Towards Meaninful Tefilla Mrs Zemira Ozarowski - July 1

We are now up to the last section of um and there's a story told about Likenstein um by his son-in-law at his aronstein and um one of Likenstein's daughters faced a life um life-threatening complication immediately after child birth and the entire family was gathered around saying to Helm for this daughter and um a little bit later a doctor came out and she told the and he told the family that the surgery was successful and this woman was fine. So they all were all very excited. They all ran inside to you know go see go see her and continued dabbing. He just stood there and he continued dabbing and they didn't they thought you know son-in-law was looking at him and he thought maybe he didn't hear the message maybe he doesn't know he didn't understand. So he comes over to him and he says, you know, whatever he called him, father-in-law, like she's fine. She's okay. We can go in. And he said, I know that, but how can I just stop dabbing? This entire time we were we were asking and dabbing and begging to Hashem to give her a Rafua. And now she got it and I'm just going to leave. How can that be? Um, we need to thank Hashem. So they continue to dab the two of them together, a different type of ha of thinking Hashem. And we see from here that it would really be impossible for us to end shima esray right after our bakasho section the section where we listed all of our requests right can't end there to do so would mean that we missed the entire point of the as we started when we first started learning right we quoted from the garra um in where it said the first section of is like a servant who praises his master before he asks him for something. And we talked about what does that mean? Is he buttering up him up? And we said no. He's reminding himself that Hashem has the power and the ability and the desire to help him. They're like a servant who is asking for something from his master. Note the last section. He's like a servant who received a prize, received whatever he requested from his master and now he's taking leave and he's going. Okay, our last section is all about taking leave from the crux of the sha is the section of the bakash, right? But the goal is not that Hashem answers our requests. We don't dav in because we want something from Hashem. It's a medium, right? By asking Hashem for the things that we want, we are creating a relationship with Hashem. So, we need to end our not with requests but with a conclusion that reflects the building of this relationship. So, how do we take leave of Hashem in a way which allows us to build our relationship with Hashem? So, we call the last section, we call it. Are you okay? As long as you're okay. What does ha mean? Thanks. So the the simple answer that most people we would normally answer, right? Hoda means thanks. We we we asked Hashem for something. We you know we praised him. We asked him and then we thank him, right? But actually has two different meanings. Means also to think. But also do like voy means that we recognize something. And if we look at the three brah that we're going to look at today in the last section modim we know means thanks right mod means it means to give thanks but the other two the of and shalom we're not thanking hashem right we always think the last section is when we think we say thank you because we're we grow up that way you say you know you say please you know you make your request you say thank you but it's not about thank you it's about um we're we're we're mit we're recogn recognizing and acknowledging acknowledging our deep relationship with Hashem. Um what's going on, right? Because I I'll tell you we people quote the scamar, right? People know is like a servant who's asking for something. So they'll say we give praise in the beginning, we ask for our things and we say thank you. It doesn't say that. It says the last ones are like a servant who got what he received from his master. It doesn't say what he's doing, right? We assume it's a thank you. Especially because we have Mosim right there. But it's not only about thank you. It's about the way that the master the servant now takes leaves leave from his master. He got what he wanted and now where does that lead to? If it's a technical relationship and often with a master it might be he got what he wanted, he says thank you and that's it. But if it's a deeper relationship, it's not about the fact that he got what he wanted. It's about now he's created this relationship. And so when we're taking leave of Hashem, we're going to look at it more deeply. But we have three paragraphs with where we we express our hope that we found favor in Hashem's eyes, right? That he enjoyed our conversation that we had with him as much as we did. Modim where we are thanking Hashem, but we're also recognizing Hashem. Because when in order to thank Hashem for what he gives us, we have to actually notice that he's the one who's giving us the things. And then the third paragraph of seem shalom, we now see shalom, we go in peace. We ask for a continued good relationship with Hashem. So we'll look at that inside. Okay. So first we start with Ray. So there's a famous mash that's told about a wealthy man. We'll call him Moshe. Moshe has two sons, Ruben and Shimon. They're twins. Okay. Now it's their 20th birthday. Moshe has a really great relationship with Ruven. He loves him. He's his favorite child. Um, and Shimon he's been struggling with for many years and he doesn't really have a great relationship with him. So now they're 20 years old and he says, "Okay kids, it's time for you guys to go on your way into the world." To Ruvane to Shimon, he gives him a suitcase fill of full of a million dollars. To Ruvane, he gives him $50 and a cell phone. Now, you might think I mixed up their names, right? Reuben is the favorite child. Shimon is the least favorite child. And Ruben gets $50. Shimon gets a million dollars. But the reason why he does this is from Shimone he doesn't want to hear from again. He's his son. So, he's going to give him enough money that he can go on for the rest of his life and he'll be fine. He won't feel guilty about it. But he doesn't want to talk to him again. It must have