The Torah Mechanism of Ontological Refuah

The great Chassidic Kabbalistic master Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch of Zidichov reveals a startling truth: “At the highest level of prayer, healing occurs automatically. When thought and action achieve complete unity, one does not consciously intend ‘heal us’ — the refuah simply happens. This elevated consciousness unlocks the mental potential to manifest whatever change we seek in the world” (פרי קודש הלולים Pri Kodesh Hilulim 2b).

People suffer not only from pain but also from not understanding why pain exists in the architecture of creation. As far as this system can be perceived from Torah and tradition, what follows is the mechanism by which refuah manifests in creation. This automatic healing finds its archetype in the copper serpent (ref. Bamidbar 21:9). The Torah does not present this as symbolism alone, but as a revealed mechanism — a case where healing occurs not through petition, but through ontological alignment itself. The verse states: והיה כל-הנשוך וראה אתו וחי “Everyone who is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live” (ibid.). Not “will try to be healed” or “will pray for healing”, simply וחי, “shall live”. The looking itself, when performed from true faith, contains the complete mechanism of healing. The Torah does not only describe this life-force — it encodes its structure within the very letters of the verse. This helps us see how refuah is built into creation itself, not added from outside.The gematria albam of this phrase plus its 21 letters equals 2304, precisely twice רפואה שלמה מן השמים “complete recovery from Heaven” (1152). Body and soul, simultaneous restoration.

The mathematics reveal deeper structure. 2304 equals the quadruple square of 24 (4 x 24²). The Zohar teaches of 24 heavenly courts issuing judgments, represented by the 24 permutations of the four-letter Name אדנ”י Adni. The pasuk shows Moshe how to sweeten these dinim descended as a plague. These judgments are not isolated decrees. They are the surface manifestation of a deeper cosmic imbalance rooted in the shattering of primordial vessels. But more fundamentally, 288 holy sparks from Tohu’s shattering fell into reality’s anti-spiritual coarseness. These sparks, trapped in physical existence, originate all affliction and disorder. The blessing רופא חולי עמו ישראל “He who heals the sick of His people Israel”, has reshei tevot רחע”י with gematria 288. Healing liberates the sparks. What appears here as metaphysical structure can, at certain stages of avodah, become direct consciousness. The system described is not only studied — it can be entered.

What we are allowed to understand experientially, as distinct from conceptually, appears as follows: These are laws of creation that belong to Torah itself, not personal attainments, and what is described here reflects only an encounter within that system. On Tammuz 16, 5773, I reached what my Magid called the Heikhal, where refuah resides. Through meditation on the יהו”ה Shem Havaya, past klipot barriers, I saw radiant kaleidoscope lights — each person’s specific refuah according to their soul-root, for “G-d creates the cure before the sickness”. My color was white-silver. I stood at the gate but needed to penetrate deeper through specific otiot. Two days later, wearing my Shimusha Rabbah tefillin, I passed the barriers again and commanded the guardian to step aside. And the letters appeared: הודו”ה (gematria 26, the Shem Havaya itself, with הוד Hod replacing י”ה).

I found the verse with these reshei tevot on my birthday, 15 Iyar: ממטיר לכם לחם מן-השמים ויצא העם ולקטו דבר-יום ביומו “I will cause bread from heaven to rain for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day”. The Mahn was itself refuah — healing the scars of Egyptian oppression from body and psyche, preparing the people to receive Torah. Oppression leaves impressions not only on history, but within the inner structure of the soul. This level unfolds in ordered layers, each serving as the foundation for the next. The mispar siduri of מן (38) equals the mispar siduri of ארכה “cure” plus the kolel.

Further meditation revealed הלחץ “the oppression”. This connects to ממטיר לכם לחם מן-השמים through their reshei tevot (מללמהוהודיב) with gematria 178 – identical to לחצים “oppress” and to the gematria albam of הלחץ. The Torah describes this process nationally; the same pattern repeats in the soul’s private exile, where oppression contracts into illness. My particular illness[1] manifests spiritual oppression in exile  — the isolation characteristic of the contemplative soul in galut, one of the more concealed forms of exile. Both הלחץ and נגף negef “plague” equal 133. The Mahn’s consciousness sweetens the oppression: הלחץ מן has gematria 223, matching אין עוד מלבדו “There is nothing but Him”. True healing is rectifying faith (Z’eir Anpin) and physical reality (Nukva) through their coupling  —  sweetening gevurah severities with chesed actualization.

