Does Prayer Bore You? - Chassidus Offers a Different Prayer Experience | Rabbi Asher Perkesh

00:00 Prayer occupies a very central place in every Jew’s daily life. We pray every day, three times a day. On Shabbos we add a fourth prayer, and on Yom Kippur a fifth. But precisely because prayer is so central to our daily lives, a question arises—a question that troubles us all: How do we make prayer truly soulful? How do we give it the place it deserves? How do we make it a prayer from the depths of the heart? As our Sages say, “What is service of the heart? It is prayer.” How do we make prayer something alive? Precisely because we pray every day, several times a day, prayer can become very routine. We go through it, say the words, and already find ourselves waiting for the minyan to finish. We rush through the prayers, barely getting the words out. And sometimes we feel to ourselves: I wish my prayer were more inward, more serious, more profound. But because the prayers are the same every day, they can become dry and sometimes even boring. We want to teach our children to pray, but here we encounter a very great difficulty. One of the biggest complaints we hear from parents at school meetings is this: We want to invest in our child’s prayer. We take him to shul on Shabbos, and there’s no talking to him. He isn’t interested in praying; he barely opens the siddur. He opens it, but he daydreams and wants to go out and play. Prayer sometimes becomes a source of tension between father and son, a kind of battle, and things can reach an impossible point. What can we do so that our children will want to pray? But really, we know that we have to turn the question back on ourselves: How do we make prayer, for us,

02:21 an experience? How do we make our prayer genuine, inward, and sincere? That is a question each of us has. Prayer has a set text. There are the same words we say three times a day, and then there is Shacharis, which is longer, but there too it is the same text every day, the same words repeated. Sometimes we ask ourselves: If prayer is supposed to be service of the heart—if our Sages wanted it to be heartfelt, as they said, “What is service of the heart? It is prayer”—why did they establish a fixed text, fixed words, parts of which we sometimes barely understand? What do they mean? If we speak Hebrew, we understand more; if we don’t, sometimes it is hard even to understand what is going on. And even if we do understand, sometimes it feels like verses repeating themselves. What exactly is going on here? Of course, we also know that the text of the prayers was established by holy people, the Men of the Great Assembly. It is a sacred text, handed down through the generations. But in the end, that alone does not satisfy us. How can we truly find the vitality we are supposed to bring to prayer and receive from it? On the other hand, when we look at halachah, it tells us that prayer is about requesting what we need. In other words, according to the law, prayer means that a Jew must ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu for his needs. Every day a Jew must ask, and that is the point of Shemoneh Esrei, the Amidah, where we ask for our needs. And there, too, I ask: First of all, if I want to ask from the depths of my heart, wouldn’t it be more fitting to ask for what really matters to me—to speak to Hakadosh Boruch Hu in my own language, in my own words, and turn to Him: “Father, Father in Heaven,” and speak with Him

04:36 heart to heart? To tell Him what really troubles me, what is really weighing on my heart? Each person could ask for what he needs in his own language. On the other hand, sometimes a person says: Everything is good, everything is fine. Baruch Hashem, I’m managing, and today I don’t particularly feel like asking for anything. I have nothing to ask for. Everything is good and pleasant. And even if I do have something to ask for, let me ask for it in the way I want to. So what exactly is prayer about, and how do we turn it into an experience? Here we come to the distinctive perspective that Chassidus gives us on prayer. Today we will discuss the mitzvah of prayer through the perspective the Baal Shem Tov and Chassidus gave us—the deeper meaning of the service of prayer. We know that in Chassidus, beginning with the Baal Shem Tov, prayer holds a most central place. First we will speak a little about some teachings and stories from the early generations of our Rebbeim, the leaders of Chassidus, concerning prayer. From there we will move on to the deeper perspective of Chassidus, which opens our eyes and gives each of us the ability to connect to prayer. We will also try to bring this down to practical terms: How can we connect to prayer from a genuine, inward, and deep place in the soul? First, the word “tefillah.” We are used to speaking of prayer as a time for making requests, as we said, asking for what we need. But the truth is that the word “tefillah” means something quite different. “Request” is not the translation of “tefillah.” The word “tefillah” means connection. We find this word in several places in Tanach, for example, “With Divine bonds I have bound myself.” When Rachel’s maidservant bore a son to our forefather Yaakov, he was named Naftali, after the words “With Divine bonds I have bound myself.” Rashi explains: “I have become joined.” Through the birth of another son to Rachel’s maidservant, she gained a special connection with our forefather Yaakov. So the words “with Divine bonds” express connection, a connection she attained through praying and asking Hakadosh Boruch Hu to give her a son. “A tightly fastened cover” is another example. There are several verses in the Torah where we find this root associated with a bond, a connection, a cleaving. This gives us a deeper perspective: Prayer is not just a moment when a Jew comes and asks Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “Please give me a livelihood, give me health, give me nachas.” There is something deeper in prayer. Prayer is a time of connection, a time of closeness. A Jew connects with Hakadosh Boruch Hu during prayer. A Jew connects with his own soul. That is the inner, deeper point of prayer. Every Jew has “an actual part of G-d Above,” as the Alter Rebbe explains to us in Tanya. This is one of the foundations of Chassidus: it revealed the depth of a Jew’s soul. The soul is an actual part of G-d Above. The soul is, so to speak, a part of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But when the soul descends into this world and becomes clothed in a body and an animal soul, surrounded by all the materiality and physicality of the world, it becomes distant. It no longer feels that inner connection, that it is an actual part of G-d Above. It wants to experience that connection again. That is the meaning of prayer as connection: During prayer, the soul has the opportunity to renew, to refresh its connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu—its inner connection with itself, which is really the soul’s connection with its source, Hakadosh Boruch Hu. One of the Baal Shem Tov’s early teachings concerning the service of prayer: The Baal Shem Tov spoke

