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The shiur in English
The Yanuka’s own words in this shiur, translated into English by Lehallel · 2,462 words · 13:29. Press a time to hear it said.
0:11 The tomb of David. What does the Minchas Elazar of Munkatch say? He says: "The son of Yishai at the head" - that David's tomb comes before all the holy places in the Land of Israel. He said to him: "Take it back, and I, you and the son of Yishai will walk in Gan Eden." Yeravam said: "Who will be at the head?" Hashem said to him: "The son of Yishai at the head." He says that the tomb of King David comes before all the holy places in the Land of Israel. This is a very, very, very awesome place, this place.
0:38 "When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars that You have set in place" "Hashem, our Master, how mighty is Your Name in all the earth" How much one must ask for the Kingship of Hashem, blessed be He, to feel that we want His Kingship - not flesh and blood, not all the falsehood of the world, not all the hiding of His Face.
1:02 Think how much madness there is in this world, how much hiding of His Face, how much falsehood... The whole world is simply... all the voices of the created beings are lacks. We speak because of a lack; all the wars are lacks. Everyone fights over something there is in abundance.
1:26 The root of all the wars is the will to exist, to live, and everyone is always afraid that in the end they will not be able to exist in their place, so they always want to fight and to wipe out. But no one is happy with what he is, with what he has. If we merited to be happy also with our spiritual portion, we would not have wars with the evil inclination either.
1:56 One needs to know how to serve Hashem truly, as one should, with a settled mind, without being alarmed and confused, to contemplate the greatness of Hashem, not to be alarmed by anything, not to be afraid. It is forbidden to let fear into the heart over anything; to fear only Hashem, the Honored and the Awesome, to serve Him calmly, without pressure and without alarm, slowly and with a settled mind.
2:25 When we come to the service of Hashem, blessed be He, one needs to feel that there is all the time in the world, and all the patience in the world, and all the pleasure; to feel that this is the root, and all the good things and the bounty. And this moment, when a person merits to raise his eyes to Hashem, blessed be He - this is the most exalted moment in all of creation.
Read the whole shiur in English (21 more parts)
2:50 But let us also ask you: When do we see that a person merits that Hashem, blessed be He, answers him? When does this happen? Do you know when this happens? Does anyone have a new insight? To pray to Hashem truly.
3:17 But today we see that now there is a war, and everyone is in fear, and people go out and fight. When does this happen? When is the prayer...? Now a person prays - how can he know...? He knows that nothing is hard. Someone - he knows. Nice, oh. Very nice, very true: that a person feels that there is no... it is only my prayer that will save me.
3:48 Prayer saves. This is how one should pray every prayer, every time; this is how one should pray to Hashem. When we say "for our lives which are entrusted into Your hand", when we say a chapter of Tehillim, when we say a psalm, when we say a prayer - what is this connection, to turn to Hashem? To pray to Hashem. And the connection - the essence and the foundation of the connection to Hashem, blessed be He - does not rest on this, that you only need to ask and say it like this, from the lips outward, and He will give you.
4:23 That is not why we pray. We pray in order to show Hashem, blessed be He, that all our life-force and all that we have flows from prayer. Therefore a person is forbidden to do work before he prays; therefore a person is forbidden to eat before the prayer. "And Me you have cast behind your back" - when a person eats before the prayer. For we show Hashem, blessed be He, that all the time a person sleeps at night, all that a person did all these hours, was in order to pray to Him.
4:55 It is to show Hashem that my connection to Him, and the prayer - this is the most important thing in the world. And when one feels prayer this way, then its power bursts forth and rises without measure, beyond all measure. Therefore it is always important, when praying, to feel as if this is the person's last prayer. There was a story with the holy Rav, Rabbi Uri of Strelisk, the author of the Imrei Kadosh, son of Rabbi Pinchas and Mrs. Feiga; he was the greatest of the disciples of the Maharash of Karlin, Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin.
5:29 And each time he would write a will, and he would take leave of his family when he went out to pray - when he went out to Shacharis, to Minchah, to Maariv. He would feel at that moment, when he stood in prayer, as if this is my last moment, in my prayer before Hashem, for I have nothing in the world but this prayer. This connection - one needs to understand that the salvation and the prayer can be at this very moment, now, now - and not to expect it to bring about some salvation after a while.
6:03 That is the meaning of prayer with concentration, when praying before Hashem. It does not mean that one has to make a lot of motions... That is not the meaning; it has nothing to do with time... It has to do only with understanding, with contemplation - with contemplation, with the understanding of how one prays to Hashem. Pay attention to what we find in the Book of Shoftim, from chapter 13 to chapter 16, the story of Shimshon: the whole story of Shimshon son of Manoach, all that he went through.
6:34 We see that his strength left him; he was no longer strong, and he could not receive his power of might from Heaven to fight the Philistines. But by way of a miracle and a wonder - when does Hashem, blessed be He, give him back his strength? What did he ask? That he asked: "Remember me, please, and strengthen me, please." That is, he asked only for this one time: only this moment, now - this is the last moment I have.
7:04 And the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him back all his strength, and he did more than all he had done his whole life. And this is a proof: because he asked only for this one time, and he felt that this was the last time in his life that he stands to pray. And if we merited this... Take this principle and this advice for your whole life - what we have learned now - for your whole life, for every prayer, for every psalm of Tehillim, at the Kosel or anywhere.
