Is it wrong to think my prayers are what got me the job, the shidduch, or the healing?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau teaches that it is beautiful to cry out to Hashem and beautiful to believe, “but don't confuse yourself.” We love the feeling that our davening made the difference, that Hashem gave us the job or the shidduch “because we cried and we believed.”
The Torah warns against saying kochi v'otzem yadi, “my strength, my power, that's what got me here.” We tend to think that warning applies only to business and material success, he says, “but it applies just as much to” ruchniyus. When you say it is my davening, my kesher, “you're still in the same trap. You just wrapped your ego in a tallis.”
The truth, Rabbi Landau says, is that “you didn't get it because of you, not your talent, not your holiness, not your special connection.” Hashem gave it to you because He chose to, because He is infinite, and “because he needs you to do it for your mission.”
Related concepts: Prayer that starts in the heart · Selfawareness
In A Soul at Peace: “My Own Strength,” Dressed in Holiness
Also answered in this teaching
So should I stop crying out to Hashem?
No. Rabbi Landau repeats that “it's beautiful to cry out to Hashem, it's beautiful to believe.” The trap is only in crediting yourself for what Hashem chose to give.
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Prayer and belief are beautiful, but they are not the reason you received what you have.
Fear, vulnerability, or tension
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau calls this one of the subtlest traps in serving Hashem: it does not look like arrogance, “it looks like faith,” and so it is harder to notice.
What may be behind it
Why is spiritual pride so hard to see?
In A Soul at Peace he writes that in business it is fairly easy to spot the “I,” but “in spirituality, the ‘I’ puts on a prayer shawl.” Hasidic teaching calls this “holy ego.”
Deepest human truth
What you receive comes because Hashem chose you, because He is infinite, and because your mission still needs you. Seeing that frees a person from the quiet claim that Hashem owes him.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Faith, Providence, and the Jewish Destiny · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz