Currently Browsing: prayer 12 articles
Atonement is At One Ment
A new poem about Yom Kippur by Gloria Tessler. At One Ment is to be an adult. To be an adult is to be Fractured, dissonant, Uncertain. Finding Footsteps in dark And silent places, Losing your way. At One Ment is to be a child. Graciously perceptive, Holding back tears That may hurt an adult, […]
Prayer never ends
Prayer never ends. It’s like the sea and the sky, like an endless field or a song that never dies, like words that echo in the mouth of a canyon long after they’re spoken, like a heart filled to the brim with love, overflowing with love, spilling over the edge of a cliff, like an […]
Stamp of Approval
In the third of three poems, Bruce Black reflects on prayer. Do prayers receive a stamp of approval when they arrive in heaven? Maybe there’s an angel sitting at a desk reading each prayer, deciding which one gets passed on to God and which gets dismissed—tossed into the wastebasket to be shredded later— while those […]
Yizkor
In the second of three poems, Bruce Black reflects on Jewish prayer. Under the folds of my prayer shawl that I drape over my head before beginning to pray, I greet my parents, my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, imagining each embracing me again, holding me in their arms. Under the folds of my prayer […]
Where Prayer Comes From
Prayer comes from a hidden reservoir deep within the heart, and words flow at times like a river in flood. The mystery is that you can pray at all, that your lips can form words, that you can find a way to reach out to God even if you question God’s existence and doubt anyone […]
Shaddai
Mirushe ‘Mira’ Zylali reviews Loolwa Khazzoom’s new album. The Aramaic-language piyyut ‘Yah Ribbon “Alam”’ ends with a prayer for a restored Jerusalem. Written in the late 1500s by Rabbi Israel Najara, the then-rabbi of Gaza, it has been sung for four hundred years as a Shabbat hymn – that’s 21,000 Shabbatot. On Shabbat, God asks […]
No Leaf Is Perfect
Eran Hornick is inspired by Shai Afsai’s poem ‘Forty-four’. In June of last year, my friend Dan and I drove to Maine to hike the renowned Mahoosuc Notch. It is famed by some to be ‘the hardest mile of the AT’ — the Appalachian Trail — and since it was within a four hours’ drive […]
Prayer
Bruce Black offers up four new poems on prayer. 1) Every day I listen Every day, dear God, I listen,wanting to hear Your voice— Just a word or two, even the soundof Your breath— Hoping for a sign that You arelistening to my prayer.__ 2) Your face is hidden Your face ishidden behinda cloud. When […]
My Metal, My Judaism
Adam Kammerling reflects on metal, theatre and Judaism. The first song to move me to tears was the Avinu Malkeinu, as sung by the congregation of the Bristol and West Progressive synagogue. I was fifteen years old and it took me by surprise. It was the hyper-normative, mega-hetero, small-town, the early noughties. Boys couldn’t just […]
Shtiebls Sans Frontieres
Sometime ago, before the ‘lockdown’, I was talking to a United Synagogue Rabbi who was bemoaning the lack of younger people in Shul on a Friday night; I guessed by “younger” he meant under 60, but he was thinking about those in their 20s. So, I told him they were all in their shuls. SHULS!? he spluttered with incredulity. Yes, shuls: […]