Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto’s lectures are well known throughout the Jewish world. They combine Hasidic teachings and philosophy with tips for a better life. We have collected pearls from his teachings that are relevant to our daily lives. This week he comments on the Torah portion of V’Etchanan.
“I begged God at that time”
In the Bible we find two great figures who pleaded with God about a matter that was of great importance to them. In this week’s Torah reading, Moses asks God to let him enter the land of Israel, and we also find the childless Chana, who became the mother of the prophet Samuel, asking God to bless her with sons. These two great and holy figures, Moses and Chana, prayed with all their hearts and put their whole soul into their petition to God.
There is a connection between these two requests, as King David says (Psalm 96:6): “Moses and Aaron with his priests, and Samuel among those who called on his name, they called upon the Lord, and he answered them.” Moses and Aaron were on one side and Samuel was on the other. What is the difference between the two requests of Moses and Chana and the requests of all other righteous and holy individuals of the Jewish people since the creation of the world?
Every righteous and holy person in the Jewish people paved a path for themselves from this world to God because of the difficulties they went through. We use these paths to reach God through our prayers. Every time another righteous person prays for the same request, he walks the same path again and renews it for his generation. You can compare it to a road that was paved a hundred years ago and no one drove on it. It was full of holes and pits until someone came to repair the road while driving over it. The meaning is that our patriarch showed Abraham the way, and after him all the righteous who went through similar trials as he did showed the same path a second time.
Once upon a time there was a righteous man who had no children and prayed to God for children. He opened the door for all others who prayed for children. Later, righteous people who prayed for children came and strengthened the way. The righteous who suffered in other ways came and showed the way for the generations after them.
The Jewish people have experienced trials, crises and severe suffering in previous generations. Every crisis that the previous generations experienced made it easier for future generations to be protected from these things, because there are paths and routes in Heaven that were already prepared for their prayers and good deeds. One only has to follow the same path that previous righteous people laid out and prepared.
Now we understand that Moses and Chana paved two strong and good roads to make it easier for every Jew to address his own requests and prayers to God. When Moses understood that God was just in not allowing him to enter the land, he asked one last time to be allowed to enter the land, not because he deserved it, but because he hoped for God’s goodness. “I pleaded with God then and said…” Rashi explains that wherever the verb chanan used, it always means a gift given freely. Moses asked for a free gift from God’s treasury of kindness. God told him, “Enough! Do not speak to me any more about this matter.” If Moses had asked God again to show him a kindness and let him enter the land, God would have had to give it to him. When one asks God to be kind to him, there is no situation in which God would say no. As long as Moses asked God to deal fairly with him, God could tell him no, but as soon as he asked God to show him a kindness, God had to stop him from asking for it.
When someone wants to ask God for something, he must follow a specific order. First, he must recite the verses of the Pesukei d’Zimrah to praise God, sweeten things, give a gift to the king, and praise him. Only then can he ask for any private request he wants. The same goes for the Shemoneh Esreh prayer. First we praise God and then we make our requests.
Another very important thing is that a person must be happy when he asks God for something. A person cannot ask God for something when he is sad and depressed because then there is a 50 percent chance that his request will be rejected. He must ask God with joy.
The two supremely holy people who changed the order of the world were Moses and Chana. When Moses asked God to let him enter the land of Israel, he did not do so in the correct order and in the correct and wise way by praising the Creator. Moses was aware that he would most likely not be allowed to enter the land, and so he was very sad even as he asked. He realized that the Israelites would not achieve their full rectification and the First and Second Temples would be destroyed and the Israelites would go into exile. Moses was already broken and sad when he pleaded with God to let him enter the land of Israel.
This was already different from the way all the saints up to that generation had petitioned God. Moses immediately asked God to enter the land, rather than precede his prayer by first appeasing and honoring God. He was like someone who goes to a king and gives him gifts, but immediately afterward makes a personal request. Moses changed the order of petitioning God accepted in the world at that time.
Chana also changed the order. When she prayed for sons, she did not pray in the usual way, which involved coming to Eli, the High Priest, in the Tabernacle, offering a sacrifice, and joyfully asking for her request. When Chana came to the Tabernacle, “and Chana spoke to her heart, only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard, and Eli thought she was drunk.” (Samuel I 1:13) She sat there and wept instead of praying the way a person normally frames his prayer—with joy. When Eli, the High Priest, saw her, he thought she was a drunk because he knew that someone who prays correctly is joyful and not sad, as she was. Eli thought she was drunk because a drunk can do two opposite things at the same time, such as crying and laughing. Eli saw that Chana’s heart was on the one hand exalted and devoted to Hashem, but on the other hand she was crying.
Therefore, the Midrash Rabba (2:1) says about the verse “I besought God”: If a Jew prays standing, should he be permitted to pray aloud? Our Rabbis teach (Brachot 31a): “If someone prays standing, he may pray with a loud voice.”
But we see in Chana (Samuel I 1:13) that she prayed silently to herself. The Midrash connects Chana’s prayer with Moses’ prayer because their prayers were similar and both contained aspects of weeping and sadness as well as great devotion to God. In this way they presented their requests to God.
And this is the great path of prayer that Moses and Chana showed the Jewish people. Moses was the first to do this, and Chana reinforced it. The fact is that a person can come to God without preparation and “pour out his heart like water” (Lamentations 2:19), without the usual preparations and known rules by which one comes to pray. A person can come with a broken heart that stems from his devotion to Hashem. He can pour out his heart to Hashem for a particular cause and at the same time be happy and pray to God for his request.
This article was written in collaboration with Shuva Israel
