lessons from a little girl

My niece was very confused the other day, she explained to her mother: "I don't understand what happened, I prayed for rain in Israel and it didn't rain."

Such genuine belief that one's prayers will be answered is adorable, but more than that, it's a lesson to the rest of us. If we really believe that HaShem has control over even the smallest details of the world, why don't we believe He will answer our prayers right when we pray for them?  [see your prayers are always heard]

The only reasonable answers you can offer are either: (1) We don't deserve our prayers to be answered or (2) He answers them at a time of His choosing because He knows better than we do.

(1) The first argument is spurious, compared to HaShem we don't deserve anything, but we are taught that His Kindness is Infinite, He provides for us even though we don't deserve anything, so why should what we pray for be any different?

(2) The second argument is addressed by Rebbe Nachman, who explains that our prayers come to fruition when we expect them to. So, if we don't expect them to be answered now, there's no telling when HaShem will answer them. The 'when' is an integral component of our tefillot. [see eyes on the prize]

distractions

All of your idle thoughts come back to distract you when you are praying. They come for one of two reasons (1) to be raised up while you are praying or (2) to interfere with your prayers because you aren't worthy to pray. [See Likkutei Moharan I:30]

This is a great piece of information. Usually it's frustrating to try and pray only to find your thoughts wandering aimlessly somewhere in the middle of Tefillah. At least now we know this isn't a failing on our part, rather it's part of the system of prayer.

I think the two reasons Rebbe Nachman brings down are actually the same reason, and its a question of how you look at it. On the one hand you can distract yourself from these distractions, and focus on legitimate tefillah, in which case as far as you're concerned the thoughts came (for reason #2) to distract you so that you may prove your worth by ignoring them.On the other hand, if you choose to raise these thoughts up then you can roll even these seemingly unrelated thoughts back into your tefillot, in which case they came back to you for (reason #1) you to fix.

Now, rather than thinking you've failed by being distracted in your tefillah, you can view it as a new challenge to overcome, so you can take your tefillah deeper.

Rebbe Nachman was right

The only answer to the problem of the rapidly advancing pace of the
world is Hitbodedut.
The only way to have a real and intimate relationship with HaShem is
to devote to Him that most precious of commodities, attention.
Hitbodedut is being alone with and entirely focused on HaShem.
As above, so below. But the converse is more important: When we give
HaShem our full attention, we have His.

[ps. The performance of Tefillah, as well as any and all other mitzwoth, touches on HaShem's infinite light. (See Iggeret HaKodesh 20) So please don't get the wrong idea here. Hitbodedut has special applicability in our day because we are the Me generation. But it cannot replace even one mitzwah, instead it's a solid framework upon which to enrich our (unwavering) mitzwah observance.]

daily life

In the past we've written about the importance of focusing on today, especially with regard to overcoming your yetzer hara. [see: bet your bottom dollar on today]

Today (no pun intended) I'd like to mention a few words about using today as a way to focus and intensify your prayers. [And through your prayers, to intensify and focus your relationship with HaShem.]

As is known, Chazal (our Rabbis, their memories should be a blessing) refer to prayer as the life of the moment. (חיי שעה) Primarily this reference is to draw contrast between prayer and Torah study, which is referred to as the life of forever. (חיי עולם) But, this definition of prayer as the life of the moment can help us in our attempt to pray with real focus and feeling.

In modern culture, prayer is seen as a last-ditch attempt that at worst can't hurt. We see this in the football play (l'havdil elef havdalot) "hail mary." Or the expression "he hasn't got a prayer [of a chance.]" We conceive of prayer as something that cannot be relied upon, [but won't hurt.]

Exactly the opposite is true: prayer is the best channel available to us to effect positive change in our lives.

Even in the midst of an earnest prayer, we lose hope when we ask for something that seems (to our limited conception of reality) 'far-fetched.' It feels like asking someone on the street for a million dollars, but rolling your eyes at the absurdity of the act. The moment we believe that we aren't deserving of HaShem's intervention, or that maybe we should ask for something less as it stands a better chance of being granted, we're falling into the trap of the yetzer hara.

More than that, we are more willing to pray for big rewards that will arrive further down the road -- subconsciously we do this to avoid being let down when we don't receive what we asked for -- if we asked for a wonderful new job today, and it didn't happen, it would seem like God isn't listening, and we're affraid He might not be.

