A Prayer from a Traumatized Jewish Heart, by Rabbi Menachem Creditor (10 October 2023)

Contributor(s):

Menachem Creditor

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

Categories:

Conflicts over Sovereignty and Dispossession, Terror, War

Tags:

Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 2023 Israel–Hamas war, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer

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Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Oh, God Our eyes, our eyes Our hearts, our hearts
	Our children, our children Our mothers, our mothers Our elders, our parents Our teachers, our grandchildren Our warriors, our peacekeepers Our very souls…
	….it is more than we can bear, and it only gets worse with every photo and every video.
	God, protect our children from the images emblazoned now in our eyes and minds, from the worst nightmare to ever befall the Jewish People. Our enemy, the face of real evil, seeks to destroy our family, body and soul.
	We must be like steel. We must be like iron. But we must never lose our warm and loving hearts along the way. We will fight until they are all erased from under the face of the Heavens. We have no choice. They have shown us what they will do if we do not. They’ve already perpetrated unfathomable evil. And we will force the world to bear witness as we reel with pain.
	God, protect our protectors, who are only children, our children fighting for our future. Shield them as they serve as the sword we hate to need. Hold our hearts. Let us not become hard like stone as we do what we must to save our lives.
	Amen.

“A Prayer from a Traumatized Jewish Heart” was written by Rabbi Menachem Creditor and shared by the author via the Open Siddur Project discussion group on Facebook, 10 October 2023.

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“A Prayer from a Traumatized Jewish Heart, by Rabbi Menachem Creditor (10 October 2023)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

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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Videos Capture Two Partygoers Being Kidnapped by Militants at Music Festival as documented by HAMAS

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "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