On the surface, the Siddur, or prayer book, would seem to indicate that Jews do not pray to angels or other divine agents, but solely to the Lord. This, however, is not the case....
The existence of the prohibition [of praying to beings other than God] goes back to Scripture...
It was, therefore, the intent of both the baraita and the Mishnah to ban sacrificial slaughter in which the slaughterer invokes an intermediary, either by name or by uttering the name of the angel appointed over it.
Clearly then, although the sages had established that the blessing recited at the time of the slaughter should be addressed to God, some Jews continued to invoke the names of angels, such as Michael, or those of specific mountains, lakes, and the like....
It is assumed that the Samaritans appealed to the angel appointed over the mountain not only at circumcisions, but also in the course of ritual slaughter, as Jews were accustomed to do, a practice condemned by the sages. This may very well explain why the sages taught in Mishnah Ber 9:2 that anyone seeing a mountain, ocean, or something similar is required to recite a blessing such as ‘Blessed be He Who created the Great Sea’. In other words, one should not invoke or be awed by the angelic officer appointed over these natural phenomena, but offer thanks only to God.
In general, then, we can say that the halachic midrashim cited here appear to reflect not only theoretical laws, but a reality in which the rituals of certain Jews included reference to a variety of servants and attendants of God, such as angels, seraphim, and the like. While the sages of the Mishnah considered this custom disgraceful and banned it, for other Jews it was apparently common practice. Such a case is seen with the author of Sefer Harazim who writes of purity on the one hand, but on the other hand refers to prayers to Helios (the sun) or to consulting with a ghost, practices already prohibited in the Pentateuch. In other words, the doctrine of the sages alludes to Jews whose religious views were considered objectionable, as they were (in the opinion of the sages) syncretistic, that is, they implied serving God in partnership....
Since contact with the dead was considered to contaminate the living, in Biblical times, as in the tannaitic period, there were some people who took care not to be rendered impure in this way. However, the gradual disappearance of the laws of purity and impurity enabled the people to begin to visit graves and solicit the help of the deceased....
We can therefore deduce from Talmudic sources that the practice of appealing to the dead Patriarchs began in the Amoraic period [beginning in the third century A.D.], most probably emerging around their burial places in Hebron and Rachel’s tomb....
Hence, praying at gravesites, a custom prohibited in Scripture and condemned in later periods, appears to have been a norm more than a thousand years ago, even if the halachic authorities refused to admit it.
(1, n. 2 on 1, 7-8, 11, 13-14)
From early on in human history, people had an interest in contacting the dead and other non-Divine beings outside the earthly realm. That's why the Pentateuch repeatedly condemns attempts to contact the deceased, Saul went to a medium in 1 Samuel 28, etc. The fact that some Jews practiced such things isn't enough to prove that they were right or that the evidence is ambiguous. Idolatry was condemned by God and by many Jewish leaders down through the centuries, yet a lot of Jews practiced it. Similarly, there were a lot of false teachings and false practices to condemn among the Jewish people in Jesus' day. The Biblical and some of the extrabiblical evidence suggest that prayer is to be offered only to God. That fact isn't changed by the Jewish sources Bar-Ilan refers to who acted to the contrary.
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