Rabbi Rael Blumenthal

Last Shabbos, one of the cherva approached me and asked if it was appropriate for him to Daven for the results of the US elections to go the way he wants them to go.

(Don’t worry, I definitely did not say it depends on who he’s voting for...)

My immediate reaction was that he most certainly should. After all, Moshe Rabbeinu tells us this Shabbos that we are all children of Hashem – בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַה’ אֱלֹקיכֶם.

From this pasuk, Rebbe Nachman (שיחות הר”ן ז׳:א) teaches that we can and should ask Hashem for anything in the world:

טוֹב מְאֹד מִי שֶׁיָּכוֹל לִשְׁפֹּךְ שִׂיחוֹ לִפְנֵי הַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ בְּרַחֲמִים וְתַחֲנוּנִים כְּבֵן הַמִּתְחַטֵּא לִפְנֵי אָבִיו. כִּי הֲלֹא הַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ כְּבָר קְרָאָנוּ בָּנִים כְּמוֹ שֶׁכָּתוּב: “בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַה' אֱלֹקֵיכֶם” (דְּבָרִים י”ד). עַל־כֵּן טוֹב מְאֹד לְפָרֵשׁ שִׂיחָתוֹ וְצַעֲרוֹ לְפָנָיו יִתְבָּרַךְ, כְּבֵן שֶׁקּוֹבֵל לִפְנֵי אָבִיו בִּתְנוּעוֹת שֶׁל חֵן וְרַחֲמִים (שֶׁקּוֹרִין פְּיֶעשְׁטְשֶׁין).

It is very good to pour out your thoughts before God like a child pleading before his father (Ta'anis 19a). God calls us His children, as it is written, “You are children to the Lord your God” (Devarim 14:1). Therefore, it is good to express your thoughts and troubles to God, like a child complaining and pestering his father...

But before responding to the question, I paused. Because there is another approach. The Mei Hashiloach (ח”א פ’ אמור) explains that when we stand before the Ribono Shel Olam in Tefillah, we should be reticent to declare that we know what He should or should not do with His world. After all, while we are certainly his children, we are also His servants.

כי תפלה הוא שהש”י יאיר עיני האדם במקום שאין ידו מגעת The essence of Tefillah is that Hashem should illuminate our vision in places that we cannot grasp.

Tefillah by its very nature demands a sense of bitul. It requires a deep sense of dependence on Hashem, and an understanding that we are addressing the Infinite Creator of All Things.

Naturally, this tension is not exclusive to praying about the US elections. It is central to our entire concept of davening, and whether we are conscious of it or not, we have all made these types of choices before. “Should I daven for this deal to go well? Do I really deserve it? Can I ask Hashem for this refuah? Or perhaps that’s too audacious...?

Our approach to solving this conundrum however, might be hiding in plain sight this Shabbos.

The Talmud (ברכות טז ב) tells us that at the end the Shmoneh Esrei every day, Rav would say a unique Tefillah.

We do not say this Tefillah daily, but many communities have co-oped this text as the prayer before announcing Rosh Chodesh on Shabbos Mevorchim: (שערי אפרים י:לה)

רב בתר צלותיה אמר הכי: ״יהי רצון מלפניך ה׳ אלקינו שתתן לנו חיים ארוכים, חיים של שלום, חיים של טובה, חיים של ברכה, חיים של פרנסה, חיים של חלוץ עצמות, חיים שיש בהם יראת חטא, חיים שאין בהם בושה וכלימה, חיים של עושר וכבוד, חיים שתהא בנו אהבת תורה ויראת שמים, חיים שתמלא לנו את כל משאלות לבנו לטובה״.

May it be Your will, Lord our God, that You grant us long life, a life of peace, a life of goodness, a life of blessing, a life of sustenance, a life of freedom of movement, a life of dread of sin, a life without shame and disgrace, a life of wealth and honor, a life in which we have love of Torah and reverence for Heaven, a life in which You fulfill all the desires of our heart for good.

It’s certainly a beautiful Tefillah, but its placement in the siddur is questionable. There are many siddurim which do not include it, with Poskim raising the concern of making additional requests on Shabbos. But even for those who do uphold this custom, we might wonder why this is the prayer to say before announcing Rosh Chodesh.

Rav Yonasan Eibeschitz (תשית לראשו עמ’ שמג) explained the connection, noting that this Tefillah contains precisely eleven requests for חיים – life; one request for each Shabbos Mevorchim of the year. (The month of Tishrei is not announced on the Shabbos preceding it.)

It follows that when we consider our hopes and dreams for the month ahead, we already have the template illustrating the life we should be yearning for during the upcoming days and weeks.

The month of Elul is centered around the request for חיים שתמלא לנו את כל משאלות לבנו לטובה – a life in which You fulfill all the desires of our heart for good.

The Klausenberger Rebbe wondered why we add the final word here: “for good”. Surely when we ask Hashem to fulfill the desires of our hearts, we are already asking Him for good?

The Rebbe explains this additional word with an insight that could only be gleaned in Chodesh Elul:

As the year begins to draw to a close, we look back on our successes and failures, our triumphs and disappointments, our achievements and our unfulfilled dreams.

An honest retrospective, by definition, offers us a certainly humility that we could never have anticipated.

None of us could’ve predicted the life changing events of this year. None of us knew how this year would transform our lives on a personal or national level. In hindsight, were we to know anything of what was to come, our tefillos last year would certainly have been radically different.

Last Elul we were preoccupied by a litany of wants and needs. We committed to improving ourselves in the hopes that Hashem would answer all of our tefillos for health, wealth and happiness.

But the truth is, a year ago, we had no idea what we might actually need. We had no way of knowing what lay ahead. In the deepest recesses of our souls, can we ever ask anything of Hashem with the full confidence that it’s the best thing for us?

To this end, the Klausenberger Rebbe writes: We ask Hashem that He fulfill all of the requests of our hearts for good. The kind of good that only the Omnipotent, All Knowing Master of the World can guarantee.

Effectively, we are adding a massive disclaimer to the entirety of our davening. “Please Hashem, give me all the things that I need and want... But only if it’s actually good for me. I trust You to know what I need far more than I trust myself. And if I’m wrong, then don’t listen to me. Instead, give me what you know I need most, painful as it might be...”

A number of years ago, Rav Shachter told us that Rabbi Soloveitchik cried many nights in Europe. He begged Hashem that he would not be forced to take a position in the USA – the “treifeh medina”.

It’s at this point in the story that Rav Schachter began crying. “Imagine if Hashem would’ve listened to his Tefillah. Imagine if Rabbi Soloveitchik had stayed in Europe. He would have been murdered along with everyone else.”

Perhaps the greatest lesson of the past year has been the recognition of our own limitations. As David HaMelech (תהילים קכ״ז:א) tells us: אִם ה’ לֹא יִשְׁמָר עִיר שָׁוְא שָׁקַד שׁוֹמֵר – If Hashem doesn’t watch over the city, the guard has watched in vain.

In the past year, we have witnessed tragic and devastating gaps in Israeli security. In the US, we looked on in shock and horror as all the might and prowess of our political connections were rendered useless in the face of campus anti-semitism.

Our generation has enjoyed enormous achievements, but this is no time to rest on our laurels.

We have been thrust into a moment in history where the stakes have never been higher. Throughout the world Jewish communities are suspended precariously in the space between Redemption and annihilation. Perhaps from our vantage point, neither option seems likely in the immediate future; but then again, what do we really know?

The only Tefillah we can offer this Elul is this: All that we really want is what You want. We have our prayers, our designs and desires. But ultimately, Hashem please do what You know is good.