The copper serpent itself embodies this tikkun. Its positioning על-נס “on a pole” (gematria 210) equals לעינים “to the eyes”. The strict looking — eyes being places of great judgment meeting the holy copper object — raised the sparks. The phrase ניצוצות חוטא שניהם תתקן “sparks [of holiness] and [the soul of] the sinner are both rectified” has reshei tevot spelling נחשת nechoshet “copper”. Through gazing at נחש הנחשת “the copper serpent”, aspects of the original Evil Serpent achieved tikkun. This helps us see that what appears as a historical episode is in fact revealing the underlying structure of creation itself. This helps us see that what appears as a historical episode is in fact revealing the underlying structure of creation itself. This tikkun is not only moral or symbolic — it mirrors the very architecture by which creation unfolded.

The serpent manifests the primordial circle-line-circle pattern underlying creation: the letter ו as Kav “straight ray”, and the two ס letters as Iggulim “concentric circles”. After the initial tzimtzum, the Kav projected into the מקום פנוי Makom Panui, then encircled in layers. Later, the world of ניקודים Nikudim emerged as ten sefirot as iggulim in a single line, precipitating שבירת הכלים Shevirat HaKelim. From this shattering, evil was created. The gematria avgad of שבירת הכלים equals the gematria milui of נחש plus the kolel (874).

Three angels formed the serpent’s spirit: Michae”l, Gavrie”l, and Rafae”l, which are the same who stood עליו “over” Avraham (ref. Bereshit 18:2). The gematria atbash of רפואה שלמה (701) equals אלו מיכא”ל גבריא”ל ורפא”ל. The gematria atbash plus the kolel of ושים אתו על-נס “set it on a pole” is 658, also of מיכא”ל גבריא”ל רפא”ל. Serpent and pole form an integrated unit, separated physically but unified spiritually through the three malachim. The reshei tevot of their names (מג”ר) has gematria ofanim 370, to wit, the 370 lights of kedusha originating in Arich Anpin, corresponding to two miluim of א”ל Kel (אלף למד, 185 each).

The state described here — where refuah unfolds without deliberate intention — reflects a level of consciousness belonging not to עולם הפירודים Olam HaPirudim — where thought and act remain distinct — but to עולם האצילות Olam ha-Atzilut. In ordinary cognition, thought must be continuously redirected, as mind and act remain distinct. Kavanah, therefore, stands outside the mind as a directed effort. But at the level of emanation, thought and act do not stand apart. Action becomes reflexive, as in the body’s own movements, which require no prior deliberation. In such a state, intention does not precede the act — it inheres within it. Healing therefore occurs not as a result of petition but as a natural expression of unified being.

At this level, the distinction between soul and body also softens, and bodily movement itself becomes expressive of inner alignment. The (literal) gestures of the body reveal the soul’s orientation, as right and left reflect corresponding channels of wisdom and expansion. Kavanot arise not as constructed formulations, but as emergent articulations from within the unity of light and vessel. Creativity here is not invention but revelation of what is already present within the immanent Ein Sof.

This is the secret: at the level where thought and action unify, where consciousness achieves the requisite elevation, healing manifests automatically because reality responds directly to raised awareness. The looking becomes the healing. The thought becomes the cure. This returns us to the Torah’s language itself. Those who believed in Hashem — who achieved this unified consciousness — lived. Not through mechanism but through being.

Rabbi Avraham

On Shevat 11, 5786

[1] See Rabbi Avraham Chachamovits, Avraham BaMidbar pg. 275, footnote 1063.

