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Archive for the ‘Better World’ Category

Against Domestic Insurrection

Posted on: January 7th, 2021 by Alden

This is a prayer in response to the rioting and attacks on the U.S. Capitol, an attack on the great history of the peaceful transition power in the United States of America.

Against Domestic Insurrection
Oh, my people,
What have we become as a nation?
And what will we become,
In the wake of violence and insurrection,
In the face of armed assault against our democracy?
Rioting. Criminality. Attempted coup.
Domestic terror fomented
By the lies, fear, and anger of a President.
Death and destruction in the Capitol.
This doesn’t happen in the United States.
But it did.
And it can again.

Woe to the land that teeters on the brink of fascism.
Woe to the people who stay silent.
Woe to the politician who cannot stand against this outrage.
Woe to us all as the tide of history turns against our Republic.

Shame on those who have hardened their hearts,
Shut their eyes,
Closed their minds,
And empowered those who
Attempt to banish justice
And free elections from our midst,
Those who bring swords and guns
Against our sovereign land.

Source and Shelter,
Grant safety and security
To the people and democracy of the United States of America.
Protect us from violence, rebellion, intimidation,
And attempts to seize our government.
Save us from domestic terror.
Save us from leaders who cannot say no to attacks
On our legacy and our future.

God of nations and history,
Let truth and justice resound
To the four corners of the earth.
Let the light of freedom
Shine brightly in the halls of power,
As a beacon of hope
For every land and every people.

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul , This Grateful Heart, and This Precious Life. For reprint permissions and usage guidelines, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter. For a taste of my teaching, see my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer.”

Photo Source: WikiMedia Commons

For Wisdom during U.S. Presidential Elections

Posted on: October 6th, 2020 by Alden

Time to vote. Cast your vote wisely. The future depends on it. Then, pray that others will also think, vote, and act with the best interests of the United States and all citizens at heart. Here’s a related Psalm of Protest against voter suppression.

For Wisdom during U.S. Presidential Elections
G-d of Justice,
Protector and Redeemer,
Grant guidance to our nation
As we select leaders,
Members of the Senate,
Members of the House of Representatives,
And a President,
The people who promise
To uphold the Constitution,
To uphold our values,
To serve and to govern,
To bring prosperity to our land,
To protect our homes and secure our future.

Grant wisdom and courage to voters
To select a visionary President
And steadfast leaders,
People who will serve our citizens,
And all who reside within our borders,
With honor and integrity
To forge a flourishing and peaceful future.
Bless our future President with
Wisdom and strength,
Fortitude and insight,
Balanced by a deep humanity
And a love of peace,
Leading us to a time
When liberty and equality will
Reign supreme throughout the land.

G-d of Truth,
Source and Shelter,
Grant safety and security to all nations,
So that truth and harmony will resound
From the four corners of the earth.
Let the light of our U.S. democracy
Shine brightly,
A beacon of hope
For every land and every people.

Postscript: This prayer is based on “For Wisdom during Democratic Elections” and first appeared here on July 16, 2016.

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Photo Source: WikiMedia Commons

Strangled by Police: Psalm of Protest 17

Posted on: May 29th, 2020 by Alden

This Psalm of Protest is in memory of George Floyd, killed by police in Minneapolis. With a knee on his neck, the officer pinned the unarmed and handcuffed Floyd to the ground as he pleaded for help. This is a prayer against brutality, abuse of power and racism. I’m not anti-police, and have written several prayers for police and first responders. But be clear: no one should die in police custody. And systemic racism must end. Period. See also “For George Floyd’s Family.” Here are all of my Psalms of Protest.

Strangled by Police: Psalm of Protest 17
A psalm of protest,
In memory of George Floyd,
Sung at the gates of justice,
When black men are strangled in the streets,
When power is abused and jails overflow,
When the voiceless are forgotten and minorities misused.
Open, you gates!
Open to the cries of those murdered, jailed or harassed
For being black,
For being a person of color,
For being homeless, indigent, destitute or unwanted,
The detained, the hounded,
The pursued and the persecuted,
Those who are killed while being restrained.
Open, you gates!
Let righteousness flow forth as living waters,
And truth flow forth as healing balm,
To still the hand of violence and hatred,
To cure the heart of bigotry and racism,
To herald fairness and equality,
And bring justice to this land.

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Postscript: See also: “For George Floyd’s Family,” “O Freedom: Psalm of Protest 14,” “A Dream of Columbine: Psalm of Protest 13,” and “Sing with Liberty: Psalm of Protest 15 .” All of my Psalms of Protest can be found here.

Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and my two CCAR Press books: This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. For reprint permissions and usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo Source: The New York Times

Pervasive Peace

Posted on: March 13th, 2020 by Alden

In these difficult times, this one line captures my simplest yet deepest prayer for us all. With so much healing needed, our prayers must rattle the gates of heaven. But sometimes, one line, recited from the heart, is enough.

Pervasive Peace

May it be Your will, G-d of our fathers and mothers,
That the year ahead brings a pervasive and complete peace
On all inhabitants of the earth,
Beyond all dreams of humanity.

,יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶֽיךָ, אֱלֹהֵי אֲבוֹתֵֽינוּ וְאִמּוֹתֵֽינוּ
שֶׁהַשָּׁנָה הַבָּאָה תָּבִיא שָׁלוֹם מֻחְלָט וְשָׁלֵם
,עַל כָּל־יוֹשְׁבֵי תֵבֵל
.מֵעֵֽבֶר לְכָל־חֲלֹמוֹת־הָאֱנוֹשׁוּת

Y’hi ratzon mil’fanecha, Elohei avoteinu v’imoteinu,
Shehashanah haba-ah tavi shalom muchlat v’shaleim
Al kol yosh’vei teiveil,
Mei-ever l’chol chalomot ha-enoshut.

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Postscript: I originally wrote this as a prayer for 5780, but I’m reposting it now in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Photo by Alden Solovy

O Auschwitz, O Birkenau

Posted on: February 8th, 2020 by Alden

Five days in Poland. My first trip. I began writing this meditation on the bus after a day at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but couldn’t complete it. We’d already seen so much. Treblinka. Majdanek. Lupachowa Forest. Zbilitowska Gora. Shuls, yeshivas, graveyards, shtetls. This Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies trip, led by Dean David Bernstein, covered the long history of Polish Jewry, from the heyday of Jewish religious and secular life to today’s Polish Jewry. And, of course, the inter-war period and the Holocaust. Here in Israel, after several weeks home, I found the end of this meditation.

O Auschwitz, O Birkenau
Treblinka, you will not see my tears.
Majdanek, you will not hear my sobs.
You will not wound me again.
You have done your evil.
You have taken your pounds of flesh.

Yes, I will shed tears for the lost,
The brutalized, the lynched,
The murdered and the slain.
Not here.
Not inside your grounds.
Not inside your gates.
I’d rather choke on my sorrow
Then give it to you.

But Auschwitz, Birkenau,
You test my resolve.
You challenge my heart
Steeled against your evil,
Steeled against the echoes of mourning
That rise from your sullen earth.

When I leave the killing fields
I will shout to the heavens.
I will lament with my people.
Our voices resounding with grief and power,
Unmistakable strength declaring,
‘Come, you tyrants.
Come, you villains and antisemites,
You murderers and despots.
You have made us fearless, invincible.
We will survive you, too.’

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Postscript: Here are two prayers that I read at different memorial services that we held in Poland: “Tears of Crystal, Tears of Broken Glass” and a new version of “Remember My Heart” adapted for reading at Zbilitowska Gora.

Photo Source: Alden Solovy

You of Blood and Venom: A Prayer of the Jewish People

Posted on: November 7th, 2019 by Alden

A prayer against the rise of antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world. This prayer is a declaration that the Jewish people will survive. The Hebrew stanza is from Psalms 121. See also: After a Deadly Anti-Semitic Attack” and “Racist Violence Against Houses of Worship.”

You of Blood and Venom: A Prayer of the Jewish People
You will not succeed,
You of hate,
You of violence,
You of blood and venom.

My people have seen your kind
For generations,
For millennia.
We have stood before guns and knives,
Gallows and gas chambers,
To outlive our persecutors.
Greece fell. Rome faded.
The Inquisitions, the Pogroms,
The Treblinkas and the Babi Yars,
All failed.
The people of Israel live.
The nation of Israel lives.

!הנה לא־ינום ולא יישן שומר ישראל
.ה’ ישמרך מכל-רע, ישׁמר את-נפשך
Hinei lo-yanum v’lo yishan shomer Yisrael!
Adonai yishmarekha mikol-ra, yishmor et-nafshecha.
See, the guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps!
G-d shall keep you from all evil, G-d will keep your soul.

No, you will not succeed,
You of hate,
You of violence,
You of blood and venom.

עם ישראל חי!
Am Yisrael chai!
The people of Israel live.
The nation of Israel lives.

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Postscript: See also, “Tree of Life, Pittsburgh,” “Ma’oz Tzur for Pittsburgh,” “Taharot in Pittsburgh,” “Prayer for the Jews of Germany” and “For the Jews of France.”

