לאמר

As the Jewish Nation stood at the shores of the Red Sea paralyzed with fear, Hashem told Moshe דבר אל בני ישראל ויסעו, speak to the Children of Israel, that they should travel. Conspicuously absent is a word that usually follows Hashem's command to Moshe to speak: לאמר, to say. For example we will commonly find: Hashem spoke to Moshe לאמר.

In general, the commentators are troubled as to the understanding of לאמר as it seems to be superfluous. There are a number of different approaches to understand its general usage. Rav Isaac of Komarna (as is also explained by Rabbeinu Bachya) understands that whenever Hashem uses the word לאמר he is indicating to Moshe that he is meant to be transmitting the message to the Nation on two levels. First of all, he is meant to be telling them the Pshat, the simple, obvious, meaning of the words which Hashem is instructing him to share with the people. The word לאמר is then coming to indicate that there is something additional to say. It is also Moshe's mandate to instruct the people in the reason behind what Hashem has instructed. Why has Hashem told us to do this. Some will explain that this indicates that he should explain the Kabbalistic reasons behind the commandment.

As the Nation stood at the Red Sea and it was time for them to proceed forward, this was the time for them to connect to the power of Emunah, to their complete trust in Hashem. If Hashem said to go, they would go. Offering them reasons as to why they should listen would have diminished this demonstration of Emunah. Emunah is only present when there is no logic or understanding, just a deep seated trust.

There was no לאמר here as Moshe was not told to tell them any reason. It was time to travel, and to trust.

My "Demands"

The headline of the ad on the back page of Hamodia Magazine read: Gedolim and Rabbonim Demand: Turn off your cell phones before davening.
Demand!
The first vision that entered my mind was of visiting my grandparents when I was a child and accompanying my grandfather to shul. If someone spoke during Krias HaTorah  the Rov would walk up to the bimah bang his hand loudly and shout at those who were speaking to quiet down. I can picture him standing there, his facing burning with righteous indignation, his large round eyes giving a piercingly angry look at the transgressors. I was certainly terrified to speak there.
But as my thoughts turned to the present and the issue at hand I realized that what troubled me was: Why is the ad focusing on a symptom instead of worrying about the core issue?
I would encourage you to read the introductory section to Rav Kook's Olas R'Iyah on Tefillah. See how he poetically describes over and over again that Tefillah, being an Avodah She'Ba'Lev, is meant to be an expression of one's pining desire for a relationship with Hashem. As we awake in the morning we are wanting to connect to Him before we go out into the world and engage in our mundane pursuits. As we conclude our workday and are returning home, we desperately desire to reconnect with Hashem to share with Him all the emotions and struggles that we contended with during the day. As we are about to go to sleep we once again want to take leave of Him before we lay down to sleep. If people would come to shul desperately wanting to utilize the time to enhance their relationship with Hashem would they be taking out their cell phones in the middle of davening?!
Imagine a husband and wife who love each other who have had to be apart for a period of time. Finally, they are able to arrange to spend a weekend in a hotel together. Will anyone need to demand of them to hang the do-not-disturb sign on their door?
But when davening is a Halachic obligation that one must fulfill, or one is davening out of a sense of needing to do it in order to get what he or she wants, and one is lacking that thirst to connect to Hashem, is there any wonder that the result is people speaking on their cell phones? There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way Tefillah is being taught to children as well as to adults. Here are my "demands" to that end:

• I "demand" that children not be taught to daven until they are old enough to understand what they are saying. (By the way, this is what Chazal teach as well.)
• I "demand" that the emphasis on Tefillah education be moved from a Halachic based model to one that emphasizes and models the meaning of Avodah She'Ba'Lev. Even teaching the meaning of the words of davening, vital as that is, needs to be subordinated to the very foundation of Tefillah itself.
• I "demand" that the concept of Tov me'at b'kavanah, that it is better to cover less ground in the siddur and to do so with a real connection to Hashem, rather than getting through the prescribed daily Tefillah but lacking any relationship with Hashem, be emphasized in all schools and shuls.

As one of the first steps for the Exodus from Egypt, the Torah says that the King of Mitzryaim died and the Children of Israel sighed from the work and they cried out to Hashem. Mitzrayim  is frequently understood to be a metaphor for being in a constricted place. It is only when we remove the constrictions that bind us, when we let out a sigh of relief from the freedom of seeing Tefillah as work, as a chore that must be done, rather than as something we are chalishing  to do, that we will truly be able to cry out to Hashem and be free.