Halachic Grounding and

the Articulation of Soul-Speech

This essay explains that the soul is constantly receiving clear, complete illumination from higher spiritual understanding, but the human mind cannot naturally translate that light into clear thought because our inner “vessels” are structurally limited. The confusion, fragmentation, and difficulty we experience in understanding truth are not signs that revelation is absent, but signs of a gap between how the soul knows and how the mind thinks. The Ari”zal’s solution is that deep study of halachah is not just legal learning but a training of consciousness itself: it builds the mental structure, precision, and stability needed to hold complex, subtle truth without distortion. In this view, halachic analysis becomes a “technology of reception” that turns hidden, simultaneous soul-knowledge into clear, articulated understanding, making mystical illumination livable within ordinary human thought.

The Problem of Prophetic Subtlety

As the Ari”zal says: והנה עוד היתה לו ידיעה אחרת והוא שהי’ קורא לנפש האדם או לרוחו או לנשמתו והיה מדבר עמה ושואל וחוקר אותה והיא משיבה אותו כל מה שהיה שואל ממנה וכל מה שאירע לה וכל פרטי הדברים “And behold, he had another knowledge, and it is that he would call to the soul of the person, or to his spirit, or to his neshama, and he would speak with it and ask and investigate it, and it would answer him everything that he would ask from it and everything that happened to it and all the details of the matters” (Sha’ar Ruach HaKodesh, Section 3).

The Ari”zal here is not describing inspiration, nor metaphor, but a structured mode of cognition in which the soul functions as a conscious interlocutor. Behold, for the soul speaks. Not a metaphor – actual speech. The neshama, ruach, and nefesh possess articulate knowledge. They משיבה meshivah “answer” with precision, containing כל פרטי הדברים kol p’ratei ha’devarim “all the details of the matters”. The revelation is not episodic but structural, ever-present, continuously unfolding from Binah through the internal structure of the soul.

The problem is not that Heaven abandons us. The problem is reception.

What descends from Binah does not arrive as sentences, nor as discursive thought, but as simultaneous light, total in each point. The soul receives this illumination in its native form, but the human mind cannot host such knowledge without translation. Thus the crisis is not in the upper transmission but in the crossing between ontological layers – between the language of spiritual light and the sequential, word-by-word structures that make up human consciousness.

The Ari”zal provides the diagnostic key, and with it a methodological contrast: וא”ל כי כשהוא רואה העניינים באותיות המצח יש דברים שאיננו יכול להבין אותם מרוב דקותם והעלמם וכיסויים והפוכם וכיוצא אבל כששואל וחוקר את נפש האדם אז יודע הדברים באמיתות גדול ובבירור “And he told him that when he sees the matters in the letters of the forehead, there are things he cannot understand because of their great דקותם dakkutam “subtlety,” העלמם he’elemam “their concealment,” their כיסויים kissuim “coverings adding opacity,” והפוכם v’hipucham “their inversion,” and such. But when he asks and investigates the soul of the person, then he knows the matter with באמיתות גדול be’emitut gadol “great truth” ובבירור u’v’birur “clarity’” (ibid.).

Symbolic perception, even at a prophetic level, encounters distortion. The light arrives in a state of dakkut, so fine that ordinary awareness cannot resolve it; in he’elem and kissuim, concealments that actively veil its structure; and in hipuch, truth presenting in inverted form. These are not poetic descriptors but functional conditions of transmission. The conscious mind cannot translate this from כח koach “potential” into פועל poel “actual” – that is, from latent, simultaneous knowing into articulated understanding. The knowledge is present in full, but its passage into language fractures its unity.

The Crisis of Articulation

This failure is structural, not accidental. The מגידים maggidim “angelic mentors” speak continuously, and the soul receives with perfect fidelity the illuminations descending from Binah, the mentality of analysis and understanding. The breakdown occurs elsewhere. Between reception and articulation there lies an ontological gap, not a psychological weakness. The upper illumination reaches the neshama at a level of refinement that the lower faculties cannot host without distortion.

When that illumination attempts to descend into the coarse vessels of verbal thought, mental imagery, and the conceptual structures of ordinary consciousness, it does not pass unchanged. In the transition, unity gives way to segmentation, simultaneity to sequence, and intrinsic coherence to the appearance of tension, ambiguity, or contradiction. Fragmentation, inversion, concealment, and dispersal emerge as consequences of the descent itself. The distortion does not originate in the soul’s reception but in the necessary step-down into the language of mind.

