From the Heart

A little while ago, I was feeling A-1 useless. I had a week where I felt I should just go and live in a cave somewhere, because everything I was trying to do, even small things, just weren’t working out.

I had plans to cook healthy, yummy suppers – which no-one ended up liking except me. I had plans for the kids (and me) to go to bed earlier, so that we’d stop the mad rush to get to school on time in the morning – and Hashem threw one thing after another in the way: birthday parties; youth group ‘weeks’; math exams that needed to be revised for with the parent that only got home after seven o’clock… End result: still a mad rush to get to school in the mornings.

I planned to tidy my house, only to have even more mess, mud, and confusion than usual. I had plans to try to stick to my shopping budget, only to find that the more effort I made ‘not to spend’, the more I actually spent – by a whopping big amount.

It was bizarre. I wasn’t trying to do anything bad, or naughty, but Hashem just wanted to show me (again) that everything comes from Him, and not to take it for granted.

So, I decided to go for a walk to talk to G-d. Except that also ended up a dismal, useless failure. Usually, I can talk and talk and talk (I am a girl, after all).

But for some unknown reason, I got stuck. Barely a word was coming out of my mouth. And even worse, this carried on for a couple of days, which meant that even talking to G-d suddenly got very hard.

I’ve just bought myself a new Gad Elbaz CD called ‘Kimat Sheket’, which in English, means ‘Almost Quiet’.

I like nearly all of the songs on it, but track 11 really got my attention. It’s not Gad Elbaz that’s singing it, but someone else, I don’t know who. But the whole song is about how the person isn’t Adi Ran, Chaim Israel, MBD, Yaacov Shwekey, or any of the other famous Jewish singers. But he sings ‘from the heart’.

It’s a pretty basic song: he lists about 10 people who he isn’t, then comes the chorus where he explains he still sings ‘from the heart’ – and that’s good enough.

As I was walking along the exercise path around my village, feeling like a complete waste of space, trying to tell G-d all about it, but unable even to get a sentence out, that song suddenly popped into my head.

So I started explaining to G-d: “G-d, I’m not Rabbi Arush. I’m not Rabbi Brody. I’m not Rebbe Nachman or Rav Kook. Most days, I’m not even sure if I’m managing to live up to being a ‘simple Jew’. But all I can tell you is that I try to pray ‘from the heart.’

I sang a few more verses – “I’m not Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, or Leah; I’m not a famous rebbetzin who gives shiurim that turn hundreds of Jews onto your Torah; I bake rubbish challot (anyone got a good, easy recipe out there?); and there are some days when if I’ve managed to put any sort of supper on the table I feel it was an open miracle.

But I pray. From the heart. From the heart. I try my very best to pray to You from the heart. And that’s got to count for something, right?”

All of a sudden, I burst into tears (like I said, I’m a girl, and these things happen).

You know, whenever I hear Rav Brody or Rav Arush explaining what I need to pray for, or about, I try my best to do it. So it is that for the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to remember to pray at least a minute or two for Am Yisrael. Often, I wonder to myself: ‘what difference can the prayers of a puny Jew like me really make? I’m NOT Rav Arush; I’m NOT Rav Brody; or anywhere close. I’m so full of mistakes and contradictions and issues myself, how can I even think that those few minutes are actually counting for anything much?’

But I think Hashem showed me that it doesn’t matter that I’m nothing special. The point is that I’m trying, and I’m trying to pray ‘from the heart’.

The Talmud teaches: ‘words from the heart penetrate the heart’. Even when all I can manage is some mumbled thanks, or half an hour of saying ‘Merciful Father in heaven’ over and over again, it’s from the heart.

And even when all I can manage is ‘almost silence’ – interrupted by a few, stilted attempts at actually saying something – that’s also from the heart. And Hashem showed me, even when it’s rubbish – and even though I’m not Rav Arush – He still values it enormously.