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Structure of Prayer I:10 — three sections:
לְפּוּרִים — For Purim (17–19 Tishray · 6 paragraphs):
- Ribon kol ha'olamim — You revealed Your G-dliness through the Patriarchs, through the Exodus, through Yisro's conversion — {E("this is the essence of Your greatness: when the most distanced draw near")}
- Anna Hashem lamdeini — teach me pure prayer; the soul descended from the heights — "Oy for the son exiled from his Father's table!"
- Rescue my soul from all desires and evil traits — both inherited and acquired
- [18 Tishray] — Rectify all my corruptions; remove my shame; help me bring others to teshuvah
- Break the trait of arrogance (gaavah) completely — all my little good is from You alone
- [19 Tishray] — Flesh and blood, confused by folly... "like clay in the hand of the potter"... holy clapping and dancing (machias kaf v'rikudin d'kedushah) sweetening judgments
לִימֵי הַסְּפִירָה — For the Days of the Omer (1 paragraph):
- Count the Omer with holiness; nullify Haman-Amalek; draw down the holiness of Mordechai and Esther
לְרֹאשׁ חֹדֶשׁ — For Rosh Chodesh (20 Tishray · 2 paragraphs):
- Complete teshuvah; Rosh Chodesh as the root of teshuvah
- Closing: faith in the true tzadikim, their prayer shields us — Amen, Selah
A frailichen Purim! Na Nach Nachma Nachman MayUman!
Prayer 10 · תּפִלָּה י׳
עברית ▾ Master of all the worlds, Lord of all — You Who revealed Your G-dliness and Your lordship in the world through our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and through them You were glorified and sanctified from generation to generation, until we merited to receive Your holy Torah through Moses Your prophet, the faithful one of Your house. And then all the peoples and all the nations saw Your greatness and Your mighty deeds — how You multiplied wondrous and awesome miracles for us at the Exodus from Egypt, at the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, and at the battle against Amalek — until Your G-dliness was revealed to all who enter the world, and those far off saw Your might, until Yisro came and converted, and said: “Now I know that Hashem is greater than all the gods” [Exodus 18:11]. And then Your Name was exalted and glorified and sanctified above and below. For this is the very essence of Your greatness and Your sublimity — when those who are very far from You come to recognize Your G-dliness and Your lordship — for then Your great Name is glorified and sanctified and exalted, may it be blessed and praised forever. Therefore I have come before You, Hashem my G-d and G-d of my fathers, to cast my supplication before You — “From the ends of the earth I call to You” [Psalms 61:3] — that You have mercy upon me through Your abundant mercies, upon one as distanced and driven away as I am — and draw me near through Your mercies and Your great lovingkindnesses, and say to my afflictions: “Enough!” And begin from now to draw me near through Your abundant mercies. For this is the very essence of Your greatness — when those most distanced draw near to Your service in truth, as You have revealed to us through Your holy Sages. And though I am very far from You — utterly and completely distanced — do not deal with me according to my sins, and do not judge me according to my deeds, for You are close to those who are far. For it is specifically from me that Your Name, may it be blessed, will be exalted and glorified and magnified forever and for all eternity — through Your drawing near one so distanced as I am to Your great Name. For this is the very essence of Your greatness: when those most distanced draw near to You in truth.
