Likutei Tefilot: How the Teachings Became Prayers

Anyone who sets the two books side by side sees that the prayers follow the order of the teachings. The first teaching in Part II of Likutei Moharan opens: "For the man of Israel was created to have dominion over the angels. And this is the purpose and the end of Israel" (Likutei Moharan II, 1:1). And the first prayer in Part II of Likutei Tefilot opens with the same idea, addressed to God: "You created Israel Your people so that they might merit the true purpose" (Likutei Tefilot II, 1:1).

The book had an introduction: Rabbi Nathan writes in Sichot HaRan that Rabbi Nachman's words about the delights made Above from such prayers were printed "already in the introduction to the prayers" (Sichot HaRan 145). The passages in the site's corpus contain no sentence stating explicitly who composed the book or when it was printed, so we do not determine that here. What there is, is Rabbi Nathan's explicit testimony about the path itself, brought below. On his life and his part in the writings, see Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov.

The instruction comes right after a long passage on hitbodedut, a set time in which a person goes "to pour out one's words between oneself and one's Maker" in the language he speaks (Likutei Moharan II, 25:1). And after it, in the adjacent section:

And the same sentence goes on with the two questions the prayer is built from: "when will he too merit to come to all of this, and how far he is from it". And right after that, the request itself: "And he should ask of Him, may He be blessed, that He grant him the merit to come to everything said there in that discourse" (Likutei Moharan II, 25:2).

Two things stand out in the wording of the instruction. First: it has no fixed text. It relies on the one who truly desires it, that "he will understand by himself, one thing from another, how to conduct himself in this", provided his words are "words of grace and well-founded arguments". Second: it ends with the worth of the thing, "and especially when one makes prayer out of Torah; from this very great delight is produced on high" (Likutei Moharan II, 25:2).

In Sichot HaRan, Rabbi Nathan writes about the conversation in which the path was handed to him:

In the same section he adds three details. Once Rabbi Nachman said to another person: "I very much want prayers to be made from the Torah lessons, but I do not know to whom to entrust this." Once he showed Rabbi Nathan a book called "Yad HaKetanah", at the end of which the author "speaks several matters from his discourses to God, blessed be He, in the language of prayer", and Rabbi Nathan understood from the hint "that his longing was very great to do so with his holy Torah lessons". And he also said that from this, delights are made Above "such that such great delights have never risen before Him, blessed be He, since the days of the world" (Sichot HaRan 145).

Rabbi Nathan also explains why these things were said by hint: "For this was his way: to hint at lofty things through small things", "so that a person would understand his intention by himself, if he wished" (Sichot HaRan 145). The counsel also entered Likutei Etzot, in a single sentence: "It is also good to make prayers out of the teachings" (Likutei Etzot, Hitbodedut 14).

It is worth noticing the difference between the two sources, and this is our reading: in Likutei Moharan II 25 the instruction is for anyone who "studies or hears some Torah discourse", and in the conversation with Rabbi Nathan a practical detail is added, "that it is good to write down the prayers for oneself" (Sichot HaRan 145). A prayer made from a teaching is not only a moment of awakening; it can be written down and returned to.

The first teaching in Likutei Moharan opens with the verse "Happy are those whose way is wholehearted, who walk in the Torah of God" and teaches that "through the Torah all the prayers and all the requests that we request and pray are accepted" (Likutei Moharan I, 1:1). Further on it describes how the evil inclination works:

And in the prayer beside it, the same words in the first person:

The words "clothes itself" and "as if" pass over almost verbatim. But the teaching describes a way of working, "and misleads a person" (Likutei Moharan I, 1:5), while the prayer speaks of the self, "urging me", and adds an image of its own, "it hides a net for my feet" (Likutei Tefilot I, 1:3).

And on grace. The teaching explains why requests are not accepted: "For the main reason that requests are not accepted is that the words have no grace, and they do not enter the heart of the one from whom something is requested" (Likutei Moharan I, 1:3). And the prayer asks for exactly what is missing:

And so throughout the prayer, for example:

• In the teaching: "a Jew must always look into the intelligence within each thing" (Likutei Moharan I, 1:2). In the prayer: "that I may merit to look at everything in the light of the holy intellect that is within it" (Likutei Tefilot I, 1:5).
• In the teaching: the Torah "is entirely the Names of the Holy One, blessed be He", and it drives out "the spirit of folly" (Likutei Moharan I, 1:5). In the prayer: "the holy Torah, which is entirely Your holy Names" (Likutei Tefilot I, 1:1).
• In the teaching: "the true grace and importance of Israel have fallen" (Likutei Moharan I, 1:1). In the prayer: "all the grace and importance of Israel, Your holy people, has fallen" (Likutei Tefilot I, 1:7).

Looking closely at these pairs, it emerges, and this is our explanation and not the wording of the source, that the main change is not in the content but in the person and the tense. The teaching says "must" and speaks of every person; the prayer says "that I may merit" and speaks of the one praying (Likutei Moharan I, 1:2; Likutei Tefilot I, 1:5). That is exactly how the instruction is phrased: to ask "that He grant him the merit to come to everything said there in that discourse" (Likutei Moharan II, 25:2).

The second question of the instruction, "and how far he is from it" (Likutei Moharan II, 25:2), is also heard in the prayers. After the prayer on Part II, teaching 1, recalls the purpose the teaching speaks of, it says: "how far I am from this purpose, from one end to the other" (Likutei Tefilot II, 1:1). The teaching sets a goal, and the prayer admits the distance from it and asks to cross it.

And there is a fine circle here. Hitbodedut should be "with words of grace, appeasement and conciliation" (Likutei Moharan II, 25:1), and the prayer made from a teaching should have "words of grace and well-founded arguments" (Likutei Moharan II, 25:2). And the first teaching in the book is a teaching about grace, through which words enter the heart (Likutei Moharan I, 1:3). One can understand that the prayer on this teaching asks for the very instrument of prayer: that my words be words of grace.

One way is to study a teaching of Likutei Moharan and right after it the prayer made from it, as in the instruction: "when one studies or hears some Torah discourse from the true tzaddik, he should make a prayer out of it" (Likutei Moharan II, 25:2). The site has a book built this way, Writings of Rabbi Nachman: teachings and prayers, in which each teaching stands beside the prayer whose wording is close to it. The match there is set by textual similarity or by a documented anchor, and the pages tell the reader so. The whole book can be read in Likutei Tefilot in the library.

A second way is to make a prayer yourself. Rabbi Nathan heard "that it is good to write down the prayers for oneself" (Sichot HaRan 145). Our suggestion, not a text from the source: after studying a teaching, write a few lines following the questions of the instruction. What is said here. When will I merit this. How far I am from it. And a simple request to come to it.

The language need not be the language of the books. Hitbodedut is "in the language that one speaks" (Likutei Moharan II, 25:1), and Sichot HaRan brings in his name:

And for one whose words do not come, that too has a place in the same teaching: "And he can also make a conversation and prayer out of this itself", asking that his mouth be opened (Likutei Moharan II, 25:1). There is no promise here of a particular result; there is a way to take what one learns and bring it into prayer.