Welcome to Connected, Prayer with Purpose with Rabbi Eliyahu Farhi. Good morning, everybody. I'm excited for the journey of this podcast and how it's going to go. The purpose of this learning experience is to give us some inspiration and focus on our prayers. It's the beginning of our morning class that I do with Morris and some other people. I'm going to keep it short and to the point, just a little boost for our morning.
When a person gets used to different things in their life, there's a positive to it: it makes it easier for us to go through that experience. It's not so difficult for us because we get used to it. Even if something's very painful or difficult, if you do it again and again, habit allows you and has a way of making you go through something in an easier fashion. Habit also has a negative side to it: something that could be very beautiful could turn into something that's very not meaningful if you do it again and again and again. So that's one way a person's prayers can turn from something that could be very meaningful into something that is meaningless, that has less meaning to them, because it becomes something that they just do every day.
So, for myself, someone who may have already learned many different parts of the prayers and what they mean, if I don't put in an infusion of inspiration and newness, even if I know what the prayers mean, I can lose my purpose or my passion in my prayer. And then there are other types of people that might enjoy and experience this learning on something helpful, people that may not understand the meaning behind their prayers. They may not have opened it up to understanding it, and so hopefully we're going to do a little bit at a time, a couple of minutes a day, just to open it up and understand it.
There's immense value for a person in having a close relationship with God. When a person has a close relationship with Hashem, everything that they experience in their life feels purposeful. It's coming from a place of love from their father, from God. And He is there to support them and give them strength throughout that experience. A big part of how you have that relationship is through your prayer. It could be through your structured prayer, like your tefillah (prayer), and it could also be through your individual custom prayer, through your conversations with Hashem.
When I was asked to give this class and Morris was talking about the topic, I had a thought came from Hashem a little bit about how to appreciate the value of such a topic. I thought of a story that I was once told about a man who was quite poor and decided one day that he was going to buy a lottery ticket. So he bought a ticket, and it turned out his ticket had the right number. The man decided—well, he didn't decide; he just chose not to look up to see whether or not he won. So even though technically he's worth millions and millions of dollars, the value that he has is unrecognized. How much does it mean to him? Nothing. What's it worth to him? Nothing. How much does it impact his life? Nothing. He still lives homeless on the street.
When a person has an area of their life that has tremendous value and they don't recognize it and they don't tap into it, it's meaningless to him. That value is not there. This applies to many areas, but for sure it applies to prayer. If a person doesn't have a true appreciation for their tefillah, their prayer and what it means, and they don't turn it into a meaningful experience of relating with Hashem, then they're like a millionaire who doesn't know how much money they have.
So, just to share an idea for this morning: I don't want to just introduce the topic; I also want to say a message, an idea that I was thinking about last night. We started with Modeh Ani (I'm thankful to you), our first prayer of the day. One thing I think is very powerful is the structure of the statement. We say, Modeh, I thank you. Modeh Ani, I'm thankful to you, lefanecha, to you, in front of you, Hashem. But Modeh, and then ani, I think is a very powerful reflection, is that I'm thankful to you, Hashem. But Modeh also means another thing. Modeh also means to admit. It's also the same word as modim when we say modim. It's that I'm thankful to God because God gave me what I have, which by virtue of that also means I'm admitting to God. I'm admitting to God that my power, my gifts, my blessing in my life are from you, God. And I thought it was powerful that Modeh Ani—the structure of the words is Modeh and then ani. It's more about the thanks. And then it's I. In English, it doesn't translate well because it's "I thank you." No. "I admit to you." "I admit to you." It's about myself. In Hebrew, Modeh Ani. It could have been Ani modeh lefanecha (I admit to you), right? But the rabbis established that the word should be Modeh Ani. That first, I'm thankful. I'm pushing out my experience to be focused on others, on God first. And then I talk about Ani. And then I bring up myself. And when a person starts out his day with a focus on others, his day is a different day. His day is a day where he's of service to other people. His day is a day where he's not centered on selfishness; he's self-centeredness. And so his experience is very powerful.
So we start our day with admitting, admitting that I'm not the one in charge, admitting that I'm not the one that brought myself to where I am today. And rather, I'm one who has experienced receiving from someone. I have to have humility because I didn't bring this myself. I received it from someone who gave it to me. And therefore I have to be that vessel of receiving, not a vessel of feeling like I'm the one that's giving and doing and asking and requesting, but I'm rather the one that's accepting with humility and with respect.