עברית ▾ Please, Hashem — teach me to arrange my prayer before You as is fitting, in clear and pure language, in a language of mercy and supplications. And send and arrange for me worthy and beautiful words, and may my prayer flow freely in my mouth — in such a manner that I am able to appease and entreat You, that You arouse Your hidden mercies upon me, to draw me near to You from the place from which I have become distanced — in countless and immeasurable kinds of estrangements. And from all these estrangements, draw me near to You through Your awesome mercies, through Your abundant mercies, through Your great mercies, through awesome mercies that You have hidden in Your treasuries — in which there is no grasp of judgment or accusation whatsoever — through mercies that have the power to draw near even those who are utterly and completely distanced, beyond whom there is no greater distance. And act for Your sake and not for ours — act for Your sake and save us; draw us near to You, strengthen us in Your service, fortify us in Your awe, take hold of our hands and bring us out from all evil desires and all evil traits that are bound up in our bodies, distancing us from You at every moment. For You alone know the extent of the compassion that there is upon us — upon our soul and spirit and our neshamos [souls] — for our soul descended from the heights of the loftiest heights, from the bosom of our Father in Heaven, and has come into this world in a body as turbid as this, in a body as coarse as this. “Woe to the son who has been exiled from his Father’s table!” [Berachos 3a] And Your holy intention was for our benefit — so that we should have trial and free choice in this lowly world, so that we might bend and break and humble the physicality of our bodies and the desires of our heart — in order that we merit to recognize You in this very lowly world, which is utterly removed from Your holiness. But what can we do, our Father in Heaven? For we were unable to receive Your great goodness — we did not spare our souls, and we did not prevail to subdue our desires. “You have refined us but found no [silver]” [Psalms 66:10]. And we have already spent our years in vanity and emptiness, through the desires of our bodies bound and tied within us from our youth until this very day. And every day we await and hope for the true redemption of the soul — yet our hope has been disappointed. And each and every day our evil inclination prevails over us even more — and we have no one to lean upon except You alone, our Father in Heaven. Have compassion upon us in Your compassion. Have mercy upon us in Your mercy. Do with us a free act of lovingkindness. “As a father has mercy upon his children, have mercy upon us” [Psalms 103:13]. Answer us, our Father, answer us; answer us, our Creator, answer us; answer us, our Redeemer, answer us — and do: “that we shall walk in Your statutes and observe Your ordinances” [Ezekiel 36:27]. Help us and save us.
עברית ▾ Please, Hashem — rescue my soul from all the desires and all the evil traits still bound within my body: both the desires and evil traits that are within me from the side of birth — “for in iniquity I was fashioned, and in sin my mother conceived me” [Psalms 51:7] — and the desires and evil traits that I have drawn upon myself through my own [failures], because I did not prevail and strengthen myself to subdue and break and nullify all the evil desires and evil traits. From all of them, save me through Your abundant mercies from now and forevermore. And grant me merit from now, and give me wisdom and understanding and holy counsel, and strength and might from You — in such a manner that I merit to rescue my soul from the pit, to draw myself away and to distance myself from all desires and all evil traits — until I merit to banish and to nullify from myself all kinds of desires and evil traits — until my body be pure, bright, and clean from all kinds of desires and all kinds of evil traits. And I merit to be truly holy and pure — as befits a Jewish person.
עברית ▾ And grant me merit that I be able to rectify in my lifetime all kinds of corruptions and blemishes that I have blemished until now — from my youth until this very day. And I merit through Your mercies to remove and to nullify from my soul all kinds of shames and disgraces that I have cast upon my soul through my many sins and iniquities and transgressions. “You know my shame and my humiliation and my disgrace — all my enemies are before You. Shame has broken my heart and I am sick; I hoped for sympathy but there was none, and for comforters but I found none” [Psalms 69:20–21]. Remove my shame that I feared — for Your judgments are good [cf. Psalms 119:39]. “May my soul be precious in Your eyes; may Your mercies roll over Your attributes” [Psalms 116:15, cf. Psalms 119:132]. “Bring my soul out of its confinement, to give thanks to Your Name” [Psalms 142:8]. For “what profit is there in my blood, in my going down to the pit? Will the dust acknowledge You? Will it declare Your truth?” [Psalms 30:10]. Arise, Hashem — deliver my soul from all kinds of shames and disgraces, from all kinds of desires and evil traits, from all kinds of blemishes and corruptions. And forgive and pardon me for all that I have blemished until now, and gather in my shame — and cast into the depths of the sea all my sins [Micah 7:19], to a place where they shall never be recalled, nor visited, nor arise in the heart forever. And help me from now to clean and to purify my soul and my body from all kinds of desires and evil traits — in such a manner that I merit from now to be truly holy and pure, according to Your good will. And help me that I merit to return others to teshuvah — for You alone know the extent of the compassion there is upon those who are far from Your Name, imprisoned in the captivity of desires, ensnared in the nets of vanities. Grant me merit that I be able to speak to their hearts — words that settle in the heart, true words, holy words — and my words should enter their ears, and their hearts be truly stirred — in such a manner that they return to You in truth. And may there be fulfilled the verse: “May sinners be consumed from the earth, and may the wicked be no more — bless {H("Hashem")}, O my soul! Halleluyah!” [Psalms 104:35].
