It’s been a year and a half since that terrible Simchas Torah, since the world of Klal Yisroel woke up to a new reality—of trauma, fear, and heartbreak. The Tehillim groups formed almost instantly. Entire kehillos gathered to cry together, to plead together. Kappitlach that we’d known since childhood suddenly became lifelines. Others, specifically intoned for the invasion of foreign enemies into our midst, were recited anew. “Ba’u goyim lenachalosecha.” “Shir hamaalos…esa einai el heharim…” All of them had new weight. New urgency. And there were no time constraints or an urgency to do anything else.
There was a powerful energy to these Tehillim kappitlach. People who had never lingered after davening stayed to say another perek. Acheinu was said slowly. Loudly. Sometimes even through tears.
But slowly, the momentum shifted. As days turned to weeks and weeks to months, the long gatherings gave way to shorter ones. The extra five kappitlach of Tehillim after all tefillos became a quick perek after just Shacharis or Mincha. The sense of chovas hasha’ah began to dull. Acheinu was still said, but it no longer came from the same place.
And then came the next klop. An attack on Iran. Retribution. Rockets. Casualties. A war within a war. A conflict now woven with nuclear threats from countries we never thought would directly speak of us again.
This time, the response was…quieter. Not absent. But quieter. There was a sense of here we go again. As if another crisis, layered onto the existing one, simply overwhelmed our capacity to respond.
And maybe that’s understandable. Maybe we had expected that “this should have been working. We’ve been davening for more than a year and a half!”
But maybe…tefillah is not a results-oriented avodah.
While he was menahel of our yeshiva, Rabbi Chanina Hertzberg shared with me a story that has stayed in my heart.
There was a young boy in maybe third or fourth grade whose grandmother was very ill. The rebbi, in an effort to motivate the boy to daven with more kavanah, said something like, “Daven better. Don’t you want your grandmother to get better?” It came from a good place, no doubt.
But Rabbi Hertzberg told the rebbi something he had heard from his rebbi, Rav Shlomo Freifeld. Never say such a thing to a child. “What if the boy does daven with all his heart,” he asked, “and she doesn’t get better? What happens to that child’s belief in tefillah?”
Linking outcomes too closely to our davening is a dangerous thing, because we don’t control the outcome. And we were never meant to. We’re not nevi’im. We’re not judges. We’re not able to decipher the exact cheshbonos of Shomayim.
All we have…is our heart.
And that’s what the Ksav Sofer explains so beautifully about last week’s parsha.
When Moshe Rabbeinu davened for his sister Miriam, the tefillah was short. Just five words: “Keil na, refa na lah.”
Rashi asks: Why so short? Wasn’t this his own sister, who risked her life to protect him? Who waited by the river as he floated in a basket? Who stood up for him even before he was born?
Rashi explains that Moshe intentionally kept it short, because he didn’t want to give off the wrong impression. Imagine, said Rashi, if people saw him standing there, reciting an elaborate, extended tefillah while his sister lay suffering. “Achoso b’tzarah vehu omeid umarbeh b’tefillah?” His own flesh and blood was in visible pain, and he’s engaging in elongated prayer?
But the Ksav Sofer asks a simple question: If someone needs rachamei Shomayim, isn’t it appropriate to daven as long as possible? Why shouldn’t Moshe have cried out for hours while pouring his heart out on behalf of his sister, just like anyone would for a sibling in pain? Why would people view that negatively?
If Moshe had davened at length, people might have thought: Why is he trying so hard? Doesn’t he naturally feel pain for his sister? Why does he need to “work up” emotion? Is he just performing? To onlookers, it might have presented the wrong appearance, almost like posturing, like a show of emotion rather than actual emotion.
It could have looked as if Moshe had to “force” the hisorerus, that his tefillah was more an intellectual exercise than an emotional one. And that would have been a terrible chillul Hashem. Imagine: Moshe Rabbeinu, the one chosen by Hashem to lead Klal Yisrael, the one who brought down the Torah itself, has to “work” on himself to feel pain.
And for Moshe Rabbeinu—whose every word was watched, whose every move reflected not only on him but on Hashem—that misunderstanding would have been a chillul Hashem.
So he said five words. Five words that came from the deepest place. Five words, but all heart.
Rachmana liba ba’i. Hashem wants the heart.
And that’s where we are now. We may not have the stamina for nightly long vigils of hour-long asifos. We may not feel that we can cry the way we did in October. But if our tefillah—even one posuk, even one Acheinu—is real, it can carry infinite weight.
There’s a chilling story I once heard (although not verified) about a moser, a Jew who informed on his brethren to the authorities, leading to imprisonment, suffering, or worse. The gedolim paskened that he was chayiv misah. They came up with a plan: They asked him to daven for the amud, and while he stood for Shemoneh Esrei, they carried out the sentence.
Afterward, one of the rabbonim involved had a dream. The moser came to him.
“You paskened correctly,” he said. “I deserved what I got. But tell me, why didn’t you at least let me finish the Shemoneh Esrei? Do you know what it means in Shomayim to say Shema Koleinu? To say Selach Lonu? Refo’einu? Even those words—coming from someone like me—matter!”
That’s the koach of tefillah. Even corrupted lips, even sullied hearts, when they reach for Hashem with sincerity, the words count.
And so the question isn’t how much we are davening.
The question is: How real is it?
I often wonder what it was like in American yeshivos during World War II. Imagine sitting in the bais medrash and hearing that the Nazis had captured Vilna. Or Warsaw. Or Pressburg. For those bochurim and roshei yeshiva, those places weren’t distant countries. They were the heart of the Torah world. It was as if, chas v’shalom, someone today said, “Bnei Brak is gone.” “Yerushalayim is under siege.” We can’t even imagine those words being uttered!
How did they have the strength to keep davening?
Day after day. Year after year. With no clear yeshuah in sight.
I don’t know the answer of then.
But I know that we must be mechazeik now.
The Ksav Sofer teaches us a timeless truth.
It’s not the length of the tefillah that matters. It’s the authenticity.
If your davening is heartfelt—whether it’s five words or fifty—it can shatter decrees and invoke rachamim. And if your words are dry and disconnected, then even a thousand of them may not rise above the ceiling.
Because Rachmana liba ba’i. The Ribbono Shel Olam isn’t looking at our siddurim. He’s looking at our hearts.
It is hard to recreate the length and continuous intensity of tefillos that took place that first week of the original war. But we cannot artificially manufacture tears. What we can do is mean it. Even if it’s one posuk. Even if it’s a heartfelt Acheinu. If it comes from the heart, it reaches the highest places.
Perhaps the Ksav Sofer is telling us that the Ribbono Shel Olam does not look at the clock. He looks at the heart.
Just saying.
