I was traveling the Yerushalayim Light Rail through Shuafat, an Arab neighborhood. It was around 11 on a Friday morning. I saw hundreds of men standing on the street, all facing one direction. Suddenly, as if on a signal, they all went down on their hands and knees … on the street! I later found out that this was outside a big mosque which cannot hold all its attendees, so the rest pray outside on the street.
In this week’s Parsha, Yaakov Avinu enters the long night of Golus. “Vayifga b’makom … and he encountered the place.” Rashi tells us that “the place” is the Temple Mount. Here, where Yaakov Avinu instituted the tefilla of maariv, “he became frightened and said, ‘How awesome is this place!’” My friends, when we enter the bais medrash and daven, do we feel the awesomeness? Are we trembling before Hashem?
Please forgive me, but do we pray with the fervor of the Moslems?
Their prayer is powerful. In Parshas Vayeira, after Yishmoel cries to Hashem from the midbar, the Torah tells us, “Hashem … heeded the cry of the youth!” This koach of tefillah gives Yishmoel tremendous power until this very day!
“There is no exile more difficult than that of Yishmoel.” (Zohar, Shemos 17a).
“In the future, Yishmoel will cause extreme and bizarre grief, the likes of which we have never seen.” (Rav Chaim Vital, Etz ha Daas Tov v’Ra, as seen in Redemption Unfolding, Feldheim Publishers)
Last Friday night, I davened next to a very serious young man, but he was looking in a sefer the entire time. Words of tefillah came out of his mouth, but his mind was in a different place.
“What should frighten us … is the apathy and indifference in our own Torah camp …. Watch how many people exit the shul after davening, even before the Tehillim begins, and how many others leave before it is completed. That apathy is more disconcerting than the potential apathy of … world leaders…. Dovid Hamelech clearly outlines for us [that] the only way the [downfall of the Moslems and our yeshua] will come to fruition is through tefillah, but not a standard tefillah. It must reach the level of … the desperate screams we sounded in Mitzraim….” (Rabbi Chaim Aryeh Zev Ginzberg shlita”h, Mishpacha Magazine, November 2023)
My friends, we are now in a replay of Mitzraim. We are surrounded. Our lives are at stake every place in the world. We have only our “desperate screams” to save us, and we are not understanding this.
What are “desperate screams?”
The Chofetz Chaim could not hear well. During Selichos in yeshiva, “the bochurim shouted … like the roar of a raging sea, so that even the Chofetz Chaim could hear them. [He] turned to the bochur next to him and said, ‘Vos shrayen zei? Why are they screaming like that?’ The bochur shouted, ‘They want to do teshuva!’ The Chofetz Chaim responded, ‘Who’s keeping them from doing teshuva?! [But] where does the shouting come in?’” (Rabbi Yaakov Galinsky, Israel Bookshop Publishers)
“Screaming” means screaming from the heart. I suppose if one is in the middle of a field, one can scream “like the roar of a raging sea.” When we are with other Yidden, however, we need to scream from our hearts. But we do need to scream. Rav Moshe Sternbuch Shlita”h said, several months ago, “tefillah without tears is not enough!”
I knew a famous Yid named Reb Amos Bunim zt”l. He knew how to cry. There was not one tefillah -- shacharis, mincha or maariv -- when Reb Amos did not cry real tears.
I want to tell you how the Saar ha Torah, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky zt”l davened. “[He] would look intensely into the Siddur, pointing to the place throughout the davening. His eyes would rarely venture out of the Siddur. He would keep his finger on the place during Chazaras HaShatz as well and follow every word. He would not open a sefer to learn during davening.” (Rav Chaim, Artscroll/Mesorah)
“The Gemara asks: What does ‘serving G-d with all your heart’ mean? (Taanis 2a) The Gemara answers: Prayer! …. [And] praying with all your heart means … expelling from your mind all irrelevant thoughts and fully concentrating on the words of prayer … [which we learn from the prayer of Chanah] ….” (Nefesh HaChaim) Chanah cried real tears, and Hashem rewarded her with a son named Shmuel ha Novi, who anointed Dovid King of Israel.
Shlomo ha Melech writes, “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to wail and a time to dance …. A time to be silent and a time to speak ….” (Koheles 3:4ff) This is a time to weep and a time to wail; this is a time to cry out to Hashem from the utter depths of our hearts.
Rabbi Ginzberg quotes the famous midrash “[which] describes how Hashem will finally bring us the Geulah that we so desperately need. It will occur amid incredibly painful and paralyzing fear, when we feel that all hope is lost. And then Hashem will call out to us, ‘Why are you afraid? All that I have done, I have done … to bring you the Final Redemption!’” (Yalkut Shimoni, Yeshaya 484)
May we soon merit to see that Great Day!
GLOSSARY
Bochurim: yeshiva students
Golus: exile
Daven: pray
Koach: strength
Maariv: the evening prayer
Midbar: desert
Mincha: the afternoon prayer
Mitzraim: ancient Egypt
Sefer: holy book
Shacharis: the morning prayer
Tefillah: prayer
Teshuva: repentance
Yishmoel: son of the Patriarch Abraham, progenitor of the Moslem peoples
