Comfort in Ruin: Tishah b’Av, a prayer-poem by Rabbi Menachem Creditor

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27 July 2023 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

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21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Prayers as poems

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	We’ve always found You, Holy One, even in the ruins. You were there, cooing like a dove, roaring like a lion. There we find You still, crying for Your children, seeing what they do to each other.
	You have never been unaffected by the brokenness of Your world, the brokenness in Your children.
	We have never been unaffected by the brokenness of Your world, the brokenness within us.
	We’ve even understood that universal brokenness as a reality within You, which is why, when we’re in ruin, we know we can find You.
	We offer You comfort Holy One, from our brokenness to Yours. We ask for Your comfort too.
	Perhaps, finally, we might even learn to be of comfort to each other.

“Comfort in Ruin: Tishah b’Av” was written by Rabbi Menachem Creditor and shared by the author via the Open Siddur Project Discussion Group on Facebook, 27 July 2023.

Menachem Creditor

Rabbi Menachem Creditor serves as the Pearl and Ira Meyer Scholar in Residence at UJA-Federation New York and was the founder of Rabbis Against Gun Violence. A frequent speaker in communities and campuses around the United States and Israel with over 1 million views of his online videos and essays, he was named by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America. His 22 books and 6 albums of original music include the global anthem "Olam Chesed Yibaneh" and the anthologies When We Turned Within and None Shall Make Them Afraid. He has been involved in the leadership of American Jewish World Service, AIPAC, the Rabbinical Assembly, and the One America Movement, an organization dedicated to bringing together Americans of different faiths and opinions. He and his wife Neshama Carlebach live in New York, where they are raising their five children.

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו׃ (תהלים צ:יז) · "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." (Psalms 90:17)

Comfort in Ruin: Tishah b’Av, a prayer-poem by Rabbi Menachem Creditor

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