Posts Tagged ‘living Torah’

 

Crown

Posted on: August 23rd, 2022 by Alden

This idea for this brief meditation arrived during Shabbat services a week ago as the sefer Torah was being returned to the ark. Let my life be a crown upon the Torah. Amen

Crown
Let my life be a crown
Upon the Torah.
And let Torah
Be the crown of my life.
My heart will overflow
With God’s teachings,
My hands will become
A fountain of God’s blessings,
And my soul will give testimony
To the glory of God’s holy word.

© 2022 Alden Solovy and ToBendLight

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Postscript: See also Let Torah and For the Gift of Torah Scholarship.

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul, This Grateful Heart, and This Precious Life. Here’s a link to my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer..” 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.

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Guest Writer: Eliza Scheffler

Posted on: January 18th, 2018 by Alden

Eliza Scheffler is a first-year rabbinical student at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem. She took my class, “Introduction to Creative Liturgy.” This is what she wrote when I opened up an empty aron kodesh — the ark/closet that typically holds Torah scrolls — and presented it as a writing prompt. This post is the first of new addition to this space: occasionally featuring guest writers.

Prayer of an empty ark
Where did my Torahs go?
Did you usher them out into the world for justice?
Did they wipe away brutality?
Did they vanquish suffering?
Or were they stolen, burned, destroyed?
Left unguarded and faded slowly?

What will come of you now —
All of you —
Do you need my Torahs still?
Who will retrace their letters?
Who will read them?
What will we learn?

“Prayer of an empty ark” is © 2018 Eliza Scheffler. All rights reserved.

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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.

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