Since the Hamas attacks this past Shabbat, I find that most of each day I feel like I am underwater. Waves of emotions ranging from sadness to confusion to anger wash through me, leaving me each time on an empty shore of anguish and grief. My sleep is interrupted by thoughts and images from Israel. Colors are muted. I feel no joy.
Like many of us, I am in mourning.
Tonight, our Sanctuary will serve as a House of Mourning. We will be together, as is Jewish tradition, to mourn, and not alone.
Most hauntingly on my mind are the Israelis (and other foreign nationals) who have been kidnapped by Hamas and brought over into Gaza. Estimates put their number at about 150, and they range from infants to Holocaust survivors, young men and women, children, parents, and grandmothers. Each one with a name.
For those of you who have been with us at bar/bat mitzvah services over recent years, often we will introduce the Nissim b’chol yom (daily miracle prayers) as prayers meant to be taken both metaphorically, and literally.
Each one of the fifteen things that we pray for begin the same way: Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech haOlam…Praise to You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe…
This standard beginning to a Jewish prayer anchors what we then petition for in our belief (hope) that God can be invoked to be with us, to grant us, to help us.
After rooting our prayer in God, what then follows in Nissim b’chol yom are the things that we ask God to grant us.
Lately, knowing the terror and horror that our people who are held prisoner by Hamas must be experiencing, I desperately lift up a part of Nissim b’chol yom that has never before spoken to me:
Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech haOlam…zokeif k’fufim-
Please God, you who are praised as Adonai the sovereign of all…please free our captives.
In my heart, I continue: please God, have their captors show mercy. Have them treated with humanity. Protect them, their bodies, and their minds. Send comfort to their families, their communities, and their people who are beside themselves with worry and fear. Return those kidnapped to their homes, safely and soon. Please, God.
May this Sabbath allow us a harbor of peace so that we can renew our energies for what is to come.
