The Most Important Part Of Shmona Esrei - Rabbi Menachem Penner

what is the most important part of the schmonastery and the answer from a purely halachic sense is of course that first bracha and we discussed how we need to try to catch ourselves to gather ourselves before that first brah otherwise there's no chance that we're going to say it with kavanagh you might want to specifically use a sitter even if you don't use a sitter just for that first bracha to be able to have a chance at saying it properly but in a larger sense the most important part of the schwann asteroid is the middle section the middle section which actually changes sometimes for shabbos for yum tube etc and the reason that is is because the requests lie at the heart of schmonastery really tefila is about requesting asking akaddish baruch for things remember salvation makes that clear in a number of his writings that although there's much power in our praise of hashem and thanks to hashem really it's about asking hashem for things and if you think about it that's a little strange it's a little strange that the middle section that the requests should be the most important part because what i would imagine is that if we praise him enough and thank him enough we get to request things that's kind of the way it works with human beings the more we praise them and thank them and a nice them we can ask him a favor but with our karash barucho it doesn't work that way who wants us to ask him because if we don't then we don't have a connection to him then we can't truly bring him into our lives the reality is listen closely that when we praise someone or thank them in a certain sense we may create a distance between the two of us certainly that's true of praise i can praise someone and put them on a pedestal and have very little to do with them but in order to ask them i need to break the barrier i need to come forward i need to explain to them what my life is about i need to ask them one-on-one look them in the eye and ask them for something and that's why the heart of our tv is asking things of hashem