27 Apr THE DAILY WORK OF TEFILLAH

In the second chapter
of Pirkeh Avot, we read
the following teaching of
Rabbi Shimon:
וכשאתה מתפלל, אל תעש
תפלתך קבע, אלא רחמים
.ותחנונים לפני המקום
When you pray, do not make your prayer
“permanent,” but rather compassion and
pleading before G-d.
What does Rabbi Shimon mean when he
warns us not to make our prayer “permanent”? And why does he refer to Hashem
here as המקום – which literally means, “the
place”?
Imagine there is somebody who wants to
lose weight, so he approaches his friend who
advises him to go to the gym. He explains to
him which workouts he needs to do.
The fellow goes to the gym, does all the
workouts, comes home, weighs himself…and
sees that he weighs exactly the same. He
goes over to his friend to complain. It didn’t
work!
Quite obviously, he missed the point. The
point is not to go to the gym just once. To
lose weight, he needs to do this regularly.
Andthen, slowly but surely, day by day, he
gradually will lose the weight he wants to
lose.
The same applies to tefilah. Sometimes we
hear stories about how somebody needed
something, prayed, and he got what he needed – and we are then disappointed when this
doesn’t happen to us. These stories are inspiring and important reminders about the
power of tefilah, but they miss the point. Tefilah is about putting in the work day in and
day out. The Rabbis refer to prayer as עבודה
– “work.” A person builds a career or a business day by day, going through the grind,
consistently and persistently, putting in the
work, getting a littlebit better and moving the
job or ent erprise forward one small, slow
step at a time.
This is what tefilah is all about. It’s about
putting in the work, each day. Every time we
pray, and we spend time thinking about Hashem and our relationship with Him, we grow
just a little. We come just alittle closer to
Him. Our mindse t is slightly enhanced. We
become just a bit more focused on Him.
This analogy between tefilah and weight
loss extends even further.
Just going to the gym isn’t enough. If a
person goes and sits on the treadmill, nothing
will happen. If he leans against the machines,
he is not going to lose weight. He needs to
put in the work.
This is true about prayer, too. If we don’t
put any effort into our tefilah, it’s not going to
do anything for us. We won’t accomplish
anything. Sure, there are going to be days
when praying is difficult, when we will be unable to concentrate. But we have to try to
make these days the exception, rather than the
rule. We need to put in the effort to try to
understand the words, to try to focus on what
we’re saying, to try to make the experience
meaningful, and then it will have an impact.
Moreover, even if somebody goes to the
gym regularly, and does an intense workout,
he is not going to lose any weight if he comes
home after each time and sits down with a
box of cookies or large bag of potato chips.
In order for the workout to have an effect, it
needs to be carried over throughout the rest of
his life.
This is true also about tefilah. Prayer will
profoundly enhance our lives – but not if we
leave it all behind once we leave the synagogue and head off to work or to wherever it
is that we go. We need to apply the tefilah
mindset to everything we do, to approach our
whole lives from the perspective of emunah,
of faith in Hashem and devotion to Him.
This is what Rabbi Shimon is telling us. If
we want our tefilah to have an impact, we
can’t approach is as קבע ,as something routine
that we go through by rote, without investing
effort into it. We need to put in the work. We
have to do the עבודה ,concentrating to the best
of our ability.
And this has to be done המקום לפני .Hashem is called המקום because He is in all places;
He governs the entire world. We need to have
our prayer affect המקום ,all the “places” in our
lives, all the various settings and situations
that we find ourselves in, no matter what is
going on in our lives, no matter what mood
we are in, no matter what time of year it is or
what we’re involved in.
Yes, it is a challenge – especially in today’s
world, when we are so easily distracted and
find it so difficult to concentrate on anything
– to commit ourselves to praying. But once
we recognize that tefilah is an עבודה ,just like
exercise, we will be better able to make this
commitment, and we will then reap the priceless benefits and rewards which prayer offers
us.