Why You Should Pray With A Minyan And Which Is The Most Important Prayer Of The Day?

0:51You have to make sure that you pray with kavanah, meaning that you have full intention and understanding of what you're saying. And you're not thinking about all the mundane things. You're not thinking about all the things that are going on in your life. You're not thinking about what you're going to eat for lunch. You're not thinking about what's going on in the market. You're not thinking about all the stuff that's technically in your mind anyway. Now, truth be told, most of us think about a bunch of stuff during prayer. Sometimes we have a really, really good prayer where part of the prayer we thought about Hashem, and part of the prayer, not so much. Sometimes we're fantastic the whole time, and we thought about Hashem, but that's not common. It's not common. So that means you're going to go and pray, let's say Mincha. By the way, just so you know, Mincha is the most important prayer of the entire day. It's not Shacharit. Most people think it's Shacharit because it's the longest. It's not; it's actually not the most important. The most critical prayer of the day is Mincha. So you're going to pray Mincha. Reality is that you know during the Amidah, out of the 19 brachot, six of them were good, six of them were kosher, but the other 13, we're not even sure if they're kosher. We're not even sure if you remember what you said at all. So now that's going to go up to Shamayim, and Hashem is going to look at this. Are you serious?

2:06This is how you pray to Me? You pray to Me like this? This half a prayer? How do you expect Me to give you parnassah, zivug, good health? All of these things you're asking for, you forgot the words at the time you said them. How? Now, you send Hashem a prayer like that, it's not that good. You send Hashem a prayer with full kavanah? So what happens? So the Chachamim made a takana where they said you should pray with a minyan. Why? Because they understood the mercifulness of Hashem, and they understood that if you pray with a minyan, Hashem loves unity so much. He will take the best parts of everybody's prayers because He knows His creation, and He knows that out of the fifty people, one of them is going to have one beracha that's good, another one is going to have half a beracha that's good, and another one might have really two berachot that are good. He's going to take the best pieces of everyone, combine them as one, and make it count for everybody as if everybody had a full prayer of kavana and...

3:10that means that everybody's prayer is being listened to, and everybody's prayer is perfect. On the other hand, when you pray by yourself, what ends up happening is that if you have kavanah, sometimes it's even better than being in a minyan. But if you don't have kavanah, then you're sending a gem like a, you know, like a kosher item, but we're not really sure if it's truly kosher. So, the ideal is to pray with a minyan, but again... Sometimes, if you travel a lot or if you do business or all types of things, it's not always possible to pray with a minyan. You still have to pray. You still should pray. And you should obviously always have kavanah, which means intention and focus, and that's the reason why I said before: don't think that you're allowed to, you know, ride a horse or drive a car or be busy with something else while praying. When you pray, you pray. The same thing with Torah. When you learn Torah, you learn Torah. So much so that you should remember and know that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says in the Mishnah that someone who treats their Torah learning lightly...

4:11And, you know, he has a sefer in front of him, but he also has the phone in front of him. And he has the computer in front of him. And he has, you know, a few other things in front of him. Every few seconds, he stops learning from the sefer and looks at the phone, then at the computer, and so on. In essence, he's treating the Torah with the same level of importance as his phone. Such behavior is severely frowned upon, and some authorities suggest that a person who does this could be bringing upon themselves a severe spiritual consequence. That's how serious it is. So, what do you do? You know you're going to have distractions already when you start. Anytime somebody leaves the Holy Torah to go deal with mundane things, it doesn't look good in Shamayim unless they planned it ahead. Either by saying, I'm going to study for an hour straight, or for 15 minutes straight, and then I'll do the mundane things. That's no problem, or as I believe it was Rav Moshe Feinstein who said, what you should do is already have in your head that whenever there is something that needs to happen, like a phone call or your wife calls you or your mom calls you, that's officially a time that you already plan to stop. Planning is key to maintaining the holiness of one's learning. Straight two hours straight. Whatever it is, 15 minutes straight, and then I'll do the mundane things. That's no problem. I believe it was Rav Moshe Feinstein who said that what you should do is already have in your head that whenever there is something that needs to happen. Let's say there's a phone call, or your wife calls you, or your mom calls you, or something calls you, that's officially a time that you already plan to stop.

