Jewish Recovery Thought - Va'eira

“Pharaoh said, ‘I will let you go, that you may sacrifice to the L-rd your G-d in the wilderness; only do not go far off – pray for me!’”

Exodus 8:24

After the fourth of the ten plagues, Pharaoh acquiesces to Moses’ demand that the children of Israel be allowed to offer sacrifices to G-d in the wilderness. Later, Pharaoh rescinds this permission, but at the moment of his anguish he tells Moses, “I will let you go, that you may sacrifice to the L-rd your G-d in the wilderness; only do not go far off – pray for me!”

Man's ego is likened to an internal Pharaoh that enslaves man’s higher self to do its bidding. Like Pharaoh, the ego seeks to deny man’s need to be free to serve G-d. At times, however, our selfish nature realizes that a frontal offense against spirituality may provoke a persistent counterattack and so the ego employs a more innocuous method of thwarting our connection to G-d. It allows man to seek spirituality, but inserting the condition, “Only do not go far off – pray for me!” In other words, go and serve your G-d, just don’t break free of me. When you pray, your prayers should be tinged with selfishness. In this way, the ego hopes to insidiously undermine the whole affair. Just as in the story of the exodus, we are not truly free to serve G-d until we have made a complete break from Pharaoh and his power over us. Although we may never rid ourselves of our egocentricity, we can at least refuse to bring it along during prayer.

In our recovery, one of the skills we have had to learn is how to pray. We discover that true prayer is free of all selfish motives. We don’t pray in order to beseech G-d to serve us but the other way around. We pray in order to ask G-d how we may be of better service to Him – “Praying only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry that out.”

It is telling that the Hebrew word for prayer (tefillah) literally means connection. While the English translation denotes making requests of G-d, the Hebrew word is devoid of any such meaning. We don’t turn to G-d to make demands. We turn to G-d to be connected. Thus, even when we may ask of His help, it is only for that which we believe will enable us to better do his work. And in the event that G-d’s answer is no, we humbly and gracefully accept that whatever it is we have desired must not be necessary for our service of Him. It may sound like overstating the obvious, but prayer is no exception to the rule governing all endeavors that the less of our ego we bring along with us, the more of G-d we allow into us.