In Judaism, prayer is an introspective process. It is process of discovering what one is, what one should be, and how to achieve the transformation. By improving ourselves with prayer, we become capable of absorbing G-d's blessing. The Hebrew word for prayer is tefila, based on the words 'to judge' or 'to differentiate'. The exercise of judgements is called 'pilelah', whose roots mean 'a clear separation'.
Prayer is viewed as a means to define what truly matters, to ignore the trivialities.
In Jewish tradition, the purpose of tefila is not to tell G-d something, but rather to raise the level of the person praying by improving their perceptions of life so they can become worthy of blessing. Thus, Jewish prayer is more than reading from a prayer book. This intent is called kavanah. The next higher level of kavanah is to know and understand fully the meanings of the prayers. The level following that is to free one's mind of all extraneous and interfering thoughts.