"In order to pray, you don't need words at all"
Background: There is only one person in the world who knows
the secret of Miri Rosen, a fourteen-year-old orphan studying
in a chareidi boarding school in Paris. Miri cannot read.
Marcelle, her sewing teacher, is determined to teach her, to
overcome the block, but admits she has failed. Suddenly, she
tackles the problem from a different angle.
"We've got to find a qualitative reason, a value, that will
commit you to reading. Let us put French aside and go over to
Hebrew letters! Consider prayer, for example. You should learn
to read so that you can pray properly, so that you can look
into a siddur and read the words one by one. Perhaps
this would help you overcome the barrier." Marcelle listened
to her own words with utter surprise, as if she were listening
to someone else. Whoever put that idea into her mind, and the
words into her mouth? She didn't know.
The forest greenery turned a deeper hue. Twilight was creeping
up on them but the leaves in the woods created a close knit
patchwork that kept it from penetrating to them. "To pray?"
asked Miri. She gave a slight shudder and her braid rested
upon her neck with a new seriousness; a light suffused her
clear eyes. "Yes, to pray," answered Marcelle, sensing that
Miri was opening a shutter, perhaps a window, into her
innermost self.
"One doesn't need to be able to read words in order to
daven," Miri said quietly. "Not only don't you need to
read words. In order to pray, you don't need words at all,"
she added immediately.
"What do you mean?" Marcelle countered. "Of course you do,"
she reasoned. "How can you pray if you don't pronounce every
syllable in the text correctly and precisely? Didn't you learn
the laws of kriyas shema? How to enunciate the
zayin of lemaan tizkeru, the ayin of
nishba. How to separate the lamed of
bechol from levovcho so that they don't run into
one another, and other important precisions like that?" But
here was another drawback of Miri's illiteracy. If she can't
identify a zayin or lamed, how can she think
about exactness?
But this time, it was not a result of ignorance, altogether
not. "To begin with," replied Miri in a voice tinged with
emotion, "prayer is not words." It was apparent that she was
talking from deep down, from the innermost, beautiful recesses
of her soul. It was as if she had tied up all of her
frustrations and failures into a sack and laid it aside, far
off, and gone over to different regions.
"Prayer is a tie with the Creator. To pray means to feel that
Hashem rules, that Hashem is with you. He hears you, waits for
you. You want Him and He wants you. You raise your eyes to Him
and lean; you separate yourself from all other things that
occupy you and you say to Him, even without expressing it:
Abba, I have come to be together with You in this sweet and
uplifting moment.
"Marcelle, do you know that to begin with, prayers were only
thoughts and emotions? Every person used to say what he
wished, when he wished, without any formal text. That's how it
was in the times of Moshe Rabbenu up till those of Ezra. But
because thoughts are so very rapid and can fly off on tangents
so easily, and also because of the trials of the golus
and the different languages that got mingled, the Anshei
Knesses Hagedola ordained a set text for prayers. The tongue
needs the heart, not the heart the tongue."
"A siddur is very important," Marcelle tried to defend
her position.
"Of course! It absorbs all the tears, shares your most
beautiful moments with you, hears your most personal pleas. My
siddur is a gift from my mother, may she rest in peace.
There is no possession dearer to me. I have traveled a long
road with this siddur and hope never to be parted from
it. But that has nothing to do with reading or with words. It
is because of the prayers! I learned all of the prayers by
heart. I had no choice. Still, I feel good holding it in my
hand when I daven, crying with it, kissing it, leafing
through it gently and reverently. I just told you now that
praying is not mainly a matter of words, nor does it hinge on
time, or even place. Tefila is the thread that connects
a person to the Creator, if he is worthy. If not, of what help
are the words?"
"Do you cry when you pray?" Marcelle allowed herself to
ask.
"Very often." With a charming bashfulness.
"How are you able to do that? I once read somewhere that
Hashem answers a person's prayers because of the impact of his
pleas and the tears in his eyes. R' Yehuda ben Yakar says that
the tears accompanying prayer are like the libations of a
sacrifice. But I can never reach that point," Marcelle
admitted honestly. For the very first time since she knew
Miri, she suddenly felt as if their roles were reversed: Miri
became the teacher and counselor, and she had become the
student who was asking and seeking. And there was, indeed,
what to learn, to ask and seek.
"Marcelle, one doesn't make an effort to cry. You pray from
your heart and the tears come already by themselves. I feel so
dependent, so pleading, so imploring. There are moments when I
feel so very close to Hashem; I feel His presence by my side
and with me so strongly, that this is enough to flood my eyes
with tears. Tears are not always from pain; sometimes they
spring from emotion, perhaps from joy. They come from an
absolute submission, from a wonderful feeling of truth."
The birds chirped again, but this time their song expressed
praises to the Living G-d. A sudden imaginary feeling suffused
Marcelle: Lo, Miri was about to spread wings and join them in
flight, up, up. Perhaps the birds would appoint her their
shaliach tzibbur! They must surely feel, in their lofty
instinct, that the Shechina was before her.
"Who taught you to pray like that?" asked Marcelle.
