Today is Rosh Hodesh Tamuz, so we will share a thought on
Hallel from Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, from the
sefer Gadol Yisrael.
He was once asked why we say the words Ana Hashem Hoshea Na Please Hashem save us
Ana Hashem Hatzlicha Na Please Hashem let us see success in the middle of Hallel?
Seemingly, Hallel is all
about thanking Hashem
and praising Hashem, so
where does Ana Hashem fit in? Rabbi Shlomo Zalman says that when we
are thanking Hashem
for all the kindness that He did for us, we get the strength to ask that He should continue to save us and give us
success, in order that we can continue to praise Him and thank Him forever and ever. So the requests
for salvation and success are, as we just said, because we want to be able to
have the ability to continue to praise Him. This is a beautiful thought.
It is
similar to a certain
Kabbalah brought down by the Kaf HaHaim in the name
of Yehuda HaHasid, that
when a person is in a difficult situation, he promises that when he gets out of the
situation, he will
say Nishmat/Thank you.
It is
almost like every month, at the end of Hallel, we say, “Hashem next month I will say Hallel again.” It’s important to realize that we
are going month to month, to be able to say Hallel. Rabbi Miller said
that we say Hallel for the previous month. We should back at the month, see what happened, and say Thank You.
And then we say, “Since I said thank You, Hashem please give me another
month to once again thank You.”
On the topic of Nishmat, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman would say over with much emotion
something that he heard from Rabbi Haskel Abramsky. Rabbi Abramsky was once sleeping in a motel, in a room next to the Chafetz Chaim. The walls were not that thick, and he
was able to hear that Chafetz Chaim saying Nishmat in the middle of the night.
He
translated every word into Yiddish with tremendous feeling and sweetness,
thanking Hashem for what
He had done for him.
On a
similar note, he said that he once met someone who was about to go through a
difficult medical procedure, and he told him, “The yesod/main thing is Hodot U’LHitpalel, thank Hashem and
pray. As we say in Hallel,
Hodu l’Hashem
Thank You Hashem, and then
Ana Hashem’ Hoshea Na, please save me Hashem. Before the operation, the first thing that you should
do is praise Hashem, And after you praise Hashem, then you can ask Him to save you, Because
you will further praise Him for that.
The major
way that we praise Hashem is through our Berachot, especially Birkat
Hamazon, which is form the Torah.
Rabbi
Shlomo Zalman was once saying
Birkat Hamazon and the people around the table noticed that he
repeated Nodeh Lecha, a Thank You blessing, a second time. A family
member asked him why, and he explained that he felt that the first time that he said it, he wasn’t really
focusing. He was a little bit detached. He said, “To say thank you without Kavana/ intention, is not called saying thank you. A Thank you without a feeling is
not a thank you. Therefore, I repeated it.“ And the child that witnessed this said that he then realized that it meant
that obviously, all the years that his father had said Node Lecha he really was paying attention!
Imagine if we really paid attention when we
said Nodeh Lecha or Modim?
It is the
opinion of some Rishonim
that in the Amida, just like we have to have kavana
on the words that we say in
the first beracha, we
have to have kavana in Modim, because that is also
essential.
Saying
thank you without thinking is not really saying thank you.
And there’s another thought about saying thank
you that hopefully we will remember for Hanukah. In the Al HaNissim of
Hanukah, we say, “We made these eight days of Hanukah to say praise and thanks to Your great name..” but Rabbi Shlomo Zalman asks why, when it
comes to Purim we say, “ and he hung
him in the tree..” but we don’t say, “We made
these days to read the Megillah and send Mishkoah Manot.”
He answers that when we say, “and we made eight days of
praise,” those aren’t instructions from the rabbis for what we should be doing, it was part of
the downfall of the Greeks, no different than the hanging of Haman on Purim. The greatest blow to the Greeks
was that the Jewish people walked out with another reason
to praise and thank Hashem. Their whole goal was to uproot
our religion, and it ended up backfiring on them, because we
added more thanks and more praise. That is the biggest dagger in the heart of
the Greeks, or in the heart of any of those that don’t believe. The Ramban
said that the Greeks only believed what they saw, that was the whole approach of Greek
philosophy. This is also the scientific approach, where if you don’t see it,
it is not there. But we fight back and our
biggest blow to them is to L’ Hodot ULHallel- praise and thank Hashem. That is what
our religion is built on. A Yehudi is Modeh/ He says Thank you. The first
words of our day are Modeh Ani- Thank you, thank you Thankyou,
And when we do that we have
the power to ask for more, to once again say thank you, thank you.