עברית ▾ And grant me merit through Your abundant mercies to break and remove from myself the trait of arrogance [gaavah] — and let there be in my heart no pride and haughtiness whatsoever in the world at all. Please, Hashem, You Who are full of mercy — You know our lowliness and our poverty and our destitution at this time, through our many sins and iniquities and transgressions, through which we have become very distanced from You — and we have no grounds for merit at all through which to accomplish our request, except through an entirely unearned gift of grace. For it is Your way to bestow goodness upon Your creatures, and You have mercy upon all Your works through great mercies and through an unearned gift of grace. Therefore, O You Who are full of mercy — have mercy upon us, that no foreign thought of error enter our minds, G-d forbid, and no hint of pride or haughtiness or ulterior motive enter my heart in the world at all — lest my hope be entirely lost, G-d forbid. For the little good that is within us — all of it is from You; for from You is everything, and “from Your own hand we have given to You” [1 Chronicles 29:14]. And even this little-of-a-little good is intermixed with very great dross — so that even the little good requires many great corrections through Your abundant mercies, in order that it be able to be clarified and ascend before You. And how can one as coarse and as distanced as this hope to gain [anything] through the little good — less than a drop from the sea — and I have no support or reliance whatsoever except upon Your abundant mercies. And if, G-d forbid, the error of any side of pride and haughtiness were to enter my heart — Heaven forfend — then I am lost in my affliction, G-d forbid. For by what can a young man stripped of all good such as I hope to merit? Hashem G-d — my understanding is too short to explain and to set out my speech before You. Have compassion and mercy upon me, and save me from pride and haughtiness. For truly — for one as lowly and despised as I am, it ought not to be necessary to pray at all to be saved from pride. For how could the thought ever arise in the mind of one so despised and rejected, full of blemishes from head to foot, to let the folly and madness enter his heart — that any hint of pride should arise in his mind? And if I had only sinned against You once in all my days — the lightest of the light sins — I still would have had no ability to lift my head, to pride myself over any of the most insignificant creatures in the world — given the magnitude of Your greatness and Your sublimity, and given the magnitude and multitude of the great and awesome goodnesses that You perform with us at every time and every hour. For according to the very sparkling of Your sublimity and greatness — even regarding something trivial — when we are not fortunate, G-d forbid, to do some matter as is fitting, in its ultimate perfection and truth — we can no longer lift our faces at all before You. And certainly I would not need to pray at all for the nullification of pride.
עברית ▾ Yet — You know, Hashem our G-d, that we are flesh and blood, and our minds are very intermixed and confused with many kinds of folly and madness — until [foolish thoughts] lie in ambush against us as well — [even] through thoughts of folly of ulterior motives and pride, as You know: “for many rise up against me” [Psalms 3:2] — and from all sides they lie in ambush against us at every moment and from every direction — until I cannot open my mouth to utter any fitting word before You in truth as is fitting. And I do not know what to do — where am I pressed? Where shall I turn? From where will my help come? I am very distressed. Even when I cry out and wail — “my prayer is shut out” [Lamentations 3:8] — because of the multitude of alien thoughts and ulterior motives that surge to confuse my prayer, G-d forbid. What shall I say, what shall I speak, how shall I justify myself? “G-d has found out my iniquity” [Genesis 44:16]. Do with me as You will — “behold, I am in Your hand like clay in the hand of the potter” [Jeremiah 18:6]. Have mercy, have mercy! Rescue, rescue! Save, save! “Save those taken to death, and those tottering toward slaughter — withhold them” [Proverbs 24:11] — and save and deliver through Your abundant and great mercies, from death to life, from grief to joy, from darkness to great light. Have mercy upon me through Your abundant mercies, that the merit and power of the true tzadikim shield me — and through them I merit to break and to nullify from myself completely the trait of arrogance — until I merit to feel my own lowliness in every single limb, truly in truth. And let no thought of pride or haughtiness enter my heart and my mind in the world at all. And I merit to true humility [anavah], and to complete faith [emunah] in truth. And grant me merit to nullify and to break all kinds of heretical thoughts and doubts and confusions and crookedness of heart [akmimiuss shebalev] — that such things never arise in my heart or in the heart of any of Your people Israel forever. And help me to truly connect with the ruach hakodesh [holy spirit] of the true tzadikim — and I merit to draw and to bring into my heart the ruach hakodesh of the true tzadikim. And through this I merit to uprightness of heart in truth — that my heart be truly with Hashem always, in truth and in complete faith and in true humility. And I merit through Your mercies that this ruach hakodesh be drawn into my hands and my feet — until I merit to rectify the blemish of the hands and feet, to reveal and illuminate the radiance of the hands and feet — until my heart stirs with great joy toward Your great Name in truth — until the holy joy spreads into my hands and my feet — until I merit to holy clapping of hands and holy dancing [machias kaf v'rikudin d'kedushah] — in such a manner that we merit thereby to sweeten the judgments [hamtakas dinim] upon us and upon all Your people the house of Israel, through holy clapping and holy dancing. And I merit through Your mercies to raise and to lift and to elevate my hands and my feet — to cleanse them from all blemish. Master of the Universe — “strengthen the drooping hands and steady the tottering knees” [Isaiah 35:3]. And have mercy upon me and purify and sanctify my hands and my feet — and say to those bound: “Go forth!” [Isaiah 49:9] — and let not my feet be moved; and bring out my feet from captivity. And feet that have descended toward death — bring them out to safety swiftly, through Your abundant mercies — from death to life. And may there be fulfilled in me the verse: “My foot stands on level ground” [Psalms 26:12]. And as for blemished hands, soiled with many kinds of filth and blemishes — have mercy upon them to cleanse and to purify them, and bring them out from impurity to purity. And forgive and pardon me through Your abundant mercies for all kinds of blemishes that I have blemished with my hands and my feet — and grant me merit from now that my hands and my feet be holy and pure, free from all kinds of blemishes in the world.
