Learning and Praying

The Talmud (Taanis 2a) refers to prayer as “service of the heart” avodah shebalev. When one prays one addresses directly God, so it may be asked, when does God speak to us? The answer is through learning Torah. The words of our Torah are the words of the holy one blessed be he, by learning Torah we enable our service of the heart to let God’s voice in.