Third Vaad Elul – Creating Topics In Tefilla

The tzurah of Klal Yisroel

We will begin to work on how to approach the tefillah of Rosh Hashonah. We need to find out the tzurah of Klal Yisroel because the davening on Rosh Hashonah is connected with this, that you want to bring down a tzura for the new year. So the tzurah of the new year needs to be connected with the tzurah of Klal Yisroel (this does not refer to our needs).

 We need to first get one thing straight. The possuk in Parshas Vaeschanan says ‘lo merubchem choshak Hashem bochem ki atem hameat mikol hoamim’.

Rashi says 2 pshatim on what merubchem means. The first pshat is that Hashem does not desire us because we are great in number. The second pshat in Rashi is that Hashem does desire us because we do not make ourselves big from everything that He gives to us. Rather, we make ourselves small from it.

The possuk is telling us not to make a mistake and think that Hashem desires us because of our ‘rubchem’. This means that beforehand we might have mistakenly thought that He does desire us because of our ‘rubchem’.  According to the first pshat in Rashi we understand why we might have made a mistake. Because we are so large in number then we Klal Yisroel can make a large noise and effect on the world. This would give Hashem the opportunity to reveal His presence in the world.

If so, according to the second pshat in Rashi there must have also been a reasonable way to have understood why our making ourselves big would be a reason why Hashem would desire us. Why would our making ourselves big be a reason for Hashem to desire us. Why is this a good thing?

We would have thought that the great achievements of Klal Yisroel is what makes us so desirable. So many Jews winning Nobel Prizes. The greatness of talmidei chachomim who know Torah by heart. Also, what we have just seen of the great Jewish intelligence of the Mossad.

Nevertheless, the possuk tells us that this is not why Hashem desires us. This is not what Hashem wants from us as Klal Yisroel. The Ramban says that just due to the fact that we are connected with Him, He desires us (and not because we are great in our achievements).

We need to approach Rosh Hashonah with clarity on what the correct tzurah of Klal Yisroel is. It’s ‘lo merubchem’- just the fact that we are connected with Him- this is the correct tzurah.

You should not make a mistake in the understanding of being connected with Hashem. This does not mean to say that Hashem knows what our personal desires are and what is in our heart and He is close to us. This is the same as what any good gentile thinks. We are not just a better edition of the gentiles.

We are totally different. Our connection with Hashem is the other way around. We are connected with Him. We bring our world into His world. It’s about what Hashem wants and not what we want in our hearts.

For our tefillah of Rosh Hashonah and also tefillah all the year round, we need to work on having this kavanah that we are coming into the Ribono Shel Olam’s world. We do not need to have any lofty kavanahs.

The problem with thinking before saying the words

So, what is the problem why we struggle with kavanah in our tefillah. R Yisroel says in Etz Pri that once a person becomes very familiar with a language, he no longer needs to think how to say every word before he says it. Instead, (once you have the idea of what you want to speak about) whole sentences come out automatically.

R Yonasan told me the same idea. He said that the words of tefillah are engrained in the Jewish soul. In his sense of humour he explained based on this, with laughter, that this is why a Jew is able instead of saying ‘mishon umivtach latzaddikim’ ‘Shimon umitbach’. The letters of tefillah are so engrained in our soul that we are therefore able to make the wrong formulations with the letters of tefillah.

Tefillah is by now in a certain place in our brain and personality that it is not possible for us to even think before saying the words. From this place the words just come out automatically. It is not because it is too difficult for us to think. It is also not because we are reshaim and we don’t want to first think before saying the words of davening.  Rather, because of where the words are inside us, we are simply not able.

So, we are told that we must think before we speak. The Ramban says this. However, some people think that this means that before saying each word we should think about it first. Think and then say Baruch. Think and then say atah. However, we are not built like this. If we try this as the solution, then we will lose our tefillah totally.

Preparing the topics

So, what do we need to practically do to help?

The Vilna Gaon in Even Shleimah says in perek 9, os 3 that before we daven we need to think in order that our tefillah will be shegurah befiv.

Why do we want to make it shegurah befiv. Like we said from R Yisroel and from R Yonasan, this is exactly our problem with tefillah- the tefillah being already in our mouth is what causes the problem that makes us to not be able to think before uttering the words of the tefillah?

The answer is that the Gaon is not talking about first thinking about the words before saying them. Rather, he means that we should first think about the topics of tefillah before davening.

This preparation of the topics is not simply technical advice. It is something about the nefesh.

Whilst the words do come out from us automatically, the topics however do not. They only come out through prior preparation. Once you have prepared the topics based on your understanding of the translation or explanations of the words then the words will come out from you together with the relevant topics.

We are working on trying to build the right tzurah for our tefillah. The way to create the right tzurah is never done by thinking about all the individual details beforehand. Therefore, it is not built by thinking beforehand about all the meanings of all the words or of the high kavanas in all the words. The right tzurah is built through the topics.

If you open up the kabalistic work of the Rashash you will see that each word of tefillah takes up about 5 pages. It is not that he is saying 5 pages about the meaning of each word. Rather, he saw in each word a whole topic. This topic takes 5 pages for him to explain. (Although when he was davening, he would have been able to daven together with these topics very quickly. Just that for him to put it in writing takes time). His topics are not understandable to us.

I will show you an example of how to make topics. The first part of tefillah until elokei yaakov– the topic is that we are connected to Hashem because of our forefathers. The next part until vekonei hakol is a topic that Hashem is guiding all the worlds in all the different circumstances. Then until leman shemo beahava is about geulah. Next week I will try and go through to make the topics of tefillas Rosh Hashonah clearer.

I tried going through the shemoneh esrei, writing down the topics. I then realized that what I was doing was making a new topic every 2 or 3 words. This is ridiculous. I am not holding there. I need to make topics that are broader.

Prepare the topics, not the words

Some people find that when they are davening their head goes off to another place. This is not a laziness or a difficulty to think. Rather, they start thinking about a different interesting topic such as their neighbour has just recently bought a nice new car. The way to combat this is not by telling yourself that you must think about the words. No. You need to combat this by telling yourself that the neighbour’s car is one topic. You have a different interesting topic to think about. You can only do this if you first have all the topics clear beforehand.

An additional reason why to work on making topics rather than working on understanding the words, is because the words are Hashem’s words.  The words do what they are meant to do anyway.  Therefore, we are not trying to connect to the words of tefilla through our understanding of them since this is beyond us.  Instead, our topics connect us in a way of “escorting” the words.

It takes guts to make your own topics for the shemoneh esrei. But this is what we need to do. We need to take our own machzor (and also ideally our own siddur during the year also) and go through writing in a pencil our own topics in the shemoneh esrei and then we are connected with our tefillah.

This being connected is the tzurah of our tefillah. This is also the tzurah of the year- that we want to have a year which we are with Him (not just that we believe that He is with us).