This phenomenon is intrinsic to inward cognition. Knowledge is present. Truth stands prior to articulation, exerting pressure toward expression. Yet the words do not come, or the formulation that emerges feels thin, approximate, or internally fractured. Articulation produces simultaneous excess and deficiency: formulation expands while essence remains unexpressed. The knowledge was whole, luminous, and complete, but in crossing into language it shattered into pieces that no longer fit together.

This is not failure. It is structure.

The world of articulation is built upon שבירה shevirah, that is, upon vessels that cannot contain total light without breakage. Therefore, fragmentation at the level of expression is not an anomaly but a direct consequence of the architecture of reality. The estrangement between understanding — Binah as the womb of formation — and the lower cognitive faculties mirrors the larger estrangement between light and vessel that defines post-Shevirah existence. What occurs in consciousness is a microcosm of cosmic structure.

The soul speaks in the language of Binah: simultaneous, inclusive, holographic, each point containing the whole. The conscious mind operates in the language of Malchut: sequential, analytic, each word delimiting and excluding its opposite. Between these two languages unfolds the entire drama of revelation — not whether light descends, but whether unity can survive translation into form.

Halachah as Grounding Technology

Now the Ari”zal introduces the solution with striking precision: כי שרש הכל לענין השגה הוא העיון בהלכה “For the root of everything regarding hasagah — spiritual perception and attainment — is iyun b’halachah, depth analysis in halachah”. The statement initially appears dissonant with the trajectory of the discussion. Until now, the subject has been prophetic subtlety, the soul’s capacity to receive illumination from Binah, and the possibility of direct interior dialogue with the neshama. The problem is why halachah — the disciplined analysis — is identified as the “root of everything” in the domain of spiritual perception.

The dissonance resolves only when halachah is understood not as juridical discourse but as spiritual technology of the highest order. Halachic iyun does not stand outside the process of illumination as preparation or prerequisite. It is the very form in which illumination becomes structurally bearable. What appears technical is in fact the disciplined formation of vessels; what appears analytical is the training of consciousness to host light without distortion. Halachic analysis is therefore not preparatory to mystical attainment. It is mystical attainment in its most accessible, exacting, and stabilizing form.

The Function of Halachic Grounding

Halachic עיון iyun “depth analysis” forms a distinctive mode of consciousness. Within the סוגיא sugya “a structured halachic-legal discourse”, contradictory positions are sustained in simultaneity — Rashba, Tosafot, Ritva — each internally coherent, each structurally viable, though not all capable of resolution at the level of פסק psak “halachic decision”. Cognition is trained to inhabit layered truth without collapse. This is the discipline the Ari”zal encodes in the metaphor of קליפת האגוז klipat ha’egoz — the shell that conceals the nut. The קליפה kelipah is the קושיא kushya, the difficulty that veils the halachic essence; the עצם etzem is the תירוץ teretz, the resolution in which concealed structure becomes visible. The halachic mind thus learns not merely to resolve contradiction, but to perceive concealment as the necessary envelope of essence.

When the Ari”zal states, שרש הכל לענין השגה הוא העיון בהלכה, the equivalence is structural, not analogical. The halachic mind’s encounter with concealment, its disciplined passage through layers of העלם he’elem and כיסוי kissui in the form of logical difficulty, and its systematic unveiling through rigorous analysis, enact in cognition the same dynamic that governs prophetic illumination. Juridical reasoning here is the trained capacity to receive obscured light and unveil it without rupture. The movement from קושיא to תירוץ is the microcosmic form of revelation itself.

Illumination descending from Binah bears an intensity exceeding the native capacity of unformed vessels. It presents as undivided simultaneity and therefore threatens rupture where structural integrity is lacking. The danger is ontological disproportion: consciousness opened to Binah while insufficiently ordered in Malchut cannot sustain descent without fragmentation. Halachic practice is that ordering. In the disciplined tracking of boundaries — מותר mutar “permitted” and אסור assur “forbidden”, טמא tamei “ritually impure” and טהור tahor “ritually pure”, חייב chayav “obligated” and פטור patur “exempt” — cognition acquires reflexive limit. Distinction becomes structural habit. What appears as juridical exactitude is the gradual strengthening of vessels capable of bearing light without shattering.