This is like not pursuing a relationship out of fear of rejection. It's not news to anyone, I know, but you can't get someone to fall in love with you without first taking risks. Same thing with God, you are building a relationship and if you don't trust in HaShem, you aren't letting that relationship grow.

My advice to you: Focus on today. When you pray, ask for what you need today. Then ask for what you want today. [Don't forget to thank God for what you have today as well.]

As you progress, don't progress to tomorrow or longer periods of time, instead progress to greater expectations from today and you will not only reveal God's presence in every moment of your life, you will also develop a wonderfully deep and personal relationship.

Don't make the mistake of thinking you can wait till tomorrow to pursue this relationship. HaShem created the world in such a way that it's virtually impossible not to get to the world to come, (later if not sooner) but the relationship you build while in this world, is the relationship that will persist in the world to come as well --

Don't get stuck in the world to come with only "hail marys" to rely on.

Take your time and pray properly

Berachot 6b - "He should have trusted in Me" - This is HaShem's response to someone not showing up to Beit Knesset for prayers because he needed to attend to his own matters.

So next time you're in doubt about whether or not to make it to minyan, go for it, only good will come of it. Take His word for it.

I've personally known this to be true for at least eight years. Every time I would skimp on a tefillah to save time, I'd always end up sitting in traffic or the meeting/appointment I was rushing to would be cancelled. Now I'm happy I found the source in Chazal. Baruch SheKivanti.

the farsighted king

David HaMelech saw that in the end of days, we'd be left with only the three daily prayers as a means to truly experience HaShem. (Tikkunei Zohar 127b)

I haven't had a chance to look into what the commentaries make of this. But I like the way it stands on its own. God willing there will be follow-up posts on the topic.

haazinu : AZ-ify us!

האזינו השמים ואדברה - heavens! harken and I will speak

These are the opening words of parashath Haazinu. While learning the Ohr HaHayyim, he asks a simple question: what is the meaning of האזינו - harken? It suddenly occured to me that the deeper meaning of these opening words is something quite different from what we might have otherwise thought:

For a little background, we need to understand a few ideas. Speech is the power of the Moshiah. Why? Speech is associated with the sefirah of Malchut in a number of places, most notably in the introduction to the Tikkunei Zohar: מלכות פה - Malchut is the mouth. Also, the Moshiah will wage his wars through prayer - בקשתי ובחרבי - with my bow and my sword - is translated as through my supplications and my praise.

Another important introduction: Az Yashir, the song that Bnei Yisrael sang upon the Exodus from Egypt, hints that Mosheh and Bnei Yisrael will sing in the future, אז, not in the past. Chazal explain (since clearly Mosheh sings with Bnei Yisrael) that this song in the future will be in the time of Israel's final redemption. (when Mosheh is resurrected with all the rest of the 'dead')

Now we can understand the prayer that was hidden within the opening words of Parashath Haazinu:

האזינו השמים ואדברה - [I entreat the] Heavens, bring us to the time/state of אז (literally: make us אז) the time of the final redemption, and then [as the Moshiah, with the power of Moshiah] I will speak.

your prayers are always heard

Imagine this:

The King sits upon his throne in a sprawling chamber surrounded on all sides by infinite troops of mighty angels, the Holy Tzaddikim come and go petitioning the King and receiving His direct acknowledgement.

Outside the door to the King's chamber there is an anteroom, there the beinonim crush in a throng around the door passing notes in to be read to the King. They aren't allowed to enter, but they are at least priviledged with passing their prayers into the room.

At the far end of the anteroom the resha'im, the evildoers scornfully loiter, without any access to the King's ear.

That's the way the Tikkunei Zohar describes the scene. It seems to be in direct contradiction to the advice of the Ba'al Shem Tov: You should pray with the certain knowledge that your prayer will be answered.

How can we reconcile the two views? Either the Ba'al Shem Tov was only speaking to the Tzaddikim or else he knows something we don't know.

In fact, more than that, we know how much HaShem loves His children. (ie. infinitely more than the most a parent has ever (unconditionally) loved their child) So how could HaShem let a prayer go unheard? Moreso, a prayer that is unheard is a secret known only to the one who prayed it, and yet we say that the hidden things are for HaShem and only the revealed parts of creation are for us. (הנסתרות לה' אלקנו) These hidden prayers are under HaShem's sole jurisdiction, how could these prayers be refused entry into the King's chamber?

