"Rabbi Shimon said: Be careful with the recitation of the Shema and the prayers. When you pray, do not regard your prayers as a fixed obligation but rather as [the asking for] mercy and supplication before G-d, as the verse states, 'For gracious and merciful is He, slow to anger, great in kindness, and relenting of the evil decree' (Joel 2:13). Do not consider yourself wicked in your own eyes."
What we see in this teaching its is the culmination of the process of the reversal of the relative importance of prayer as sacrifice versus prayer as individual service of the heart. Both are present in Tanach but in different proportion than now. To understand this sentence we need to take a step back.
The basis of Judaism is communal - the Covenant between Hashem and the Jewish People. However, it was ruptured and only partially restored after the destruction of the First Temple. In the commentary in the first chapter we showed that Shimon Hatsaddik's replacement idea of the Jewish state run by righteous priests and based on the three principles of Torah, Temple service, and Public Benevolence became untenable in the Hasmonean era of venal rulers. We followed the brief emergence of the concept of autonomous religious society functioning below and separately from the political order; however, it also was not tenable in the changing society of the end of the Temple era with its religious paradigm shifts. Replacing it after the destruction of the Temple and beginning with the teachings of Hillel but finding its greatest expression in the words of the five students of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, was the concept of individual service to the G-d of Israel.
Rabbi Shimon's statement shows the end result of a similar evolution in regard to prayer. As shown by Ziony Zevit in his article From Judaism to Biblical Religion and Back Again, published as chapter 8 in "Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship", New York University Press 2008, there existed both the public worships service centered around sacrifices, which I add was a primary type of worship, and a private prayer that was modeled after a personal conversation with other people. This private prayer was characterized by unique posture, usually prostration, and a conventional conversational style, as one man speaks to another. The posture of Daniel, in prayer on his knees, represented the coming to the fore of individual prayer as a distinct type of Divine Service. Upright posture and formalized, organized prayer, defines the third stage of development and prayer – elevating what was a minor component of divine service in Biblical times to the primary method. The two components of Biblical Prayer are outlined in the following disagreement:
R. Jose son of R. Hanina said: The Tefilot were instituted by the Patriarchs. R.
Joshua b. Levi says: The Tefilot were instituted to replace the daily sacrifices. (Talmud Berakhot 26b)
In this view, the way we pray in our time, it's simply their elevation of what was once a minor component of private prayer of biblical times to a more central role, and, consequent downgrading of the sacrificial aspects of the Prayer design to becoming a minor component of prayer. Certainly, one can see continuation of this process in the Hasidic elevation of individual prayer and its downgrading of public features pf prayer, such as disregarding set times for prayer, the lessened importance of the minyan and the emphasis on personal unifications versus keeping pace with the group.
Rabbi Shimon's statement is interesting for several reasons. It's noteworthy that he speaks about their citation of Shema and prayers in one breath. Personally, I believe that this is most consistent with the approach of the Tosafists who apply many of the laws of prayer to Shema because they seed the Shema as formalized within the prayer service to be in itself a prayer. This is unlike Rambam who sees it as the fulcrum of the prayer experience but not as the prayer, but a declaration of faith. For more see here and in this book.
R. Shimon says that every individual must be careful with his own recitation of prayers and not rely on the public. The prayer must be mercy and supplication. It is not merely an individuals contribution to the public service. To support this point, R. Shimon reinterprets the verse in Joel that, in its context, speaks about Hashem's relationship to the nation of Israel. This reinterpretation is important in emphasizing the individualistic nature of this teaching. It also serves as the seguey into the third teaching which we will discuss please G-d, next time.