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Translation (Olat Re’iah):

And now, on account of our sins, the Mikdash is destroyed and the Tamid offering has ceased…. But you have declared that the prayers of our lips can be accepted in place of korbanot (lit. ונשלמה פרים שפתינו). Therefore, may it be Your will, our G-d and G-d of our forefathers, that the words of our mouths be accepted before you as if we had offered the Tamid in its appointed time…

Matters of spirit and sanctity are not arbitrary. G-d, the Creator of all worlds, has imbued the spiritual world with certain laws and axioms. The sacrifices seem to embody this principle more than any other area of the Torah, given their myriad of details and precise requirements. G-d is intensely concerned with what type of animal is brought, where is it offered, how its blood is applied to the altar, etc.. This system contains tremendous spiritual power. Indeed, the sacrifices bring about nothing less than the indwelling of the Shechinah in the Mikdash and the Jewish people. We would thus expect that after the destruction of the Mikdash, the spiritual content of the korbanot is irrevocably lost.

However, we must bear in mind that G-d can supersede the laws that govern the spiritual world. His supernal and all-encompassing will is the substrate of all existence. G-d’s will cannot be constrained by anything, and certainly not by the spiritual ‘laws’ that He Himself authored!  And so if man fails to realize some spiritual goal, G-d’s vivifying will can reveal itself and complete whatever is missing. This is what Tehillim means when it describes G-d as the One who “Opens his hands and satisfies every living thing with its desire”,[1]the One who “Encourages the humble with salvation.’[2] This is the dynamic at work in the principle of ונשלמה פרים שפתינו. G-d supersedes the limitations of the normal spiritual system. He accepts sanctity of speech in place of sanctity of action.

But this only works because human speech emanates from the innermost dimension of the soul. When a Jew speaks, he taps into a sanctity that transcends his individual being, a sanctity that is rooted in the collective heritage of the Jewish people. That sanctity manifested itself openly when the Temple stood and is still latent within us, notwithstanding the fact that the Temple has been destroyed. Even in our lowly exilic state, we harbor an inner connectedness to G-d that we have inherited from our ancestors. And in the merit of that inherited, collective sanctity, we express our yearning that the supernal will of G-d accept the deficient “offering of our lips” and make it whole.

Putting this all together, we now understand why we introduce the prayer that G-d accept “the words of our mouths… as if we had offered the Tamid in its appointed time” with the words “Let it be Your will, our G-d and G-d of our forefathers….”

• “May it be Your will” – because only Your supernal will can transcend the limitations of the ordinary spiritual order.
• “Our G-d and G-d of our forefathers” – in the merit of the collective, ancestral sanctity of the Jewish people, which we express by means of our speech.

[1] I think Rav Kook is interpreting as follows – G-d is משביע, i.e. completes, the רצון, the incomplete and unactualized will of all of his creations.

[2] 145:16, 147:6.

Story

I think the following well-known story about the Ba’al Shem Tov illustrates Rav Kook’s point:

A certain villager used to pray on the Yamim Noraim in the Beit Midrash of the Baal Shem Tov. He had a child whose wits were dull and who could not even read the letters in the siddur, much less recite a holy word. His father never brought him along to the city, because the boy was completely ignorant. But when the boy became Bar Mitzvah, his father took him with him to the city for Yom Kippur, so as to be able to watch him and keep him from eating out of simple ignorance.

Now the boy had a little flute on which he used to play all the time when he sat in the field tending his flock.  He took the flute with him from home and put it in his coat, and his father did not know about it. The boy sat in synagogue all Yom Kippur without praying, because he did not know how.

During Musaf, he said to his father. “Father, I want to play the flute.”  His father became terrified and spoke sharply to the boy.  The boy had to restrain himself. During the Afternoon Prayer the boy repeated again: “Father let me play on my flute.” Seeing that the boy wanted badly to play on his flute, his father said to him “Where is the flute? The child pointed to the pocket of his coat. The father therefore held the child’s pocket in his hand, to keep the boy from taking out the flute and playing on it.

Holding the pocket with the flute in this way, the man stood and prayed Neilah.  In the middle of the prayer, the boy forced the flute out of his pocket and blew a blast so loud that all who heard it were taken aback.

When the Baal Shem Tov heard the sound, he shortened his prayer. After the prayer the Baal Shem Tov said, “With the sound of this flute the child lifted up all the prayers and eased my burden.  For this child does not know anything but by dint of his seeing and hearing the prayer of Israel all of this holy day, the prayer’s holy spark kindled a fire in him and the flames of his longing burned higher and higher until his soul nearly expired. Because of the strength of his longing he played the note of his heart truly, without any distraction, for the sole sake of the Name of G-d. Now the pure breath of his lips was very acceptable to Him and by this means all the prayers were lifted up.”

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. Rav Kook writes that the spiritual world has its own laws and axioms, and he discusses one in particular. Can you think of any others?
2. How would we relate to people differently if we judged them on their ideals and their yearnings, instead of what they actually accomplished? How would we judge ourselves differently?
3. The idea of ונשלמה פרים שפתינו is one connection between speech and korbanot, but we find another in the very notion of prayer itself. Our Sages (Gemara Berachot, 26b) teach that the daily prayers were established in correspondence to the sacrificial order in the Mikdash (i.e. two daily Tamid offerings and the burning of animal parts in the evening). Can Rav Kook’s teaching shed light on the value or spiritual function of prayer in general?
4. Does the idea that the spiritual world has its own laws make sense to you, or is it counterintuitive? Why or why not?
5. Can you think of anyone (living or historical) who embodies the idea of being connected to the collective sanctity of the Jewish people?
6. The simple understanding of ונשלמה פרים שפתינו is that it is limited to korbanot, but some sources extend it to all mitzvot. They claim that learning about a particular mitzvah contains all of the spiritual potential of actual performance. Which side of this debate do you think makes more sense?

About this Piece

Olat Re’iah is a two-volume commentary on the siddur that Rav Kook began writing while trapped in London during World War I. Only a small portion was compiled by Rav Kook himself; the majority was collected by Rav Kook’s son from a variety of his father’s writings and unpublished manuscripts. The Hebrew in Olat Re’iah is quite challenging, but an English translation was published only a few months ago by Koren. The translation was done by Bezalel Naor, who is one of the world experts on Rav Kook’s thought. Koren’s translation is accessible and infuses prayer with Rav Kook’s unique dimension of freshness and exciting spirituality. It is well worth your time.