Description: Shavah 05
She’arim BiTefillah
Sha’vah 05
Now let’s see how this applies to davening for Ruchniyos. When we say in davening, ‘vitahair libainu li’avdechah be’emes,’ if we think about this a little, we’d realize that all our future depends on this. If we have an inspired heart, a pure heart, then our davening goes easily, we daven with kavanah, with emotion and passion. We do mitzvos with alacrity, with excitement and zerizus. We have no problem finding time to learn, and are able to get immersed and have a geshmak in learning. All this revolves around us having a pure heart – one that ruchniyos can penetrate.
But if our heart hasn’t been ‘purified’ by Hashem, then it’s full of blockages, and davening becomes hard, hard to wake up, hard to get into it. Everything is hard, and we lack inspiration. If we can’t accomplish in ruchniyos, not only will it affect us spiritually, and of course affect our nitzchiyus, but it has such effect on our life day to day. It drags us down.
When we daven on Yom Tov and say, ‘bnei beisechah kivatchilah,’ we don’t begin to appreciate what a difference the Beis Hamikdash would have on our lives. The chief reason there is such a ‘yeridas hadoros,’ such a downward trend from generation to generation, is because we become more and more distant from the Beis Hamikdash. The pasuk says, ‘malkah vi’sareha ba’goyim, ain Torah,’ because the king and the nobles are in galus, there’s no Torah anymore.
Chazal say, that when Rabbi Akiva was accompanying the kevurah of Rav Elazer, he hit himself repeatedly in anguish, until he started to bleed profusely. Tosafos asks that it’s a Torah prohibition to do that – ‘lo sisgodedu!’ Tosafos answers if one is doing it because of Torah – it’s different. Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz zatzal explained, that the real reason for the issur of not wounding yourself when you lose a close relative is because it says, ‘banim atem la’Hashem elokaichem, lo sisgodadu.’ You are children of Hashem, why are you so in grief and lost, why are you wounding yourself? By wounding yourself you are demonstrating that your life is not worth living. But how can you think that - you still have a father! You have Hashem! But when a person realizes he has lost the opportunity to learn Torah, and to grow in ruchniyos, that is truly something which makes life not worth living. That’s true loss of ‘life’! For that it’s understandable that you wish to wound yourself.
Rabbi Akiva, who was the greatest of the Tannaim, was so distraught when his rebbi, Rebbi Elazar passed away that he couldn’t handle life so to speak, so he was hitting himself in pain! That’s how much loss of ruchniyos affected Rabbi Akiva who was so great!
We of course are very far from that. But we do appreciate the role ruchniyos plays in our lives. What would we be without our davening and learning, without Shabbos and Yom Tov, without mitzvos and Chesed, without Torah and Avodah? When we daven for ruchniyos – we have to stop and think for a minute what would we be without anything? If even one of those things would be denied to us – maybe we’d be put into a position where Chas V’Shalom we won’t be able to do mitzvos, we’d be stuck without matzos and wine on Pesach night – how terrible would we feel? How much would we be missing? We know internally how valuable ruchniyos is to us – and if we think about it – we would feel how important what we are asking from Hashem really is to us – and then we could accomplish a level of ‘shav’ah’ in our tefillos.
She’arim BiTefillah
Sha’vah 05
Now let’s see how this applies to davening for Ruchniyos. When we say in davening, ‘vitahair libainu li’avdechah be’emes,’ if we think about this a little, we’d realize that all our future depends on this. If we have an inspired heart, a pure heart, then our davening goes easily, we daven with kavanah, with emotion and passion. We do mitzvos with alacrity, with excitement and zerizus. We have no problem finding time to learn, and are able to get immersed and have a geshmak in learning. All this revolves around us having a pure heart – one that ruchniyos can penetrate.
But if our heart hasn’t been ‘purified’ by Hashem, then it’s full of blockages, and davening becomes hard, hard to wake up, hard to get into it. Everything is hard, and we lack inspiration. If we can’t accomplish in ruchniyos, not only will it affect us spiritually, and of course affect our nitzchiyus, but it has such effect on our life day to day. It drags us down.
When we daven on Yom Tov and say, ‘bnei beisechah kivatchilah,’ we don’t begin to appreciate what a difference the Beis Hamikdash would have on our lives. The chief reason there is such a ‘yeridas hadoros,’ such a downward trend from generation to generation, is because we become more and more distant from the Beis Hamikdash. The pasuk says, ‘malkah vi’sareha ba’goyim, ain Torah,’ because the king and the nobles are in galus, there’s no Torah anymore.
Chazal say, that when Rabbi Akiva was accompanying the kevurah of Rav Elazer, he hit himself repeatedly in anguish, until he started to bleed profusely. Tosafos asks that it’s a Torah prohibition to do that – ‘lo sisgodedu!’ Tosafos answers if one is doing it because of Torah – it’s different. Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz zatzal explained, that the real reason for the issur of not wounding yourself when you lose a close relative is because it says, ‘banim atem la’Hashem elokaichem, lo sisgodadu.’ You are children of Hashem, why are you so in grief and lost, why are you wounding yourself? By wounding yourself you are demonstrating that your life is not worth living. But how can you think that - you still have a father! You have Hashem! But when a person realizes he has lost the opportunity to learn Torah, and to grow in ruchniyos, that is truly something which makes life not worth living. That’s true loss of ‘life’! For that it’s understandable that you wish to wound yourself.
Rabbi Akiva, who was the greatest of the Tannaim, was so distraught when his rebbi, Rebbi Elazar passed away that he couldn’t handle life so to speak, so he was hitting himself in pain! That’s how much loss of ruchniyos affected Rabbi Akiva who was so great!
We of course are very far from that. But we do appreciate the role ruchniyos plays in our lives. What would we be without our davening and learning, without Shabbos and Yom Tov, without mitzvos and Chesed, without Torah and Avodah? When we daven for ruchniyos – we have to stop and think for a minute what would we be without anything? If even one of those things would be denied to us – maybe we’d be put into a position where Chas V’Shalom we won’t be able to do mitzvos, we’d be stuck without matzos and wine on Pesach night – how terrible would we feel? How much would we be missing? We know internally how valuable ruchniyos is to us – and if we think about it – we would feel how important what we are asking from Hashem really is to us – and then we could accomplish a level of ‘shav’ah’ in our tefillos.