Call To Prayer

Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer
Friday May 21, 2021
— please listen to the video to hear Rabbi Jessica’s words, below is a poem read at the end of the teaching written by Rabbi Jordan Braunig

It is possible to pray for peace.
Our prayer life need not know
our boundaries. No green lines,
no dashes, no subtle
Demarcations.

Our longings can transcend
our political ideologies, cut across
our keen analyses. Earnestness,
cast out of our public discourse,
still has a place in the language
of our hearts.

We have the capacity to pray
for the old couple crouched
in their stairwell in Ashkelon
and the terrified child in his
pajamas in Gaza.

We can spread our prayer
like a tattered shawl
like a billowing canopy
like a sparkling firmament
over the tired shoulders of these
and across the narrow frames of those.

We are not naive, not cowards,
nor traitors to pray for peace.
We are told to get in line,
to stand with them
or to stand with the other,
but we pray to a Holy One
who resides in the space between,
diminished by their missiles,
laid low by their rockets,
exhausted, but still listening
for our prayers.