been a pretty bad relationship. Okay. Rubin he loves and he wants to hear from him on a continuous basis. So he gives him enough money to last for the day and says, "Call me tonight and tell me what you need tomorrow." And this way we'll always be continuing to talk. This is really the mash that we we know about from the time of the Nahash, right? By right the was given his his punishment was that he can that he eats the dust of the earth which on the one hand sounds like who wants to eat the dirt, right? On the other hand, he has as much as he needs. There's plenty of dirt in the entire world, right? He ne and and the reason why it's a punishment is because Hashem doesn't want to hear from him again. So he says, "You can eat dirt. You won't never need to ask for anything from me because you'll always have plenty of dirt." Whereas as to the humans, he gives them it's still a punishment, but it's a punish a punishment where he has to work by the sweat of his brow and he needs to be always turning to Hashem, asking for rain, asking for parasa, asking for what he needs. Um so here we understand that Hashem created us with many needs and many deficiencies. Um because why? He wants to continue hearing from us. He wants to make sure that we always need to turn to him on a daily basis to ask for all the things that we need, right? He could have just given us everything that we need from the start, but then there'd be no relationship. And so he purposely created the world this way that we always need things from him and we always need to continue asking why because of the relationship. The whole point of this is creating a relationship. Um and so when we finish with say we turn to Hashem and we say we hope Hashem we found favor in your eyes and you really enjoyed this conversation right and you took pleasure in connecting with us. So we say, "May Hashem, may you be pleased with your nation and bring back um bring back the aoda to the beta mikdash. And may you accept with love the um theote of Ben is and may our service of you Hashem always be um may you always find favor in it and um may our eyes witness the return to with your mercy. Blessed are you who brings back your Okay. Okay. So what are we doing here? Right. In this braha, we see like a kind of combination, right? On the one hand, we're asking Hashem. First of all, it sounds like a request, right? We just said we finished the bakash section. We're asking Hashem for two things. Number one, that he should be pleased with our number two that we should witness the return to the we mdash again. So this kind of sounds like it should have been back in the bakashot, right? These are requests and yet they're over here at the end. And why? So the rau explains that in the truva that sometimes hashem fulfills our requests but he's still not happy with us. He's talking about in the context of forgiveness but really in general sometimes the same way that what was his name? Our father Moshe, right? The same way that Moshe is the father still of Shimon. He doesn't like him but he still feels obligated to provide for his needs. So sometimes Hashem can provide for our needs because he's our father, but we don't have a good relationship. That's not what we want, right? Our goal here is not just to get the answer to our request. The the goal is that we've created a relationship. And so um over here, we are making a request, but it's not a request in the technical sense of the word like please answer our request. We're not asking just Hashem answer our request. We're asking Hashem, our goal was to create a relationship. Please, I hope that we've accomplished this. We're taking leave of you and we're hoping that the end goal, the end um goal that we've reached here in the is that we've created that relationship that you're giving what we asked for, but not just because you need to, but because it's part of our relationship, right? Right? We say let's say Hashem we don't only want that Hashem now has found favor in our in our requests but also in us that we that he actually wants us to be his nation. And then we go on and we start talking about the beta mikdash right and the question is why how does that fit in over here? Um so the first thing is that the sedolum says that this fra was originally said in the beta mikdash every day after they brought the carbon out. The same way that we ask that Hashem accepts our accepts our felot with favor. They would ask Hashem, we just borrow all these corbonote, but we don't know were they pleasing in your eyes. Were they accepted? Please, Hashem, accept them. Please, may you find favor in them. Um, and once we started dabbing, we didn't have the corbon anymore. So, we added in that you should accept our prayers. But we also added in that should bring back the service to the mikdash that we should witness the return to because in this we're recognizing that the whole point of our and all of our requests is to build a relationship with Hashem and we can do that still today every day in our ding no matter where we're dabing. However, we all know that if we could do it in the beta mdash in the place where hashemina is resting, how much more so would our relationship blossom through our and so we ask Hashem that yes, in this level, we're thankful that we're here and we're able to dab in and communicate to Hashem, but also can we we're hoping and we're waiting for that day that we can come back to mash and feel it can be on an even higher level. I remember somebody asked when we were talking about and all the requests at the end the national request and someone said where's the beta mdash in this so it's here um okay and then we move on to and we say um we're thankful and if anyone doesn't have you guys can get a sitter I feel like but I mean I guess you know the words but we're thankful to you who that you are our God forever Ever the rock of our lives and the shield of our salvation. You are with you are for us for all generations. We will thank you and we will tell of your glory on your our lives that are that are given into your hands that are that are dependent on you. Okay. So here we get to and we're thanking Hashem for everything that he does for us. And at first glance it seems