Halachic consciousness operates in multiple registers at once: principle (klal), case (prat), application (ma’aseh), conceptual extension (sevara). Such layered cognition mirrors the simultaneity of Binah and constitutes the vessel required for the soul’s speech, which arrives not as linear argument but as total illumination across levels.

The structure of halachic reasoning mirrors the structure of the sefirot themselves. A מחלוקת machloket “argument” between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel reflects the dialectic of Gevurah and Chesed; the derivation of a דין din “”judgment/law” through קל וחומר kal va’chomer “the arguing from a minor to a major case” activates the generative thrust of Chochmah issuing into Binah. Torah reasoning recapitulates divine emanation. Halachic analysis configures consciousness into isomorphism with the soul’s native language.

From Concealment to Clarity

This is why the Ari”zal teaches that through שאלאה וחקירהsha’alah v’chakira — questioning and investigation of the soul — one moves from confusion to באמיתות גדול ובבירור “great truth and clarity”. The passage from dakkut, he’elem, kissuim, and hipuch to בירור birur “clarity” and אמת emet “truth” unfolds through disciplined inquiry — the very structure of Talmudic dialectic. At the cognitive level, the sugya enacts what occurs spiritually when the soul’s speech presses toward manifestation: knowledge stands present yet appears inverted, covered, concealed, and too subtle for immediate grasp. Investigation does not create light; it removes obstruction. Distinction clarifies. Resolution reveals. What was hidden becomes visible. What was potential becomes actual.

This is not analogy but structural identity. The process of Torah learned בעיון b’iyun is the very process by which revelation becomes bearable to consciousness. The resolution of a Tosafot is the microcosmic translation of soul-speech into articulated understanding. The sustained holding of multiple שיטות shitot without collapse strengthens the vessel capable of receiving illumination without rupture.

The Convergence

The Ari”zal’s teaching converges. The soul speaks continuously with perfect articulation — והיא משיבה אותו כל מה שהיה שואל ממנה וכל מה שאירע לה וכל פרטי הדברים — yet this speech presents as דקותם והעלמם וכיסויים והפוכם: subtlety, concealment, covering, reversal. Translation from potential to actual, from hidden knowing to conscious clarity, occurs through העיון בהלכה — depth analysis in halachah.

Halachah is not preparatory to mystical consciousness; it is mystical consciousness in stable form. The navigation of a sugya, the sustained holding of multiple perspectives, the disciplined movement from difficulty to resolution, constitute the cognitive architecture required for articulation of the illuminations continuously received from Binah. Juridical exactitude is vessel formation.

Thus the Ari”zal names halachic analysis שרש הכל, the root of everything. Illumination is not granted differently to the trained and the untrained; what differs is capacity. The vessel formed through עיון alone can translate כח into פועל, potential into actuality, the soul’s continuous speech into articulated understanding. The maggid speaks. The soul answers. The light descends. Articulation depends upon structure.

This is the Ari”zal’s technology of reception: the configuration of consciousness through halachic analysis by which soul-speech becomes bearable as clarity.

Rabbi Avraham

on Shevat 8, 5786

Postscript: The Vertical Architecture of Reception

The principle articulated in this essay—that halachic analysis forms vessels capable of translating soul-speech into articulate consciousness—operates not only within Asiyah but across the entire vertical architecture of reality. The ontological gap between how the soul knows (holographically, simultaneously) and how the mind thinks (sequentially, analytically) repeats itself at every level of emanation. Each olam presents the identical challenge: illumination descends in a form too refined for the vessels below to contain without distortion.

Because each world operates in a different register—Asiyah in physical action and sequential logic, Yetzirah in emotional formation, Beriyah in pure conceptual structure, Atzilut in divine grammar—the identical challenge requires different expressions of the same technology. In Yetzirah, this manifests as the disciplined exactitude of kavanot and yichudim—which name aligns with which sefirah, which intention opens which channel. In Beriyah, as rigorous sefirot-mapping, training consciousness to hold Chochmah and Binah in simultaneity without collapse. In Atzilut, the principle reaches its source: divine grammar itself, where structure and light remain unseparated. What appears as juridical reasoning in Asiyah is one expression of a principle governing reception across all worlds.

