Communal Prayer, Elevated Eating and Healing

1“And you shall serve Hashem your God, and He will bless your bread and your water, and I will remove illness from your midst.”¹ The commentators, the Baal HaTurim and the Alshich, ask a question here.² Why does the verse open in the plural, “And you shall serve …,” speaking to all of you together, and then close in the singular, “and He will bless your bread …,” speaking to each person alone?

2We may answer as follows. In the Mechilta deRabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Chazal expound: “‘And you shall serve Hashem your God’: this is prayer. And so it says, ‘and to serve Him with all your heart.’ What is the service of the heart? It is prayer.”³ The proper way to serve Hashem in prayer is to pray together, as a congregation. As Chazal said on the verse “As for me, my prayer is to You, Hashem, at a time of favor”: “When is a time of favor? When the congregation is praying.”⁴ We learn from this that a time of favor from Hashem comes only through praying with the congregation. That is why the verse uses the plural for the service of the heart, which is prayer: “And you shall serve Hashem your God …” It teaches that the service of prayer must be done with the congregation, all bound together as one.

3Once we have been privileged to receive a time of favor from Hashem, we can cleave to the Creator and reach lofty levels. We can even be privileged to rectify the food we eat. That is why, right after “And you shall serve Hashem,” the verse says “and He will bless your bread.” Through the service of prayer you will be privileged to raise up the holy spark within the food,⁵ and that is a great level. But raising up the spark in the food depends on each individual's understanding and level. So here the verse uses the singular, “and He will bless your bread,” for in this every individual has a level that is his alone.

4The verse ends, “and I will remove illness from your midst.” It is well known that illness comes upon a person, Heaven forbid, because sin has blemished one of his limbs, and illness then takes hold of that limb. This is discussed in the Shaarei Kedushah of R' Chaim Vital and in the Olas Tamid [of the Arizal].⁶ So this is what the verse is saying. In the merit of taking care to pray with the congregation, and to eat and drink in an elevated way, a person's food and drink, taken in holiness and purity, will be blessed and raised up. As a result the blessing “and I will remove illness from your midst” will come true for him, for in this way all the blemishes that draw illness down, Heaven save us, will be repaired.

5May Hashem, blessed be He, grant that we be privileged to reach this level, and may we bring the redemption near. Amen, may it be His will.