[Avodah] efficacy of prayer

[Michael Makovi]

> Two questions
>
>  1. My wife spoke this morning with a former terrorist victim (lost
>  husband and 2 sons).
>  She asked my wife that thursday morning there was a public prayer at the kotel
>  with important rabbis. That night was the tragedy at yeshivat hakotel.
>  What good is all these prayers?
>  What do you answer this woman?

It was Merkaz haRav, not Yeshivat haKotel, but anyway....

I really have no idea, but here's the best I could think of:

Perhaps G-d had some overwhelming purpose in this that no prayer could
overcome (i.e., if you pray for what's NOT good for you, even if you
think that it is good for you, I should hope that G-d would not answer
the prayer).

Perhaps fewer people got hurt than would have otherwise.

Perhaps it is because of some sin we have, that no amount of prayer is
strong enough to overcome.

Perhaps G-d, for some reason, put the prayer in the bank for later -
i.e., perhaps it has had some effect on the future, that we cannot see
yet. I recall in A Tzadik in Our Time, somewhere, it says something
about no prayer or tear going to waste, and that eventually, it will
bear fruit, even if we cannot see it. Either in that book or somewhere
else, there was a story about a woman who prayed for her Cantonist son
to return to Judaism - everyday she'd pour tears for hours over her
Tehillim. But to her dying day, he never returned to Torah. But, after
her death, when he went to pick up her belongings, he found the
swollen tear-stained book of Tehillin, and this sparked his teshuva.
So you never know.

>  2. People I know had an argument whether it is better to pray for oneself or
>  rather it is preferable to ask a tzaddik to pray.
>  I am convinced that praying oneself is better but I need sources not logic
>  --
>  Eli Turkel

Well, for an argument *against* what you say (sorry!), Rav Hirsch to
Avraham praying for Sodom and Gomorrah, and again to Avraham praying
for Avimelech (return his wife, for he is a navi, and he will pray for
you), says that a tzadik's prayers are effective because in effect, he
is saying, "G-d, You have deemed it proper that ploni go through kach
v'kach. But, have You deemed it proper that **I** suffer for the fact
that he is suffering?" A tzadik makes others' pain his own, and so G-d
cannot punish ploni without punishing (unjustifiably) the tzadik too.
I am reminded of the story of Reb Aryeh Levine (I think, but maybe
someone else) that he said to the doctor, "My wife's foot is hurting
*us*".

Mikha'el Makovi