Salvation in Six

Translated by Rabbi Lazer Brody

My students and I often resort to six hours of consecutive personal prayer, especially when a major salvation is needed. “Salvation in Six” works miracles in unclogging the pipes of abundance, both spiritual and material. Many people ask what the source of the six-hour personal prayer session is; I’m happy to share it with you.

There is a special spiritual ploy that can “overcome” even the toughest obstacles; namely, to do six straight hours of personal prayer about that particular problem.

This is hinted at in the Torah, in Exodus (32:1), where it’s written: “And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mount.” In Hebrew, “delayed” is b’shesh. The word shesh also means the number six. If the Children of Israel had done six hours of personal prayer when they started to worry about where Moses had gone, they wouldn’t have committed the sin of the golden calf and the final redemption would have come.

Once, a poor man came to me for advice. He had struggled to make ends meet for years, and was always heavily in debt. He tried so hard to repay everything he owed, but even if he managed to pay off the old creditors, he always had new debts to take their place. His wife wanted him to travel abroad to ask for donations to help him cover his debts. He came to me for advice, because he didn’t know if that was the right thing to do, or not.

I told him that I had no problem with him traveling abroad. Nevertheless, I had something that would save him a great deal of time, money, and effort, and which would solve all his financial problems once and for all – six straight hours of personal prayer about his debts.

Six hours sounds like a lot of time, but think about the alternative: Twelve hours on a plane flying abroad; twelve hours on a plane flying home. Think of the hours of humiliation going from door to door with an outstretched palm, begging for strangers to help him. Think of the initial expenses of buying the ticket, and what about meals and lodging? Who says you won’t be sick overseas, either?

It’s not as though it was ‘guaranteed’ that he’d be given enough money to cover his expenses, let alone pay off all his debts. Even if he did manage to repay all his debts, he still wouldn’t have solved the root of the problem. He’d be back in debt very quickly, and would have to go through the whole process again and again and again.

So I asked him: “Isn’t it much simpler to dedicate six hours of your time to praying to Hashem, asking Him to help you get out of debt? It’s much less time than a trip abroad will entail; and it’s certainly much less hassle. Plus, if you ask Hashem to help you do teshuva for the sin which is causing the whole problem in the first place, you’ll never have to worry about being in debt again. Hashem is the only One who can truly solve your problem.”

If you want to follow the path of prayer to get out of debt, here are a few guidelines for how you should do it:

1. Start your prayer session by thanking Hashem profusely for all the good He has done for you – for all the material and spiritual kindnesses Hashem has shown you throughout your lifetime, up until now. Then, go on to thank Hashem for the debts themselves, because they come from Hashem, and everything that comes from Hashem is for the good. For example, the only reason you are standing before Hashem trying to do six hours of personal prayer, is because of your debts!

2. Then you should say: “Master of the universe, if I don’t have enough income, it’s surely because I don’t deserve it. If I have debts – which are causing me great suffering – it’s surely because I’ve transgressed your Torah. I know that I have sinned, and that You have acted justly with me by sending me debts and giving me insufficient income, etc etc.” The point here is to ‘justify’ Hashem’s judgments, and accept them wholeheartedly.

3. Next, ask Hashem to show you how to make genuine teshuva for your transgressions, as follows: “Master of the universe, everything is revealed before You. You know exactly what I need to correct spiritually. You know what You are trying to show me by sending me these heavy debts, and what You want me to do. Please, please help me to correct what I need to…” Ask Hashem over and over again to bring you closer to Him, to forgive all of your sins, particularly the ones responsible for your debts, and to show you what you need to do, spiritually, to ‘fix’ the problem.

4. Next, you need to pray for emuna. Ask Hashem that He should help you to believe in Him; to trust that He really is the One and Only Provider; to believe that Hashem doesn’t anyone else’s help to give you what you need. Ask Hashem that he should help you to stop worrying; and that He will help you to give 10% of everything you receive to charity. Ask Him to help you always give generously to charity, and to trust that giving to charity will never cause you to be short of cash. Ask Hashem to have mercy on you, your wife and your children. Tell Him that without a steady income, you find it hard to serve Him; Rebbe Nachman teaches that it’s good for a person to have some financial independence so that they won’t get confused about what they are really in the world to do. Tell Hashem that if you didn’t have to run around trying to repay your endless debts, then you would have so much more time to work on improving your soul.

5. Ask Hashem to give you your livelihood – as a free gift! Tell Him that you want to be a proper, ‘kosher’ person, but that it can’t happen overnight. So in the meantime, ask Hashem to send you your livelihood as a free gift, so that you will have the breathing space you need to really start serving Hashem, and to become a genuinely good person.

6. Resolve to do specific things to start improving yourself. For example, undertake to set a specific time to study Torah, give 10% of your income to charity, etc. If you don’t make these resolutions – and stick to them – you won’t have anything ‘concrete’ to back up your argument that you need sufficient income in order to work on your soul.

7. The most essential ‘resolution’ you have to make is to do an hour of personal prayer every single day. As Rebbe Nachman teaches in Likutei Moharan 100, no one can become an upright person if they aren’t doing an hour of personal prayer a day.

When Hashem sees that you really are sincerely trying to do teshuva, He will surely listen to your arguments about why you urgently need a steady income – and He will save you from your debts.

By contrast, if you spend all your time trying to get yourself out of debt and rustle up more cash – and there’s still no time for Torah study, or doing an hour a day of personal prayer – it’s clear that you haven’t really made teshuva.

If a person hasn’t sincerely made teshuva, then it’s better that they continue to suffer financial difficulties, which atones for their sins in the meantime. If this sounds harsh, remember that financial difficulties and problems making a living are a relatively ‘light’ tribulation. A person could be sent much worse difficulties, God forbid. But, with extensive prayer, we invoke the level of Divine compassion where we’ll see eye-to-eye miraculous salvations, amen!