A Prayer for Central Oklahoma After the Tornado, by Rabbi Abby Jacobson (2013)

Contributor(s):

Abby Jacobson

Shared on:

21 May 2013 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Dangerous Storms & Floods

Tags:

2013 Moore tornado, weather, storm, catastrophe, tornado, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., Oklahoma, English vernacular prayer

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Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Lord our God, we stood before You just a week ago to receive the Ten Statements of Your Torah. We stood, as though with our ancestors, and listened to the Torah reader chant descriptions of the smoking mountain, the thunderous rumbling, and the long-awaited voice of God.
	This afternoon, the people of central Oklahoma did not stand to hear the voice of God. We sat, we paced, and we huddled. We listened to the voice of the meteorologists and watched as dark clouds swirled together over a cone of destruction. The rain fell upward, not down, and the thunderous roar of the swirling winds carried, and we saw the awesome power of God. This was not Shavuot — the Feast of Weeks that marked our days of freedom. This was minutes that seemed like years and trapped us into watching the same images of destruction.
	Merciful God, a great and powerful windstorm has passed, and it has torn apart the buildings and shattered the rocks before You. You told Elijah, the prophet, that You were not in the windstorm.^[1] Cf. 1 Kings 19:11 Please, then, be in the still, small voices of the children crying out to be found. Be in the voices of the rescuers calling out for survivors. Be in the cries of those who are lost and of those who have lost.
	May it be Your will that those who are missing be found alive and be cared for well, and may the people of central Oklahoma find strength in You and in one another as we rebuild what we can.

“A Prayer for Central Oklahoma After the Tornado,” by Rabbi Abby Jacobson was originally published by the Rabbinical Assembly, at their website, in the aftermath of the 2013 Moore tornado.

Notes[+]

Notes
1	Cf. 1 Kings 19:11

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“A Prayer for Central Oklahoma After the Tornado, by Rabbi Abby Jacobson (2013)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Abby Jacobson

Rabbi Abby Jacobson serves the community of Emmanuel Synagogue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

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The 2013 Oklahoma City tornado as it passed through south Oklahoma City. (credit: Ks0stm, license: CC-BY-SA)

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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