Is it possible to become a prayer? Dov Mendel did. To listen along as you read, click on the triangle in the bar below. The text follows.

 

Dov Mendel
One Shabbat morning, Dov Mendel’s prayer was answered. It wasn’t much of a prayer. It was more of a question, a question that came to him as he stood in silent devotion. “Do my prayers rise to heaven? Can my tired voice be heard on high?” A question from an old man to the Ancient of Days.

In that instant, in the instant between breaths and blinks and heartbeats, Dov Mendel felt his soul become a prayer. It rose gently out of his body. He could see prayers fill the synagogue as they began the journey toward heaven. The prayers were wind and light, song and tear, humility and compassion, and Dov Mendel could see them all. The prayers lifted each other, rising through the roof of the shul.

As he rose with the prayers into the sunshine, Dov Mendel could see from his body and soul at the same time as if he were in two places at once. He saw the treetops and villages and all the prayers rising with him. Dov Mendel, his soul a prayer, rose through the blue sky gaining strength from the other prayers, becoming a great roar of praise for the Almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth. Dov Mendel was a trumpet, the prayers a symphony, as if the Shechinah herself lent her voice to the song. And in the instant between breaths and blinks and heartbeats, Dov Mendel was back in his synagogue and back in his body, as if nothing had happened.

© 2010 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

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Tags: celebration, faith, freedom, miracles, praise, pray, prayer, Shabbat story, Shabbos, song, spirit