4 Sivan: 48th Day of the Omer

Week Seven: PRAYER

Bracha

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al s’firat haomer.

Blessed are You, LORD God, ruler of the Universe, who hallows us with the mitzvot, commanding us to count the Omer.

Today is the forty-eighth day — six weeks and six days of the Omer.

Today’s Reflection

Today’s reading begins with a reflection by Rabbi Arthur Green from his book, Seek My Face: A Jewish Mystical Theology:

At the center of our worship stands a cry. The cry itself is beyond worship, almost beyond words. All of our prayers, the ordered literary creation of our best rabbinic minds, serve as mere accompaniment to this cry. They prepare us for it, lead us up to the appropriate moment, coax the cry forth from deep within us, and then gently guide us back from it.

The cry itself — Sh’ma Yisra’el — “Hear, O Israel, Y-H-W-H our God, Y-H-W-H is One!" — is not addressed to God. It is a call to Israel, to ourselves and those around us. It is call to all who struggle with this divine and the human, who struggle to understand. It is our cry to one another; we call it out as the angels call it out, “Holy, holy, holy!” This act of calling demands all our strength; sometimes it even demands life itself (Kedar, pg. 158).

I learned the Sh’ma in my early twenties, along with some key Jewish prayers, as part of my university and personal studies, and it resonated in my soul, a feeling of primal call to connection, similar to how Rabbi Green describes it as a cry. As I read and hear stories of the Sh’ma, of how this cry linked the people of Israel in the diaspora, in the in the Holocaust, and now. I have a Sh’ma wall hanging in my room, right near my bed as a constant reminder of who I am and feel so deeply in my heart, and how I soulfully long to (re)connect and belong to the people of Israel.

And so it is. Amen.