Grace After Meals - Part 6 - Rabbi Reuven Lauffer

so anyone over the age of our meat or bat mitzvah is obligated adventuring little kids I mentioned yesterday if they are if they're old enough to begin learning how to bench so they should learn how to bench even if they're not going to say the whole thing you can you can certainly teach them and you could even use the name of God whilst you're teaching them to bench then they should set the right way even though you yourself may not have eaten anything right so you know you've got little children at home in term and they've had some lunch today fast day right they've had lunch you haven't need i say more and they're they're going to you know that's so funny no problem whatsoever you can bench with them in order to get them to learn how to bench properly when you are reciting their cat amazon right when you're reciting benching you have to you have to know that from the time that you start until the time that you n you should not be talking right which means that it's got a little it's a little bit like when you're dabbling the am neither right so you've got to know from the beginning to the end that you're not supposed to be saying anything and even stopping in the middle is something that you should try to avoid doing right just keep running the whole through the whole the whole way through what happens if you did stop in the middle what happens if you spoke in the middle so you don't have to go back to the beginning and start all over again even though you know for example if you do that during parts of governing if you if you make a break in the middle of davening then you would have to go back and start at the beginning again but with benching you don't have to but you definitely should not be making any kind of a break whatsoever so i love you if you need to go to the bathroom right whilst you whilst you're reciting big cat I was almost you're benching if you need to go to the bathroom in the middle so trying to get to the end of the bravo and then go off to the bathroom and come back and carry on from where you left off now there's a sort of radical concept over here which is an idea that runs its way through not just been Qing but through in general but we should really be doubling and benching with intense concentration I mean I apologize for mentioning that so we do because it's hard enough it's it's hard enough doing this you know it's hard enough just saying the words actually but having to actually have intense concentration as well is a somewhat radical you no idea but nevertheless it's a great thing to do and you should recite the words slowly and carefully there's actually in the air you're finding a many in many different sources it says that if you bench if you bench properly and if you bent bench slowly and carefully then it is actually a Saguna it's an omen for having wealth I once heard from one of the one of the great one of the great Alaskan authorities alive today who said that people you know people run around all over the world trying to they're called sagoo lot trying to find things that they could do that will enhance their plan also enhance their livelihood not not you know by by doing all kinds of sort of spiritual things and he said it's really a ridiculous thing to do he says because you just have to bench that's what that's what that's what I college bar who is telling us and if we bench carefully and properly that's one of the portals that brings us into having a successful penalty yeah he vengeance or not you people but sharing although shouldn't your favorite candy binge for all of us so the images like this even though it's possible for somebody to make bro hot for you right which is what happens you go to somebody's house for shabbos and they make kiddush for you they make up my tea for you come to my house I'll even eat for you as well you know you don't have to do anything really you can just sit you know what you don't even have to come I'll do it all for you that with benching the only way that somebody can fulfill your obligation to bench is if you can't bench yourself alright so that means that somebody doesn't know how to bench isn't aware of any of this you don't have any English benches there to be able to do and you can't read in the Hebrew it's impossible so somebody can bench for you and every time they make the broccoli you need to answer our main to the brothels that are being said however if you can bench yourself then you can't have somebody else do it for you interestingly enough that's where the repetition of the immunity comes from the source of the repetition of the army de is that when people weren't able to pray for themselves and they couldn't think they were illiterate and they couldn't pray then the the Kazon would recite the Amidah for you and you would say I'm in at the end of each brand that was considered as if you fulfilled your obligation to recite Liam either you can't rely on the Shelia Sybil's recitation of the of the repetition if you know how to daven yourself though to say exactly the same kind of an idea right which means that if you know how to daven then no you can't just stand there and say I made to his brothers and have him fulfill your obligation because the obligation is yours so this question got a lion hood different benjamin gardening in English if you understand it you have the real like emotion behind it or he who don't understand it kind of fall off in this tragedy yeah so the truth is and it's very it's a it's very difficult to perhaps perhaps to understand what the mission Abreu is saying the mr. Brewer says if somebody knows how to read Hebrew that it's better it's better to pray in Hebrew even if you don't understand what you're saying then to pray in the language that you do understand it sounds a little counterintuitive it really does because encourage you to learn Hebrew well yeah maybe but the again the mr. Brue explains a lot lush and I konishi Hebrew language something which has an inherent holiness to it and even though I may not understand what I'm saying I'm tapping into that holiness even just by it just by using the woods if a person doesn't speak any Hebrew account the country Hebrew then they can they can pray or bench in English and achieve the same levels of connecting to God through bench in English as they would if they were benching me bro so kind of it's a kind of a no-lose situation right whatever we suggest to everybody which which is that you know somebody if somebody if somebody's is kind of kind of okay with Hebrew but just not not you know they don't don't really understand what they're saying good okay I think yeah you should do it if you can you should do it and and I also recommend again a somewhat radical idea but I do recommend perhaps taking off five minutes a day perhaps and and studying what it is that you're saying that they're all kind but I've got all kinds of books in english today that deal with prayer alright so for example as a brook bought a book called the schmatta say which is all about ermita written by rabbi foyer there's a book called rad Schwab on probably that you just you go into any well-stocked safest safer store and you'll see and like mummies you a mass of different books in English that are written about prayer and it's terrific it's fantastic because what it means is like this I you know do you take off five minutes a day and you can concentrate for example you're looking at the iMini you can concentrate on just a one-on-one blessing not to try to absorb it all in one go just to concentrate on one blessing and then the next time you come to pray so you'll be more aware of what it is that you're saying you know you'll understand it better I would say like this and what the more you