07:10 about a special connection. Another son was born to Rachel’s maidservant, and through that she gained a special connection with our forefather Yaakov. So “with Divine bonds” refers to connection: through her prayer and her request that Hakadosh Boruch Hu give her a son, she became connected. “A tightly fastened cover.” There are several verses in the Torah where we find this root associated with a bond, a connection, a cleaving. This gives us a deeper perspective: Prayer is not just a moment when a Jew comes and asks Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “Please give me a livelihood, give me health, give me nachas.” There is something deeper in prayer. Prayer is a time of connection, a time of closeness. A Jew connects with Hakadosh Boruch Hu during prayer. A Jew connects with his own soul. That is the inner, deeper point of prayer. Every Jew has “an actual part of G-d Above,” as the Alter Rebbe explains to us in Tanya. This is one of the foundations of Chassidus, which revealed the depth of a Jew’s soul. The soul is an actual part of G-d Above. The soul is, so to speak, a part of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But when the soul descends into this world and becomes clothed in a body and an animal soul, surrounded by all the materiality and physicality of the world, it becomes distant. It no longer feels that inner connection, that it is an actual part of G-d Above. It wants to experience that connection again. That is the meaning of prayer as connection: During prayer, the soul has the opportunity to renew, to refresh its connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu—its inner connection with itself, which is really the soul’s connection with its source, Hakadosh Boruch Hu. One of the Baal Shem Tov’s early teachings concerning the service of prayer: The Baal Shem Tov spoke

09:35 About Noah’s ark, and explained that all the stories in the Torah are not just stories; they are instructions. The Torah teaches us a way to live. According to Chassidus and the Baal Shem Tov, the story of Noah’s ark teaches us about the power of our prayer. The Baal Shem Tov says: “Make yourself an ark.” When Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Noah, “Make yourself an ark,” the Hebrew word for “ark,” teivah, also means “word.” “Make yourself a teivah” means to make the words we say in prayer into words with a soul. “Make a window for the ark.” The Baal Shem Tov says: The words of prayer can be dry words, dark words, words with no meaning, no substance, no soul. Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells a Jew: “Make a window for the ark”—bring light into the words of prayer. “Come into the ark,” says the Baal Shem Tov. What does that mean? Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Noah, “Come into the ark.” Go inside. In other words, don’t stand outside. Sometimes we say the words of prayer, but we’re standing outside. It often happens that we stand in prayer and say the words while, at the same time, we’re traveling all over the world. We’re everywhere except where we’re supposed to be: face to face with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, connecting with our soul and connecting with prayer from within. So “come into the ark,” says the Baal Shem Tov. Enter the teivah. When you pray, be there. Be inside. There’s a story about the Maggid of Mezritch, the Baal Shem Tov’s great disciple and successor, Reb Dov Ber. At first he studied in the yeshiva of the Pnei Yehoshua, one of the great Torah scholars of that generation, known for writing a foundational work studied when learning the Talmud, the Gemara, in depth. So in that yeshiva

