The gemara (Kesubos 62) relates that after his marriage, Rebbi's son went off to learn for 12 straight years. As a result of his being gone for so long his wife ended up becoming infertile and was unable to have children. Rebbi debated with himself what he could do. To have his son divorce her was not fair, as his poor wife had waited for him faithfully for 12 years while he was learning. To have his son take another wife to be able to have children also was not a tenable solution wither, as people would assume the wife with children is the "real" wife. Having no way out, Rebbi davened for his son's wife and miraculously she was healed and was able to have children.
Rav Yisrael Meir Druk (in a parsha sheet on P' VaEschanan) asks why Rebbi needed to go through this whole give and take with himself, exploring different possibilities of what he could do, before davening for his son's wife. If his tefilos could heal her, then why did Rebbi not just daven right away?
Rav Druk explains that the gemara is revealing to us a key insight into the concept of tefilah. So long as a person thinks that he/she can fix a problem, then there will be something lacking in his tefillah. They are not really turning the reigns over to Hashem and 100% asking for His help because they still think they can fix the problem themselves. Rebbi therefore first made a cheshbon to himself and contemplated what he could do to solve the problem at hand. Only once he took to heart that there was nothing in his power that would work could he daven effectively.
Tefilah is called avodah, work. Chazal derive the obligation to pray from the pasuk in our parsha, "U'l'ovdo b'chol levavchem." Saying words is not laborious. Where is the hard work involved? The answer is that there is nothing harder for a person and nothing that requires more work than accepting being dependent. We hate when things are out of our hands to fix and out of our power to change. Tefillah ultimately means accepting that EVERYTHING is out of our hands. Without Hashem's help, we are nothing.
The Sefas Emes uses this idea to interpret these pesukim:
"Ki tomar bilvavcha, 'Rabim ha'goyim ha'eileh, eicha uchal l'horisham?'
Lo tira meihem: zachor tizkor es asher asa Hashem Elokecha l'Pharoah..." (7:17-18)
The parsha does not simply tell us that Hashem will help us conquer Eretz Yisrael. Instead, it tells us that we will wonder to ourselves, "How are we ever going to get the job done?" and in response, Hashem offers his help. Why does the parsha not just cut to the chase and tell us that Hashem will take care of things for us? Answers the Sefas Emes: Hashem does not offer his help until we first realize that without that help, we can't do it ourselves.
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People shouldn’t daven for the siccess of their efforts? And if / since they should, ehy did Rebbe need to prove to himself that everything is hopeless in order to daven with full kavvanah?
ReplyDeletePersomally, I am very uncomfortable with the “there is nothing left we can do, lets pray” approach to davening. As though we shouldn’t daven until after hishtadlus runs out. And that really seems to be the implication here.
Yes, I would have said this case was different in that it required a shinnui hateva, a neis, which you ordinarily can not daven for.
DeleteOtherwise, I would agree. Teflla always requires awareness of our total dependence on Hashem, notwithstanding hishtadlus.
"nothing...requires more work than accepting being dependent"
ReplyDelete--it seems that in chumash, only nevi'im resort to prayer. reliance on those few cases for faith in one's own prayer, could be "laborious" indeed
--utter dependence on a false god, does that too require hard work?
"Tefillah ultimately means accepting that EVERYTHING is out of our hands""to fix and out of our power to change"
--should the halachic concepts of b'yado and chazaka qualify this conception of prayer? when things are 'b'yado', wouldn't prayer be suspended in certain particulars? conditions where one relies on chazaka could likewise mean that one proceeds without prayer. [Hashem Himself might be constrained by considerations of chazaka, when He renews daily, continually, the work of creation...] maybe incessant prayer turns G-d off, Who has given man powers, and a presumably godlike role in the run of the earth, and even the option of a working disbelief?
--the man who ordered that the House of Prayer for All Peoples be with great labor built, also encourages everyone to get a good grip on things (Koheles 9:10):
does this conjunction support or suppress the assertion quoted above?
the "conjunction" (last line of the comment) of Highly-directed dibur, and the opposable thumb. this matches the dibur (prayer, and so rain) and gathering grip of Eikev 11:13-14, which matches adam ha'rishon's work* in the garden (2:15)-- prayer for ongoing rain --and his grasping of permissible fruit [while the eitz ha'da'as might be called, in the current context, the tree of independence]; (receptiveness to the nachash, and adam's subsequent expulsion from the gan, of course match Eikev 11:16-17)
Delete*as to adam's guarding the gan-- to guard the tongue from adverse speech (and the grip from adverse fruit [taking/holding a forbidden mango was nothing manually, compared to the very dexterous act of sewing at 3:7 {making textiles, b'dei eved, the first human industry fully in our hands}])
---a prayer for getting a grip on the punctuation marks (...), [...], and {...}, is probably called for at this time---