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266 | A New Light
fiery flames, and the heart is purified. As Rabbi Nachman teaches
(Likutei Moharan I 156):
Purity of the heart results when a person’s heart is
fervent and burns for Hashem, may He be blessed. As a
result of that [fervor], his heart is purified. Since he was
aflame and burning for a sin or for an evil craving, heaven
forbid, which polluted his heart, he must have his heart
flame and burn for Hashem, may He be blessed. Then
his heart is purified. As the verse states, “Whatever is
used in fire, you shall pass through fire” (Numbers 31:23).
And when a person’s heart is purified, he can always
speak new words, which is the level of Divine inspiration.
Thus, the phrase, “Create a pure heart for me, God,”
is followed by the words, “A proper spirit renew within
me” (Psalms 51:12). He will be able to have new words,
which are on the level of Divine inspiration.
Help Me Receive
The principal element relevant to the present discussion is that
in order to receive the spiritual abundance that the Creator wants
to give us—and that He does give us—we need “hands.” These
“hands” are the wholeness of our intent. With it, we receive the
abundance. And from where do get the wholeness of intent and
“hands” to receive? Hashem is all-powerful, and He Himself can
give us these “hands” (as taught earlier). That means that we must
ask Hashem to give us “hands”—i.e., to give us the wholeness of
the will. Rabbi Natan prays in Likutei Tefillot (I 19):
Master of the universe, in Your compassion
You have given us the good gift that was in Your
treasury whose name is Sabbath. Therefore, I
come to pray, plead and beseech You, Hashem, my
God and the God of my forefathers: just as Your
compassion and kindness expanded to give us this
good, holy gift, so in Your great goodness please
Chapter Six: | 279
Hashem’s compassion, to plead and ask for an unearned gift, and
our need to pray with all our might and with an unrestrained outcry
from the heart. It is permissible to demand immediate salvation.
That shows the might of the will. Still, this prayer is a means of
asking for Hashem’s compassion and pleading. We ask for Hashem’s
compassion, we plead and we request an “unearned gift” because
we do not deserve anything. But since Hashem is compassionate,
wants to save us, wants His children to receive and progress, and
He knows that there is no other path and no other address from
what to receive but from which to Hashem alone, He wants us to
be stubborn in our prayers until we will receive.
Therefore, there is no contradiction. Moreover, it is a great error
to think that prayer in the form of pleading is weak, and that we
must beg Hashem out of a feeling that “if He gives, fine, and if
not, He does not.” That is a tremendous error, because in truth
we must recite every prayer with utter devotion and burning fervor
(as expressed in many sources). A person can only pray with utter
devotion when he feels as though he is hanging by his hands from
a wall and crying out with all his might, asking to be saved at this
very moment.
In order to weaken our prayer, the evil inclination exploits the ideas
that “I do not deserve anything,” that we must pray for Hashem’s
compassion and that we must plead. The evil inclination gives a
person the idea that praying for Hashem’s compassion and pleading
before Him means that a person must ask lethargically and weakly,
like a pauper. But that is wrong. Moses’ prayer to enter the Holy
Land is the paradigm of prayer expressed as pleading—indeed, it
is introduced with the phrase, “and I pleaded” (Deuteronomy 3:23).
Nevertheless, Moses prayed with great intensity, as the midrash
relates (Devarim Rabbah 11:5):
When Moses saw that the decree of judgment
concerning him had been sealed, he fasted. He made
a small circle and stood in its middle, and said, “I will
not move from here until You nullify that decree.” At
that time, what did Moses do? He put on sackcloth and
wrapped himself in sackcloth, wallowed in ash, and stood