Hoda'ah

 

“Were the existence of gratitude and recognition of the good lacking from existence, the human spirit would be left without sparkle or shine.”

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook

For the Perplexed of the Generation 4:9

 

 

I recently was honored to receive the following email:

 

Dear Rabbi Weinberg;

 

I am grateful that both my parents survived Covid in the ICU.

 

I am grateful that my husband is home, although with oxygen, but no longer on a ventilator.

 

I am grateful for the Jewish community, of which I am not connected, for food, drivers, shopping, and all sorts of help too much to list.

 

Someone printed a page from Partners In Prayer and scribbled your email on the bottom. Can you teach me how to pray? Is there a way I can use prayer to express my gratitude? Can I pray without becoming religious?

 

My husband and I and our children are willing to celebrate Hanukah this year. Is that okay?

 

My father, who grew up very religious, his parents kept kosher at home and he even had a bar mitzvah keeps on singing something he heard from his grandfather called “halel.” Can I start with that?

 

Sincerely,

J.S.

 

 

Dear J.S.

 

I was so inspired by your email that, in your honor,  I posted above a profound reflection by a man described during his lifetime  as the High Priest of Israel.

 

I chose a Cohen, or Priest, because the Hanukah story is one of the Spiritual leaders of Israel, the Cohanim, the Priests who conducted the service in the Temple in Jerusalem. They fought battles, they overcame odds , they triggered miracles and they, just as you, chose Gratitude as the spiritual essence of the day.

 

The song of which you asked, the Hallel, is ultimately one of gratitude.

 

It seems that you, with your powerful gratitude,  have already begun to celebrate the deepest essence of the Festival and with your beautiful quest have formed a prayer , a song, a Hallel, sweet and precious to God.

 

The Hanukah Hallel is divided into eight paragraphs. I hope that for our initial exploration of prayer you will be comfortable with my selection of key verses of the first two paragraphs.

 

Our shared objective is to find a way for you to express in prayer, specifically Hallel, the feelings as described in your email and in our short conversation.

 

Opening Paragraph – Psalm 113

 

Who is like God, our Ultimate Empowerer,

Who, enthroned on high,

Pays attention to  what is below,

in the heavens and on earth?

 

He raises the poor from the dust,

lifts up the needy from the refuse heap

to set them with the great,

with the great men of His people.

He sets the childless woman among her household as a happy mother of children.

Hallelujah.

 

Comments – Application

We celebrate God as the Ultimate Healer, the One Who empowers us to heal: The doctors and nurses who stood with your mother in the ICU, who fought at your father’s bedside, for them to breathe and heal, are viewed as Empowered with special gifts from the Ultimate Healer.

 

While some may question whether the One so High would care individually for your mother, for your father, for your husband, for your children so frightened and vulnerable, for you fighting for all, we use Hallel to sing:

Who, enthroned on high,

Pays attention to  what is below,

in the heavens and on earth?

 

Now, you who experienced the helplessness of being stuck outside a hospital while your parents were fighting for their lives, can breathe:

 

He raises the poor from the dust,

lifts up the needy from the refuse heap

to set them with the great,

with the great men of His people.

 

 

Paragraph Two – Psalm 114

 

“Before the Master

the earth trembles,

It trembles in the presence of the Source of all Power,

the God of Jacob,

Who turned the rock into a pool of water,

the flinty rock into a fountain.

 

Comments – Application

 

There are few people in the world who did not tremble this year in the face of an invisible virus and its wake of destruction.

 

We trembled because we did not know where to turn. We felt powerless and yet, people survived in ICU, people miraculously recovered.

 

We join you in being grateful that your loved ones were amongst those who lived the miraculous, the gift of the One

 

Who turned the rock into a pool of water,

the flinty rock into a fountain.