11:57 they studied Gemara in depth, using the method of pilpul, and that was where the Maggid of Mezritch studied. He was one of the outstanding students, one of the brilliant minds of the yeshiva. In time, he discovered Chassidus. Even before discovering Chassidus, the Maggid was already a genius, a tremendous genius in both the revealed and hidden dimensions of Torah. Then he became close to the Baal Shem Tov, began studying Chassidus, and became one of the Baal Shem Tov’s greatest disciples. They say that years later, the Maggid met an old friend from before he had become close to the Baal Shem Tov, a friend from the Pnei Yehoshua’s yeshiva. They met and began talking, and his friend noticed that when it came time to pray, the Maggid prayed for hours. He devoted a great deal of time to prayer. It took him many hours each day to pray, dwelling on every word, and he truly prayed with great depth and concentration. This was something new to his friend; he had never seen it before. After the Maggid finished praying, that friend, his former fellow student, asked him: “I remember you from the good years when we were in yeshiva. We studied together, didn’t we? You studied a great deal of the revealed Torah, and you also studied the hidden dimension of Torah, Kabbalah. I can understand that when you pray, you don’t just concentrate on the plain meaning of the words; you also have deeper intentions in mind, the mystical intentions. But I know the Arizal’s intentions too, the Kabbalistic intentions in prayer, and that shouldn’t take more than an hour and a half or so. Yet you spend hours and hours on prayer. What is there to spend so much time on?” They say the Maggid began by asking him, “Tell me, what do you do? How do you earn a living?”

14:03 Although that Jew was a Torah scholar who sat and learned day and night, he had a grocery store. “And how do you run the store?” “Throughout the year,” he said, “my wife runs it, so I can sit and learn undisturbed, day and night. But twice a year there’s a fair.” In those days, people would travel to a central town where there was a market, a market day, a fair. All sorts of goods were sold there. People would buy them, bring them back to their own towns, and sell them to make a living. So every few months they had to travel to the fair. “I travel to the fair. A few times a year, I take a horse and wagon, set out, spend the necessary days at the fair, and come back home. Then we bring in the merchandise, and my wife sells it in the store.” The Maggid of Mezritch asked him: “I don’t understand. Why neglect Torah study for so long? Why waste so much of your time? You could seemingly do all that in a few minutes. I’ll give you a simple suggestion: Close your eyes and imagine getting onto the wagon, setting off on the journey to where you need to go, making your purchases there, loading everything into the wagon, and traveling back. In a few minutes you’re back in your town. Open your eyes, and there you are. Why spend whole weeks on the roads, traveling there and back and making purchases? What’s the point?” His friend looked at the Maggid as though he’d fallen from the moon. He said, “I don’t understand you. What are you even saying? If I’m not there, I won’t get the merchandise. If I want the merchandise, I have to be there. And being there requires the journey. It will

16:05 take as long as it takes.” The Maggid looked at him and said, “There—you’ve answered your own question. You have to be there to get the merchandise. Knowing the meanings of the prayers and knowing the intentions behind them is very important and very beautiful. But if you want to be there, you have to go inside.” The Baal Shem Tov said, “Come into the ark.” It’s not enough to say the words of prayer; you have to enter the words, go inside them. That is why prayer holds a central place in Chassidus. Prayer isn’t just recitation, just words. It means being there, entering the words of prayer. At the beginning, in the early period when Chassidus was revealed, the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples placed emphasis on praying with intention, on drawing close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Prayer was a time for closeness, for cleaving to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Then there was a very interesting, rather surprising episode involving the Alter Rebbe. There is a letter from the Alter Rebbe containing a passage, a saying of just a few words, that at first glance seems utterly incomprehensible. Yet those very words contain a special depth that gives us a wonderful perspective on prayer through Chassidus. This is what happened. One of the complaints raised at the time Chassidus was revealed—when many people initially didn’t understand it and asked, “What is this?”—was a fundamental question: Why make prayer so important and central that so many hours are devoted to the avodah of prayer? After all, that was one of their questions, Torah study is a much more important mitzvah. Torah study is a Torah obligation, a mitzvah from the Torah—and not just one mitzvah from the Torah. The Torah says many times that we must study. Torah study

