A Yid once came to Reb Moshe of Ludmir, who was the son of the heilige Reb Shlomo Karliner zy”a. The Yid cried to him, “My children are hungry and I do not have a cent to buy them bread.
“Rebbi, daven for me!” the Yid cried.
“Why did you come to ask me to daven for you?” Reb Moshe asked him. “Can’t you daven on your own to your Father in Shamayim?”
“Rebbi,” the man answered, “things are so bad and bitter for me that I am not even capable of davening.”
Reb Moshe asked him, “If things are so bad for you that you can’t even daven, how can you possibly worry about your children? Leave the whole matter alone.”
The Yid was shaken up. “Do I have a choice?! If I don’t care for my children, who will care for them? I must take care of them.”
“You also ‘must’ daven,” Reb Moshe told him.
When a Yid comes to a situation in which he has to do a certain hishtadlus, he knows that he “must” do it. If he doesn’t go to the grocery store, the bread and milk will not grow wings and come to his home automatically.
When someone needs to bring home a salary, he knows that he “must” wake up in the morning and do something about it. If not, then the salary will simply not come in.
In the exact same way, Reb Moshe taught the Yid, if you don’t daven, you won’t receive what you need. You “must” daven, because if one does not daven for something, he simply doesn’t receive it.
In the words of the Gemara (Bava Basra 116), he should go to a wise man who will ask for mercy for him. The Me’iri explains that the wise man will teach the Yid how he needs to daven.
Those who used to come and bemoan their difficulties to Reb Chaim Kanievsky zt”l were accustomed to hearing him say, “Daven.” When they would tell him that they’d already davened, Reb Chaim would say, “Daven again.”
Reb Chaim would emphasize that each new tefillah needs to be an addition to the existing one. Add another word in your own language, from your own heart.
This is what the tzaddikim of all the generations taught us. There is a single eitzah, to daven again and again and again, and only in this way will the yeshuah come.
Gut Shabbat
Pinchas Shefer
