Library:D'vrei Torah

A PRAYER FOR YAMIM NORA’IM
Stan Samuels
HH 2009

God of our ancestors,
Who believed in you even unto death.
Who passionately worshiped you
In song and dance,
While swaying and beating their breasts.
We have turned from you.
Our world has changed and we now understand
      many of the miracles that our ancestors did not.
Many do not pray out of belief but from tradition.
Repeating the prayers that our ancestors spoke
      even as they were martyred.
But our understandings and insights are different
The loving, merciful Worker-of-Miracles
That our ancestors pictured in their hearts and minds
Is very different from the God that we now envision.

God of our ancestors,
We need to be forgiven and pardoned;
We need to atone —
For we are but human, and you are the God of our fathers,
We are childlike, and we need a parent,
We are weak, and we need a protector,
We are not sheep, but neither are we the shepherds,
We are thinkers and you are our concept,
We are creators, and you are our creation,
We are explorers, and you are our ethical compass,
We are masters of this planet, and also its servants,
We are individuals, and we are a community,
We are independent, and we are mutually interdependent,
We are questioners, and we need answers,
We are faithful, and we need a source of faith,
We are strong-willed, stubborn and stiff-necked, and we have created a God in our own image,
We need the omnipotent, omniscient, merciful and eternal God that our fathers believed in,
We need more wisdom and strength than we possess.

God of our ancestors, indeed we need to ask for forgiveness,
For we have not been what we are capable of being.
Some have not observed those teachings of the Torah
That we know are timely and relevant today.
We need to ask for forgiveness,
Not from a mythic personification but from ourselves,
      our loved ones and our fellow humans.
It is not God that we have sinned against but ourselves.
It is not the path of our ancestors from which we have strayed
But the path of our aspirations
For the kind of world that we would like our
      Grandchildren to live in.
It is not sufficient to pray for forgiveness,
To pray for a better world.
We must work for it
For that is in our power alone.

Stan Samuels RH 5770 (2009)