Personal Prayers
During the High Holy Days many congregants have read personal prayers. Many of these prayers are quite moving. Below is one example of our heartfelt words.
LIVING LIFE WITH ALL OUR SENSES – Jonathan Garlick
May it be your will that we find a way to live our lives with all our senses – truly hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching. To more fully sense the world around us through the coming year, by being mindful of how each one of our senses informs the way we experience our lives.
HEARING – I pray that the sounds and voices we HEAR will resonate with meaning in our ears and mind. I have always been moved by my father’s favorite Yiddish poem, written by Avrom Reizin, that has helped me continue to hear the resonance of my father’s life, 32 years after his death. As a third-generation funeral director, my father spent a good deal of time in cemeteries. I clearly remember the day he came home from one New York cemetery, full of emotion and read us this poem that was engraved in Yiddish on the poet Reizin’s gravestone.
Zing, neshome, zing!….. Sing out, my soul, Sing
Lebn haste – gezang…… Life/ is Song
Un dernokh vet zine….. And Afterwards
Sheyn der vider-klang….. How Beautiful is the Echo
This poem echoed once again when we chose it to announce the birth of our son Jesse as we linked his life to my father’s. I pray that we will continue to hear the echo of those we love, as they live on in us.
OUR SENSE OF SIGHT – In this season of renewal, may we find a way to SEE a new and ever-renewing image of ourselves and of the world around us. To be able to view what we have looked at many times before, but to do so with a vision that can reveal facets that have never been obvious to our eye. Like Hagar, when “God opened her eyes”, to see the life-saving well that was there all the time. I pray for a vision that will give us this sense of revelation. To see with discernment or “haskel”… with the power to discriminate the nuance of detail. Seeing to discern the unknown possibilities yet to be found in our lives, so we can begin to translate this into a meaningful vision of our future.
THE SENSE OF SMELL – I pray that SMELLS around us will evoke memories, that will take us deeper into the world of our past. To feel the memories they trigger, so we can retrieve them and bring them to life, as they flow through us and linger with us.
OUR SENSE OF TASTE – I pray that we experience a blending of complex TASTES as we gracefully balance the bitter tastes with the sweet, and the sour with the savory, serving as a reminder of how we can balance the contrasting and paradoxical thoughts and feelings in our lives.
I pray that we can become aware of OUR SENSE OF TOUCH, not just by touching others, but by experiencing a more innate, subtle touch, like that of the warm sun or cool breeze on our skin. Spending a short time in the hospital this year for an infection that thankfully healed quickly, I looooonged to feel the sensation of fresh air! I found a hospital room that had one crevice-like, screened window that opened to the world. I pushed my face against that screen and felt the air touching my skin like I have never felt it before. I still feel that way NOW when I feel a breeze. I pray that I always will.
In closing, I pray that we be mindful of living our lives with all our senses so we can experience a year of revelation, memory, discernment and resonance.
ZING NESHOMA ZING…Sing out, my soul, Sing
Life is Song
And Afterwards,
Sheyn der vider-klang…How Beautiful is the Echo