Tefillah - 072 Salvation From Misconceptions About Livelihood

In the blessing of רפאינו we ask Hashem, הושיענו ה' ונושעה – “Save us, Hashem, and then we will be saved.” 

We always need Hashem’s yeshuah, His salvation; why we do we mention this specifically with regards to getting healed?  Why we don’t we ask for Hashem’s salvation when in the blessing of סלח לנו, where we ask Hashem for forgiveness? Don’t we always need Hashem’s salvation? Earlier in Shemoneh Esrei, we also asked for salvation, in the first and second blessings of Shemoneh Esrei; it is understandable why we need Hashem’s salvation when it comes to those matters. But why do we ask for yeshuah\salvation in the blessing of רפאינו?

Man’s Efforts

Let us try to understand why Chazal established that we should ask for yeshuah when it comes to getting healed.

Hashem created man as the crown of Creation. Man has free will to choose between good and evil. The concept that man has free will is a novelty in Creation. Man can do what he wants, and he can even choose to oppose the Creator’s will, chas v’shalom.

When Adam sinned, man was cursed with labor, and this was another novelty concept in Creation, because the Mesillas Yesharim explains that making effort to go to work is a penalty placed on mankind. Ever since the first sin, man has had to put in his own efforts in order to survive, even though it is clearly the Creator who does everything.

Even more so, Chazal say that permission was given to doctors to heal. Here we see another novelty concept of Creation: although it is clearly Hashem Who heals, He let doctors be able to heal people.

Hashem controls everything, but He gave the power of free will to man. That was the first novelty. Man also needs to make effort to make a living, even though He is the Provider, and that is the second novelty of Creation. Man has permission to heal people, and this is the third novelty which Hashem allowed in Creation. It is as if Hashem cleared aside space from Himself in order for man to be in control of some things.

There are all kinds of effort that people make on this world. Chazal say that if a person needs to deal with the government, he should study the parsha of Yaakov Avinu when he prepared to meet Esav, who prepared himself with three things: weapons, gifts, and prayer. 

Prayer is another novelty in Creation; the fact that a person can change Hashem’s will through prayer is certainly novel. However, prayer is not a power of man, for it is the Creator who answers the prayers. Gifts and weapons, however, are more of a novelty than prayer. What is man’s permission to prepare for war or to use gifts? If a person has to go to war, then war is included in effort, but if it’s not an obligatory war, what is man’s permission to prepare for war with weapons and gifts? Free will, effort to make a livelihood, and doctors are all concepts that required permission from the Creator to make use of. If so, what is man’s permission to do any other action, such as to prepare for war with weapons and gifts?

The answer lies in the understanding of “Permission is given to doctors to heal”. It really means that all actions are permissible to be carried out by man, even though it is Hashem Who does everything.  The fact that permission was given to doctors showed that man received permission from Hashem to do any act.

However, there is a danger in this. When man thinks he can heal, he might not attribute Hashem as the Source of the healing. When a person gets sick, he davens and makes effort to go to doctors; in his efforts, he might forget Who is really healing him. Thus, we daven in this blessing specifically that Hashem should bring us salvation when we get sick – הושיענו ה' ונושעה.

Why Prayers For Salvation Don’t Always Get Answered

But the deeper understanding [of why we ask for Hashem’s salvation, specifically in this blessing of Shemoneh Esrei] is as follows.

It can happen that a person davens to Hashem to be healed, but He does not merit Hashem’s salvation. How can this be? If Hashem is our Savior, why doesn’t He always save a person?

Let us reflect into this. This matter is tied to a particular problem that is manifest in this generation.

Man has to go to work in order to make a livelihood. Why does man have to go to work? It is because man is cursed with having to make effort, ever since the first sin. But why is there a concept of work in the first place? This is a separate issue than effort to make a living. We are referring to the concept of livelihood itself. Why do people need livelihood in the first place?

In our current generation, all kinds of physical desires fill the world. It is very rare for a person to wish to transcend the indulgence in physical desire. People indulge in physical desires these days without any sense of shame. The advertisements say to buy a certain food because it tastes very good; the truth is really the opposite. Because it is tastes good, that’s exactly why one should avoid it! What an “upside-down world” we live in.

Hashem gave us the concept of livelihood so we can have the means to buy our necessities. But people think these days that having parnassah (livelihood) is meant so that we can buy all these new products and indulge in them….

It is clear to a person who lives a truthful life that Hashem wants us to avoid all these extra desires that we don’t need. Hashem does not want us to indulge endlessly in physical desires. When a person asks Hashem for salvation, he wants Hashem to give him all these desires. That is why he doesn’t get answered! His salvation is precisely not to have such a wish answered!

Hashem Is Sending Us A Message

Yet there is a deeper understanding as well to why people aren’t getting answered when they ask for Hashem’s salvation with regards to having parnassah.

When a person loses his parnassah, when he is in financial strain, he can hear Hashem talking to him through this. If a person has a little bit of spiritual senses left in him, he can hear Hashem’s voice talking to him through this situation, and it is not prophecy; it can be heard by anyone who has a little bit of sense to spirituality. Hashem is telling the person that if you search for the truth, not only is there a penalty placed on mankind to have to make a living – nowadays, there is an additional problem. First of all, don’t spend so many hours working. Work is a penalty placed on mankind, but to overdo working is not included in the penalty. In addition, Hashem is sending us a message that we were not meant to work in places that endanger our entire Yiddishkeit.

There are now decrees upon us – both on our physical situation, as well as on our spiritual situation. We need Hashem’s salvation - but going to work these days to make a living will not be the salvation. How will we indeed get saved? That’s up to Hashem. But Hashem is asking us to seek the truth. If there are decrees upon us that are putting financial strain on us, Hashem is letting us know that it’s because making parnassah these days has been overdone, or that it wasn’t being coming from a good source. If there are decrees on our Torah learning, it’s because the Torah learning in the last few years wasn’t truthful.

Most of the sources of the parnassah in today’s times involve issues that are prohibited according to Halacha, and these are not merely “chumros” (stringencies) to keep. What does it mean to ask for Hashem’s salvation,הושיענו ה' ונרפא ? That we should get parnassah from any of these bad places?! The salvation will be the opposite – not to get parnassah from those places!

We must understand that most sources of parnassah today, the places in which people work, are the antithesis to Torah and holiness. Hashem is asking us to reveal our innermost place of our soul not only when it comes to matters of holiness, but when it comes to parnassah as well.

Most of the salvations that people are asking of Hashem are situations that they need to be saved from! They need a yeshuah from the kind of ‘yeshuah’ that they seek! When a person needs salvation, it shouldn’t be about asking Hashem simply for what a person wants to have. When we ask Hashem for salvation, like if we need 2000 dollars, the salvation will not happen when we get the money. The salvation will happen when we change our perspective towards life.

What we are missing is not money. We are missing a revelation of Hashem in our life; that is what we need a yeshuah from. If a person would get answered by Hashem in their requests for parnassah and have plenty of parnassah, that would be the greatest curse!

When we wish to be comfortable so we can learn Torah with peace of mind and not have to worry about parnassah, that’s not what we really need. What we need is a truthful kind of Torah learning.

The worst part of it is that people think that their perspective towards making life is correct, and they erroneously think that salvation means to be able to have plenty of money. It has become a way of life, an attitude that people have. We need a yeshuah from this, from the things we are asking for that are not really going to save us. We need to ask Hashem for a yeshuah that we should have a truthful perspective towards life.

This is the meaning of הושיענו ה' ונושעה– “Save us, Hashem, and then we will be healed”. When we merit this, we will merit the complete redemption and to bask in Hashem’s light.