It’s one of the saddest moments in the history of our people. Moshe Rabbeinu, having sacrificed his entire life,
his family, for Am Yisrael, for the expressed purpose of bringing the people in
Eretz Yisrael, has been told he cannot enter the land.
But, of course, he hasn’t given up!
And he tells the Jewish People the story:
(כג)
וָאֶתְחַנַּן אֶל יְקֹוָק בָּעֵת הַהִוא לֵאמֹר:
And I PLEADED with Hashem at that moment.
And we can imagine the intensity and the emotion in Moshe’s
tefillah to Hashem. The tears, the POWER
of his tefillah.
On top of that, Moshe has quite a track record when it comes to
having his powerful tefillos answered in the affirmative:
–
When
Am Yisrael sinned at the Egel HaZahav, the Golden Calf, Hashem wanted to
destroy them, Moshe’s tefillos were answered, and the people were saved.
–
When
we sinned with the Chet HaMeraglim, Moshe davened, and Hashem delayed our entry
into Eretz Yisrael for 40 years, but he didn’t destroy us.
And yet, as we all know, when it comes to his own tefillah, Moshe
did not receive the response he had hoped for.
The answer was no.
And while the question of prayers that are not answered the way we
would hope has no answer, and I would never dare to explain why any particular
tefillah receives a yes and others receive a no, in THIS CASE, the
Medrash tells us why Moshe was not answered.
Moshe tells the people, “V’Lo Shama Elai”. Hashem didn’t listen to ME! Look at the language of the introductory
words of our parsha:
Va’Eschana El Hashem!
I davened.
Says the medrash, after everything Moshe Rabbeinu had done for the
people, the reason his tefillah wasn’t answered was because he davened
ALONE. The Tzibbur, the people he had watched
over for forty years, didn’t daven with him or for him!
“Va’Eschanan”, Moshe tells the people with tears in his eyes. I davened all by myself. I didn’t have the power
of the tzibbur, so I won’t join you in Eretz Yisrael.
And Rav Soloveitchik, following up on this medrash made the
following penetrating point:
The Rambam in his introduction to Hilchos Taaniyos, the Laws of Public
Fast Days, where he describes the process of davening b’eis tzara, in times of
crisis, writes that our job is LITZOK (לצעוק),
to call out, to daven. However, later on,
in the very first halacha he changes the language to LIZOK (לזעוק).
And the Rav said, you know what the difference is?
–
Litzok
is to COMPLAIN. To protest. There is a story with Elisha and a mother who
came to complain to him. There the
Tanach uses the language of TZAAKA, to complain.
–
What,
then, is ZAAKA?
In Megillas Esther, when Mordechai hears about the gzeira, the
decree against the Jewish People, says the megillah:
וַיִּזְעַק זְעָקָה גְדֹלָה וּמָרָה:
He cried out a bitter cry.
But what was Mordechai doing?
Just crying because he was sad? Of
course not! He was calling out,
galvanizing others to join him in tefillah, which is exactly what they did.
In the words of Rav Soloveitchik:
“Zaaka expresses the love of the
individual for the community, and the dedication of the community to the
individual.
Zaaka… means…I get involved with the tzibbur, and I summon the tzibbur
to pray with me – not l’hispallel before Gd, but Lizok before Him [together!].”
When Moshe davened for the people after the Chet HaEgel and after
the Chet HaMeraglim, Hashem responded to a tefillah said b’lashon rabim, on
behalf of the community. But once he was
left to daven on his own only for himself, the tefillah just didn’t
carry the same weight.
And it is no surprise, then, that virtually every tefillah we say,
we say b’lashon rabim, either TOGETHER as a community, or ON BEHALF of the community:
–
When
we daven for someone who is sick, we ask Hashem to send them a refua,
healing, b’soch shaar cholei Yisrael, together with all the others in Klal
Yisrael who need a refua.
–
When
we comfort a mourner we daven that Hashem should offer them comfort, “B’soch
shaar aveilei zion V’Yerushalayim” among all other mourners for Jerusalem.
We have learned since the story of Va’Eschanan, when our greatest
leader was left to daven all alone, that a Jew never allows another Jew
to daven alone. We join
together, and we daven together.
We call this Shabbos, Shabbos Nachamu, the Shabbos of Consolation
after Tisha B’Av. But what does that mean?
How can we be consoled if the Beis HaMikdash is not yet here?
And Rav Soloveitchik explained that word נחם really isn’t translated as comfort, as much as it means to
change perspective.
As the Torah tells us after the Chet Ha’Egel:
וַיִּנָּחֶם יְקֹוָק עַל הָרָעָה אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר לַעֲשׂוֹת לְעַמּוֹ:
פ
Hashem changed his mind, He regretted what He said He would do to the
people.
Hashem of course does not regret. He is perfect. He doesn’t change His
mind. Rather, Hashem changed his
perspective.
We spent an entire Tisha B’Av recognizing that we can only fulfill
our mission as a people when we feel connected to each other. When we realize how much we NEED each other. And Shabbos Nachamu is when we have an opportunity
to begin to show that we have learned that lesson and have begun to CHANGE OUR
PERSPECTIVE, not only in terms of how we treat each other outside of shul, but
also with how we relate to each other INSIDE SHUL.
We think that when we walk into shul I am here to fulfill my
obligation to daven with a minyan.
If you want to make it even more meaningful, I have come to daven to Hashem,
to create a personally meaningful connection with HKBH through personal
conversation, and I do so alongside others.
And while that is true, what we have learned this morning is that it’s
so much more than that. When we come
into this room, or any other Beis HaKnesses, we have joined a team that is working
together, for each other. We
join forces to daven as a group, and we daven b’lashon rabim, in the plural. Whether
I even realize it or not, every time I open a siddur I’m not davening only for
myself. I’m davening for him, and he’s davening for her, and she’s davening for
someone else. We’re not a bunch of individuals, davening for ourselves, who
happen to be standing in the same room. We
are a team working in unison for each other.
And if that’s true, now we can have a totally different perspective
on what it means to enter our shul. Because what Rav Soloveitchik reminds us is
that a Makom Tefillah is a place of shared responsibility and shared opportunity.
It’s a place where my tefillos have
power way beyond myself, and, of course, my conduct matters way beyond
myself.
It’s a place where we aren’t simply roommates, we are
teammates. And, therefore, when we are
mindful to remain focused on the task at hand, and, at the very least, not to disturb
others, we are not only acting with basic derech eretz, respect for others and respect
for ourselves, we are elevating the tefillos themselves, which, after all, are being
davened on behalf of us all, each and every one of us, together.