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Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but make them known unto thy children and to thy children’s children; the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeḇ, when the Lord said unto me: Assemble Me the people, and I will make them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days that they live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children. (Deuteronomy 4:9-10) | |
And these words which I command thee this day shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt speak of them when thou sittest in thy house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7) | |
Come, children, chant the King arrayed in glory, Enswathed in praise eternally intoned. His splendor is the theme of song and story: In awful majesty He sits enthroned. O hear the tale of His tremendous power: His glory is a fitting decoration, May Israel in the Synagog assembling | |
This is the day when Israel stood at the foot of Sinai and saw the flames and the clouds enveloping the mountain. Above the sound of the trumpet, they heard the voice of the Lord speaking unto them from the midst of the flames. Surely the words were engraven upon their hearts never to be erased! Never would they forget the wonders their eyes had seen! Yet before they left the wilderness, Moses needed to admonish them, saying: Do not forget what your eyes have seen when ye stood at Sinai. Keep the divine Word living in your hearts, for ye must teach your children the way of life. | |
Children are confirmed in their faith through the lives of their parents. In order that the knowledge of God shall not perish from among us, children must behold its light illumine[d by] the lives of those they love.[1] The grammar and theme of these lines suggest an accidental ellision here that we have corrected with the text in brackets. –Aharon Varady Upon each parent in Israel, therefore, is placed the duty of living as a witness of the revelation of Sinai; to keep the word of God vital within him; to cherish each precious memory of God’s nearness; to recall in joy those hours when the divine voice spoke to him, bringing him strength and guidance; to recount unceasingly the abundant mercies of God. When he sitteth in his house, the praise of the Eternal shall be upon his life. The children, hearkening, will learn to call upon the name of the Lord. If through the words of the parent there sounds the voice of God, the children will stand in reverence at the foot of Sinai confirmed in the faith of their fathers. | |
Thou Life of the Universe, be Thou revealed anew this day unto every soul. Lead us to the Mt. Sinai that is within our souls, for there may we behold Thy glory. O how wondrously we glimpse Thee when we survey our own possibilities and powers, how gloriously we find Thee when we find ourselves! As the daybreak of love and beauty ariseth within us, O how rich is our vision of Thee! How near Thou art! | |
Lord, this very springtide becomes Mt. Sinai if only our hearts be purified and, like Israel of old, prepared for Thine approach. From the unsanctified heart Thou art hidden. Only the path of love and truth leadeth to Thee. Through holiness we approach Thee. O exquisite intimations of a beauty beyond beauty, of depths of glory beyond the visible glory, of a loveliness transcendent whereof the splendors of nature, verdure glistening and skies beaming and a myriad blossoms exhaling fragrance are but the mystic whisper! | |
And when the hour is one of trouble and our lives are, like Sinai, heaped with dark thunder clouds and shaken with forces volcanic, O then too be Thou manifest. Help us to penetrate beyond all grief and gloom to where Thou abidest above the fury of the storm. Let the supreme and imperishable worth of love and service be revealed when, in the lightning flashes of adversity, the futility of all else is made manifest. Speak, through these insights, unto all whose lives endure the darkness of anxiety. O Thou who art our help, the very consciousness of Thee is strength. | |
Eternal Father, let our boys and girls from this day find in Thee the confirmation of their souls. Invest Thou our rites and customs with the living flame of Thy spirit, that our confirmants may, in truth, look upon Thy beauty and exult in doing and learning Thy will. Descend Thou into every heart that is lowly as Sinai is lowly, humble as the thorn bush is humble and let us hear Thee say for evermore unto our souls: I am the Lord, thy God. Amen. |
“Shaḇuoth—The Feast of Weeks” is the forty-first prayer found in ברכה ותהלה Blessing and Praise: A Book of Meditations and Prayers for Individual and Home Devotion (CCAR 1923), pp. 135-138. Unfortunately, we do not yet know of a resource providing clear attribution of authorship for any of the prayers in this volume.
Source(s)
Notes
| 1 | The grammar and theme of these lines suggest an accidental ellision here that we have corrected with the text in brackets. –Aharon Varady |
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“Shaḇuoth—the Festival of Weeks, an exhortation for parents of bnei mitsvah confirmants (CCAR 1923)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication.
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