18:13 Torah is of supreme importance. Torah study is equal to all the mitzvos. There are all kinds of verses and teachings of our Sages praising the mitzvah of studying Torah, placing it above all the other mitzvos. But the service of prayer—there is a dispute over whether prayer is a mitzvah from the Torah at all, or whether it was instituted by the Sages. The Shulchan Aruch brings both opinions: the Rambam’s view that it is a Torah mitzvah, and the view of the Ramban, the Rosh, and other great halachic authorities that it is a mitzvah instituted by the Sages. And the ruling in the Shulchan Aruch is that prayer is rabbinic. If so, how can you even compare the two? What do they have in common? Why do chassidim put so much emphasis on the service of prayer, which is only rabbinic, instead of emphasizing Torah study, which is such a tremendous and important Torah obligation? So the Alter Rebbe wrote a long letter explaining the matter in detail. But within it was a line that, when read at first glance, superficially, sounds astonishing. The Alter Rebbe writes: “And even those who say that prayer is rabbinic have never seen light in their lives.” Wow! Those who say prayer is rabbinic have never seen light in their lives. That caused an uproar. What does that mean? How could the Alter Rebbe say such a thing? How can you use words like that about the great Torah sages—the early authorities, the Ramban, the Ran, the Rosh, the great halachic authorities of earlier generations, the Shulchan Aruch, the Beis Yosef—who rule that prayer is rabbinic? And suddenly the Alter Rebbe comes along and says that even those who say prayer is rabbinic have never seen light in their lives. The question gets even stronger. The Alter Rebbe himself wrote a Shulchan Aruch, the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch. Look in his Shulchan Aruch, and he too rules that prayer is rabbinic. So is he writing a letter against himself? And here comes

20:30 the wonderful explanation that the Alter Rebbe himself gave in one of his maamarim in Likkutei Torah, his maamarim on the weekly parsha, in Parshas Balak. There the Alter Rebbe gives a wonderful explanation that offers us a deeper perspective on the whole subject of prayer. The Alter Rebbe says this: We know that there are 248 positive mitzvos. The 248 positive mitzvos correspond to the 248 limbs of the human body. A person has 248 limbs, as the Mishnah says, and corresponding to them are 248 mitzvos. Each mitzvah is connected to a particular limb. More than that, the Zohar says there are, so to speak, what are called “the limbs of the King.” The Alter Rebbe brings this in Tanya. In Yechezkel’s vision of the Divine Chariot, there is the likeness of a human being, the human face in the Chariot. So there too, so to speak, are the 248 limbs of the King. This number, 248, represents the supernal sefiros as they are composed in that number. Every mitzvah is connected to one of the supernal sefiros. When a Jew performs a mitzvah, he connects with the 248 limbs of the King—with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak, with the supernal figure of man upon the throne. So there are 248 limbs, one corresponding to each mitzvah. Limbs are like vessels, as they are in a person. What are limbs? The soul is full of energy, full of life, and it enters one limb and then another and another. Each limb takes the soul’s vitality and channels it in a particular direction. There are limbs for seeing, hearing, understanding, and walking—all the limbs of the body. Each one draws on some of the soul’s faculties, and that enables a person to live in this world. The mitzvos, too, are a kind of limbs of the King, through which Hakadosh Boruch Hu brings

22:41 a source of influence and blessing into the world. Every mitzvah is a limb; every mitzvah is a vessel through which Hakadosh Boruch Hu bestows something on the world—kindness, charity, goodness, blessings. All the different kinds of things Hakadosh Boruch Hu bestows on the world reach it through the mitzvos. These are the limbs of the King. The Alter Rebbe says: Look carefully at all the 248 limbs listed in the Mishnah, and you will find one thing that is not mentioned as a limb: the spinal cord. The vertebrae—the bones around the spinal cord—are listed among the limbs. But the spinal cord itself, the most central, essential thing on which a person’s entire existence depends, is not. We all know that the spinal cord supports the entire body. G-d forbid, if it is damaged or something happens to it, it is a matter of life and death. Yet the spinal cord—the center, what supports and gives life to the body, from which the whole body stands, lives, and exists—is not listed as one of the limbs. Why? Because it is not a limb. It is not one particular limb; it is what sustains all the limbs. The Alter Rebbe says: That is prayer. Do you know why, according to these halachic authorities, prayer is not a Torah mitzvah? Why prayer is a mitzvah instituted by the Sages? Because prayer is, in effect, the spinal cord. Prayer is the cord; it is the source of vitality. Through prayer, a Jew receives vitality from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It gives life to his soul, and with that strength he goes on to perform all the mitzvos throughout the day. So prayer is not rabbinic because it is less important than the other mitzvos. On the contrary, it stands above them. Prayer is the spinal cord; it is what sustains the entire day and gives it life. A Jew,