עברית ▾ And grant me merit through Your abundant mercies to fulfill the mitzvah of counting the Omer [Sefiras HaOmer] in holiness and purity, and with a good heart and great joy, with all its details and precise requirements and intentions, and the 613 mitzvos connected to it. And through this we merit to subdue and to break and to uproot and to nullify the kelipah [shell of evil] of Haman-Amalek from the world. And help me through Your mercies to fulfill and to receive the days of Purim with great joy — and we merit that the holiness of the illumination of Purim, the holiness of Mordechai and Esther, be drawn down upon us and upon our offspring and upon all Your people the house of Israel. And we merit to fulfill all the mitzvos practiced on Purim in holiness and purity and with a good heart and great joy. And put joy in our hearts — until the joy spreads into our hands and our feet — and we merit then to holy clapping of hands and holy dancing [machias kaf v'rikudin d'kedushah], with great joy toward Your Name in truth. And help us through Your abundant mercies to accept upon ourselves anew to fulfill all the words of Your Torah with love — and we merit to learn and to teach, to observe and to perform and to fulfill. And illuminate our eyes in Your Torah. And we merit to learn and to understand and to discern, in the revealed and in the hidden [nigleh and nistar] in truth — and grant us merit to attain the hidden things of Hashem at every turn — “and may we not come before You in shame” [cf. Berachos 17a].
עברית ▾ And help me to return in complete teshuvah before You in truth — and may I not leave this world until I return from my sins, and rectify all that I have blemished before You — in thought, speech, and deed. And be with us in our help — that we merit to draw down upon us the illumination of complete teshuvah from its very root — which is Rosh Chodesh [the New Month], as You have revealed to us through Your true tzadikim. And we merit to receive the New Months with great holiness. And we merit to draw down upon us the root of teshuvah through all twelve New Months that You have given to Your people Israel — a time of atonement for all their generations — in such a manner that we merit to return to You in complete and true teshuvah.
עברית ▾ And grant me merit through Your abundant mercies to believe in the true tzadikim [tzadikim emes] — and I merit to draw truly near to them. And be with me in my help that I be able always to arouse mercies before the true tzadikim — that they pray for me and intercede on my behalf, and arouse mercies before You to draw me near to You in truth. And may they draw down upon me and upon my offspring and upon all Your people the house of Israel — all good, and all that we lack — whether in physical or spiritual matters — all shall be filled for good through the prayers of the true tzadikim who will pray for me and for all Your people the house of Israel. For You know that we have no power to arrange our prayers before You as is fitting — and our speech is very halting, and our tongue is full of blemish. Therefore we have no support and no hope whatsoever, except upon the prayer of the true tzadikim — both the true tzadikim who are alive, at length of days and years, and the true tzadikim who dwell in the dust. Upon them alone have I fixed my tent-pegs; upon them alone will I place my hope; upon them shall I lean. And through their merit and their great power I have come before You, Hashem my G-d and G-d of my fathers — have compassion and mercy upon us, that their prayer may shield us — and through their prayer we merit to draw truly near to You. And we merit to turn from evil in truth and to do the good in Your eyes always, from now and forevermore. Amen, Selah.
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