7:31 Take this and serve Hashem, blessed be He, with it. Each time we have learned principles; there are a great many principles that we have learned, but now, for this time, we will take the way to pray, the and what prayer truly is - to stand before Hashem, blessed be He. And this understanding alone will help a person to have holy thoughts; he will have help from Heaven, and he will pray with a holy thought, with a pure thought.
7:58 It is not for nothing that the Tur writes that a person who has a stray thought, or during the prayer, then he must be silent. Why must he be silent while he is praying? Because when I pray to Hashem, blessed be He, every stray thought makes the offering invalid, because prayer is like an offering, so it will not be a thought of piggul. Now that I am praying to Hashem and I am thinking about the greatness of Hashem, blessed be He, and I am showing Hashem that this alone is the connection between me and You, and as the Shulchan HaTahor of Komarna explains - he says: "This is what we have received" - pay attention - that whoever thinks, Heaven forbid, during his prayer about things he will want to do afterward, his thought will not come about; he will not succeed in it.
8:46 Many times people plan things during their prayer, and it does not succeed, and it is only because of this. One must be careful about this. It is like the story of that pious man in Tractate Shabbos, page 150b, that the Gemara says about that pious man that he had... and in the end he did not want to repair the fence. that he had... and in the end he did not want to repair the fence. And then the Holy One, blessed be He, made a miracle for him, and a caper bush grew for him there, in that very place, because he was such a pious man, and he did not want to repair the fence, just because of the thought on Shabbos.
9:12 He said: "I am not touching it, because I thought about it on Shabbos." One must understand that every connection to Hashem, blessed be He, is Shabbos. And therefore the same applies to prayer, the Amidah prayer: when a person prays to Hashem, blessed be He - this is Shabbos; at that moment it is... What is Shabbos? Shabbos is the sign, it is the covenant; it is our connection with Hashem, blessed be He. Prayer is the connection of the person Prayer between the Creator and the created, to Hashem, blessed be He.
9:37 And when one prays to Hashem and feels that this is the only connection with Hashem, blessed be He, and all my life-force and my essence stand on this, then it is forbidden to think about anything - it is like Shabbos. So a person who thinks this way will see how it will sprout and bring him salvations and miracles and wonders and marvels, such that you will see all your lives, with Hashem's help. May it be His will that we merit this, and that Hashem, blessed be He, save us.
10:04 And there is another principle we learned, if you remember. Remember this - we learned it now about prayer - also when saying a psalm of Tehillim, going to any holy place: always think this way, to pray in this way that I explained, that it is the last moment, that it is truly with all the concentration, with all the strength, to really put into it all the thought and the life-force. And the second thing: always to do teshuvah, and pardon and forgiveness for the staying in the place.
10:30 For now, when we were in a holy place, or in every prayer we prayed, or in every mitzvah, we merited to create wonderful lights, and wonderful vessels for this light, through the way of prayer and the staying in the holy place, or in anything. And when one asks forgiveness and pardon for the staying - for certainly, even the fact that we are in a holy place... Look at the Kohen Gadol, who enters the Holy of Holies once a year: he does not stay there a long time, in order to show us that the higher the level of holiness one is in, the place itself also has importance, and one must be careful in it.
11:06 And if, Heaven forbid, one is not careful in the place, then one can be punished, and therefore the Kohen could die. So there could be danger. From a holy place - one must always know, each time one prays, each time one stays, even on Motzei Shabbos, to say to Hashem, blessed be He: "Pardon, forgiveness - perhaps I did not keep, did not keep Shabbos properly; may I merit to strengthen myself more in Shabbos." And the tefillin: as I wrap up the tefillin, to think, to have thoughts of teshuvah, that I did not think in holiness during all the time the tefillin were on me; during the time of prayer, at the end, at Aleinu Leshabe'ach, to have thoughts of teshuvah that perhaps I did not pray the whole prayer properly.
11:44 Always to have thoughts of teshuvah about the fulfilling of the mitzvah. We usually take up teshuvah for sins, for things that are negative commandments, and prohibitions and severe things, or matters of piety, or thoughts, or holiness, all kinds of things like that. But we never consider the need to do teshuvah over the staying, or over the service of Hashem itself: to have thoughts of teshuvah at the end of the tefillin, to have thoughts of teshuvah at the end of the prayer, to have thoughts of teshuvah for having stayed at the Kosel, to have thoughts of teshuvah that I stayed now, here, in this holy and awesome place, where we are facing the Beis HaMikdash, the Holy Temple, facing the Holy of Holies, at this time; to have thoughts of teshuvah for this very moment itself.
12:24 These are the things that give us the vessels to come close to Hashem, blessed be He. So take these principles with you for your whole lives, that this will always be in your head, and you will see miracles and wonders from this. May you have good tidings. May Hashem, blessed be He, guard all His people Israel wherever they are, in the whole entire world, from every trouble, from every distress, from every fear, from every dread, and bring all the captives back to their homes, whole and healthy, and guard all the soldiers who are on all the borders. Amen.
12:55 And all the good bounty, mercy on all His people Israel. Amen. He Who has mercy on all His creatures will have pity and compassion on all the holy ones, all who pass away, all who have no one to say for them... all who have no one to pray for them. Hashem, blessed be He, will raise them up into the treasuries on high. They are in the highest place; there is no need to pray for the elevation of their souls.
13:21 They are holy; they are in the portion of the Sages.
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