Perhaps Rebbe Nachman can enlighten us: In the past we discussed his teaching that prayers born of utter despair are always welcomed into the chamber of the King. [see prayers cleaving to prayers] The real trick here is that all the half-hearted or unintentioned prayers that loiter around, unable to enter the King's chamber, are embraced and wrapped up within a true prayer born from desperation. HaShem Himself brings such a prayer into His chamber and there, alone with this very precious prayer, all the other prayers are unwrapped and revealed.

Here we see that HaShem created the world with a structure and a system, it's called midah k'neged midah. (or 'a turn for a turn' as translated by R' Lazer Brody) The system (figuratively) handles the day to day function of how the world should work. But HaShem also created prayer as a means to petition HaShem directly, perhaps we could say (again figuratively) a means to balance the system. This is a secret backchannel established with His beloved children and it's actually bidirectional.

You see, we've learned previously one of the most basic (and crucial) lessons of the Baal Shem Tov: When HaShem wants to give us more blessing than we deserve, (according to the system of midah k'neged midah) He wraps that blessing up in a package of suffering. When we experience the suffering and thank God for that suffering recognizing that anything that comes from God is ultimately for our own good, we merit to remove that outer package of suffering and get at all the surplus of blessing hidden within.

That's one direction of the backchannel. The other direction is prayer. As we just learned prayer lets us wrap up our prayers, all our needs and desires, all of our confusion, everything in the desperate prayers of any member of the Jewish people. One person's genuine prayer is enough to raise up the needs and wants of all to God's attentive ear.

Prayer is the general 'upload' channel, but repentance, Teshuvah, is a more specific protocol of prayer. Through Teshuvah we can awaken HaShem's infinite Mercy and bring down limitless influx of blessing. The reason it can bring down so much blessing is because it contains an element of the download channel as well -- we thank HaShem for the sin, for the fact that we failed the test, recognizing that even our failure comes from God, and even our failure was ultimately in our best interest.

In short, there's this whole massive edifice that is the rules and structure of creation, and then there's the entirely personal, entirely private relationship HaShem has with His children. The structure is really there to educate us, and to sustain us as long as we don't know how to access that personal relationship. But don't be mistaken, the entire goal of your existence is discovering and developing that personal relationship.

So if you find yourself standing outside in the anteroom this Rosh HaShanah, don't forget that you have a V.I.P. pass to the afterparty.

heavy conversation

We have a mitzwah to pray every day (for a Jewish woman once a day, a Jewish man three times a day) we are required to pray, to talk to God.

That's heavy. That's difficult. That's an awful lot of commitment.

But here's something perhaps you have never thought of:

In the Talmud (Masechet Berachot) we are taught that HaShem also keeps the mitzwoth.

If you are committed to talking to God every day, He is committed to talking to you too.

waiting on your prayers

Pray. Take your time.

We're so tempted to rush, to feel pressed for time, when it's exactly the opposite that is true.

We think the world around us is moving so fast, if we take time out of our schedule to simply pray, there's no end to what we may miss.

If only we knew how wrong that thinking is. I challenge you, take your time, see what happens.

Every time I have ever cut my prayers short because I was running late, the meeting was cancelled, or there was a traffic jam, or any number of other delays that meant I could've taken my time.

The whole world is literally waiting on your every word.

Prayer is what makes the world go round.

How do I know?

וְכֹל שִׂיחַ הַשָּׂדֶה, טֶרֶם יִהְיֶה בָאָרֶץ, וְכָל-עֵשֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶה, טֶרֶם יִצְמָח: כִּי לֹא הִמְטִיר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים, עַל-הָאָרֶץ, וְאָדָם אַיִן, לַעֲבֹד אֶת-הָאֲדָמָה.

Bereishith (Genesis) 2:5

Chazal explain, when God created the world the rain didn't fall and so the plants didn't grow until after man existed to pray for the rain.

The whole world is waiting on your prayer..

..so what are you waiting for?

the best of intentions

Good intentions aren't always enough. It's more about the delivery. (We all know the aphorism about where the road of good intentions leads.)

Esav's head (but only his head) is buried in m'arat haMachpelah because he wanted to be a tzaddik.

This is even more true of prayer, the Baal Shem Tov explains, when you pray with kavanah, intent, then your prayer is limited to the level of kavanah you are able to muster.

However, and this is his hidush, when you pray with tremendous energy, when you put yourself into each and every word, without trying to have any kavanah at all, then HaShem supplies the kavanoth for you.

