Ana BeKoach

A Name hidden in the first letters

Count the words: seven lines, six words each, 42 in all. The Gemara (the rabbis' discussions built on the Mishnah) speaks of a Name of God with 42 letters. It was taught only to someone modest and humble, halfway through life, who did not get angry or drunk and did not insist on his due. The Gemara never says what the letters are. Rashi (the classic commentator, France, 1000s) writes: "They did not explain it to us." Later teachers say the first letters of these 42 words spell that Name.

Who wrote it?

Your siddur prints a heading above it: "the prayer of Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKanah," a sage of the Mishnah who lived about 1,900 years ago. That is the tradition. But the Mishnah and the Gemara never quote this prayer. The Mishnah does record a prayer of his, and it is a different one: a short prayer for entering and leaving the study hall. The oldest books we could open that quote Ana BeKoach are by the Kabbalah teachers of Tzfat in the 1500s. It may be older than that. Who wrote it, and when, is not known.

The man whose name is on it

The Gemara tells what kind of person Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKanah was. His students asked how he had lived so long. He said: I never gained honor from someone else's shame. I never took a friend's curse to bed with me. And I was easygoing with my money. For the second, the Gemara gives the example of a sage who said every night: "I forgive anyone who hurt me." He also taught Rabbi Yishmael, whose thirteen rules for reading the Torah come later in this part of the siddur.

The first 42 letters of the Torah

Rabbeinu Tam (Rashi's grandson, France, 1100s) says the 42-letter Name "comes out of" the first verse of Bereishit and the verse after it. Tosafot, the commentary that quotes him, does not say how. Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (a Kabbalah teacher in Tzfat, 1500s) is exact, quoting the Tikkunim (a companion to the Zohar, the central book of Kabbalah): from the Torah's first letter to the second letter of vavohu, "and empty." Count them: 42. Around 1100, the midrash collection Lekach Tov already writes out how it begins.

The first line echoes the Song at the Sea

"With the strength of Your great right hand": at the Red Sea, Israel sang, "Your right hand, Hashem, is majestic in strength." The same two words, yeminkha (Your right hand) and koach (strength), open this prayer. Other lines have echoes too. "Guard them like the pupil of an eye" uses a rare word from the prophet Zecharyah (Zechariah): whoever harms Israel "touches the pupil of his eye." And the seventh line calls God the One "who knows what is hidden." Tehillim 44 says: "He knows the secrets of the heart."

The Arizal sang it

Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote down how his teacher said this prayer. His teacher was the Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the Kabbalah teacher of Tzfat, who died in 1572). He said it "with a pleasant voice and a tune." After it, Rabbi Chaim Vital adds, say Baruch Shem. That is the line the people in the Temple answered when they heard God's Name on Yom Kippur, as the Reishit Chochmah prayer tells.

A prayer for going up

Why here? You have just finished Abaye's list of the whole Temple day. Rabbi Chaim Vital, writing down the Arizal's teaching, says that "all ascents are through the 42-letter Name," and he points to Ana BeKoach right here in the weekday morning offerings. You say it at other times too: on Friday night just before Lecha Dodi, and after counting the Omer. Kaf HaChaim (a law commentary, early 1900s) brings in the Arizal's name to think of it while falling asleep, because it helps the soul rise.

More than you can hold

Rav Kook (the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, who died in 1935) explains the first line. God's right hand stands for kindness, and kindness comes in two sizes. Small kindness is measured to fit you: it gives as much as you can carry. Great kindness gives more good than you can hold. And if you cannot carry it, he writes, it is so great that it also gives you the ability and the strength to take it in. The line asks for the "greatness" of the right hand. Now read it again.

גדולת החסד היא מדת החסד הנותנת רב טוב יותר מכדי המדה של המקבל, ואם לא יוכל שאת רוב הטוב, אז החסד הוא גדול כ"כ, עד שמשפיע הוא מטובו ג"כ יכלת ואמץ להכיל את קבלת הטוב והחסד

Six letters, six wings

The six first letters of each line form part of a hidden Name of God. Reishit Chochmah (a guide to loving and fearing God, written in Tzfat in the 1500s) quotes the Tikkunei Zohar (a companion book to the Zohar, the central book of Kabbalah). It reads those six letters as the six wings of the angels the prophet Yeshayahu saw: two cover the face, two cover the feet, two fly. With them, it says, the soul flies up each night. The Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria of Tzfat, who died in 1572) taught to say the words in pairs, pausing after each pair.

בשתים אתוון מכל שם תכסה אנפהא מנהון, ובשתי אתוון תכסה רגלהא, ובשתי אתוון פרחת לעילא

The Name you never say

The Arizal taught that nothing goes up to a higher level except through the 42-letter Name of God. Then he gave a warning, which his student Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote down: do not say that Name with your mouth. Say this prayer, and keep in mind that the Name is hinted in the first letters of its words. So what you say out loud is a request for help. The Name stays inside it, unspoken.

