קהלת לא צדק | Kohelet Wasn’t Right, by Rabbi Oded Mazor (24 November 2023)

Contributor(s):

Ayelet Cohen and Oded Mazor

Shared on:

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

Categories:

Slavery & Captivity

Tags:

58th century A.M., 2023 Israel–Hamas war, 21st century C.E.

This prayer was written on Friday, November 24th 2023, 11th of Kislev 5784, early afternoon (Israel Time), when we were all waiting to witness the first group of hostages come back home from captivity in the hands of Hamas. Having close friends who have relatives kidnapped who do not fit into the criteria of being released now, I was looking for words to pray at this moment. Referring to the words of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai z”l, and his “remarks” on Kohelet’s “For everything there is a season,” I tried to describe how all feelings are mixed in these awful hours, and in the days since.

I am thankful to Rabbi Ayelet Cohen for her translation of this prayer into English. –Rabbi Oded Mazor

TOGGLE COLUMNS (on/off):

ADJUST COLUMN POSITIONS: select the column header cell and drag it where you want. show me!

COPY INDIVIDUAL COLUMN(S): use CopyTables, a browser extension.

TABLE HELP

Source (Hebrew)	Translation (English)
“קהלת לא צדק”, —יהודה עמיחי (אדם בחייו)	“Kohelet wasn’t right”, —Yehuda Amichai (from “A Man in His Life”)^[1] Find the text of Amichai’s poem with a translation in English, here. The theme of his poem is that a human being’s life isn’t long enough to experience every season established for every purpose under heaven. –ANV
בְּיָמִים בָּהֶם כָּל הָעִתִּים קוֹרְסוֹת אַחַת אֶל תּוֹךְ רְעוּתָהּ, וְאֵין בְּרֵרָה אֶלָּא לִבְכּוֹת וְלִשְׂחוֹק בְּאוֹתָן עֵינַיִם, לִסְפֹּד וְלִרְקוֹד גַּם יַחַד, וְהִיסְטוֹרְיָה אֲרֻכָּה נִדְחֶסֶת אֶל יוֹם וְשָׁעָה אַחַת, נְבַקֵּשׁ אֶת הַכּוֹחַ לְהָכִיל אֶת עָצְמַת הַלְּבָבוֹת הַמִּתְפַּקְּעִים. לִשְׂמֹחַ עִם הַזּוֹכִים לַחֲבֹק כְּבָר הַיּוֹם, לַעֲטֹף אֶת הַמִּתְכַּנְּסִים בִּכְמִיהָתָם וְנַפְשָׁם נִרְעֶדֶת, לֶאֱחֹז בַּתִּקְוָה בְּלִי לְהַרְפּוֹת, וּלְהוֹתִיר מֶרְחָב שֶׁל שֶׁקֶט לַזְּעָקָה שֶׁאֵין לָהּ קוֹל.	In the days when each hour collides with the next We have no choice but to cry and to laugh with the same eyes To mourn and to dance at the same time And the long arc of history is compressed into one day and one hour We ask for the strength to contain The intensity of our bursting hearts. To rejoice with those who will be able to embrace today, To enfold all of those leaning into their longing, souls trembling, To hold on to hope without letting go, And to leave some quiet space for a silent scream.
אָנָּא, תֵּן לָנוּ מָקוֹם לְהִשָּׁבֵר בּוֹ לִרְסִיסִים, וְרוּחַ לְהִבָּנוֹת שׁוּב, מֵחָדָשׁ.	Please, grant us the room to shatter into pieces, And the spirit to be rebuilt, anew.

Notes[+]

Notes
1	Find the text of Amichai’s poem with a translation in English, here. The theme of his poem is that a human being’s life isn’t long enough to experience every season established for every purpose under heaven. –ANV

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“קהלת לא צדק | Kohelet Wasn’t Right, by Rabbi Oded Mazor (24 November 2023)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Ayelet Cohen

Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen is Senior Director of the New Israel Fund’s New York/Tri-State Region. Previously, she was Director of The Center for Jewish Living and The David H. Sonabend Center for Israel at The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. She served for 10 years at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBT synagogue serving people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Passionately committed to progressive and feminist Judaism, she is an activist and an advocate for full inclusion and celebration of LGBT Jews in the Jewish world, and an advocate for LGBT civil rights. Rabbi Cohen has been profiled in the New York Times, was named one of the “Heeb 100,” Heeb Magazine’s “hundred people you need to know about,” and was honored at the 2005 Ma’yan Seder as a leading young Jewish feminist activist. She is a member of the Rabbinical Assembly and the New York Board of Rabbis.

Oded Mazor

Rabbi Oded Mazor, born and raised in Israel, received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Jewish Philosophy in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and rabbinic ordination from the Israeli program of HUC-JIR. Oded co-edited the Israeli Reform Three Regalim (Pilgrim Holy Days) prayer book, HaSimcha Sh'Balev, and is part of the editorial committee of Tfilat HaAdam. After nearly a decade as rabbi and educator in the Leo Baeck Education Center, Haifa, and living in the renewed Kibbutz Ḥannaton, Oded and the family are back in Jerusalem, where he serves as the rabbi of Ḳehilat Ḳol HaNeshama.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

Kibucoví dobrovolníci v kibucu Ga'aš. (credit: kibbutz gaas, license CC BY)

הכרזת יום הבחירות | Declaration for Israeli Election Day, by Rabbi Oded Mazor

תִּגְדַּל | Tigdal, by Rabbi Oded Mazor

nourriture, desserts, repas, régime alimentaire, nutrition délicieux (CC0)

כוונה להפרשת חלה לשבת | Kavvanah for the separation of ḥalah before Shabbat, by Rabbi Oded Mazor

עמידה קצרה לליל שבת | Short Amidah for Leil Shabbat, by Rabbi Oded Mazor

ברכת יוצר האדם לכבוד יום זכויות האדם ולכל יום | A Blessing for International Human Rights Day (and every day), by Rabbi Oded Mazor (2012)

Protests near Azrieli Center, Tel Aviv, 4 March 2023

מי שברך לשמירת הדמוקרטיה | Mi sheBerakh for Preserving Democracy, by Rabbi Oded Mazor

Detail of transtropilized translation of a portion of Megillat Qohelet.

💬 מגילת קהלת | Megillat Qohelet (Ecclesiastes): Chantable English translation with trōp, by Len Fellman

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=53500

Associated Image:

A rally calling for the release of the Israeli abductees in the Gaza Strip, Gedera (credit: Nizzan Cohen, license: CC BY-SA)

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in shared links on social media.)

Source: XML | JSON | HTML | ODT

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Ayelet Cohen and Oded Mazor.
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=53500>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of contributors, patrons, or institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture. If you like what you've found here, please help keep our project alive and online with your financial contribution.

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