24:53 when he prays—tefillah also means connection—connects with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Through that connection in prayer, as you stand and connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu and your soul shines, you receive vitality. Then you bring that vitality into giving tzedakah, Ahavas Yisroel, tefillin, tzitzis, every single mitzvah, eating, kashrus, Shabbos—every mitzvah of daily life. The vitality enters it all, and afterward, throughout the day, the Jew makes the world a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu through the power of the prayer he prayed. So that is what the Alter Rebbe means when he says, “And even those who say prayer is rabbinic”—not, G-d forbid, that the Alter Rebbe means the halachic authorities who rule that prayer is rabbinic. Of course he himself is one of them. He means those who want to use that ruling as a reason to take prayer lightly, to belittle it. Those who complain that because prayer is rabbinic, it is less important—they have never seen light in their lives. They do not understand its depth; they do not understand the light within Torah. And here comes a wonderful explanation from the Alter Rebbe about how we connect with prayer and with its words. The Gemara in Berachos, page 13, discusses the verse “Shema Yisroel.” What does “Shema Yisroel” mean? The Gemara says: “Let your ears hear what your mouth says.” The simple meaning is that when a person prays, he should make his words audible to his own ears. In other words, prayer should not be only in his thoughts, nor should he merely move his lips. He should pray so that at least his own ears can hear what he is saying. The Alter Rebbe says: There is a much deeper message here. The Zohar says that the word “You” refers to the Shechinah: “For You are our Father”; “Blessed are You, Hashem.” “You” refers to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to the Shechinah. The Shechinah is the source of the soul. After all, as we said earlier, the G-dly soul of every Jew is truly a part of G-d above.

27:18 In the holy Zohar, the Jewish people are called the Shechinah. All of the Jewish people are one soul, bound to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. When the time for prayer comes, the soul listens to the praises of the Shechinah. The soul, which is literally a part of G-d above, sings to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The letters of Yisroel can be read as shir E-l, “a song to G-d.” The soul sings to Hakadosh Boruch Hu because it is a part of G-d above, and it sings all the words of the prayers. This is what we said earlier: when the Men of the Great Assembly composed the prayers, they listened to a song the soul knows—the song the soul sings as it connects and cleaves to Hashem. Prayer means connecting to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Gemara says: Do you know what we do in prayer? “Let your ears hear what your mouth says.” In prayer, we are meant to listen to the song of our own soul. Now, during prayer, our soul is singing, praying, cleaving and connecting to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And we, from the standpoint of our body and animal soul, have the opportunity to listen. Let your ears hear: listen to the song, connect, enter into the prayer, and just listen to the words. Those words are really the words of the soul. It knows this song; it knows what to say and how to say it. The soul is singing to Hakadosh Boruch Hu now, and we are meant to sit and listen to what the song is saying, to connect with the words of the prayers. From here we can move to practical steps. So how do we actually do this? How can I say the words of the prayers and connect to prayer in this way? I want to tell you about a yechidus, a very interesting conversation between the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the Rebbe of Toldos Aharon, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing. He visited the Rebbe in 5721, and they had a very fascinating conversation about how to approach prayer. They discussed

29:46 the subject at length, and the Rebbe explained the points we’ve been talking about: what the avodah of prayer means according to Chassidus. Prayer must be a connection, a bond. He told the story of the Maggid of Mezritch and how he prayed to be fully present in prayer. Then the Rebbe explained a point that we can really relate to and put into practice: we must study the prayers. Take a verse or a chapter and study it—not just know its plain, literal translation, but understand its deeper meaning too. The verses of the prayers have wonderful interpretations and explanations given by Chassidus. Take one verse. You can’t pray the entire service this way; you don’t have time to do that with the whole service. It’s a long prayer service. I mean, of course saying the words of the prayers is one thing. I’m talking about praying from a more inward place, delving into the prayers and connecting with them. Sometimes we don’t have time for the lengthy prayer of hours of contemplation. But one verse, a few verses, one chapter—surely anyone can study it and understand its depth according to Chassidus. The verse itself may be a simple verse. If we take it and study it in the light of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings, and contemplate it during prayer—and after all, it is an explicit halachah in the Shulchan Aruch that during prayer a Jew should contemplate the greatness of Hashem and the lowliness of man, in section 98—then, when we take particular verses from the prayers, study them, think about them and connect with them, we will experience that special feeling of connection and closeness in our daily prayers. This is what Chassidus teaches us. Prayer each day is a wonderful opportunity Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives a Jew, a wonderful gift He has given us: a Jew can

31:54 connect to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A Jew can cleave to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Prayer is the moment when we listen to our soul, listen to its song—yes, listen to the song of the soul, connect with it and cleave to it. Then we seek nothing else, only to stand in closeness and connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This prayer gives a person vitality and brings that vitality into all 248 limbs, as we said, into all the mitzvos and the entire body. And in the merit of this prayer, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will surely accept all the prayers of the Jewish people. May our prayers be accepted soon, in our days—especially the central prayer every Jew says each day: “May You speedily cause the offspring of David to flourish.” May Hakadosh Boruch Hu bring us the redeemer and the complete Geulah speedily in our days, amen.