Posts Tagged ‘Am Yisroel’

 

How to Count to 700

Posted on: August 31st, 2025 by Alden

On Friday it will be day 700 of captivity for the hostages held in Gaza, an impossible and incomprehensible number. Days of hell in the tunnels of hell. Days of yearning and agony for their families. Days of fear and terror. Here is “How to Count to 700” for your personal use and perhaps for Shabbat evening services. Use the icon below to download a PDF of all of my meditations on counting since 7 October 2023.

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Counting Days in Captivity

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How to Count to 700
Paint a stone yellow.
Then paint another.
And another.
Paint 700 stones
For 700 days
In the tunnels of hell.
If you are brave,
You will keep painting.
Paint stones yellow
Until you are exhausted
And famished
And have lost all track of time.
Paint until there is nothing
But darkness and yellow.
Then, maybe then,
You will know
The impossible
Reality
Of 700.

© 2025 Alden Solovy

Postscript: I am currently the student Rabbi at Or HaTzafon, Light of the North, Jewish Congregation of Fairbanks, AK. Follow my essays on this adventure with my “Torah Borealis” substack enewsletter. Check it out by clicking here.

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Please check out Enter These Gates: Meditations for the Days of Awe and These Words: Poetic Midrash on the Language of Torah and my other CCAR Press volumes: This Grateful Heart, This Joyous Soul, and This Precious Life, which can also be purchased as the Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. 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.”

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Assembly

Posted on: September 3rd, 2020 by Alden

This prayer is the result of spending nearly two months studying the High Holidays machzor in preparation for teaching my “Mysteries of the Machzor” series. I’ve added references to the texts quoted from Leviticus, Numbers, and Jeremiah. I didn’t select the obvious source text for the second stanza, Exodus 19:6, because the verse from Leviticus adds another layer of meaning.

Assembly
When the children of Israel
Assemble before You
In holy convocation,
We assert the covenant,
The promises You made
To our ancestors.
We claim the right
To forgiveness.
.וַיֹּאמֶר ה’, סָלַחְתִּי כִּדְבָרֶךָ
Vayomer Adonai, selachti kidvarecha.
And Adonai said, ‘I forgive, as you have asked.’ (Num. 14:20)

When the children of Israel
Assemble before each other
In holy convocation,
We assert our kinship,
The solidarity we have
With our heritage.
We claim the responsibility
To be a nation of priests.
.וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם, קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ
V’amarta aleihem, kedoshim tihyu.
Say to them, you shall be holy. (Lev. 19:2)

When God’s love
And God’s mercy
Join our holy convocation,
In breaths,
In whispers
And in blasts of the shofar,
Holiness and forgiveness,
Repentance and love,
Become One.

:’כִּי כֹה אָמַר ה
.וִהְיִיתֶם לִי לְעָם, וְאָנֹכִי אֶהְיֶה לָכֶם לֵאלֹהִים
Ki koh amar Adonnai:
V’hayitem li l’am, v’Anochi Ehyeh lechem laylohim.
For Adonai says:
And you shall be My people, and I will be your God. (Jer. 30:12,22)

© 2020 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com.

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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.

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.

© 2019 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com.

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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.”

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 Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism

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