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Hearken unto Me, ye that follow righteousness, ye that seek the Lord; look unto the rock whence ye were hewn and to the hole of the pit whence you were digged. Look unto Abraham your father and unto Sarah that bore you, For when he was but one, I called him, and I blessed him and made him many. (Isaiah 51:1-2) | |
And I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king to them all. And they shall no more be two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more. (Ezekiel 87:22) | |
Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. (Psalms 188:1) | |
For I, the Lord, change not, and ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. (Malachi 8:6) | |
When all Israel is united, it becomes one household, and is called “holy” as the prophet saith, ‘Holy is Israel to the Lord’ (Jeremiah 2:3). (Zohar II 121b) | |
As God Himself is one, so Israel is one, as Scripture saith, ‘Israel one people on earth’ (II Sam. 7:23). Just as His holy Name though spread throughout all lands is one, so Israel, though scattered among the nations remains one people. (Zohar II 16b) | |
He who, in his prayer, knows how to declare the unity of the Name of the Holy One, helps, through his worship, to maintain the unity of Israel. (Zohar II 57a) | |
Israel’s unity is not based upon geographical accident nor solely upon racial identity. Israel is one people, and its unity is a conscious achievement, a determined conquest of the forces of disintegration. For, externally, the history of Israel has always been the history of a broken people. From almost the dawn of its story when the people divided into two nations, all the centuries seem to have striven to destroy them. They dwelt in different lands, distant from each other. Mountain barriers and oceans, diversity of languages and of mode of living, tended to estrange them. Yet they willed to be one people, and that will conquered time and circumstance. | |
The people of Israel willed to live, because its life had a purpose. It staunchly insisted that God sent it forth as a people among the nations of the earth. The children of Israel were convinced that they would have been recreant to God’s purpose if they permitted themselves to cease as a force in history. They never wholly forgot the divine appointment: Ye are My witnesses; and the guiding aim of their life became: I shall not die but live, and declare the works of God. | |
God’s purpose, they knew, was not entrusted to individual men, or to a special priestly caste. The whole people of Israel was bidden to look back to its father Abraham, God’s first messenger, and to become like him, the servant of the Most High. The divine Law which God gave through Moses and the seers, was to be the heritage of the congregation of Jacob. The whole people was declared to be ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Exodus 19:6). Unity in Israel is a religious ideal. | |
Hence each individual among us must foster within himself those qualities which make for unity; the search for the common Father, the glow of sympathy in suffering, the sense of belonging together in spite of accidental differences. No dispute must ever weaken our love for one another. We must guard against the forces of dissension. We must proudly cherish the designations ‘Israel whom I have chosen’ (Isaiah 44:1), ‘Israel My firstborn son’ (Exodus 4:22). We must resolve to live, not merely as individuals, earthbound, but as the people upon whom God’s light has arisen, that nations might walk in its radiance. | |
Heavenly Guide of earthly destinies! Nations grow and decay at Thy word. Thou sendest men forth to the ends of the earth as Thy messengers. To Thee we give thanks for the great love with which Thou hast loved Thy people Israel. May it ever continue to stand before Thy throne. We have sought to live, O Master, in order to fulfil the duty for which Thou hast created us: ‘This people which I have formed for Myself, that they might tell of My praise’ (Isaiah 43:21). | |
Forgive our failures to do Thy will. Pardon us when we forget Thee, and bow before idols of wood and stone. Put into our hearts, we beseech Thee, the trust in Thy purposes, that we may ever be near Thee, and through Thee, near to each other. May we never be estranged from Thee and thus estranged from our brethren. Make us worthy of the continuance of Thy mighty promise: I the Lord change not, and ye, O sons of Jacob, will not be consumed. Amen. |
“Israel’s Unity” is the twenty-eighth prayer found in ברכה ותהלה Blessing and Praise: A Book of Meditations and Prayers for Individual and Home Devotion (CCAR 1923), pp. 96-98. Unfortunately, we do not yet know of a resource providing clear attribution of authorship for any of the prayers in this volume.
Source(s)
“Israel’s Unity, a prayer for national identity established in the context of its religious mission (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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