What’s in a Word?

ritual

prayer

תפילה · בקשה · תחינה · תחנון · פלילה · חן

Bottom line

Tefillah is prayer proper. Rabbi Simcha Maimon offers two ways of taking it against bakashah: either it is the praising side of prayer and bakashah the asking side, or it is the fixed, formal prayer with its nusach and its halachos against an ad hoc asking. On Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg's reading of the root it is a plea that Hashem set right what the petitioner feels is unjust. Bakashah is the request, the unscripted asking for one's needs. Techinah or tachanun is supplication: the appeal of one who admits he has no claim and asks to be given anyway, out of chen, favor. The trap is rendering all three "prayer"; where Yaakov's sword and bow are darshened (Bava Basra 123a), tefillah and bakashah must be kept apart in English.

Distinctions

On his deathbed Yaakov leaves Yosef the city of Shechem, "which I took from the Emori with my sword and with my bow" (Bereishis 48:22). Yaakov was neither a swordsman nor an archer; his power was in his voice (Bereishis 27:22). So the mesorah (Bava Basra 123a) reads the pasuk non-literally: "my sword" is tefillah, prayer, and "my bow" is bakashah, request. Targum Onkelos renders the words the same way, tzeloti and bausi. That the two stand side by side suggests they are not the same thing, and the article's question is both what divides them and what either has to do with swords and arrows.

tefillah (תפילה)

Root פ-ל-ל. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg derives tefillah from pelilah, arbitration or judgment (in Modern Hebrew the word means "criminal"): the one who prays presses his case before Hashem, demanding that He address a perceived injustice. Rabbi Simcha Maimon, a prominent Rosh Yeshiva in Yerushalayim, gives two readings against bakashah. First, tefillah is the "flattering" side of prayer, in which one praises Hashem, while bakashah is the "wishful" side, in which one asks Him for one's needs. Second, tefillah is formal, instituted prayer with set formulae and set halachos, while bakashah is ad hoc. On the second reading, tefillah answers to Yaakov's sword: the words themselves carry inherent power, as a sword is dangerous by its own sharpness.

bakashah (בקשה)

Root ב-ק-ש. The request made of Hashem in one's own words. The link between bakashos and keshasos, bows, may simply be homiletical, since the two words are spelled and sounded so much alike. Rabbi Simcha Maimon nonetheless works out a conceptual link: because a bakashah lacks the formality of tefillah it is not inherently a powerful form of prayer, just as an archer's projectile need not be as sharp as a sword; but an arrow's efficacy lies not in the arrow itself but in the kinetic energy of its release, just as a bakashah's lies not in the words but in the urgency the supplicant feels. Rabbi Shmuel Laniado, a sixteenth-century Syrian scholar, offers a similar observation on the bow: an archer strikes without having to approach his enemy, and so a bakashah lets a man standing in a dire situation in This World, without leaving where he is, send his prayer through the upper realms to the Heavens.

techinah / tachanun (תחינה, תחנון)

Root ח-נ-ן, from chen, favor. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg: the one who says tachanun appeals as one who admits he is not worthy of what he asks and beseeches Hashem to grant it graciously anyway, hoping to find favor in His eyes undeserving as he is. This is the opposite footing from tefillah on his reading: tefillah presses a claim, techinah disclaims one.

Rendering guidance

  • Bereishis 48:22 with Bava Basra 123a: "my sword" is tefillah and "my bow" is bakashah. Render them "prayer" and "request," never "prayer" twice. Onkelos already separates them, tzeloti and bausi.
  • Tachanunim in a pasuk or a piyut: "supplications," or "pleas for favor" where the chen is the point. Do not use "prayers."
  • Bakashah standing alone in a mussar sefer usually means the asking part of davening; "request" or "petition" both work, but stay consistent inside a chapter.
  • Trap: English "prayer" absorbs all three, and "supplication" will absorb bakashah and techinah together. Where a passage lists two of them, or builds on the contrast (a claim of justice against a plea for favor), give each its own English word and gloss the Hebrew on first use.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Say your Prayers," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 16 Teves 5777 (2017-01-14): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/say-your-prayers; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7090-say-your-prayers.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 48:22 and 27:22; Bava Basra 123a; Targum Onkelos to Bereishis 48:22. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, Rabbi Simcha Maimon and Rabbi Shmuel Laniado are all cited by the article without a locus, and without naming any of their works; a reference here to Mecklenburg's HaKesav VeHaKabbalah has been removed, since the article does not name it. Nothing the article cites is omitted.