For many years I didn’t understand the kohen gadol’s tefillah on Yom Kippur – “Don’t accept the tefillos of travelers regarding rain, at times when the world needs [rain].
Picture it: Thousands of people have plowed and planted their fields, and they stand and daven – at every hour of every day – for Hakadosh Baruch Hu to send them gishmei brachah. Then along comes a single Jew who’s out traveling, and it starts to rain, and it makes him uncomfortable, so he davens to Hashem, “Please, stop the rain.” That’s all he says. What possible effect could one tefillah of an individual have, davening because of his own temporary discomfort, when there are tens of thousands of tefillos of Yidden who are davening with all their hearts for rain that is so vital for all mankind?
Many Jews worked in the fields for long months. They invested all their strength and a lot of money – and in order for Hashem to have mercy on them, so that their many efforts won’t be in vain, it is necessary that no one less than the kohen gadol, on the holiest day of the year, in the holiest place in the world, daven that Hashem shouldn’t accept the simple tefillah of a traveler?
But when a Yerushalmi Yid told me recently what had happened to him, I understood the answer to my question. This is the story he told:
I really suffer from the cold. When I’m feeling cold, I can’t function at all – it’s almost as if I’m paralyzed.
One year on Rosh Hashanah I was davening in a shul where about a thousand others were davening, and I felt like I just couldn’t daven. The shul’s air conditioners were working quite well and everyone was enjoying the cool air, but I was suffering terribly.
Suddenly, I cried out to Hashem with bitter tears, “Abba, I want to daven! Please make me able to daven with true kavanah, as I should on such an important day as this.”
Suddenly I began to feel warm, and I found that I was able to daven! At first I didn’t understand how this could happen, but an hour later I looked around, and I saw that the air conditioners had simply stopped working.
I laughed and told him, “If the gabbai would have known what you were davening for, he would have thrown you out of shul!”
And then I understood the meaning of the kohen gadol’s tefillah. The tefillah of a single individual can indeed tear open the Heavens. When the tefillah of an individual is the opposite of the desires of an entire community, an exceptional ko’ach is needed, a ko’ach that only the kohen gadol has when he is in the Kodesh Hakodashim.
Every single Jew is a child of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. When a Jew is suffering, when he’s outside in the rain, and he cries to Hakadosh Baruch Hu to stop the rain, the rain might stop, even if the entire world needs it at that moment.
Rav Tzadok Hakohen of Lublin (Pri Tzaddik, Vayishlach) wrote, “We must realize how great we really are. We must realize that our actions affect the entire universe, up to the highest level of Shamayim.”
Every single Jew stood at Har Sinai, and every single Jew has tremendous power. The tefillah and the actions of every single Jew can accomplish tremendous things in every dimension of the universe!
Gut Shabbat
Pinchas Shefer
