A Thought on Parshas Ekev

"...va'esnafal lifnei HaShem...v'esnafal...asher his'nafalti...va'espalal..." (9:18, 25,26) "...and I fell before HaShem... and I fell...as I had fallen... and prayed..." Moshe reviews the steps he had taken following the Maaseh Egel, which involved falling in contrition and pleading before HaShem, and praying and praying. Rashi explains that the latter two verses refer to the same event which is mentioned in the earlier verse, but Moshe aims here to tell us the exact scope of his prayers, through these recurrent descriptions of how he threw himself to the ground and pleaded for mercy. The Panae'ach Raza asks a piercing question. Why is it necessary for Moshe to review and to repeat that he undertook those detailed and powerful prayers? Earlier on in the Torah, following that tragedy which occurred at the foot of Sinai, we learned about the scope and content of those prayers. Why is it necessary here to review them and to describe them with three repetitive statements - "and I fell, and I fell, as I fell, and I prayed"? The Panae'ach Raza sees in Moshe's emphasis here "chachma gedola" - astounding wisdom. The tragedy was that the Jewish people created the Egel haZahav which was a most extreme form of collective iniquity. He prayed to HaShem and the people were pardoned. Moshe, however, did not want this to convey a grossly incorrect message, namely, that whenever someone sins that he or she can simply rely on subsequent prayer to fix the problem. Sin is serious. Prayer is serious. The former cannot be taken lightly and the latter cannot be viewed as a mere reflexive verbal remedy. Sin must be contemplated and regretted. Prayer, in turn, must be contemplated and must come from deep within the heart. Moshe reviews the sequence which he used in praying about the Egel, and the theme of his prayers is that HaShem not wipe out the nation lest the Divine Name be tarnished. This was the thrust of Moshe's plea and this seems to be the variable which led to HaShem forgiving us. Moshe makes repeated references to this so that the people would begin to understand that it was the specific concern of chilul Shem Shomayim which led to being pardoned; when there is no issue of HaShem's name being tarnished and instead, the matter of chait is one of its reflection on the sinner instead, there can be no guarantee that a cursory prayer or plea will erase the stain on one's soul. Moshe reiterated the details of where his employing a precisely focused prayer sequence seemed to bring the desired result so that all would infer that in more general circumstances, iniquity requires a very intense subjective prayer generated by each individual. Following a script or a text will not suffice when we need to turn to HaShem and plead for forgiveness. Good Shabbos. D Fox