understand something the greater your appreciation for that thing is and that what's true in the what's true in every every dimension is true in the spiritual dimensions as well so for example that if there's anybody here you know anybody here who's into into art for example right so you know we can all go we can all go and look at a painting together and sense of beautiful painting that somebody who appreciates art is appreciating it's not what he's not just king of the painting he's looking at their art strokes and he's looking at the depth and he's even looking at the frame that goes around the painting right and everything everything is contributing to his feeling of appreciation it's true with really it's truly true with everything actually and it's true in the world of prayer as well it's no different the more details I'm aware of inside of prayer the more familiar i am with what i'm saying and why I'm saying it the greater is my appreciation for what it is that I'm saying and that really only comes with studying reading you know the more you read about it so the more familiar you'll be with the ideas and you'll get to that prayer inside of the imido for example you get to you'll get to that blessing you say wow you know hold on a second gosh this is I I know I know this you know and it adds a whole dimension of wanting anticipation to daven maybe I'll give you an example look really a very a very fascinating example you know inside one of that one of the Broca's inside of the Amidah is a broth over for anal in Rafina we pray that people should be well and mope unfortunately most people know you know people who aren't well and inside of that brothel that's a very good place to pray for them to get well to ask God for a particular person that he should become or she should become well rob us an Irish it's one of one of the great rabbis from a few generations ago he says like this the the roof the bracha prefer anal which is a brothel for health is the eighth blessing in their leader the number eight represents things which are beyond nature supernatural things number seven is nature the seven days of the creation is seven days of the week anything that's got the number seven inside of it is is going to contain that concept of a natural dimension number eight is that which represents what's called in Hebrew lymala minute ever things that are beyond nature and he explains it's a very fascinating halacha question he said how is it how is it permissible for somebody to pray for somebody who's not well if that person has a terminal sickness right there's a concept in a locker there's a concept of something called to fill out shove which is praying in vain right you can't take God's name in vain if I pray for somebody who's got a terminal sickness isn't that what I'm doing and taking God's name in vain because this person is not going to get well so explains her illness and I Rashid's that no that's not that's not the case because we we the Jewish nation live llamala minute ever we are beyond nature we're in the domain of God and God can do whatever he wants and that's why it's okay to pray for somebody to get well and that's why he says the eighth blessing of the a leader is the blessing of refer anal that we should be well now normally you know this idea that when somebody gets the blessing or for a mo and now they know that this is tapping into the energy of the number eight right that dimension is something which is above and beyond the natural world that natural dimension so then maybe that's going to help them to tap into their prayer in a different way right maybe they'll have a whole different approach to reciting that particular blessing than they would have had otherwise and that's really that the idea of details inside of details inside a prayer is something which gives us tremendous appreciation for what's going on one you know what maybe won't one more one my locker for today it's correct to actually recite benching from some kind of a text right it's a recommendation from the Mishnah brewer it's not it's not you know it's like an interesting thing because the truth is that we are very good at getting distracted and if you're concentrating you've got something open in front of you and you're reading it then that way you're going to be much more focused than what it is that you're doing when we close our eyes you know it is true that some people get more concentration when they close their eyes but I think an awful lot of people they close Orizon and that's it they kind of disconnect themselves there's a famous Jewish joke which is might look like a lot of Jewish jokes it's not very funny but it's very deep about a fellow he's in he's in the shop he's in the market and he's squeezing the tomatoes and and looking at the peaches and I don't know the fun family bashes into his chest and he looks up to see who who was that who was so rude and it's him he's doubling mimicking he's got to the slash London where you're supposed to tap yourself on the chest and of course what had happened was his wife had taught him on the way home from surely have just gone pick up some fruits and vegetables that would be much appreciated so he's already there right in his mind he's already there it's just physically he's got to finish up darling and then he's going to get there and I get anything it's I unfortunately there's not there's an awful lot an awful lot of thatum that goes along with with with prayer and one of the ways of being able to combat that is by just looking inside into into a sitter or into a bencher and reading the words rather than allowing you even if you know it off by heart rather than allowing yourself to do it off by heart because that's what leads us to be distracted I think I've mentioned in the past but over here many many many years ago in the achiever something did a little sketch on / in / at night it was pretty funny and it's about this what this fellow's thinking whilst he's praying this was in the good old days when they didn't have little little players he came out with his great big boom box and he SAT it down on the table and you see those doubling me I be the right so he bends down real low and then he bow so low he bangs his head on the table the first thing you hear coming out of this thing is ouch and then you get like a 10 minute monologue it was brilliant absolutely brilliant about what this guy's thinking whilst he's praying you know he's he's standing there and he's you know sweating backwards and forwards and doing all the actions that he's supposed to be doing but in the midterm what you hear is what's going through his head and at some point you know he's looking to see where the person next to me is up to and he sees in a person opportunities he's behind him away with everything he's fuller than I am I gotta slow down right and then halfway through like somebody comes collecting money and he's having like this whole negotiation silent negotiation with him about how much he's going to give him and at the end you here and say you know okay steps backwards three two one left right middle and then you hear him say wow that was great now if I could only learn how to say the woods and then you know unfortunately there's a lot a lot of this even even when we know how to say the words like there's a lot of this you your mind is just let let loose right whilst you're praying and it goes off on a on a journey who knows where it's gone too and whether it'll ever come back again good what's the bottom line what have we learned today we need that we need to we need to take our doubling and our been chewing seriously and we need to the best of the best one of the best ways of being able to start doing that is by using using a text to dominant to pray from you