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Short Summary
Main recommendation: When you daven (pray) for someone, imagine that person is your own close family member, feel their pain, and pray for a few people by name rather than reciting a long list. Rabbi Paysach Krohn illustrates this with a story about Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz during the 1976 Entebbe hijacking, when Rav Chaim told the crowd to pray as if the hostages were their own father, mother, brother, or sister.
Key Points
- The story begins in 1976, when a plane was hijacked from Tel Aviv's Lod Airport and taken to Entebbe airport in Uganda, and Idi Amin threatened to kill the Jews on board.
- Israelis were so anxious that the Mirrer Yeshiva held a Yom Iyun (learning day) with Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz leading the davening.
- Rav Chaim was overcome with emotion on entering and wept before and after kissing the aron kodesh, and then said one sentence: "Dovid, as if it was your father or your mother or your brother or your sister who's on that plane."
- According to the speaker, Hashem answers people's feelings rather than lists of names, so reciting names alone has little meaning.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: When davening for someone, picture them as a specific relative: a sister with an illness whose children are waiting for her, a brother with nine children and no parnassah (livelihood) who is too embarrassed to ask family for help, or a father in a nursing home who cannot walk straight.
- Concrete instructions: Choose two or three people and pray for them by name, with feeling and specifically for their parnassah or need, instead of listing 25 names.
- Concrete instructions: Before praying, imagine what the person's family is going through, so the prayer comes from the heart.
- The speaker attributes the story to a man named Zucker, who was learning at the Mirrer then and later became a mechanech, and who said he still gets chills when he recalls the tefillah.
- The speaker states that tefillah is not magic, and that Hashem loves the people being prayed for and answers when the one praying shows genuine feeling for their pain.
Bottom Line
Effective prayer for others comes from genuine empathy: a few people prayed for with real feeling outweigh a long, impersonal list.
