April 5, 2024 admin

For these things I pray in these terrible times

Eighteen in Hebrew is signified by the word חי chai, which means life. So I want to write about life. For ten times chai makes one hundred and eighty, the exact number of days today since October 7, six months ago on Sunday, the date on which Hamas, the enemies of life, perpetrated their evil against Israel and ultimately their own people too.

I want to write about life, but I’m struggling, drafting sentences, then deleting them, because my head and heart are full of the horrors that have ensued since.

So all I can manage is a prayer, a prayer for hope and life as we approach the month of Nisan, the season of freedom, the beginning of our journey to redemption, the springtime when we bless the fruitful beauty of God’s world. How frail all these things seem! How much it therefore matters to care for them all the more.

So I pray for life, for everyone in Israel, for the women, men and children still held hostage by Hamas, for the safe return of all the soldiers.

I pray for the tens of thousands of ordinary people in Gaza, caught homeless, helpless and desperate in the middle.

I pray that this war will swiftly end with a cessation of all the bloodshed, the return home of all the hostages, and a viable plan bringing hope for a dignified future for everyone, across Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, so that hatred has no leverage anymore.

I pray for food, drink, shelter and healing, everywhere in Israel and Gaza. How else can I say ‘Let all who are hungry come and eat’ at the Seder table in 18 days’ time?

I pray for everyone striving to heal wounds, work with the homeless and displaced and bring comfort to grief and trauma. May God give them resilience, strength and courage!

We are always allowed to hope and pray.

I want to pray especially for the hostages whose families I’ve met, whose names I know, whose faces I see before me.

Naama Levy, may you be safe in body and strong in spirit. May you soon be held once more in your mother’s and father’s arms. May your dog Bafi jump up at you, against all the rules, when you walk through the door. May you go to the seaside with the Ra’ananot girls, your school and Noam youth movement friends.

Romi, you should know – I hope the knowledge somehow reaches you – that the picture of your smiling face looks out everywhere across your hometown of Kfar Veradim, which longs to welcome you home. May you once more relish the music you love, and dance in each of the six styles of dancing (or more?) your father told me you enjoy. May you spread the joy of your life-loving spirit across everyone you meet.

Oded Lifschitz, may you hear in freedom the words of your remarkable daughter Sharone, who calls in her quiet, collected, courageous voice for Hamas to release you, who minces no words about their cruelties, and who yet can say that she has taught her heart to feel the pain of others. May the fields be replanted which you and your wife tended for decades; may your lifelong work for peace and co-existence resume. May you witness it bearing fruit.

I pray for all the grieving families I’ve met, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druse. I don’t believe that deeply felt grief is different because it’s on the other side of a border.

I pray that hearts pierced by anguish and grief be filled not with hate, but with healing and compassion.

I know all this may sound stupid, amidst the fighting and dying. But I don’t know what else to say. I fear terribly the turning of our world, our beautiful world, God’s world, towards hatred and destruction.

So I pray for life.

Where there’s hope we’re not just permitted but required to pray. We’re commanded, too, to back up our words with commitments, solidarity and actions. And how anyone carry on without hope?

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