Tefillat Hashlah (Prayer of the Shlah Hakadosh)

The Shlah Hakadosh wrote: “It is particularly important to pray for good and upright children. While praying for this, one should also ask Hashem to provide them with all their needs and to send them their life’s mate. I believe that the most appropriate time to recite this prayer is on Erev Rosh Chodesh Sivan, for that is the month when Hashem gave us His Torah and when we began to be called His children. It is proper that every husband and wife fast on that day and repent, committing themselves to improve all areas of their home life…and let them give charity to poor people of character. This is the prayer they should recite:

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You are Hashem, our G-d, before You created the world and You are Hashem, our G-d, after Your created the world. Forever and ever You are our G-d. You created Your world so that your divinity would be revealed through Your divine Torah, as our Sages said (may their memory be blessed): “ Bereshit, in the beginning for the Torah and for Israel”. For they are Your people and Your inheritance which You chose above all people. And You gave them Your holy Torah and brought them close to Your great name.

Because of the creation of the world and the creation of the Torah we received from You, Hashem our G-d, two commandments. You wrote in Your Torah: Be fruitful and multiply, and You wrote in Your Torah: And you shall teach them your children, and the meaning of both of them is one and the same.

You did not create the world in vain but to be inhabited, and for Your honor You created, You formed and You also made so that we, our children and the children of all Your people Israel will know Your Name and learn Your Torah.

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Therefore, Hashem, King of kings of kings, I will come to You and will beg You, my eyes raised to You, to have compassion and hear my prayer and bestow on me sons and daughters that they shall too shall be fruitful and multiply, they, their children and their children’s children, until the end of all generations, so that they and I, and we all should engage in the study of Your holy Torah to learn and teach, to guard, to do, and to fulfill all the words of study of Torah with love.

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Enlighten our eyes to Your Torah and bring our hearts to cling to Your mitzvot, to love and fear Your Name. Our Father, merciful Father, grant us all long life endowed with blessings.

Who is like You, merciful Father who remembers His creatures and gives them life in Your compassion? Remember us for eternal life, as Avraham, our father, prayed: “that he may live before Thee.” And our Rabbis (may their memory be blessed) interpreted this as “ in fear of You.”

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Therefore, I have come to ask and beg before You that my children and my children’s children shall be, eternally, worthy. That there shall not be in me or in my children or in my children’s children, for all time, anything unfitting. Only peace and truth, goodness and justice in the eyes of G-d and in the eyes of man.

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May they be masters of Torah, masters of the written Law, masters of Mishna, masters of Talmud, masters of kabbala, masters of mitzvot, masters of chessed, masters of noble character, and may they serve you with love and true fear, not with false fear. Grant each one of them all that he needs with honor, give them health, honor and strength, give them stature, beauty, grace and kindness.

May there be love, brotherhood and peace between them. Bestow on them worthy spouses from the offspring of the “Torah scholars, students of the sages” and from the offspring of the “tzaddikim, the righteous ones.” And may their spouses be like them in all that I have prayed for them, for they are all one for eternity.

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You, Hashem, know all the secrets of the heart and before You is revealed all that is in my heart. For my purpose in all this is for the sake of Your great and holy Name and for Your holy Torah.

Therefore answer me, Hashem, answer me for the sake of our sacred fathers Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov and for them save the sons, that the branches shall resemble the roots. And for David, your servant, the fourth wheel of the divine chariot, the poet who sang with divine inspiration: “Song of Ascents: Fortunate are all who fear Hashem, who walk in His way.

The toil of your hands, you will eat the fruit thereof and it will bring happiness and be good for you. Your wife is like a fruitful vine within your house, your sons are like olive plants around your table. Behold, thus will be blessed the man who fears Hashem. He will bless you, Hashem, from Zion. See in the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life. And see your sons of your sons; peace over Israel.”

Please, Hashem, who hears prayer fulfill in us the verse: “ As for me, this is my covenant with them, says Hashem, My spirit that is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your seed, nor out of the mouth of your seed’s seed, says Hashem, from henceforth and for ever.”

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May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be favorable before You, Hashem, my rock and my savior.

You can find the Shlah’s prayer with commentary and stories in the book Tefillas HaShelah.