Pensamento Judaico sobre I Samuel 1:13

Because prayer is service of the heart, we have connected the chapter on prayer with the chapter on the olah, total offering. As an olah is an offering that "rises" towards G'd in its entirety, since the whole of the animal is being offered on the altar, so is prayer an offering of the heart which rises toward Heaven in its entirety. When our sages describe prayer without concentrating on its meaning, as being comparable to a body without soul, they mean that the warmth of feeling generated by genuine prayer, parallels the ongoing fire on the altar that burns the olah. In Vayikra Rabbah 7, Rabbi Pinchas notes that the Torah does not describe the fire on the altar as being "on" the altar. The Torah does not require that the "fire on the altar burn on it," rather it does say “aysh hamizbeach tukad bo," the fire on the altar shall burn within it, meaning that the entire altar should be permeated by it. (Leviticus 6,2) So our hearts are to be permeated by the outpouring of our prayers. The Talmud Berachot 32, tells us that we have to arrange the praise of the Lord before proceeding with voicing our requests from Him. Since the requests concern mostly our temporal needs, our sages (Shabbat 10) describe the supplicant as someone who temporarily abandons his concern with the values of the world to come, in favour of the mundane needs of this world he lives in at the time. If this is so, the opinion held by many, (including Maimonides chapter one hilchot tefillah ) which claims that prayer has been legislated by the Torah, is hard to understand. If the purpose of prayer would be exhausted by our asking for our needs, why should it matter to G'd whether we ask for them or not? We should be entitled to forego the opportunity to ask G'd for His kindness, assistance, etc. However, just as we have described the institution of sacrifice as designed to arouse certain emotions within us which will bring us closer to G'd, so prayer, by means of the trust we express when we ask Him for our needs, will bring us closer to Him. The conviction that He cares, that His Providence watches over us, all this helps to strengthen the existing ties between us and the Creator. The thanks we express for what He has done for us and for others, all help to cement our relationship with hashem. The early Chassidim, men of piety and devoutness, are described by the Talmud Berachot 32, as having prepared for prayer an hour ahead of time, and as having spent another hour winding down from the spiritual high achieved during prayer, before returning to the mundane tasks in their lives. Actually, they did exactly what our sages have since built into the formal liturgy that we follow nowadays. The hymns of praise, keriyat shema, are our introduction and preparation for prayer, i.e. the part during which we voice our requests. On the other hand, we are told that he who fails to enunciate the keriyat shema audibly, has failed in his purpose, since the praise of G'd and our assuming the yoke of Heaven are to be made known to our fellow men. On the other hand, he who raises his voice during the supplication part of the prayer service, is described as lacking in faith, as a prophet of the ido Baal. (Berachot 24) Channah already demonstrated that requests need not be aired audibly. If the High Priest Eli considered her as a drunken woman, this was not because she did not raise her voice in prayer, but because she had chosen a time of day he did not consider suitable for offering up prayer. (compare Samuel I chapter 1) He watched her closely to find out what she had to say to him, since most other women milling around the entrance of the tabernacle always spoke to him. Understanding Eli's error, she told him that her remarks were addressed to Him who does not need audible expression of her words in order to be able to hear and understand them. Since Channah came to the tabernacle after having dined, it was natural for Eli to have misconstrued her purpose, and to have judged same by outward appearances. In fact, one must not raise one's voice, so as not to create the impression that one considers G'd hard of hearing. When Ishmael was close to death, (Genesis 21,17) G'd considered his state of being "as he was then," not the loudness of his prayers. The mental anguish that he was suffering at that moment was the decisive element that led to his rescue. On the other hand, all those paragraphs in the liturgy that teach us knowledge and comprehension have to be recited aloud. "Hear O Israel!"- these words we have to hear with our own ears; they are directed both at ourselves and at our fellow Jews.

(1) Since only Isaac and his descendants are called Abraham's seed par excellence, the Torah sees fit to restate Isaac's ancestry, stressing that it did not go back further than to Abraham. Anyone prior to Abraham could not claim a share in Isaac as his descendant. In Jewish law, we have the principle that upon conversion to Judaism, a proselyte's family ties are severed, he ceases to have legal family ties, and is considered like a totally new creature. Abraham having become the first Jew, his children's ancestry was rooted in him and in him only. (2) Isaac married at forty, having attained the mental maturity to found a family, as discussed in Chapter 22. Bethuel was called an Arami since he was deceitful, as implied by that word. For that reason, the two have to be mentioned separately. (3) Rebecca had no hope to have children until Isaac's prayer had been answered, otherwise we might have attributed her pregnancy to the blessing that had been given her by her brother Laban prior to her departure from home (Bereshit Rabbah 63). The meaning of the verse "the Arami was about to cause my father's destruction" (Deut.26,5) could be "the latent traits of deceit and treachery inherited from Laban almost led to my destruction." Isaac's prayer was solely for the benefit of Rebecca, since he as an olah temimah, a flawless offering, and could not have served as such if he had been physically blemished. The word lenochach used to describe Isaac's stance during prayer, means that he concentrated on a single objective. A similar use of that word occurs in Proverbs 4,25-27. (4) Perhaps the reason that we are told that Isaac loved Esau who brought venison to him is to point out that Rebecca possessed enough independence of spirit to love Jacob, whose behavior warranted this, and in whose character she could see the promise of the prophecy that had been revealed to her prior to the birth of the twins that in time the older one would become subservient to the younger one (Genesis 25,23). (5) Jacob's holding on to the heel of Esau may symbolize that values which Esau would stamp his foot on would be the very ones Jacob would cherish.