to your tiny problem,” Rabbi Landau says. So think bigger, and ask bigger.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Real prayer asks big. Whining shrinks the request down to a passing craving.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

What the complainers asked for was not forbidden. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the flaw was not in what they asked for but in the state of mind they asked from.

What may be behind it

When a person whines, he fits the Creator of all worlds into the size of his own small problem.

Deepest human truth

Prayer is meant to widen the mind. In the book he cites “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it”: ask from a big place.

More questions from this teaching

• Why was it a sin for the Israelites to ask for meat in the desert?