ואל תזכור שם בן מ"ב בפיך ממש אבל תכוין איך נרמז בר"ת של תפל' זו

Forty-two stops

The Torah lists every place Israel camped after leaving Egypt. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the first Chabad Rebbe) notes that there are 42, like this prayer: seven lines of six words. This Name, he says, is about going up from below. That is why, he adds, it is also said at bedtime, when the soul goes up in sleep, and before Kabbalat Shabbat. The Baal Shem Tov (the founder of Chassidut) taught that those 42 stops are in every person's life, from the day you are born until the day you go back to your world. His grandson wrote it down.

המסעות הם במספר מ״ב כמו שם אנא בכח גדולת כו׳ שיש בו ז׳ פסוקים ובכל פסוק ששה תיבות והשם הנ״ל הוא בחי׳ עליה ממטה למעלה

The knot that looks permanent

Rabbi Yaakov Leiner of Izhbitz-Radzin (a Chassidic rebbe in Poland in the 1800s) hears the first line as the prayer of someone trying to come back from a mistake. Sometimes a person has done something that, to the eye, has no fix. It seems there is nothing left to pray for. He writes that teshuvah, returning to God, can still heal what came before, because teshuvah is made of longing and wanting. Nothing else can heal the past, he says. "Untie what is bound" is what that person is asking.

שאף אם עשה ח"ו מעשה שנראה לעין שאין לו תיקון להתפלל עליו, אמנם ע"י תשובה, שהוא תשוקה ורצון, יוכל לרפאות את הקודם

Is there a right way to say the lines?

Two words at a time. Sha'ar HaKavanot (the prayer teachings of the Arizal, Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the Kabbalist of Tzfat, written down by his student Rabbi Chaim Vital) says: ana bekoach, pause, gedulat yeminkha, pause, tatir tzerurah, pause. The Ben Ish Chai (a law book by Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad, late 1800s) and the Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary, early 1900s) rule the same. One Sephardic siddur prints a period after each pair.

Some siddurim print six letters next to each line. Do I say them?

No. They are the first letters of that line's six words, and the seven groups together are known as the 42-letter Name of God. The Ben Ish Chai says to have these Names in mind, from the first letters of the words, as the siddurim show. Pri Etz Chaim (a collection of the Arizal's teachings), in its section on the bedtime Shema, warns: do not say the 42-letter Name except through Ana BeKoach, as a prayer, "and not with the letters themselves." The words are said. The letters are only thought.

Why is the last line said in a whisper?

Baruch Shem is not one of the seven lines. It is the line whispered after the first verse of Shema. Od Yosef Chai (another law book by Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad) rules that after Ana BeKoach it is said quietly too, because here too you say it as praise of God's oneness. His contrast: someone studying a passage of Mishnah that quotes the line may read it out loud. One Sephardic siddur prints "and he says quietly" before it. Siddur Sefard prints no instruction. The Reishit Chochmah prayer has more on the whisper.

Do I stand for it?

Customs differ. Sha'arei Teshuvah (a digest printed with the Shulchan Aruch, the main code of Jewish law) quotes Shiyarei Knesset HaGedolah (by Rabbi Chaim Benveniste, Turkey, 1600s): some have the custom to stand when they say Ana BeKoach. The Ben Ish Chai quotes a book called Minchat Aharon, which argues from Kabbalah that there is no need to stand here, and he agrees. He also checked. He asked about the custom of the pious men of Beit El, the yeshiva of Kabbalists in Jerusalem, and was told they do not stand.

Seven lines, seven days. Is that on purpose?

In one custom, yes. Od Yosef Chai says that when you say Ana BeKoach in the morning, you say the line that matches the day three times: the first line on Sunday, the second on Monday, and so on. He bases this on what the Arizal taught for the Shema said at bedtime. The Kaf HaChaim spells out that bedtime order: say the whole prayer, then, before Baruch Shem, repeat that night's line three times. On Friday night it is the seventh line. Siddur Sefard prints the prayer straight through, with no repeats.

Why is one word of Ana BeKoach printed by each day of the Omer?

Do the math. Seven lines of six words is 42 words. Add one more for each whole line and you get 49, the number of days in the Omer (the count from Pesach to Shavuot). Siddur Sefard prints "ana" beside day one and "bekoach" beside day two. Beside day seven it prints the first letters of the whole first line. The Kaf HaChaim gives the practice: say all of Ana BeKoach every night of the Omer, and keep that night's one word in mind, by its first letter. Week two takes the second line, and so on for seven weeks.

Do I have to say it?

No law book we found calls it an obligation. The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who added Ashkenazi practice to the Shulchan Aruch) lists what is said here: the daily offering, and "some say" Abaye's order and the Ribon HaOlamim prayer. Ana BeKoach is not on his list. It is part of the order of prayer that Rabbi Chaim Vital received from the Arizal, which the Kaf HaChaim copies. Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) says the other prayers printed with the offerings are good to say, not required.