What Does 515 Reveal About Prayer and Song?

Question: The word for prayer, Tefillah (תְּפִלָּה), has a numerical value of 515. The word for song, Shira (שירה), also has a numerical value of 515. Is there a connection here, considering that Tefillah is the judgment of the self, while Shira belongs to the higher realm?

515 — a picture of the One, sandwiched in grace. It boggles my mind.

Answer: The root letters of the Hebrew word for prayer are פ.ל.ל — p.l.l. They mean “to incriminate oneself.” There is a sense of separation in this root: the scene is of a hidden court in the back rooms of the mind. The picture of prayer is one of trial and prosecution, and the one who prays stands against the prosecution — or against what we perceive as the prosecution.

That same root opens onto another reading. The letters ת.פ.ל also spell tafel, “saltless,” as in the phrase “ha’ochel tafel” — the food is tasteless, lacking being, lacking love. Salt in Hebrew (מלח) carries the value of three times twenty-six — three times the divine Name — echoing the legend of the princess who loved her father “like salt.”

What salt does

Follow that image into the kitchen. When we salt food — a salad, anything — every flavor hidden inside is drawn out and made to shine and tasty. All the goodness stored within the vegetables emerges the moment the salt sparks against it; salt causes a diffusion of the inner waters. Unsalted food, by contrast, is like a meal that has fallen apart — ingredients scattered, with nothing binding them. Salt is what unites all that potential into one thing: shining and full of taste.

So it is with prayer. Prayer is unsalted life, is like a scattered salad — everything is present, but without organization or taste. A person prays precisely when he finds no ta’am (טעם), no taste — and in Hebrew this same word also means “reason.” When people fall into depression, they say: “ein ta’am lichyot”, there is no reason to live. There is no lechidut, no achdut, no ta’am — no cohesion, no unity, no taste. Everything is falling apart.

From here you can understand why prayer is, at its root, an act of self-incrimination: the “me” testifies and confirms that everything in life feels broken and scattered, and that no taste can be found in any of it. When a prayer is a moment of: “Perhaps you can help me become whole — united — again?”

The distance written into the word

Tefillah תפלה also opens with the letter tav (ת), the last letter of the alphabet. When we arrive at the 400 of tav, we have reached the greatest possible distance between the Source and its expression in time and space. And prayer is the natural mechanism printed into all of nature to close that distance — even animals and plants pray, in their own way; they yearn for the Source.

This is why the final verse of Psalms says: “Kalu tefillot David ben Yishai” — the prayers of David, son of Yishai, are completed. Kalu comes from the root of kelaya, ending, completion. David wrote all the prayers, perhaps so that every distance might, in time, be felt and traversed by a human being.

From prayer to song

Then came his son Solomon, and he wrote the Song of Songs — Shir HaShirim (שיר השירים). Here the word shifts from tefillah to shir, and with it the whole picture changes.

Shir (שיר), “song,” is written with the letter shin (ש), the twenty-first letter of the alphabet, the letter of three tongues of fire. Its value is 300, and according to Sefer Yetzirah, its place is in the head — the hidden realm of thought. This tells us that the origin of shir, the song, is the head, the hidden chambers of the mind. Shir is lashon zachar, masculine in grammatical form — for the masculine within us, the potential, is always hidden.

Shira (שירה), poetry, belongs to the feminine — the world of malchut, the manifested, the revealed. She rises up and cleaves to the male, the hidden one, the shir, and together they ascend in completion. Shira already carries this connection within its own letters: ש“ר + י”ה, shar (sing) plus Yah (יה), wisdom and understanding. We see this in Shirat HaYam, the Song of the Sea, and in Shirat Devorah, the Song of Deborah.

Where the 515 meets

So it is true: both words share the value 515 — the same value as the word Va’etchanan (ואתחנן), from the Torah portion of that name, where Moses offered 515 prayers begging forgiveness for the Golden Calf. Va’etchanan itself means “and I pleaded,” “and I asked.”

Tefillah, prayer, is a testimony of separation; it begins with the 400 of tav. Shira is already a connection; its element is fire, and fire rises. And shir alone, hidden in the inner castel of the mind, is the highest of all.

This is why Sarai (שרי) — her very name holding the letters of shir, song — had to step down a level, la’redet madregah, and become Sarah (שרה), a feminine name. In the hidden world of shir, the masculine world, nothing is born, nothing manifests, nothing multiplies. And nothing is lacking there either.