Tefillah - 063 Arousing Hashem's Mercy

Meriting Hashem’s Mercy - Through Revealing Mercy Upon Others

 מחל לנו מלכינו כי פשענו – “Forgive us, our King, for we have been negligent to sin.”

Our Rabbis wrote that there are three levels of sin – חטא (unintentional sin), עון (iniquity) and פשע (intentional sin).

In the beginning of this blessing of Shemoneh Esrei, we asked Hashem, סלח לנו אבינו כי חטאנו – “Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned” - we ask Hashem to be forgiven from sins that we committed unintentionally. Here in this part of Shemoneh Esrei, מחל לנו כי פשענו, we are asking Hashem to forgive us from even sins that we committed intentionally – פשע.

How are we able to ask Hashem to forgive us from sins that we did when they were done intentionally?

When we ask Hashem here to be forgiven for sins that were committed intentionally, we use the word מחל, which can be rearranged to form the word חמל, mercy. Hashem has mercy on His creations. A person grows in his mother’s womb, which is called “rechem”, from the word rachamim, compassion. This alludes to how a person is raised by his parents, who had mercy on him. Without mercy, a person wouldn’t be able to be nurtured properly. Parents have pain from raising their children, but Hashem imbibes the parents with a trait of mercy on their children, so that their children will be raised with mercy and thus survive.

In this blessing of Shemoneh Esrei, we ask that Hashem have mercy on the Jewish people. But Hashem also has mercy on the other nations of the world. He has mercy on His entire Creation, on animals, plants and even on inanimate objects. (The sefarim hakedoshim state that even inanimate objects have feelings in them; there is a saying in the Talmud Yerushalmi which supports this concept).

The gentiles can do teshuvah, and Hashem has mercy on them. The sefarim discuss about how exactly a gentile can do teshuvah; so a gentile can to do teshuvah and merit the mercy of Hashem.

If a person has rachamim on others, he can awaken the rachamim of Hashem, for Hashem deals with us accordingly. So if we don’t awaken mercy for others, we don’t awaken Hashem’s mercy. Hashem forgives, but that is only when He exercises compassion, which we need to awaken.

Thus, if we don’t awaken His middah of rachamim, then there is no point in asking Hashem to have rachamim on us. Hashem’s trait of rachamim must be awakened by our own middah of rachamim, so if we want to be forgiven by Hashem, we need to forgive others.

Let us reflect into this concept: how Hashem has mercy upon His entire Creation.

How To View The Other Nations

[Here in Eretz Yisrael], in our communities, we often see some Arabs or Africans hanging around. How do we feel towards them?

There is a rule that “Esav hates Yaakov”; although Esav kissed Yaakov, deep down, Esav hates Yaakov (This was said about Esav, not Yishmael). The nations of the world are ingrained with hatred for Jews. Ever since we received the Torah at Har Sinai, Chazal say that hatred for the Jews entered the nations of the world; Chazal found a hint to this in the word “Sinai” comes from the word “sinah”, hatred, because hatred for Jews descended onto the nations ever since we stood at Har Sinai, where we received the Torah and we were designated as Hashem’s chosen nation.

The gentiles have a hatred for our people. Naturally, because we know this, our reaction is to reciprocate their negative feelings towards us and hate them back. After all, the rule is “just as water reflects one face to another, so does the heart of man reflect one to another man”. The Tosafos[1] state that if a person knows that someone else hates him, he will naturally hate him back.

The truth is that although we must indeed feel separate and apart from the nations of the world. Ever since we stood at Sinai to receive the Torah, we were elevated from the other nations, and this applies that we need to feel how we are elevated and apart from them. If a Jew is not aware of this and he merely showers love and mercy upon gentiles, this will cause him to have an abysmal descent from his spiritual level. Throughout the generations, thousands of Jews have had a complete downfall by showing unrestrained loved to gentiles and by mixing with them.

A person needs to deeply realize that we are separate from the gentile nations. Not only must we make sure that we don’t change our names, clothing and language to be like them. Our whole lifestyle has to be different than them.

A Jew must first make sure that he realizes how a Jew must be separate from a gentile, before he seeks to increase his love and mercy towards them. That is the first step.

The natural feeling of a Jew is simply to feel hatred to a gentile, for we know that they hate us. But the truthful perspective is that while it is true that we must be apart from them, we also need to reveal mercy towards them.

For example, when we see an Arab or an African hanging around in our vicinity, do we ever think towards him that he, too, is deserving of Hashem’s mercy? Hashem has mercy on all His creations.

So if something bad happens to a gentile, how should we react? Often, a person thinks, “Good. He deserves it.” But this reaction is really coming from cruelty, because he is failing to emulate Hashem’s mercy upon His creations.