But precision-training in one world does not transfer automatically to another—it provides the foundation upon which higher training becomes possible. Thus vessel-formation is cumulative, not substitutable. Vessels unformed in Asiyah do not materialize in Beriyah. One who has never held Rashba, Tosafot, and Ritva in sustained simultaneity cannot hold Chesed and Gevurah in consciousness without one overwhelming the other. The structural capacity developed through distinction-making at one level creates the stability required for subtler distinctions at the level above it. This cumulative architecture explains two seemingly contradictory teachings that together map the complete vertical structure and its failure modes.

The Vilna Gaon: “He who does not know the sod cannot know the pshat.” This addresses incompleteness from below. Without knowledge of how the technology operates in higher olamot, halachic structure remains syntactically correct but grammatically opaque. The distinctions function, but the practitioner does not perceive that mutar and assur are vessel-forming operations isomorphic with emanation itself. The technology works, but its nature remains hidden.

Rabbi Moshe Cordovero: “Learning Kabbalah without Halachah is like walking on a field with many holes while looking at the sky. The person will fall.” This addresses instability from above. Consciousness in Beriyah or Yetzirah without Asiyah-grounding lacks foundational integrity. Illumination arrives, but translation collapses into dakkut, he’elem, kissuim, hipuch—perception without vessels, light without containers capable of birur.

Together these reveal that the optimal path is not sequential but integrative: halachic grounding and perception of higher structure in continuous relationship, because precision at one level stabilizes vessels across all levels. Thus the Ari”zal moved fluidly between halachic analysis and Kabbalistic architecture without marking boundaries, demonstrating vessel-formation operating simultaneously across dimensional registers. His teaching style encoded the vertical integration: intensely detailed, tracking precise distinctions across all olamot at once.

When the Ari”zal identifies iyun b’halachah as “the root of everything,” he speaks from this vertical knowledge: halachic analysis provides the most stable foundation for vessel-formation across all worlds, enabling soul-speech to become articulate understanding without shattering.

The light descends. The question is whether anyone is home to receive it.

Kavanot, Context, and the Conditions of Prayer

Siddur Kavanot HaRashash ̶ Scribed by Rabbi Yichye Tzarum ̶ Jerusalem, 19th/20th Century

The practice of kavanot necessitates attention to situational context and to the world beyond the individual praying. If one does not pray together with people to whom one is genuinely close and whose struggles and challenges in life are intimately known, the Ari”zal states that such prayer “will not bear fruit.”^[1] Time and locale themselves shape the mystical formulae of kavanot.

In light of this principle articulated by the Ari”zal ^[1], the use of kavanot in chutz la’aretz becomes especially fraught, and all the more so within a minyan. Kavanot are not abstract techniques applied in isolation; they operate within a concrete human and spiritual field shaped by time, by the inner condition of the one praying, and by the shared spiritual reality formed when a ציבור prays as one body.^[2] The Ari”zal’s own condition for a prayer that “ascends above and bears fruit” is not presented as a private attainment but as a state achieved through binding oneself to כלל ישראל in a lived and active way, specifically through loving each member of Yisrael “as his own soul,” and, with greater intensity, through love of the actual companions who learn together, to the point that each person must include himself as though he is a limb within the other and must concretely share the צרה of any companion in illness or in suffering and pray for him.^[1] In a minyan, this standard exposes the central vulnerability at stake: one is necessarily interwoven with others, yet one rarely possesses the intimate clarity required to “include” them as an actual shared organism and to carry their pain and needs into the precise interior of the prayer. Where such clarity is lacking, the inner configuration of kavanot becomes precarious precisely because the spiritual “body” being formed is undefined and unstable.^[1] The Ari”zal further insists that prayer is not a uniform act across circumstances but undergoes “great difference and change” across distinct sanctified times, meaning that the very architecture of prayer is time sensitive and not mechanically transferable without consequence. This strengthens the claim that precision in kavanot is inherently contingent and that spiritual conditions are part of the formula rather than background noise.^[2] Moreover, the pressure of machshavot zarot is described in the kabbalistic tradition not as incidental distraction but as an active grasping that reappears “in every prayer and every prayer,” drawing a person into foreign thoughts and empty matters, such that the maintenance of sustained focus toward kedushah becomes a contested spiritual labor rather than a neutral mental posture.^[3] Under such conditions, the risk is not merely distraction but misalignment of intention itself, and the older Zoharic framing goes further by describing prayer as vulnerable to external interference when it is “heard,” because external forces “hear” and become intermingled with it. This model fits the concern that the environment surrounding prayer can corrupt its ascent rather than merely weaken its concentration.^[4] Therefore, when the realities of chutz la’aretz and the intensification of tumah are taken into account, the problem is not simply that kavanot are difficult, but that the very prerequisites named by the Ari”zal for prayer that “bears fruit” are harder to establish in a minyan whose inner states are unknown, while the constant assault of machshavot zarot threatens the integrity of the intention upon which the ascent of kavanot depends.^{[1] [3]}