that the structure is right we we said please we asked we said thank you but the problem is that we didn't actually get anything we asked for right it didn't happen that fast right we asked for a foolish lema for whatever you know people that we know it didn't happen in two seconds right or any of the other requests it didn't it didn't happen we're saying thank you before it actually happened so um there's two ways that we could look at it the first is that what we've been saying all along that we have these where we say like go right things are written in present tense right Hashem is continuously redeeming us he's continuously I don't remember which other were in present tense maybe you guys remember but but when we ask for something we're setting our process in motion and we don't see the results obviously in two seconds but from that moment on right we've put in a request to Hashem in a very real way and we're recognizing that Hashem is the one to turn to and that he can provide for us and as soon as we do that we've put this process in motion where Hashem is setting the stage is planting the seeds to begin the process of giving us what we've requested. It might take 20 years, but it started and so we can already thank Hashem for having put that process in place. The other answer is that we have the confidence and we have the we know Hashem is going to answer us. Maybe not in the way that we want it, maybe not at the time that we want it, but Hashem is listening to us. And so even though we don't see yet, and these answers really go together, but even though we don't see yet that we've received what we've asked for, we can we can say with full confidence, "Thank you, Hashem, for having listened to us and for we know that you're going to provide what we need. Thank you." Um, another answer is right, we're not thanking Hashem for having granted us for the specific request that we asked for. Rather, we're thanking him for the opportunity to appeal to him in prayer. Right? This fact that we as mortals can now have the ability to speak to the almighty and ask him for whatever we want whenever we feel like it is really unbelievable, right? That's not a normal thing. You can't go to the king and just ask for whatever we we you want. But we've been saying all along that even the smallest things we can and we should turn to Hashem for them. And that's an amazing thing that we have that relationship. So when I when I say that I think you I always think about all the things that Hashem has already given me. Every day he gives us so manyos and so many good things in our lives that we should always thank him for all the things correct that he gives us continuously and in the past and um I went to Rab and he said when you say no that you should always stop and think of all the things one thing or two things that has given you that you want to thank him for during love. Amazing. And and the reason why we're able to do that while why we have that mindset that we are able to recognize it is because we've gone through a process where we've asked we we recognize in the first section who he was who he is and what he can do and then we ask him for things. And when we ask him for things, the more that we ask him for things and even this is even in our regular lives when we're asking for the small things, then we're able to recognize that Hashem has done for us. Right? If we don't put in those requests, if we don't recognize from the beginning like he's the one to turn to. So then when we get what we want, we don't always remember where it came from. But because we have that mindset, right, and that's come from years of fela and shim and other things also, but it's it's a it's a philosophy that we've built up in ourselves. Um that's why we're able to actually notice the um the things that we thank him for. And and when we when we say that file, we ask we say to him, what are we thanking him for? We're not thanking him for the huge miracles, right? We can also, but we we thank him on the for the miracles that happen to us every single day and the wonders that happen all the time evening, morning, and afternoon. Okay? We don't experience lifealtering miracles three times a day. But we do, right? Because if we're sensitive to it, then we do. Other people in the world will not say the fact that I don't know you woke up in the morning is a miracle but it's a huge miracle right but people don't call those miracles but because we have sensitized ourselves to recognize Hashem's hands in our lives so then we have the ability and the um obligation really to thank Hashem for every single thing no matter how big or small it is. waking up in the morning wasn't a good example because that's a really big thing but that we found the parking spot that whatever it is right we thank Hashem for all the little things and those are also miracles because we are able to see Hashem's hand in our lives it's very easy to say okay thank you and think of all those things that Hashem could be there forever we all know that but to thank him for the opportunity to appeal to him whenever we want is something I didn't think Yeah. Yeah. But I think they all the things really go. They're really all one and the same because what they are is on the one hand, yes, modim is definitely thank you, right? But we said modim also means vi to recognize um all of those answers that we just said are all this ability that we have um to recognize Hashem's hand in our lives. Right? That's what we're doing. We recognize that you are our God. That you are that you are the rock of our lives. You are the ones that were that we're leaning on. Right? Everything that comes afterwards, all those little and big miracles that we're thanking him for all come on the heels of a a deep recognition that it's Hashem who's giving to us. And that comes from the ability to be able to reach out to him when we need things because then it's like it's the automatic when you ask for something, then you receive it. It's automatic. Okay, there's a thank you there. If you never asked for it, you don't always recognize that it where it came from. Um, okay. So, that is mim. Um, and then finally, sim shalom. Okay. So, sim shalom. So, when I was writing