מַה־טֹּבוּ | Mah Tovu, a paraliturgical reflection by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman

Contributor(s):

Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman

Shared on:

6 May 2020 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Entering Sacred Spaces

Tags:

מה טבו mah tovu, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, shame resilience, paraliturgical mah tovu

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)

Paraliturgical Reflection (English)

מַה־טֹּבֽוּ אֹהָלֶֽיךָ יַעֲקֹב,
מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶֽיךָ, יִשְׂרָאֵל׃ (במדבר כד:ה)
וַֽאֲנִי, בְּרֹב חַסְדְּךָ, אָבֹא בֵיתֶֽךָ,
אֶשְׁתַּֽחֲוֶה אֶל־הֵיכַל קָדְשְׁךָ, בְּיִרְאָתֶֽךָ׃ (תהלים ה:ח)
יְהֹוָה, אָהַבְתִּי מְעוֹן בֵּיתֶֽךָ, וּמְקוֹם, מִשְׁכַּן
כְּבוֹדֶֽךָ׃ (תהלים כו:ח)

How good is this place I am right now.
Even though I wrestle with its goodness, I affirm it nonetheless.
I enter this place with abundant loving-kindness.
I bow in the holy space, in awe.
Holy One, I love Your home, where You so intimately dwell.
No matter who I am, or how I am feeling, I trust I am welcomed here.

וַֽאֲנִי אֶשְׁתַּחֲוֶה וְאֶכְרָֽעָה,

אֶבְרְכָה לִפְנֵי־יְהֹוָה
עֹשִׂי׃ (תהלים צה:ו)

וַֽאֲנִי תְפִילָתִי־לְךָ ׀ יְהֹוָה עֵת רָצוֹן.
אֱלֹהִים, בְּרָב־חַסְדֶּךָ,
עֲנֵֽנִי בֶּאֱמֶת
יִשְׁעֶֽךָ׃ (תהלים סט:יד)

I bow, I bend, I kneel to honor my own nature
As an Earthling, a formed being, yet made of Spirit.
Let my presence here be my prayer,
It is an offering to You.
I offer my ego to Your great Presence
And in this moment, You receive me with ease.
God, in your abundant loving-kindness
Help me feel You present with me in the all, the A-Z truth of existence.
This is what saves me from myself.

Rabbi Shoshana Meira’s paraliturgical interpretation of Mah Tovu, the prayer for entering sacred communal spaces, was first published in her Siddur v’lo Nevosh (2014). Linear correspondence between the Hebrew source and the English by Aharon Varady.

Source(s)

Notes[+]

Notes
1	cf. Numbers 24:5.
2	cf. Psalms 5:8.
3	cf. Psalms 26:8.
4	cf. Psalms 95:6.
5	cf. Psalms 69:14.

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“מַה־טֹּבוּ | Mah Tovu, a paraliturgical reflection by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman

Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman is the Associate Rabbi at Temple Sinai in Brookline, Massachusetts. She feels blessed to serve this vibrant community through building personal relationships, teaching Torah, innovating new engagement initiatives, working for justice, and leading prayer. Rabbi Shoshana is a leader in the interfaith climate justice movement in New England. She and her husband Yotam Schachter co-wrote The Tide Is Rising, an anthem for the climate movement that has been sung in congregations, climate rallies, and gatherings in the US, Brazil, Denmark, and France.In other pursuits, she has released an album of original music called Guesthouse, clowned for hospitalized children, tended a community garden, and written poetry. Her publications include pieces in the Huffington Post and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and she has written an interpretive translation of the weekday prayer service called Siddur V'lo Nevosh: Jewish Prayer as Shame Resilience Practice.Rabbi Shoshana was ordained at Hebrew College Rabbinical School, and is a graduate of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, JOIN For Justice, and Oberlin College of Arts & Sciences where she was also a Henry David Thoreau Scholar. She grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and lives in Jamaica Plain with Yotam and their dog Lulu. For sermons, publications, music, and activism visit www.rabbishoshana.com.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

מַה־טֹּבוּ | Priêre en entrant dans le Temple, a paraliturgical Mah Tovu by Rabbi Arnaud Aron & Jonas Ennery (1848)

מַה־טֹּבֽוּ | Mah Tovu, translated from Rabbi David Einhorn’s Olat Tamid (1858) by Joshua Giorgio-Rubin (2020)

מַה־טֹּבוּ | Mah Tovu: Prayer upon Entering the Synagogue (Romanian trans. Avraham Shlomo Gold, ca. 1903)

"Tea bowl fixed in the Kintsugi method" (Public Domain). Kintsugi is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer resin dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.

אֲשֶׁר יָצַר | Asher Yatsar, a paraliturgical reflection by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman

בָּרוּךְ שֶׁאָמַר | Barukh she’Amar, a paraliturgical reflection by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman

בִּרְכָּת גָּאַל יִשְׂרָאֵל | Emet v’Yatsiv, a paraliturgical reflection by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman

תפילת העמידה ביום חול | the Weekday Amidah, a paraliturgical reflection by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=31341

Associated Image:

“Tea bowl fixed in the Kintsugi method” (Public Domain). Kintsugi is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer resin dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.

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

Source Data: XML | JSON

Re-formatted: HTML | ODT

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

Properly attribute the work to Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman.
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=31341>.
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