5:15But again, that doesn't mean that you should stop every two seconds. It just means that if something happens, you meant to stop that way. So it gives you, like, a "get out of jail free card" type of thing. But don't treat the Torah lightly, as if it's of the same importance as your phone or something else. So when you're talking to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, remember, you're talking to the King of Kings. You're learning His Torah, and you have to treat it accordingly. Same thing with how you go to a Beit Knesset. A Beit Knesset is a Beit Mikdash Katan. You have to come appropriately. You can't come, some people come to the Beit Knesset with a bathing suit or they come with tank tops. Now I know maybe it's more comfortable that way because you want to be like that, but the reality is you're not a baby anymore. It's not suitable. You're coming to see HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You have to come appropriately. You don't necessarily need to come with a full three-piece suit, but you have to come appropriately. For men and for women, you cannot come with only half your body covered. It's not appropriate. Remember, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is here. He's not up there; He's here, right now. It's not me; I promise you, Hashem is here, though. Any place where there's Torah, Hashem is there. So that means if you're going to meet Hashem, you have to look appropriate. Not just act appropriate, but look appropriate. So, if you're going to continue socializing, that's not appropriate.

6:32The jab was at the ones that were socializing while I'm talking. Next, Yosef, you have some questions, no? Chava, next to you. Very good question. Eliyahu HaNavi had a battle with a bunch of Nevi'ei Sheker. In the Torah, there's a story where there were a bunch of fake prophets. These fake prophets told people to go worship idols. I said, "No, no. These are instructions of Hashem. These are instructions of God to go to these middlemen." Eliyahu HaNavi was a reincarnation, some people say, or just simply the same person as Pinchas, meaning he was a very zealous person and... So zealous that HaKadosh Baruch Hu never killed him, he became a malach. And he's the one that's going to come three days before Mashiach, it says. So now Eliyahu HaNavi was very zealous for Hashem, passionate for the truth. When he saw that the leaders were all fakers, he said, "Okay, you're all going to come on your knees. You're going to come on your knees begging for Hashem to give you another chance. From now on," he says, "it's not going to rain."

7:51And it happened. For three years, it didn't rain. Famine, starvation, no vegetables, no fruits, animals are dying, people are dying, everything. And Eliyahu HaNavi was hiding in a cave, and Hashem sent him food every day. Eventually, Hashem sent him a message: "Okay, it's time, Eliyahu, to go back. It's time to go back, show them the truth." They got the message; it's time to show them. As you would have it, it says even at the gate of Gehinom, even the people who are really, really wicked. You tell them a million times, show them proof, bring them themselves, yet they continue to question, "No, no, no, maybe it's this, maybe it's that." They have a lot of questions until the gate of Gehinom. Why does it say "until the gate of Gehinom"? Because inside Gehinom, everybody knows. Everybody knows it's not worth it to sin, inside Gehinnom. But until the gate, they're still trying to fight the battle, still trying to win the battle. Point being, Rabotai, these wicked people, these fake prophets, continued with their argument and Eliyahu HaNavi wanted to show a big Kiddush Hashem and show everybody

9:05The beauty of the Torah, the beauty of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, but the emet. So he said, okay, this is what we're going to do. Every one of you, fake prophets, and you do a sacrifice to your god, and I'll do a sacrifice to Hashem. And whichever sacrifice gets accepted by heaven, that's who God is. How do we know it's accepted by heaven? It has to be a heavenly fire. A heavenly fire has to come and burn the korban. So, everybody is riled up. All types of things are going on. Everybody makes their mizbeach, they bring the korban, and each one of them starts doing their prayer to their idol, but nothing happens. They pray a little more, and still, nothing happens. They pray a bit more, and yet again, nothing happens. Eliyahu HaNavi is just sitting there, laughing at them. There's a huge crowd, thousands, possibly millions of people witnessing this scene. Eliyahu HaNavi then mocks them by saying, "No, no, maybe your idol can't hear. You should shout louder. Go ahead, call a little louder! Perhaps your idol is hard of hearing, maybe he's old." After continuing to mock them for a while, Eliyahu says, "Let me show you who HaKadosh Baruch Hu truly is."

10:21and he not only put the korban on the mizbeach, but he actually put a bunch of water on it, making it to the extent that it was literally a puddle—a puddle on top of it. Burning something is one thing, but to burn something that's in water is against nature. He literally made a puddle and then he prayed to HaKadosh Baruch Hu at the time of mincha. At the time of mincha he said, "Hashem, please show everybody You are God." A fire from heaven came and burned not only the korban; it actually burned the water. And that's why the Gemara Masechet Yoma says there are several different types of fire. There's a fire that just consumes the solids. There's a fire that consumes the liquids. There's a fire that consumes both. This was a fire that consumes both. This was the fire that consumes both solids and liquids. This is the fire of the Shechinah, it's called. The fire of the Shechinah consumes everything. Nothing is more powerful than it. So this is the fire that Eliyahu HaNavi did, and we learned from there that he did it specifically at the time of Minchah, because he knew that that's the ideal time to pray to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Good question.