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thought to his speech, so that his prayer will have focus, soul and to Hashem’s kindness and compassion. Therefore, we ask Hashem,
life. And when a person’s prayer has life, it gives him life. As Rabbi “Have compassion on us with an unearned gift, hear our prayers
Nachman teaches, “We receive the essence of our lifeforce from and give us knowledge.”
our prayer” (ibid. 9). Prayer renews a person’s abilities and renews
his faith. Of course, this refers to prayer, not to mere reading, Incidentally, I asked myself why the blessing ends, “He Who
because prayer that does not have life does not do anything. hears prayer” and not “He Who accepts prayer.” The reason
Certainly, it does not give a person life. This is explained in Eitzot appears to be that since Hashem wants to give, He accepts every
Hamevu’arot (Tefillah 15): prayer that He hears. Therefore, our every prayer produces fruit.
The blessing ends, “He Who hears prayer,” because His hearing
We receive the essence of our lifeforce from our prayer. itself indicates His acceptance. And the opposite is also true. When
That is to say, when a person pays proper attention to the Holy One, blessed be He, does not hear, that means that He
the words of [daily] prayer that emerge from his mouth, does not accept. As the verse states: “Even when you increase
or when he is involved in other types of prayer—i.e., prayer, I do not hear” (Isaiah 1:15).
Psalms, techinot, and the like—and he properly heeds In the seventeenth blessing, “He Who returns His Presence
the words of the prayers that he is reciting, he feels a to Zion,” we ask Hashem to want us even though we are still
wonderful aliveness that one does not feel when unworthy. Why are we unworthy? Because we want things other
engaged in any other good deed. than closeness to Hashem. Hashem wants our only goal to be
knowing Him and recognizing Him. If we would want only that,
“Hashem Seeks All Hearts” certainly Hashem would want us and we would not need to ask
Him to want us. But because, unfortunately, we are still far from
Since the words of prayer themselves have great power to inspire knowledge, we ask Hashem to nevertheless want us and our service,
a person, it is a very good practice to look in the siddur while you and return the service to the Temple.
pray, because when you see a word with your eyes and think about
it with your mind, that strengthens your deep feeling. Therefore, Also, in the words, “And may the service of Israel Your nation
we learn that the Ari took care to pray from a siddur—how much always be willingly accepted,” what is the meaning of “willingly
more, then, should people like us. But if a person prefers to pray accepted”? If we did the work with our will, certainly it would
with his eyes closed, it is a good practice to visualize each word rise to be willingly accepted. But unfortunately, we do this work
before saying it. As the Nefesh Hachaim states (ibid., chapter 13): without will. Therefore, we pray that it should nevertheless be
willingly accepted, as though we did it with will. And may we see
The main thing in the work of prayer is that when a quickly the return of Hashem to Zion.
person verbalizes a word of prayer, he should visualize In the eighteenth blessing, “You Whose name is good, and
the word itself and have the intention to use it to increase to Whom it is good to give thanks,” the essence of our thanks
the power of holiness, so that the power of holiness will to Hashem is for the fact that we have knowledge. Therefore, this
bear fruit in heaven and increase [the words’] holiness blessing begins with the words, “We thank You that You are Hashem
and light…. It is a wonderful practice—one that is tried our God.” We thank Hashem for the fact that we know that He is
and true—to accustom oneself to do this, in order to “Hashem, our God and the God of our fathers,” and that “forever
eradicate and remove all vain thoughts that interfere He is our God.” The phrase, “Our Rock, Rock of our lives,” means
that Hashem is our might and the bulwark of our lives. It is as if we