They emitted an outcry and their scream rose to G-d from the labor. (Shemos 2:23)
It says in the Zohar that שוועה, “screaming,” is different from זעקה, “outcry.” What’s the difference? “Screaming” is prayer with words, and “outcry” is a pleading outburst without words. The Zohar goes on to say that “screaming” might go unanswered, but not “outcry.” The wordless outcry is stronger.
Why?
Screaming with words is a prayer that needs to ascend to Heaven. There might be obstacles on the way that prevent it from reaching Heaven, and it might thus go unanswered. But a wordless outcry doesn’t need to ascend to Heaven at all, because about a situation like this it says עמו אנכי בצרה – Hashem says, “I am with him in his distress.”
When a person is in trouble, Hashem is right there with him. So to speak, Hashem is within the person’s heart, and there is no need for the prayer to ascend to Heaven at all. This is why a wordless outcry cannot go unanswered.
1 Shemos 19b.
2 Tehillim 91:15.
This teaches us an important principle. A person doesn’t need to go far in search of a special tefilah, an effective means of prayer. Everything is inside his heart already. A person’s heart is built for drawing close to Hakadosh Baruch Hu by means of tefilah. It’s only when his heart becomes marred, and there are other, extraneous things in his heart, that the need arises to go looking for this closeness in other ways.
There is a story that took place in the time of R. Chayim of Volozhin, about a tzaddik who worked wonders by means of his tefilos. R. Chayim sent sick people to him so he would daven for them, because he thought that his tefilos were effective.
The tzaddik would stand perfectly still when he davened. He did not shuckle at all. When he was asked why he davens this way, he answered with a parable:
There was a king who wanted to build himself a palace. He called in an architect and asked him to draw up a plan for the construction of the palace. The architect was very exact in his work, and in the end, when the king asked him what his fee is, he told the king to take a certain number of gold pieces, and place them in the corner of one of the rooms, and they should fit in exactly in this corner.
They took the gold pieces, tried to place them in the specified corner, and couldn’t get them to fit. They were greatly puzzled by this. But then they checked the corner and found that there was a little dirt left there, without which the gold coins would have fit exactly.
The tzaddik then explained to them that this is how the heart is. By nature, it is built in such a way that all the feelings and emotions of tefilah will be in it, with perfect exactness. You don’t need to move around and sway. You don’t need to do external things to arouse your heart to the proper feelings of prayer. Only someone whose heart is sullied by extraneous things that shouldn’t be in it needs to find other ways to arouse in his heart the feeling of closeness to Hakadosh Baruch Hu when he davens.
