The Simplicity of Prayer - Ari Abramwotiz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

i want to spend a moment talking about prayer because as usual when seeking divine guidance and wisdom to make sense of things one of the first places we turn to is the torah portion of the week which this week has very beautiful insights into prayer itself because ultimately the only thing that can truly stop the world spilling spiraling out of control with this hatred and war and violence is prayer the only thing that can bring light from all this darkness turning to hashem is prayer even the other night i was on the mountaintop looking to hashem and i was just thinking and thinking and thinking and intellectualizing and i just said to myself you know what there's only so much my brain can do i just need to talk to hashem and pray and and the aurahaim a great sage of israel or means uh the light of life he was uh he discussed the root of this sin uh the sin of the meat onanim the mitonim are the complainers the group of complainers in this week's torah portion that had the unbelievable chutzpah to complain to moshe to moses about not having meat they had this unimaginable audacity to sing the praises of the free food in egypt which of course was free for the same reason an animal gets its food for free because animals are property that exists to fulfill their master's desires just like those jews were they spoke positively about this genocidal nightmare that was life in egypt while speaking negatively about the manna the food that god created for them himself i don't know about you but since i'm a little kid i imagined what it's like eating manna god's own food that he prepared himself and they they demeaned it now there's so much more to say about this but the khatam so he explains that we can understand the roots of one of these great sins by looking in chapter 11 verse 1 and the nation complained in hashem's ears hashem heard and became angry a fire burned them and consumed the people at the perimeters of the camp so their sin was hashem okay that the nation didn't believe that hashem really hears their words or their prayers you see people can believe that hashem runs the world and that he sees everything but it's harder to believe that hashem hears everything that he turns his ears towards us when we speak to him it's often hard to believe that our words make a difference to him at all that our words can change his decrees it's something that i've struggled with a lot it's a lot higher a level of faith than the nation had at the time they doubted that hashem was really listening to them and that doubt in the power of prayer was the true root of their sin of all their complaints and later in the portion we see actually indeed a living manifestation of the power of prayer of the truth of prayer miriam and our own sinned in that they spoke in a judgmental way about their brother moshe as we know uh again perhaps another example of the challenge in believing that god hears everything that we say and as a result of this lashon hara this gossip miriam was struck with leprosy and both mosha and arun were distraught to see their sister in this way she looked like she was dead and our own turns with brother moshe and begs him to pray for their sister and here we see the power of prayer moshe turns to hashem in the shortest and most concise prayer in the torah he says el na that was it and moses cried to the lord saying heal her now oh god i beg of you el narefa nala and my family when someone's feeling uh not well we actually sing that we go el nadar it's a famous song in israel and it's just we just pray for for health it's five words just five words and god hears moshe's prayer and he says yes she'll be healed but first she must sit outside the camp and consider and reflect on what she's done now what struck me about that prayer was just its simplicity its brevity it was just so short and simple and it worked miriam was healed now i'm guilty of this too i sometimes i feel like my prayers need to be lengthy and eloquent and and ornate and poetic i've set up at times such a high standard that i actually don't get around to praying at all i just feel like i'm unworthy and my simple words wouldn't even matter but here moshe teaches us that it isn't about all that the question is whether it's from the deepest place in our hearts just this week i had a revelation that really drove this home and of course it was from one of my greatest rebbies my sweet daughter dwash she's uh she's 15 months old now and for some reason her favorite word is abba abba she just walks around all day saying abba abba meaning what does abba mean father or daddy and it doesn't matter how many times she says it every time she says abba maybe it's because i waited so long but every time she says it my heart explodes in my chest so last night in the middle of the night she started crying and i was given the opportunity to be the one to get up and to take her out of the crib and hold her and in the dark she leaned her head on my shoulder for a while and then she pulled away she grabbed my ears she focused in and she recognized my face in the dark and she gave this big smile and she said abba and the joy i felt at that moment was indescribable at that moment i realized that it must be the same with hashem we can mumble through prayers half-heartedly and it probably means very little but to turn our eyes on our heart to god with a full heart of love and yearning and we just say abba well that's a level of prayer that the prophets have this highlight was taken from the land of israel fellowship every week hundreds of families from literally around the world come together on our live zoom sessions to strengthen each other to inspire each other and to learn torah from the land of israel in which we connect the dots between the bible the hebrew language and the confusing events of our times go to www.thelandofisral.com backslash fellowship or click on the link below to join thank you you