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Parshat Vaetchanan
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron

בס"ד

לשכנו תדרשו

Discovering the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land

ואתחנן אל ה'

‘Hear our voice, HaShem our God; merciful Father, have compassion upon us and accept our prayers in mercy and favor, for You are God who hears prayers and supplications; do not turn us away empty-handed from You, our King, for You hear the prayer of everyone. Blessed are You HaShem, who hears prayer.’

Our Sages teach that Moshe Rabeinu prayed 515 prayers, the numerical value of ‘vaetchanan’ (and also ‘tefila’), in order to enter the Holy Land. We learn from this episode how important it is to pray to come to the Land of Israel, even if one is detained from actually coming, as was the case with Moshe Rabeinu. In fact, our Sages learn important lessons in the manner of prayer from Moshe Rabeinu’s prayer here. How can it be that we learn so much about prayer from a prayer that seems to have been rejected? Rather, we should understand that these prayers were not granted on Moshe Rabeinu’s personal level at that time, but they were not rejected on our grander-national level. In this sense, we can see the prayers of Moshe as paving 515 paths of prayer for all the generations after him who pray for the settlement of the Holy Land and raising the power of the Holy Presence therein. God forbid should we ever lose hope, rather, we should strengthen our trust in HaShem, reinforce our hope unto God, and pray continuously for redemption.

The Ramhal and his students compiled 515 prayers for the redemption of the Holy Presence and the salvation of all Israel with a constant emphasis on trusting and building one’s hope on HaShem, with each of these prayers ending with the words, ‘in Your salvation I trust, HaShem.’ This type of trust and prayer unto God can be compared to holding fast unto HaShem so-to-speak with full devotion and connection. With this conception we can follow in the footsteps of Kaleb in Hebron, where he supplicated before HaShem in prayer to save him from the plots of the spies through the merit of the Patriarchs. Indeed, it was this power of prayer in Hebron, whose name also hints to the steadfast connection (‘hibur’) to HaShem through prayer, that Kaleb succeeded to brave the plots of the spies and also merit to enter the Holy Land and take Hebron as his portion of settlement.

It is told that that the Alter Rebbe of Habad (Lubavitch), R. Shneur Zalman of Ladi, became a follower of the Hasidic doctrine through his will to learn how to pray full-heartedly. Interestingly, Hebron was Habad’s first stronghold in the Land of Israel. The founder of Habad’s granddaughter Menuha Rahel z”l very much wanted to move to the Land of Israel, and so she did with her husband R. Yakov (Kuli) Slonim. The Habad community in Hebron grew over the years and included one of Habad’s important yeshivas in the Land of Israel, ‘Torat Emet’. One of the significant sites of this Habad community one can visit today is the ‘Synagogue of the Middler Rebbe’ (also called by some ‘Menuha Rahel’) in the midst of the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. This synagogue, a center of Torah and prayer, can also hint to Habad’s special connection to the Torah and prayer so inherent to Hebron, City of our Devoted Connection (‘hibur’) to HaShem through Torah and Tfila.

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Real Stories from the Holy Land #229

‘We were once checking a house to purchase, when we asked my brother-in-law whose advice we usually have used and trusted in the past in regard to real-estate. He could not come to see the house, so we asked my other brother-in-law to come and express his opinion. When this brother-in-law came ‘it turned out’ that he recognized the main figure responsible for selling the house, for they work together daily in the same police station.’

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