What's his name? When you pray for someone, does it matter if you get their Hebrew name right? I think that this is another ramification of the difference between the rationalist and mystical worldviews. According the mystical approach, your prayers (or, as is more common with people who subscribe to this approach, your Tehillim or Torah), function to mechanically manipulate various metaphysical forces. If you get the name wrong, then it presumably simply won't work. Now, of course you can claim that Hashem will make the necessary adjustment to the process. Still, the mystical mindset, with its focus on mechanistic manipulations of metaphysical forces via the power of combinations of letters, certainly points in the direction of mistakes being critical. (It reminds me of the joke about the 80-year-old sick woman who called Kupat Ha-Ir to donate to get a