Photo Source: The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism

Jew against Jew, Revised

Posted on: October 20th, 2019 by Alden

This is a prayer for Jews to love each other and not to commit acts of violence against one another. It is part lament and part admonition. This revision is a response to the attack by Jewish settlers on Jewish volunteers helping with a Palestinian olive harvest. An 80-year-old rabbi was among those attacked and beaten by Jews. A friend and a teacher at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Rabbi Meesh Hammer- Kossoy, who was there, wrote, in part:

“The rug has been pulled out from under the truths on which I build my life. I have been betrayed by my own. My understandings of where I am safe and who will come to my aid or endanger me have been shaken. I am painfully aware of how much worse things could have been. Nevertheless, I refuse to let fear run my life. I remain committed to my belief that people, Jews and non-Jews alike, are generally good, that Torat Yisrael is Torat Chessed, that multiple narratives can co-exist.”

I first posted this prayer after my own experience of being attacked by Jews. Charlie Kalech and I were beaten after helping facilitate the use of a sefer Torah by Women of the Wall at the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh Iyyar, April 22, 2015. This revision adds a plea against violence, which was absent from the original piece, as well as the addition of a line from Psalms.

Jew against Jew, Revised
Oh my people,
What has happened to your heart?
What has happened to your vision?
And what has happened to your wisdom?
And what has happened to our love for one another?
Disrespect, misunderstanding,
Condemnation, recrimination,
Fear and anger yielding violence,
A rising hatred of Jew against Jew
That threatens to consume us.
Sinat chinam has attacked the soul of our people.

Ancient One,
G-d of our fathers and mothers,
Grant us a new wisdom and a new vision
To see beauty and holiness
In all of the tents of Israel.
Let no Jew lift a hand of anger against another.

.למען אחי ורעי, אדברה-נא שלום בך
Lma-an achai vrei-ai, adab’rah na shalom bach.
For the sake of my companions and friends,
I will speak of peace. (Ps. 122:8)

G-d of Old,
Guide us back to each other
With reverence and understanding.
Renew our days with love.
Then we will build a temple of song to Your Holy Name,
Resounding from heart to heart,
From soul to soul,
From generation to generation,
The whole House of Israel.

Blessed are You, Adonai our G-d,
You delight in Your people’s love.

Postscript: My reaction to my attack was similar to Meesh’s when I wrote: “Do not hate the man who stomped on me. Rail against his misogyny, object to what he was taught, condemn his behavior, seek justice against his violence, if that’s even possible, and seek change in Israeli democracy. But don’t use what happened to me to justify hate or prejudice of anyone.” I first wrote the prayer as an assignment from Rabba Yaffa Epstein at Pardes after a semester of studying the Amidah, a central prayer in Jewish liturgy. May one day soon we forget violence, on that day the love of Torah will be shared equally, with joy, among all of our people.

Photo Source: Rabbis for Human Rights via Times of Israel

Prayer for the Jews of Germany

Posted on: October 11th, 2019 by Alden

A prayer for the Jews of Germany after the Yom Kippur attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany. This prayer incorporates a line added to the liturgy for the Aseret Yamai Teshuvah, the 10 Days of Repentance/Return. A line from the classic Yom Kippur liturgy: וכתב לחיים טובים כל בני בריתך, And write for a good life all the children of Your covenant. At Ne’ilah, the final service of the day, the line changes to וחתום לחיים טובים כל בני בריתך, “And seal for a good life all the children of Your covenant,” as it does at the end of this prayer.

For the Jews of Germany
Author of life,
Man has turned violent,
Attacking the heart of prayer
In Halle, Germany,
Murdering and wounding innocents
In the name of antisemitism,
With a passion for bloodshed
And the destruction of the Jewish people.

וכתב לחיים טובים כל בני בריתך
And write, for a good life, all the children of Your covenant
Uc’tov l’chaim tovim kol b’nai britecha

To the traumatized in Halle,
We pray for healing,
For the Jews of Germany,
And all of the Jews of the world,
We pray for an end to antisemitism.
For the people of Germany,
And all of the people of the world,
We pray for shelter and solace,
Comfort and consolation,
Blessing and renewal.

וכתב לחיים טובים כל בני בריתך
And write, for a good life, all the children of Your covenant
Uc’tov l’chaim tovim kol b’nai britecha

Heavenly Guide,
Hand of love and shelter,
Put an end to anger and hatred,
Bigotry and fear,
And lead us to a time when no one
Suffers at the hand of another.

For the sake of our people,
And for the sake of Your Holy Name,
Grant the Jews of Germany Your protection,
Your wholeness and healing,
And Your peace.

וחתום לחיים טובים כל בני בריתך
And seal, for a good life, all the children of Your covenant
U’chatom l’chaim tovim kol b’nai britecha

Postscript: This is an adaptation of “For the Jews of France.”

