Thirteen Intentions of Faith Taught at the Beit HaMidrash of Elat Chayyim, by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

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Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality

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24 July 2017 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

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Learning, Study, and School, Addenda

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אני מאמין Ani Maamin, North America, שלשה עשר עקרים shlolshah asar iqarim (13 principles), Jewish Renewal, תחינות teḥinot, supplications, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., כוונות kavvanot, Elat Chayyim, עולם הבא Olam Haba

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	Each one who aligns oneself every day with these principles of the faith and lives according to them can be assured that s/he will have a role in the World to Come for us and for all the peoples on the entire world soon:
א	1 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith in the G‑d who is infinite and the blessed light that issues from that Infinite Source, who is beyond time and space, yet who longs to have a dwelling place among those in the worlds here below; and who, out of loving beneficence to Her creatures, contracted Her light and Her radiant glory, in order to emanate, to create, to form, and to effectuate all that exists in the universe.
ב	2 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith in the Oneness of G‑d and of all creation, a oneness of the kind of One that has no second; and that all which exists in the universe exists solely according to the will of that G‑d, who constantly calls everything into being – who causes all existence at every moment.
ג	3 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith that the Creator has an intent and a purpose in creation, and that one of the aspects of that purpose is so that He shall become known to us by and through it; and that we, creatures have a task to broaden and enlarge that knowledge / awareness until the world will be as filled with knowledge of G‑d as the waters cover the sea.
ד	4 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith that the hoped-for goal is that all of us will come to constitute one united interconnected and organic whole and that every living being will know that You are the One who constantly causes its existence.
ה	5 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith that all the pathways through which the Holy Spirit is manifest and revealed are of one piece with the Torah that was given at Sinai.
ו	6 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith in the mission of Judaism, which is one of the vital organs of the collective being that comprises all existence, and that through G‑d’s compassion on all creatures, it is revealed to them also how indispensable and integral they are to the health of all the species of the planet.
ז	7 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith that the universe is not ownerless and abandoned, and that every one who does good with his/her life takes part in the fixing on the world and that every one who uses his/her life for evil participates in the destruction of the world; and that every action has an impact on the rest of existence.
ח	8 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith that the amount of good in the world is greater than the amount of evil, and that the entire order of movement through the chain of evolution is designed to bring about the fulfillment of the Divine intention.
ט	9 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith that the deeds of the fathers and mothers accrue to the benefit of the children, and that the tradition that is passed on contains within it the seeds of the light of redemption.
י	10 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith that our prayers are heard and answered.
יא	11 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith that the Holy Shechinah dwells within our midst and that all who show kindness to living creatures show kindness too to the Sh’khinnah, and vice versa.
יב	12 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith that physical death does not terminate the existence of the soul; rather, that there are innumerable worlds, within which they return to live again.
יג	13 May it be the Divine will that I believe with perfect faith in Tikkun HaOlam, that the world can be repaired and healed and that it is becoming alive; and that besides coming to life, the world will come to possess a consciousness and feeling, and as such will become a fitting vessel for a fuller revelation of the Divine will.

This list of thirteen supplications for emunah (faith) was included by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, z”l, in his Siddur Tehillat Hashem Yidaber Pi (2009) under the heading, “The Teaching of the Beit Ha Midrash at Elat Chayyim.” Sentence parsing by Aharon Varady.

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“Thirteen Intentions of Faith Taught at the Beit HaMidrash of Elat Chayyim, by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Rabbi Dr. Zalman Meshullam Schachter-Shalomi, affectionately known as "Reb Zalman" (28 August 1924 – 3 July 2014) was one of the founders of the Jewish Renewal movement. Born in Żółkiew, Poland (now Ukraine) and raised in Vienna, he was interned in detention camps under the Vichy Regime but managed to flee the Nazi advance, emigrating to the United States in 1941. He was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi in 1947 within the ḤaBaD Hasidic movement while under the leadership of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, and served ḤaBaD communities in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He subsequently earned an M.A. in psychology of religion at Boston University, and a doctorate from the Hebrew Union College. He was initially sent out to speak on college campuses by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, but in the early 1960s, after experimenting with "the sacramental value of lysergic acid", the main ingredient in LSD, leadership within ḤaBaD circles cut ties with him. He continued teaching the Torah of Ḥassidut until the end of his life to creative, free and open-minded Jewish thinkers with humility and kindness and established warm ecumenical ties as well. In September 2009, he became the first contributor of a siddur to the Open Siddur Project database of Jewish liturgy and related work. Reb Zalman supported the Open Siddur Project telling its founder, "this is what I've been looking forward to!" and sharing among many additional works of liturgy, an interview he had with Havurah magazine in the early to mid-1980s detailing his vision of "Database Davenen." The Open Siddur Project is proud to be realizing one of Reb Zalman's long held dreams.

Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality

The Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality (now a program of Hazon at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT) began as the Elat Chayyim Jewish Retreat Center, a project from the board of ALEPH (Alliance for Jewish Renewal), the central organization in Jewish renewal. Founded in the early 1990s by by Rabbi Jeff Roth and Joanna Katz, Elat Chayyim offered weekly spiritual retreats year round in the Catskill mountains of New York. Retreats included classes with top faculty, vegetarian food, spiritual community, yoga and meditation offerings, and a unique prayer experience. In 2006, Elat Chayyim relocated to the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. In 2014, both Isabella Freedman and Elat Chayyim (as well as the Teva Learning Center and the Adamah Farm Fellowship) merged with Hazon.

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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