And may it be
good in Your eyes to bless Your people Israel, at every time and at every
hour with Your peace. Blessed are You,
Hashem, Who blesses His people Israel
with peace.
So ends the brocha
of both Sim Shalom (Shacharis) and Shalom Rav (Mincha and Mariv), the
nineteenth and last brocha of the Shemona Esray, and as with the other brochos
the chasima (end) of this brocha is a microcosm of the thirty-four words that
preceded it.
For every other
brocha in the Shemona Esray, you are flying solo, be it in relation to the
personal or communal requests that you are making from or the praises you are
giving to Hashem. If the guy next to you
is not with the program, then it’s his wish list that will take a hit, not
yours. Or at the very worse, there will
be one less vote counted for the rebuilding of Yerushalayim or the ingathering
of the exiles.
The brocha of
Sim Shalom is cut from different cloth because it’s the brocha of achdus and
we’re all in it together. On that score,
Rabbi Yitzchok Kirzner z”l tells us that this is the only tefillah in the
Shemona Esray in which we ask Hashem for something that depends upon our being
united.
Boruch Dayan
HaEmes. We’re doomed.
If we can’t get
it together achdus wise, then what can we possibly bring to the table in the
first part of the brocha, where we ask Hashem to shower a host of goodies such
as peace, kindness etc., upon us and upon all Israel and then a few words later,
when for good measure, we ask Him to bless all of us as one?
The good news is
that we’re not collectively being held hostage to our inability to achieve even
a minimal level of achdus in the world beyond Sim Shalom. The truth is that the whole question of
achdus, as it impacts on the blessings that we are attempting to invoke both upon
ourselves and the Klal, near the beginning of Sim Shalom, is in each
individual’s hand. Even if the guy next
to you is somewhat less than a team player, you can still push the envelope on
achdus in the context of Sim Shalom.
We have on
numerous occasions in a number of EmunahSpeak pieces decried both the lack of
achdus in Klal Yisroel and the over hyping of certain situations and events as
being paradigms of achdus, which in reality have nothing whatsoever to do with
the subject. And we did so because neither
the fact of nor the lack of achdus is a group phenomenon. It’s not quantitatively expressed by the size of
the crowd at Citi Field or the head count at the Kletzky levayah.
And as we said
in EmunahSpeak:
Nu?:….when a family of Torah
Jews is slaughtered in their beds or eight Yeshiva bochurim are gunned down in
their Yeshiva we seem to be incapable of stepping outside of our label
saturated existence long enough to attend the funeral. It matters not a
whit how many people show up because it’s not a numbers game.
It’s all
about the mosaic of Torah Jewry.
In Shomayim,
three hundred of EVERYBODY at a levayah will trump thirty thousand of only a
certain SOMEBODY every time.
Reduced to its
lowest common denominator, achdus is qualitative, and in the context of the brocha
of Sim Shalom it’s brought to fruition by the power of one.
Notwithstanding
the fact that it is Hashem that is being asked to give the actual blessing, Chazal
have given us, by way of the chasima of this brocha, the awesome power to bless
Klal Yisroel. Given the wording of the
chasima it’s as if each and every Yid actually invokes it while making Hashem
his shaliach to carry it out.
So how do we score
one for achdus by merely reciting the nineteen words at the end of Sim Shalom
and what does it have to do with Hashem bestowing the manifestation of His
finest attributes upon us, upon all Israel, and blessing all of us as
one?
It’s all in how
you say it and what you’re thinking at the time.
If you’re
not blessing all as one, then how do you expect Hashem to do it when
you ask Him earlier in the brocha to bless us, our Father, all of us as one.
You either have
everyone in mind when you say the words, and may it be good in Your eyes to
bless Your people Israel
or you don’t.
You can't run, hide or try to dance your attitude under the radar. And you also can't internally hold your nose because it’s only you
and Hashem, and He's occupying more space in your head than what you're pleased to call your thoughts, so who are you kidding anyway? Do you really think you can mentally exclude Lakewood, Satmar, or YU without
rendering your effort a brocha levatola?
The bottom line
achdus that’s going to unleash the power of Sim Shalom is in your head and the
head of everyone who recites it. The
attitude, mindset, and kavana with which you massage those last nineteen words
of the brocha will be the template that Hashem will apply to the first thirty-four.