Rabbi Avraham

on Shevat 4, 5786

Footnotes

[1]
קודם שהאדם יסדר תפילתו בבית הכנסת מפרשת העקידה ואילך צריך שיקבל עליו מצות ואהבת לרעך כמוך ויכוין לאהוב כל א’ מבני ישראל כנפשו כי עי”ז תעלה תפלתו כלולה מכל תפלות ישראל ותוכל לעלות למעלה ולעשות פרי. ובפרט אהבת החברים העוסקים בתורה ביחד צריך כל אחד ואחד לכלול עצמו כאלו הוא אבר א’ מן האברים שלו ואם יש איזה חבר מהם בצרה צריכים כולם לשתף עצמם בצערו או מחמת חולי או מחמת בנים ח”ו ויתפללו עליו וכן בכל תפלותיו וצרכיו ודבריו ישתף את חבירו עמו “Before a person arranges his prayer in the synagogue, from the portion of the Akeidah and onward, he must accept upon himself the mitzvah of ‘And you shall love your fellow as yourself,’ and he should intend to love each and every one of the Children of Yisrael as his own soul. For through this, his prayer will ascend, included with all the prayers of Yisrael, and it will be able to ascend above and bear fruit. And especially, love of the companions who engage in Torah together—each and every one must include himself as though he is one limb among his companion’s limbs. And if there is any companion among them in distress, all must join themselves to his pain, whether due to illness or due to children, Heaven forbid, and they should pray for him. And likewise, in all his prayers and his needs and his matters, he should join his companion together with himself.” (The Ari”zal, Sha’ar haKavanot, Drushei Birkot haShachar).

[2]
דע לך כי יש הפרש ושינוי גדול בין התפילות של חול אל תפלת השבת ור”ח ואל תפילת היו”ט ואל חול המועד “Know that there is a great difference and change between the prayers of a weekday and the prayer of Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh, and the prayer of the Festivals, and Chol haMoed.” (The Ari”zal, Sha’ar haKavanot, Drush Seder Shabbat).

[3]
ונאחזה בו הקליפה והסט״א. ולכן ג״כ בכל תפלה ותפלה נאחזת הסט״א להחטיא את האדם במחשבות זרות ובדברים בטלים “And the husk and the sitra achra became attached to him. Therefore, also, in every prayer and every prayer, the sitra achra attaches itself to cause a person to stumble through foreign thoughts and through idle matters.” (Later Lurianic Kabbalistic tradition, summarizing Ari-based doctrine concerning the attachment of the sitra achra during prayer).

[4]
ואקרון אודנין בגין דאינון צייתין כל אינון דמצלאן צלותהון בלחישו ברעותא דלבא דלא אשתמע ההוא צלותא לאחרא. ואי ההיא צלותא אשתמע לאודנין דבר נש לית מאן דציית לה לעילא “They are called ‘ears’ because they listen to all those who pray their prayers in a whisper, with the will of the heart, such that the prayer is not heard by another. But if that prayer is heard by the ears of a human being, there is no one above who listens to it.” (Zohar 194b, Vayakhel).