Finding the Right Door

Standing in the palace she knows that she is surrounding by the greatest luxuries and abundance she can imagine. The problem is that there are hundreds of rooms and she doesn't know which one has the food she so desperately needs to eat. She opens one door, and finds a room full of gold; not very edible, and useless at the moment. She runs down the hallway and randomly selects another door to open. Still no food. Silk won't satisfy her needs.

Why is there no food here, she screams. There is, she is just opening the wrong doors.

The same is true, oftentimes, when we pray to God. In our lost sense of frustration, we begin to think that there is nothing there for us, that we are doomed to failure in one area or another. But maybe we are just knocking on the wrong door. Perhaps, more often that not, we have just been knocking on the same door over and over again, and haven't bothered trying another door...

Connecting the Heart

For years I have tried to figure out how to properly daven (pray). Most of those efforts were focused externally. I have purchased countless seforim (books) each one offering its own approach to proper prayer. I read Yesod V'Shoresh HaAvodah 25 years ago or so, and found it to be a very intense workout. I am not sure if I got much more than intensity from it, as well as an attempt to direct my mood during davening according to the dictates of the sefer.

Since that time I have had books from a German perspective, from a Chasidic perspective, from a Lithuanian perspective, anthologies, halachic based works, and Kabbalistic works. Nothing has really done the trick for me long term.

Eventually I learned where my error lay. I was approaching davening with my head and it is meant to be approached by the heart. My pursuit of understanding was rooted in the same type of intellectual endeavors I devoted to Torah study. But to succeed in this arena I need to put my logic on the back burner and move my emotions to the front.

I saw this point brought out beautifully in Yam HaChochmah as he discusses people who invest davening energy into complex Kabbalistic kavanos. He points out that the point of these exercises is to enhance ones experience; to enable their hearts to cleave to God even more. But if they are causing him to lose his heart and engage his brain, he is better off sticking to the simple explanation of the davening.

Although I am not one who is into Kabbalistic Names of God during my davening, this admonition opened me up to realizing the error of my emphasis. Now, if I could only engage my heart properly...

Try Again

The Kozhnitzer Maggid once asked a friend whether after saying his prayers did he try to study a subject that he could not previously master. The friend said that he did not. The Maggid then said, "In your prayers you ask God to give you more understanding of Torah. If you don't believe in the efficacy of your prayer, by virtue of the fact that you don't bother to see if it worked, how can you expect the prayer to have any effect?!"

The Rabbi and the King

"What should I be thinking about as I pray," asked my friend. "I am naturally inclined to focus on my personal needs and those of my family. On the other hand we are taught that one should really not focus on his own needs, but on the pain of God for the fact that we are in exile and not able to serve Him fully. It is difficult for me to concentrate on that, but if I focus on my personal needs I end up feeling guilty."
I thought about his dilemma for a few moments and then told him that I agreed that it wasn't natural for a person to pray without any focus on his own needs. Perhaps the following story could illustrate what our sages have in mind when they tell us to focus on the pain of the Schechina (presence of God).
During WWII the Nazis occupied Morocco. They imprisoned the King of Morocco. One day his captors decided to put him on trial for his life, and were leading him through the streets of Fez to his trial and certain conviction and death. On his way he noticed the Baba Sali walking down the street with his son. The Baba Sali was trying to avoid the attention of the Nazi guards, but the king, who had previously met his as the representative of Moroccan Jewry, called him over.
"Give your son a blessing," the King commanded the Baba Sali. Nervous of the Nazis, the Baba Sali mumbled a quick blessing. "No," said the king, "You must give him a truly heartfelt blessing."" Seeing he had no choice, the Baba Sali gave his son a lengthy and meaningful blessing. As he was about to conclude his blessing, the king said to him "Include me in the blessing as well." The Baba Sali did so.
The king was not killed and after the war he invited the Baba Sali to the palace to thank him for his blessing. The Baba Sali expressed surprise at the request the king had made of him years before. "Why did you ask me to bless my son," he asked. "Why didn't you just ask me to give you a blessing?" "I wanted you to give me a blessing from the bottom of your heart," the king explained. Had you just blessed me it wouldn't have been so heartfelt. Once you were giving the blessing to your son I knew it was coming from the deepest place in your heart, I then asked you to include me in it."
In the same way, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for us to truly be able to approach God and just feel His pain. However, when we first focus on and feel our personal and family pain, we can then transfer that feeling towards God, and feel His pain as well.
So, yes, we must feel our own pain, it is the vehicle through which we can come to feeling the pain of God.