Rebbetzin Leah Gans
Sometimes trouble befalls us or people we know, and we pray and pray—but there is no answer. It seems as though we have not "prayed our way" to a good outcome. In fact, no prayers go unanswered; we simply do not see the answer immediately.
Another situation in which we receive no answer is when we pray for the wrong thing.
We decide that we know best what is right for us—and ask for it. Yet our plans will not always turn out to be what we need. We may lead ourselves into a trap, since we cannot foresee what will follow from our choice.
So the best approach is to pray something like this: "Almighty, You know that I am pursuing worthy goals. You know what is good for me (who is right for me—in the case of a shidduch) and when it should happen. Please arrange for everything to work out in the best possible way for me." Trusting in Divine Providence in this way, we can pray without fearing that our request will be rejected.
One of our sages asks: Why must a woman give birth?
That is, why must she go through pain and suffering, through the anxious anticipation of the unknown? When Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, the founder of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in the Land of Israel, was at the very beginning of his great project, he spoke about Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, who "mixed the clay with tears, not water." That is, he "mixed with tears" the first foundation bricks for the building—weeping over the yeshiva's future. This is how the Volozhin Yeshiva, known as the "mother of yeshivas," was built. And every yeshiva must be built this way to have the strength to endure.
A Jewish baby is a cornerstone of the people.
If everything went smoothly, no tears would have gone into his creation. A child is not born without his mother's tears, and at that moment she would do well to channel all the strength of her troubled soul into prayer for this baby, so that he may become G-d-fearing. Every child is an entire world, and we welcome him with tearful prayer to give him strength.
Tractate Sanhedrin (44b) says: "A person should always offer prayer before misfortune strikes."
This can be said of any illness or trouble—it is better to pray in advance that all should be well. The Chafetz Chaim writes that we need to take care when praying—we should be at ease and calm so that we can pray thoughtfully and with concentration. But how can we pray calmly when hardships have filled our hearts with bitterness?
And yet we know that during a lull, when all is calm, we may become distracted in prayer and think about unrelated things, while when a broken heart speaks within us, our prayer is much stronger and seems to "pierce the Heavens." It is still better not to wait until something happens that makes us pray with kavanah, but to pray with concentration even when everything is calm.
I read that during the Yom Kippur War, several tanks were on the Sinai Peninsula and were ambushed there.
There were far more Egyptian tanks. The soldiers felt this was the end. At that moment, the commander shouted over the radio: "Does anyone know how to pray?" Silence followed. To their shame, none of the soldiers knew a single word of prayer. Then one of them remembered how, when he visited his grandfather, his grandfather would give him a glass of orange juice and say: "Say the blessing ‘Shehakol nihyah bidvaro’ (‘May everything be according to His word’)." He shared his memory over the radio. The commander ordered them to load a shell; they recited "Shehakol" over it and fired. And for the first time, they hit an Egyptian tank! From that moment on, each "blessed" shell hit an enemy tank!
This is roughly how prayer works in a difficult hour, when it comes from the heart.
Women who have at least 15 minutes of free time can pray from a siddur. If there are no longer any small children in the family, the mother usually has time for Tehillim as well. But even very busy mothers can pray in their own words about what is weighing on their hearts—and that, too, is prayer.
The words established by the sages of the Great Assembly have power and holiness, and all the more so the psalms written by King David; but prayer from the heart is no less important.
When the Almighty told Moses our teacher to build the Mishkan, Moses replied that he could not. Rashi comments on the verse "And they brought the Mishkan to Moses" as follows: "They could not erect it themselves, and since Moses had done none of the work of making the Mishkan, the Holy One, blessed be He, left the erection of the Mishkan to him." But this is physically very demanding work: raising the pillars and stretching out the sheets of fabric. One person, even someone like Moses our teacher, cannot manage it. When Moses asked, "How can a person erect the Mishkan?", the Almighty answered: "Set to work (on it) yourself, with your own hands." It appeared as though Moses was erecting the Mishkan, but he was only touching it, and the Mishkan rose on its own.
When a person prays, he often sees no sign that anything has changed.
The tears have dried, and the heart is dry—there is no hope—it seems impossible to pray with kavanah any longer. In this situation we think like Moses: How can one person create a prayer that can bring about a change in circumstances? We still need to pray; the Almighty will fill in what our prayer lacks and finish building it Himself.
to be continued
prepared by: Mrs. Zissi Skarzhinskaya