Yet there is something we should know even before this. If a person doesn’t feel a love for another Jew, why would he feel any mercy on a gentile? If a person skips over the stage of Ahavas Yisrael (love for the Jewish people), he surely won’t be able to love a gentile either.

There are Jews who want want to shower mercy upon gentiles when they haven’t yet worked on developing love for their own fellow Jewish brethren. They might claim that their mercy towards gentiles that is because they are trying to emulate how Hashem has mercy on all His creations. But it’s really because such a person can’t deal with the truth [of first feeling a love for the Jewish people]. He therefore runs away from the truth, disguised in his attempt to shower love and mercy upon the gentiles. There are also people who have compassion on dogs, but they don’t act so nice to human beings.

We must first reveal compassion to other Jews, if we hope to have any compassion on Hashem’s other creations. So we first need to become compassionate to every single Jew, and even towards those whom we are permitted to hate – because ultimately, Hashem has mercy on all of His creations. After we feel a love for every Jew we come across, we can then seek to expand our mercy more outward towards the rest of Creation.

Arousing Our Mercy On Others

Take some time to make the following reflection.

First of all, who are the people you love? Sometimes, a person doesn’t even love his own family members. So the very step here is to make sure that you are revealing love for those who are closest to you.

After this, you should progress to a higher level, and feel compassion on those whom you feel act differently than you. Sometimes other people have a more correct way of life than you do, and sometimes, their way of life is incorrect. In either case, you need to feel compassion towards a person who lives differently than you do - even if his way of life is definitely the wrong way to live.

This point requires caution, though, because when you develop a strong love and compassion for others, you might become too attached with others who act improperly, and this will endanger your own spiritual level.

So there must be a balance. A person must to make sure he feels totally separate from this generation, and at the same time, he must feel love and compassion on all people of this generation.

If a person doesn’t make sure to keep himself away from this generation, he will foolishly connect with people who are totally wicked, such as souls of the Erev Rav, and then be negatively affected by them.

In Summary

First, separate yourself [both in the physical as well as on an inward level] from all your surroundings; feel that you are apart from this generation. Then, seek to improve how you connect with others and feel mercy upon others.

The very first thing you need to do before all of this, as we said, is make sure that your home situation is good, that you are showing more and more compassion towards family. This is the first basic step you need to go through. After that, expand that arousal of love upon all other Jews as well.

After that, feel bad for others who are in pain, whether they are in physical pain, or whether they are Jews who are lacking in their spirituality. In order to merit Hashem’s mercy, we need to awaken it by having mercy on others. The world is full of terrible suffering; we all know this. There are all kinds of problems – health, children, shidduchim, parnassah, etc. Each person has his own problems. But there is much suffering as well that is taking place in the souls of people. People these days live in darkness; they are living in an inner kind of imprisonment.

The first step in this [as we said] is to make sure that you are separated from the generation, and after that, arouse your compassion on them. Cry for other Jews and feel sorry for them, in whatever way they are lacking. After you have done this, you can then arouse compassion on the gentiles you see, such as the Arabs and Africans that are hanging around in our vicinities.

Mercy Towards All of Creation

We need to feel merciful towards the entire Creation! There is a famous story that the Chazon Ish didn’t want to walk past a small chicken, so that it shouldn’t become afraid and maybe die from fear. This was not because the Chazon Ish thought deeply about this. It was rather because he felt compassion towards the entire Creation.

The degree of how much compassion you need to have differs. The main compassion you need to have, as we said, must first be developed towards other Jews. You also need to feel compassion to a gentile, but not as much as you need to feel towards another Jew.

You also need to feel compassion towards animals, but it doesn’t have to be as much as you feel towards a gentile. You don’t have to be as compassionate on a plant or rock as you are towards an animal. But you definitely need to feel compassion on all of Creation, because Hashem has mercy on His entire Creation.

Emulating Hashem’s Mercy

When a person lives without palpable emunah in Hashem, he does not see how all of Creation is Hashem’s handiwork. When he kills a mosquito, he thinks he’s just getting rid of a pest, and he does not think for a second that he has just killed a creation of Hashem.

However, mercy alone, without any restraint, is not the way of a Jew. This is the path of a gentile. When a Jew is merciful, he needs to realize that Hashem has mercy on all of His creation, and therefore, he too needs to have mercy. A Jew needs to incorporate a sense of G-dliness into his trait of mercy.

If a person wants to develop his mercy on others, he is pulled towards what it means to feel others’ pain; perhaps he will want to go to places in which he can observe how other Jews are suffering. This is only half of one’s avodah.

First, a person needs to realize what the essence of mercy is: because Hashem has mercy on all of His creations. Because Hashem has mercy on all of his Creation, we also need to have mercy towards His creations.

Upon gaining this perspective, we can act truly merciful towards others, and through arousing mercy on all others, we merit Hashem’s mercy and forgiveness.