my article, I'm just going to say because it's totally out of time. It's a time warp, but it's it's still meaningful. Um, when I wrote my original article about Sim Shalom, it was during Corona. and that the shabas before I wrote it I don't remember if I was in bed or I had corona I don't know but I wrote about my shabas experience and what we used to do probably not in the beginning when people were very very strict but at some point along the way when somebody in our family was in bed on chabas we didn't want them to feel completely separated from everyone so they would the person would sit on top of the stairs and we would all be on the bottom at our table eating and they would be able to kind of feel that they were part of the chabas meal but not be too close so it was my turn and I was sitting on top of the stairs and I was watching the Shabas meal from afar. When you sit at your Shabas meal, you see a lot of details that you might not want to see. You might see, you know, one kid uh fighting, whatever it's going on, right? From up there far away. What did I see? I just saw beauty. I saw my kids from far away and I saw, wow, look how they're singing. Look how happy they are. Look how they help out. I didn't see like the little things where they were like, you know, running off from the table, you I wasn't I just saw the big picture and when I saw the big picture it gave me this like intense um feeling of this desire that this goodness should just continue forever and it hit me then as I was writing my article about sim shalom it kind of gave me a glimpse sort of you know in a certain sense of what we're what we're asking from hashem so what are we asking for so we say um we say shalom hashem you should give us peace and goodness and blessing saying life great sorry graciousness kindness mercy you should give it to all of us I don't know about you but that sounds like a pretty big laundry list of requests rightem give us goodness and peace and blessing and graciousness and raim and we go on and we say that Hashem should bless us with his or with with you know his countenance his I don't know how you translate or the light of his face um and he should um you know because he's given us through his or has given us right so many things that we're asking for right so how is this belong over here at the end in our taking leave section and not in the requests so um Rabinger writes in his book til is that in this brah we're not actually making a request we're rather expressing our desire to come closer to Hashem right like we wrote we we talked about in the other two two we're expressing our desire that ashray not only succeeded in getting us what we wanted the list of requests that we wanted but rather in creating a very real and genuine relationship with Hashem and so here we're asking that Hashem answers our requests not just in a very technical way not just because he has to because he's our the way that David did for Shimon, right? But in a way that creates a connection between us, right? We we hope that when he answers our request, it's going to be be with love and mercy and peace and goodness, bringing us closer to where we were to to where we than where we were before, right? So, going back to my personal story, right? It's our hope that when Hashem looks down on us, he's looking down on us with this ora. He sees everything through a lens of shalom and tova and and right. All he sees when he looks at us is the goodness. He doesn't see the same way that I didn't notice my kids when they were misbehaving. He doesn't see the things that we're doing wrong. He just sees this big picture from afar and sees the goodness and sees our good intentions and he and he sees um and then he has this desire, right? This overwhelming desire the same way that I did to to just continue. He can I couldn't do it. I could just stop him for it. that he can just he just sees it and he just wants to give us everything we've asked for not because he has to but because he has this overwhelming love and desire to give to us. Um and then and he wants to continue that goodness forever to be good in your eyes to continue showering on your nation at every time and at all hours through your sense of shalom through your sense of that that or that looking down and seeing everything in this positive light that you just want to continue giving and this is the way we close our sha right um that we're asking not just for the request but the the relationship that comes with the request. The seam shalom is like all of the like external parts like what is the request? We're getting the we're getting the answer to our request but it's wrapped in something. It's wrapped in all of those feelings that relationship that we're hopefully creating with Hashem through our spila. So I didn't think we'd actually get through it. Okay. So um so basically right this is really the fitting way to close our essay. Right. We started out before we began with our request. We started out just reminding ourselves who Hashem is, what he can do for us, why he wants to do anything for us. We have this vote um that he's a takadosh. He's the only one who can do for us. And once we laid that foundation, we were able to turn to Hashem with our requests on a different level. On a level where we understood that Hashem can and wants to do for us, our requests can be answered. But we also refined our requests, right? We said through our process of going through the different requests that are listed there, we had to um redefine what do we want from Hashem and why. What is our goal in the world? What is our relationship with Hashem? What does he want from us? And to ask Hashem for all our things in a way that we're asking it on his behalf. We want these things in order to serve you better. Once we concluded that we were able to take leave from Hashem in a way where we we we we just our only request is really that this has led to a stronger relationship in our lives all the time not just during the but throughout since we do have a time where I didn't think we'd get to it but we'll just go through a little bit with elkinds because we ended but we didn't end because we all know there's elkinds but that's not one of the 