Now that we have completed our last blessing of the Amidah, we end with a lengthy final prayer that begins: Elohai, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking deceitfully. And to those who curse me may my soul be silent. May my soul be like dust to all. Open my heart with your Torah, and may my soul pursue Your commandments. As for all who plot evil against me, quickly cancel their plans and frustrate their intentions. Do it for Your name’s sake. Do it for the sake of Your right hand. Do it for the sake of Your holiness. Do it for the sake of Your Torah. In order that Your beloved ones be liberated, deliver with Your right hand and answer me. The opening word of this prayer Elokai (“my God”) is quite shocking. It marks a spiritual climax, reflecting the power of the Amidah and the effects it should have on us. Until now we referred to God as “our God” or as the God of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, but now we are saying “my God.” To say my God expresses an incredible sense of intimacy and empowerment. Let us now examine the sentences that follow that dramatic opening: “Guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking deceitfully.” During our prayers we should experience the incredible spiritual power to our words. With mere words we are able to bring blessing to ourselves, the Jewish people, the world and even God. We offer our words of prayer as a sacred gift to God which He receives with love. With our words we acknowledge God, become receptive to His presence and enable Him to become manifest in our lives. What a pity it would be then, after using the sacred power of speech to communicate with God, that we would use it to slander and lie. At the start of the Amidah we acknowledged the miraculous partnership between us and God that is manifest in every word that comes out of our mouth: “God, open my lips and my mouth will speak Your praises.” We now conclude with a request that God protect us from violating our partnership and abusing the precious power of speech. “And to those who curse me may my soul be silent.” In other words, “Please God protect me not only from instigating slander and lies, but also from reacting badly to insults or verbal abuse. May my soul be quiet so that I not get drawn into their negativity and feel any need to lash out in retaliation.” “May my soul be like dust to all,” so that “no one will even bother to curse me. May I be humble and unnoticed (never seeking to draw attention to myself) like the dust of the earth. And yet like the dust of the earth, if stepped upon, may I remain indestructible, strong and ever-present.” The request that “my soul be like dust to all” expresses not only our desire to stay humble in our relationship with others but also with God. This request is especially appropriate now that we are bold enough to address God as my God. Note, however, that dust nonetheless has substance—we are not asking to be nothing. “Open my heart with your Torah, and may my soul pursue Your commandments” so that “my prayers will inspire me to want to know more and do more, to learn more of Your Torah and aggressively pursue opportunities to serve You better.” One of the early critiques of the Chassidic movement was that, to Chassidim, prayer was more important than learning Torah. However, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught that we should wrap our Torah learning in prayer. We should pray that we learn Torah, and after we learn Torah, we should pray that we put into action the Torah that we learned. Prayer is not meant to promote passivity. It’s an active warm-up exercise to ambitiously accomplish what we are praying for. We also conclude our prayers with a request that God open our hearts with His Torah, because when we pray we are speaking to God, but when we learn Torah, God is speaking to us. The questions that arise within us and the unique insights we get when we grappling with the text are actually tools that God uses to communicate with us. When we properly learn Torah we experience God teaching us, but we also ask that His Torah open our hearts and not simply challenge our minds. The words “open my heart with your Torah” also express our desire that God’s Torah erupt from our hearts. The Torah is already in our hearts, as we say in the Shema: “And the words that I have commanded you today shall be on your heart.” Why does it say on your heart rather than in your heart? Because the words of Torah are already inside our hearts, our goal is to get them outside of our hearts and into our lives. “And may my soul (nefesh) pursue Your commandments.” According to the Kabbalah, the nefesh is the lowest spiritual aspect of our self. There are five parts to our soul: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah. Nefesh, according to some opinions, is our biological life-force. Ruach is our personality. Neshamah is our consciousness, our individual self. Chayah is the collective national self and yechida is the universal self. Therefore, when we say “my soul” here, we are referring to the lowest level, the simple living creature. In other words, we ask God that even on the most elementary level, driven by instinct alone, we pursue God’s commandments. “As for all who plot evil against me, quickly cancel their plans and frustrate their intentions.” In other words, “God protect me from those thinking negatively about me, plotting to harm me and seeking to derail me from my pursuit of Your Torah and its commandments.” “Do it for Your name’s sake.” In other words, “Without me, You have no name, God. What good is Your name if there isn’t anyone here to call You or acknowledge You?” And also: “God, for the sake of Your name, protect me from abusing the power of speech and reacting to the abusive words of others. For Your name’s sake, inspire me to learn Torah, motivate me to fulfill Your commandments and protect me from those plotting against me. Protect me and empower me, so that I can promote You, build Your name recognition and inspire others to acknowledge Your presence in their lives.” As God’s chosen people, our mission is to be God’s PR agents. Every nation has it own mission, a special calling to serve God. Some nations fulfill this mission through medicine, others through engineering, technology, commerce or agriculture. But our job is PR. We promote the name of God. We are meant to inspire others to do what they should uniquely do as servants of God. We are chosen by God to promote His name to the world. That is what Avraham did. He went around teaching people that God has a name and you can call to Him because He is ever-present. Therefore, we pray that God protect us for His name’s sake, so that we can use the power of speech correctly and do a good job promoting God-consciousness worldwide. “Do it for the sake of Your right hand.” According to the Kabbalah the right hand represents the power to do kindness. In other words, “God protect me and empower me because this is an opportunity for You to manifest Your kindness.” “Your right hand” may also refer to us as His right hand man, doing His work in the world. “Do this for the sake of Your holiness,” for the sake of revealing Your holiness. We discussed earlier that kadosh (“holy”) also means transcendent. Precisely because God transcends the limitations of time, space and being, He is able to be manifest within every moment, place and person. This is the mystery of Divinity and the miraculous power of transcendence. Therefore, the Amidah here asks, “God, for Your holiness to be fully expressed, Your presence has to be manifest on earth. And I want to be the sanctuary for Your presence. So please protect me and empower me to do my job of revealing Your holiness.” “Do it for the sake of Your Torah,” to reveal Your values and ideals. “In order that Your loved ones be liberated (from all forms of bondage), deliver with Your hand and answer me.” Until now we asked God to do it for His sake, but now we ask that He do for our sake because we are His beloved.