It is related that before the greatness of the Baal Shem Tov zy”a became known to the world, he would travel to small villages to encourage the simple Jews who lived there and draw them close to their Father in Heaven. One day, he came to a small roadside inn that was owned by a Jew. The children greeted him warmly and invited him in, offering him food and drink. When he asked them where their father was, they said that he had gone to shul to daven, so the Besht waited for him.
After waiting for a few hours, the father finally came home very late at night. He greeted his guest and apologized for coming home so late. He explained that he was an unlearned man and he read the words of davening very slowly. Additionally, he didn’t know which tefillos he was supposed to say at which times, so he read the entire Siddur, from beginning to end, for each tefillah of the day.
The Besht said that he could help him. He showed him how to use a Siddur, and then he wrote notes on small pieces of paper. In Yiddish, he wrote: morning prayers, afternoon prayers, night prayers, prayers for after a meal, prayers for Shabbos, prayers for Rosh Chodesh, etc., and he put each note in the proper place in the Siddur. The innkeeper was overjoyed that he could now daven properly, and he profusely thanked the Besht.
A few hours later, the Besht left the inn. A short time afterwards, the Siddur fell to the ground, and all the notes fell out. The innkeeper began to cry as he didn’t know if anyone would ever come to his inn again who could put the notes back in their proper places. He grabbed the Siddur and the notes and began in the direction that the Besht went. After running for a few miles, he saw the Besht in the distance. He saw him approaching a deep river, and he wondered how he would cross it. He wanted to scream at him that it was dangerous to try to cross the raging waters but, to his amazement, he saw him place his handkerchief in the water and walk on it as if it were a sturdy bridge.
A short while later, the innkeeper reached the river and he copied what he had seen the Besht do. He put his handkerchief in the water and walked on it to the other side. When he reached the Besht, he tearfully told him that the notes had fallen out of the Siddur and he asked them to put them back in the right places. The Besht asked him how he had crossed the river and he answered, “I did the same thing you did!”
When he heard this, Besht said, “It seems to me that Hashem likes your tefillos just the way they are. The best thing to do would be to continue davening as you did until now.”
A similar story is related about a city that concluded the recitation of Megilas Esther on Purim but they had no Siddur that contained the piyyut of Asher Heini, which is customarily recited after the Megillah, and no one knew it by heart. Suddenly, one unlearned man said that he knew Asher Heini by heart, and he proceeded to recite it out loud, with everyone repeating after him. This created a great commotion, as everyone thought this man must be a tzadik nistar who was only pretending to be an am ha’aretz. However, he explained that the reason he knew Asher Heini by heart was because he didn’t know which tefillos to say at which time, so he said the entire Siddur every day.