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing. For usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” For notices of new prayers, please subscribe. You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter. Please take a moment to explore my book, Jewish Prayers of Hope and Healing.

Photo credit: Associated Press

For Whistleblowers and Watchdogs: Psalm of Protest 16

Posted on: October 4th, 2019 by Alden

Here’s a new Psalm of Protest celebrating the role of watchdogs and whistleblowers in defending democratic ideals and institutions. See also: “Sing with Liberty: Psalm of Protest 15 .”

For Whistleblowers and Watchdogs: Psalm of Protest 16
A psalm of protest,
Sung at the gates of truth,
When senators and spokesmen
Attempt to swindle the truth with lies,
When lawyers and presidents
Attempt to swindle the treasury
And hijack elections.
Open you gates!
Open to the call of the watchdog,
The vigilant and the whistleblower,
Open to the call of special investigators and ombudsmen,
Who serve veracity in the name of the people,
Who serve honesty in the name of the law.
Open you gates!
Let truth flow forth like living waters
To cleanse regimes of fraudulent leaders.

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Postscript: See also O Freedom: Psalm of Protest 14” and “A Dream of Columbine: Psalm of Protest 13.

Tree of Life, Pittsburgh (Hebrew)

Posted on: October 2nd, 2019 by Alden

This is a Hebrew interpretation of my acrostic, “Tree of Life, Pittsburgh,” a response to the Oct. 27, 2018, shooting. The Hebrew and English versions are part of a new Yom Kippur Martyrology from Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Rabbi Jeffrey Myers. The Hebrew, by my friends Rav Aytan Kaden and Elyssa Moss-Rabinowitz, is energized with references to Tanach and Siddur. Read the story behind this prayer on Times of Israel. A PDF download of an annotated set of the prayers appears at the end of this post.

עֵץ חַיִּיםְ ,פִיטְסְבּוּרְג

עֵץ חַיִּים
צִוִּיתָנוּ לִבְחֹר בַּחַיִּים
חַדֵּש אֶת יָמֵינוּ
יַחֵד לְבָבֵנוּ וְהָאֵר עֵינֵינוּ בְּתוֹ¬רָתֶךָ
יִשָּׂא פָּנָיו אֵלֵינוּ בְּחֵן וּבְשָׁלוֹם
.מְקוֹר הַחַיִּים וְהַבְּרָכוֹת

פָּתַחְנוּ שִׂפְתוֹתֵינוּ בִּתְפִלָּה
י-ה, מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קָרָאנוּ אֵלֶיךָ
טוֹב לְהוֹדוֹת עִם הַנִּצּוֹלִים וַעֲבוּר הַמַּצִּילִים
סוֹמֵךְ ה’ לְכׇל הַנֹּפְלִים וְזוֹקֵף לְכָל הַכְּפוּפִים
בְּיָגוֹן וּבִכְאֵב הִתְאַחַדְנוּ
וְשַׁבְנוּ עַדֶיךָ בֶּאֱמוּנָה מִתּוֹךְ אַהֲבָתֵנוּ אֶחָד לַשְּׁנִיָּה
רְפָאֵנּוּ וְנֵרָפֵא
.גְּמֹל עָלֵינוּ כָּל טוֹב סֶלָה

עֵץ חַיִּים
צוּר יִשְׂרָאֵל וְגוֹאֲלוֹ
חוּסָהּ נָא וְחָנֵּנוּ
יִשְׁכְּנוּ בְּתוֹכֵנוּ צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט
י-ה, שְׁמֹר צֵאתֵנוּ וּבוֹאֵנוּ בְּפִיטְסְבּוּרְג וּבְרַחֲבֵי תֵּבֵל
.מֵעַתָּה וְעַד עוֹלָם

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Postscript: Here’s a link to the English version of this prayer. See also: “Ma’oz Tzur for Pittsburgh,” “Taharot in Pittsburgh,” “After a Deadly Anti-Semitic Attack” and “Racist Violence against Houses of Worship.”

Tree of Life English and Hebrew Acrostic with Annotations

1 file(s) 200.09 KB

Download

Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. For reprint permissions and usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo Source: Tree of Life * Or L’Simcha Congregation website

Archive for the ‘Better World’ Category

Against Domestic Insurrection

For Wisdom during U.S. Presidential Elections

Strangled by Police: Psalm of Protest 17

Pervasive Peace

O Auschwitz, O Birkenau

You of Blood and Venom: A Prayer of the Jewish People

Jew against Jew, Revised

Prayer for the Jews of Germany

Tree of Life, Pittsburgh (Hebrew)

Tree of Life English and Hebrew Acrostic with Annotations

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