What does this mean?

To me, in the simplest of terms, it means the essence of prayer is connecting to God, the more energy we put into this connection, the more emphasis we place on the importance of this connection, the greater the connection. Simple.

If we manage to entirely lose ourselves in this connection, we are able to receive a much higher revelation of God through that connection.

Think of energy in prayer as bandwidth.

when you can't break through

When you are struggling to feel anything at all in your prayer, when you feel the world weighing down on you from every side, start praying for others you know are in need.

Keep praying, think of more and more people in need of HaShem's intervention. Not nameless hypothetical people, but actual people you are familliar with, people you care about, people whose success/wellbeing/happiness is important to you.

This is a key to breaking through depression, to reaching God when you feel He's turned His back on you.

for example

When you find yourself full of distracting thoughts and you are trying to pray, pray to HaShem that His Torah and service should be as interesting to you as these distracting thoughts!

praying from the depths of your heart

Really pouring out your heart is a very difficult concept to relate to without a good analog. At first it seems like it's very simple to imagine -- but what we are actually imagining is something super-human and nothing we could be expected to do every... single... day. 

On the other hand when we find a good example we can all relate to, then suddenly pouring out your heart becomes possible, even easy, even fun: 

Take your pick, there's singing or dancing. Either one works to understand this idea.

We all know what it's like to sing half-heartedly, you execute the song as required, but with no feeling, it doesn't move you and it won't move your audience. On the other hand, I imagine everyone has, at one point in their lives or another, sung with so much energy that we inspired/touched/affected ourselves through our song. It's not so hard to do, just a matter of feeling like the song is expressing you. When you find the right song, and you're in the right mood, you belt it out, and it's effortless, you want to sing more and more and never stop.

When the song moves you, you sing, and your song moves you all the more. (The same is true with dancing.)

Anyways, we might have never been moved by prayer -- but I don't believe you've never been moved by song. If you've been moved by song, then you know what it feels like to be moved by prayer. You know what it feels like to pour all of your being into something.

Now you are ready to pray.

does my father yet live?

When we converse, are we talking to the body or the soul? The Baal Shem Tov says the answer is simple: The soul. If we were talking to the body, then we would still carry on conversations with a dead person. [Or even a sleeping person for that matter.]

It seems to me that the reunion that took place between Yosef and Yaakov his father, is the perfect metaphor with which to illustrate true prayer. Yosef playing the part of the person praying, and Yaakov the part of HaShem, the father who has been waiting long years to hear news of his favorite son.

Both are asking: Is it true that my father/son is still alive? As illustrated by the inverse of the Baal Shem Tov's lesson above, if we aren't communicating it could be mistaken as a sign of lifelessness. When we truly reconnect with HaShem through our prayers, we're beside ecstatic to find our father still alive and He is overjoyed to find His son still lives.

That pure joy, that wonderous disbelief, is what true prayer is meant to feel like.

Now imagine feeling that feeling three times every day!

of sound and noise

It is possible to sit right next to someone you care about, carry on an entire  conversation with them, and never once stop thinking about what you are missing on TV right now.

It's as if you never spoke to them at all, you were never there, they don't even exist.

I'd hazard a guess that a lot of our daily interactions run fairly close to this scenario, whether it be TV we're thinking about, or anything else, even things of great importance.

If we truly love someone, they deserve our full attention, our time. This is such a hard lesson to absorb as a father and a husband. There's so much to do, but it's so much less important than the minutes or hours we spend with those who mean the most to us.

I wouldn't even be able to write this now, if my parents and grandparents hadn't embodied just this throughout my childhood.

The same is true about God.

Prayer is an opporunity to talk to HaShem.

HaShem is above time and space, He's got nowhere to go, He's listening.

We can pray three times a day every day, without our thoughts ever leaving the latest episode of Prison Break.  (Or House, the newest Harry Potter book,  the latest extrapolations of the foremost breakthroughs in modern medicine and cosmology, dinner, deadlines, music, traffic, anything at all other than God.)

Yeah, all this is pretty cliched, it's not new, someone probably pointed it out before---but were you listening then, or thinking about TV?

Either way, it's not the point I intended to make. My point is that this is just the very first step, the beginning of the road.

A Tzaddik isn't someone who invests energy and time in his prayers---that's what everyone is supposed to do!

And what's the next step? When I'm in traffic, cooking, cleaning, working, designing, developing, shopping, eating, building, creating, resting; I'm thinking about God. Everything I'm doing is establishing, growing, my relationship with Him.

