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462 | A New Light
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my
heart be acceptable to You, Hashem, my Rock and my
Redeemer. Amen and amen.
From Prayer 54:
Help and save me so that I will get up every night at
exactly midnight. May I never sleep through a midnight,
but may I wake up every night at exactly midnight all the
days of my life, forever, without fail. May I then rise in
strength like a lion to truly engage in learning Torah and
serving You. “Awaken, my soul, awaken, lyre and harp,
I will awake the dawn” (Psalms 57:9).
From Prayer 33 (Part 2):
Have compassion on me, You Who are filled with
compassion, vast in kindness and truth, You Who grant
so much benefit, You Who have such great forgiveness
for transgressions and pardon for sins, You Who act
righteously on behalf of all creatures composed of flesh
and spirit. Help me in Your tremendous kindness. Help
me, save me, strengthen me and bolster me in Your
wonderful ways, so that from now on I will get up every
night at exactly midnight and recite Tikun Chatzot—
mourning, lamenting and weeping a great deal over the
destruction of the Temple, the house of our holiness and
splendor, the house of our life and length of days, our
dear house, our beautiful meeting place, the apex of our
might, our loveliness, our radiance, our splendor and our
holiness, over what has happened to us: that with our
sins we brought about the destruction of our Temple, the
site of Your mighty Presence, the site of the Torah and
prayer, the site of the revelation of Your Divinity, where
we were able to draw onto ourselves the attainment of
Your Divinity, to know and recognize You even in this
physical world, and may we cling to You forever.
Chapter Nine: | 467
Prayers for Holy Sleep
Hashem Wants You to Pray
Now that you understand that all that Hashem wants of you is to
set aside time to pray, I will present some passages of prayer that
will sum up this chapter and help everyone pray every day. I have
divided the prayers as follows: prayers for the time of the work
of the will, and more specialized and focused prayers to be said
before going to sleep. It is always possible to recite all of the prayers
before going to sleep. But since there are so many, I did not want
to burden the reader before sleep. The prayers to be recited before
going to sleep are more intense than those meant to be recited
at the time of the work of the will, because at the time of sleep a
person is truly in danger.
It is very important to underscore that although you may utilize
these prayers in the work of the will, in order to receive inspiration
and ideas for your own words, do not view them as a substitute
for your personal prayers in your own words. During the half hour
devoted to the work of the will, do not read prayers from a text,
but speak to Hashem in your own personal words that come from
the heart. And the main thing is to pray with a great deal of will.
Some of the following prayers are taken from Likutei Tefillot,
but most are personal prayers that were composed based upon
the teachings discussed in this chapter. These prayers sum up this
book, because they are a living model of the work of the will, a
living model of how to transform Torah learning into prayer, and
a model of how learning inspires prayer. And the prayers before
sleep provides a living model of Chapter Six: Cause a New Light
to Shine on Zion, which teach that when a person prays, he must
feel as though he is hanging from a precarious wall, suspended
between life and death, with the faith that Hashem wants to save
him.