"My mother, may she rest in peace." Tears of prayer and love
combined filled Miri's eyes. "I was only five and we were
returning together from the beis knesses on the first
night of slichos. I remember everything, as if it
happened this moment. Ima hummed the beautiful melody of
Lishmoa el horina all the way. She had an extraordinary
ear for music. And even though she hummed under her breath, I
could hear all of the nuances, all the curlicues, the
kneiches of this complex tune. I can easily shut my
eyes now, this very minute, and hear her humming, not off by
the slightest fraction of a note.
"Suddenly, as we were approaching home, Ima stopped short,
looked deep into my eyes, smoothed my hair and said, `One best
learns how to daven when one lives alone. My purest
prayers were during the years that I didn't have anyone in the
world. Hashem was my father, mother, brother and sister,
friend and teacher. As far as I was concerned, there was only
the two of us in the whole world. I found only Him in every
place and to Him, alone, was I able to speak. That is what
bound us together in a very strong tie. Remember always, He is
the only One to Whom you can, should, confide all of your
secrets. To Him, alone.' At the time, I understood her words
at a very superficial level, as best as a five-year-old girl
can. Perhaps because I was unable to understand them, only to
feel them. And a child can feel a great deal. But since the
time my mother passed away, up to this very day, not a day has
gone by without my hearing those words. I usually think about
them shortly before I begin davening from my
siddur. Oh, how I wish my prayers were but a small part
of my mother's prayers. I try, but she tried and also
succeeded."
Miri was silent for a moment as she leafed through her mind
and dredged up more memories. "I don't know how old I was, but
I once got up in the middle of the night for a drink and heard
a rustling on the porch. I went out. It was a very chilly
night. The sky was spread out seeded with stars. My mother
stood, leaning on the railing, a pleading look in her eyes. I
couldn't see her lips moving but she stood as if in prayer.
She looked like a candle flame, flickering up a bit and down
again, gently moving. Only years later did I learn that the
Zohar says that the reason why Jews sway back and forth while
they study or pray is because they are like candles. `The soul
of man is Hashem's candle.' A Jewish soul comes to life during
study or prayer. I hadn't known it then, but the simile was
there in the flesh.
"`Ima, what are you doing here?' I asked her. `I'm praying,
dear child,' she said, with a supplicating look mingled with
hot tears. My mother took me into her arms and hugged me.
`Come, let's daven together, Mirele,' she whispered to
me.
"`What are we supposed to say now? Modeh ani is only
for the morning, right?' I remember the touch of her fingers
on my back when she said, `One always prays, little girl.
There are prayers that suit the day and others that are best
for nighttime.' She lowered her voice, looked all about her,
from one end of the sky to the other, and whispered, `Look up;
smile at the stars. Listen to the crickets. Pay attention to
the night sounds and feel that your Father in heaven is
waiting for your prayers. Love Him, long for Him, and sing to
Him something of what is in your heart.' Do you know,
Marcelle, those were unforgettable moments. Many times I go
out to the porch of our floor at night and wait for the
sweetness that I felt then to spread through me once again, to
feel the longing for Hashem, to want to sing to Him inside my
heart. In my rare visits to my father's house, I avoid going
out to that porch. It evokes too much; it is too painful."
The branches shifted to let in the night shadows.
"Mincha," said Marcelle. "Soon it will be too late."
The two stood up to pray. Neither of them had a siddur.
They had no need for one. Miri shut her eyes, focused her
heart and soul, purified her thoughts, and was already ever so
close to heaven.
Marcelle watched her and was impressed by the dignified way
the young girl prayed: She swayed gently, her hands resting
calmly alongside her body. Her whispering was inaudible. An
aura of serenity and purity rested upon her pleasant face. The
quality that emanated from within took on tangible presence
and enveloped her with circles of nobility and adherence. It
seemed as if she and her prayer were one. "And I am [total]
prayer," stated Dovid Hamelech. She seemed to dissolve
naturally into the woods, melding with the song of the
branches and the tune of the grasses, joining the humming of
the birds and the prayer of the roots hidden beyond sight,
blowing with the wind and plucking at thousands of strings
along with it. Sans place, time or words. Only a thread
connecting her to the Creator. How wondrous. How firm and
powerful could a tenuous, invisible silk thread be!
Marcelle felt shame and embarrassment: shame that a fourteen-
year-old girl could teach her, one who had had lived through
thirty-one years with many days filled with prayer upon prayer
-- what prayer was.
Perhaps this is not the time and place to be embarrassed or
annoyed with yourself? Perhaps you must give thanks with all
your heart that you are finally privileged to understand the
essence of prayer. A man could be a G-d-fearing Jew, live
all his days and years, pray all the prayers, pronounce them
with his lips morning and evening, utter his musofim
and ne'ilos, and fail to attain this desired-for moment
in which tefila forges a blissful path straight to
heaven, the moment when everything stands still, the banks of
time recede into oblivion, the world and all of its pleasures
vanish in a stormy poof, and tefila conquers a straight
way directly to Hashem.
A wind blew across the treetops and set the entire woods
astir. Marcelle took her three steps back. "Pour out your
heart like water in the presence of Hashem." Leave be what
was and what wasn't. Don't think now about what you may have
missed out on because you didn't know what it really meant to
pray. Don't linger over the lost chances of your life and
don't begin analyzing the causes behind them.
Grab onto the present! Exploit the opportunities and pray
today, this minute, right now!
[Highly recommended reading, intermediate level Hebrew,
gripping, forceful, a rich, rewarding experience.]