It's not about becoming boring and one-dimensional, it's about uncovering deeper dimensions within the mundane. 

Everyone wants God to talk to them. 

Everyone.

But we all think God talks like He's on the telephone, or via SMS. How limited are we when we SMS, email, IM? Don't we sometimes want the closeness and warmth of a physical person looking at us? All those additional channels of stimulus add infinitely to that relationship.

Yet HaShem, who is truly infinite, we expect a phone call. "Yo"

The deepest and most basic teaching of the Baal Shem Tov is that every element of our experience, every stimulus that fires a single neuron, is part of the totality of God's communication with us. 

It's not a phone call, it's an intensely overwhelming experience of the infinite that barely lets us maintain our sanity -- that's why we prefer TV over trying to really connect. That's why we prefer Boing Boing or Wikipedia to trying to visit every page on the web every day.

This is why relationships are so important. This is the secret of relationships. By relating to others, making space for others, being open to others, we create an awareness, a vessel, exactly that which we need to start to relate to and digest the words of God. (which are always being spoken)

the shame of poverty

Last night during my Hevruta on Notzer Hesed, I was able to gain a much clearer insight into something I had learned in the past in the Pri Ha'aretz, something that seems to happen a lot.

The Pri Ha'aretz teaches that every single absence that is noticeable in the world is an instance where the Shechinah was forced into exile. She is in exile in the lack. When we pray for her return to her rightful place, then all of that which is lacking in the world will collectively vanish with the restoration of her true status.

It's a difficult concept to picture, but it does illustrate the connection that is often made that we should pray for the well-being (completion) of the Shechinah, rather than for our own personal needs.

Still, I want to bring it down to a level that's a little more within our grasp. Even if it will be a very esoteric grasp, we'll try to get some kind of grasp on the abstract metaphysics of the issue.

The Shechinah, in a sense, represents the revelation of Godliness in the world. Godliness permeates all of existence, but in the default state of this world it is hidden from sight. Any revellation of Godliness is a manifestation we call the Shechinah. 

[One question that arises here is that if we see two different people whose lives are both a revellation of Godliness, this doesn't imply there are two Shechinahs, rather the Tanya explains that it is like sunlight shining through two windows in one room.]

Now, the nature of the Shechinah is that she has nothing of her own. (לית לה מגרמא כלום) And what we refer to as Godliness (that which is hidden) is the source of all the Shechinah's emanations.

Normally, the ideal state of existence is the unification of the Shechinah with the Holy One Blessed be He. Now we aren't talking about two separate entities no matter how it may sound, we are simply talking about uniting the Revelation of Godliness, with the Hidden Godliness; it's all just God. (אין עוד מלבדו - there is none other than He) What this means in more practical or dynamic terms is that the revelation of Godliness is not missing from the world. Whenever a lack of Godliness becomes apparent, the Shechinah (its revelation) is said to be in exile. Because any need or emptiness is a function of the attribute of the Shechinah, of having nothing of her own.

So, now that we kind of understand that idea. We understand perhaps the smallest part of what it means to say the Shechinah is in exile. (If we were delving into this discussion with the aid of describing and explaining the sefirot, some of the points might be more accessible, but others might be more confusing, so we will leave the matter of sefirot aside from this post. For those who would like to see a little bit of the connection, suffice it to say that Malchut which is also called the Shechinah is the vessel within which all of creation (revelation of Godliness) occurs.)

Now, having some basic framework from which to work with, lets try and take another step: When we sin, we cause the Godliness that was invested in that sin to become deeply hidden. We cause less revellation of Godliness in the world, we cause the exile of the Shechinah. The Shechinah, now in exile, is pained or suffers because her poverty, her lack of anything of her own, is revealed to everyone through this apparent lack of Godliness.

When we pray for the sake of the completion of the Shechinah, for the union of the Shechinah with The Holy One Blessed Be He, it is the same as saying we are praying for Godliness to be openly revealed in the whole world. In this way, the Shechinah no longer lacks for anything, she is no longer in exile, she no longer suffers the embarrassment of 'abject poverty.'

When we pray in this way, it not only addresses all of our own needs and lacks but those of all the world, for every need in the world is merely an expression of the Shechinah's having nothing of her own.

more to pray about

Last erev Shabbath I gave a short dvar Torah summarised here:

We know from the 13 rules of how to expound Torah (according to Rabi Yishmael), that we can learn about the generality, the klal, from the specific, the prat. 

