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Contribute a translation | Source (English) |
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Dear God of chess games turned long-range missiles, fateful tanks and heavy metals | |
Let our prayers be likewise geared for long-range impact and great precision to protect the innocent from invasion and division | |
For suddenly the game has changed… Another match just like we played last season and the last… in fierce competition, yes, but a theoretical game of chess none the less… | |
Until today when these wooden figures turned flesh and bone and tender When suddenly the tactics are tactile made of real fire, no fiction in shrapnel | |
For these chess pieces bleed… the rooks buckle under pressure and bishops bend break shatter pawns blasted asunder by another monster and another | |
And the bloodied board has begun to drip onto the carpet that keeps getting pulled out from beneath our feet and we can’t seem to stop it… | |
The fabric of an entire continent stained sprayed afraid as we pray our way through this somber day. | |
We are wildly untethered weathered by winter and pandemic we are deep in it dismay, dismal and may we finish the game somehow saved somehow civil | |
May Justice be the victor and may the chess master master his own inward glance and retreat from disaster | |
Unseat the monsters who make chess pieces bleed onto the carpet the kings and queens are just mothers and fathers protect the pawns God of chess games please stop this… |
“A Prayer for Ukraine” was first published by Chaya Kaplan Lester on her Facebook page.

“A Prayer for Ukraine, by Chaya Kaplan Lester (2022)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.
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