189 brahood it's an extra what is it so elk is almost like an addendum it's like a PS at the end of a letter what you know when we used to right letters PS right um it's this afterthought that was added in after is all typed up ready to go wait we have an afterthought what is our afterthought so the bra actually lists a whole series of personal addendums that different um used to say they all had something that they added in at the end um with the idea being that it seems like once they finished the hal that we should get to this when they did it right and they got through the entire estray they couldn't end. They finished, but they weren't done because they said, "We just want to continue pouring out to Hashem everything that's in our hearts. We want to do it now in our own words. We want to be able to ask for the things that we didn't ask for yet. We want we're we're we're like in this moment. We're not ready to end yet." And and that's where we want to get to, right? We want to be able to connect to Hashem in a powerful way that when we finish, we just don't want to end, right? We've already asked for a lot of things, but we didn't ask for everything, right? There's more things. There's things that are personal to us and we want to be able to also pour pour out to Hashem for those things. Again, not only because we want the answer the the um the answers to those requests, but also because we want the relationship. Whatever is burning in our heart, we want to pour that out to Hashem because that's how we connect. You know, if you have a friend, you know, you're you only tell your really good friends the things that are really burning in your heart, the things that are really upsetting you, the things that you really need, right? We want to be able to pour that out to Hashem because we want to create the relationship. we'd also like a response but but in addition right we want the relationship and so um this elocinosaur was the was the um addendum of the tana mar de raina that was his personal addendum we didn't choose all of them maybe we chose this one because it has a lot of aspects that are connected to us on a personal level right we ask to avoid the daily pitfall of lash right we ask for assistance in not developing an egoika My soul should be like dust to everyone. We ask for help in create making sure we don't create personal enemies, right? Anyone who thinks badly of us, they should change their minds. Um and we ask um Hashem to inspire us to be enthusiastic about our Torah learning and our mitzvot, right? Shem should open our hearts in Torah. We should run after mitzvot. So these are all requests that most of us can relate to on a personal level. And so maybe that's why we chose his. But I think the most important part is the conclusion where we say Hashem should give us a request, right? For Hashem's sake, right? We're reminding ourselves, which we just discussed, we just mentioned before that everything that we request and whatever we receive needs to be used primarily for what? For Hashem's sake, in order to serve Hashem better, in order to create a Hashem in the world. Um, but our personal addendum doesn't need to end with the words of um, Marberry Davina, right? We say his words because they're good words and they apply to us. But we're able to first of all add in any of the dendims of the other. You could look back in the Gar. It's in um, they all have very nice personal denims that if we relate to, we can add them in says you could put it either before or after. You could add in as many as you want. But in addition to that, the Adam writes that we should be adding in our own personal addendums. He says it's worthy for every person every day individually on a private level on his needs and in his about his children and his grandchildren that the Torah should never leave his family that all of his future generations should be real. And he goes on and he says and he lists about a bunch of other things but he says he should ask Hashem here for anything that he knows in his heart that he needs and we talked about this byolu and we said right it's different thanu we had to keep things brief because we didn't want to get distracted. We're still in the middle of right we can't start going off into la land of all of our our needs. We think about the things that we need for today, right? We think about what do we need Hashem's help today in our schmacolino and we say it not in a set text. We say it every every day is different. Every day we need different things and we talk to Hashem about what we need for that day. But here at the end of is our chance to really daven for whatever we need. It could be the same text every day because these are big overarching requests. So if we're asking for sha, if we're asking for the of our children, if we're ask whatever it is, what whatever request we're asking for that are not necessarily in the daily, you know, in our text of right, those things might not change, they'll get solved and we'll have new problems, but they might not get changed for a long time. But so we can write our own file. We can say the same thing every day and or we could not we could say it in our own words every day and we could say it as long as we want because we finished one essay. Here's the our chance to actually now that we've reached this climax of time where we've brought ourselves to a certain level if we've done it right in our relationship with Hashem that we can really just stand there and pour out everything to Hashem. We should be able to to reach this level. It's not easy. It's much easier to talk about it. I'm saying it. I don't I don't get there. But but um I think that every day again and we've said this a lot of times if we can just try take one section teach one part focus in on something one line anything um even if we're not going to get to this but we we've kind of what we've done in this class is just opened our eyes up to where we might be able to get to what our goal is where you know we have many more years to get there it's a process but um to be able to work towards a process to know that where is supposed to be getting us to and bazar hashem one day at a time we'll be able to get slowly towards that goal.