Today we'll look at a single prat, and from this, learn about everything, the klal.

Just as it's obvious to us that we can never stop praying for our children, that they are always a work in progress, so too it becomes obvious to us that we must always pray for every aspect of our lives and existence.

Think about it for a minute.

Money, clothing, transport, food, health, everything. Even when something is "in the bag" still, it can devaluate, rip, break, rot, fail, or cease to be. When we rest assured that what is in front of our face is "a sure thing," we're forgetting HaShem's constant hand in our lives.

This isn't meant to make you paranoid, just the opposite. 

When you realize that there is no substantive difference between holding something in your hand or not having it all, you can recognize that it all depends solely on HaShem. At this point you can be comforted by the fact that He is infinitely more trustworthy than government, insurance, investment, lifetime warantees, or employment.

HaShem provides us all with everything we need, not medicare, not taxes, not 28-hr [sic] work days. Pray for it.

"So you're telling me not to work?" No!!! Work, but recognize that the work itself is a form of prayer to HaShem, the most basic form of prayer: "I'm doing my part HaShem, from here on out, it's up to you." 

If your work performance is less than "I'm doing my part," well, then that's not really praying is it?

This is the heart and essence of the deepest kabbalistic meditations, yihudim and kawanoth: "I'm doing my part HaShem, from here on out it's up to you." You are entering into a complete and total partnership with HaShem.

This was the legacy left to my father by my grandfather ztz"l, and I'm still learning it to this day.

Everything, whatever it is you are doing right now, has the potential to be a prayer. If it doesn't, then stop doing it. If it isn't then ask yourself why it isn't, or better yet, make it so.

years blending into days

I had a huge connection come together during my chevruta on Likkutei Halachoth. Essentially Rebbe Natan might have been spelling it out, but it hit me all of a sudden, that you can look at the schedule of the year just as if the whole year was one big day.

We have 3 regalim each essentially parallel to the 3 daily prayers. Av is the end of the day, Elul is bein ha'Arba'im. Tishrei is the beginning of night. Sukkoth is Arvith, (Maariv) the prayer of Yaakov avinu. Heshvan and Kislev is the deep of night, Hannukah is hatzoth halailah. Just as we awaken at Hatzoth to acknowledge the first promise of light, in the context of the year we light the Hannukah candles to fulfill the exact same purpose. Tevet, Shevat, is the early early morning. Adar is zman kriath shema, when you can recognize your fellow from a few paces--hence shalach manot to one's fellow. Nisan is netz haHamah. Pesah is Shaharith, the tefillah of Avraham Avinu.  Iyar, Sivan is late morning, Shavuoth is minchah, the tefillah of Yitzhak Avinu, at minchah Gedolah. Tammuz, Av is the dwindling of the day, 17 Tammuz is minchah ketanah, and 9 Av is shkiah.

I don't know if I have it all right, but of it all I'm pretty clear on Hannukah being Hatzot ha'lailah, which is definitely hinted at in Likkutei Halachoth, Hilchoth Birkoth HaShahar.

razing jericho

יהושע בן נון חיבר תפילת עלינו לשבח בנצחון יריחו ובו מסיימים כל תפילה כדי להזכירנו שבכל תפילה אפשר לזכות לכנס בארץ הקודש

The prayer with which we end each one of the three daily tefillot, (prayers) Aleinu L'shabayah, was originally penned by Yehoshuah Ben Nun.

He composed Aleinu upon the conquest of Yericho (Jericho) when Bnei Yisrael first entered the land that was to become the land of Yisrael, already promised to Avraham Yitzhak and Yaakov.

From this we can take away that every single prayer has the potential to be like the first time we entered the land of Israel.

Bnei Yisrael surrounded the city seven times, blowing the shofar, and the walls came tumbling down. HaShem fought on our behalf, and we followed His instructions in good faith.

Every prayer has the same potential, we work to refine each of our own attributes, the seven middoth, through the blowing of the shofar, reminding ourselves to return to HaShem in true Teshuvah, and then HaShem brings us out of Egypt and returns us to our land, to closeness with Him.

With every prayer from start to finish we can enter the land and conquer it. Dwell in it in the comfort of HaShem's merciful protections. Perhaps this is why we say the blessing Goel Yisrael - He redeems Israel, in each of the amidahs.