“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.
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