There I was with my sleeve up, eyes sealed, heart open, as the nurse busily prepared the dose. I took a deep inhale and realized I needed some sort of prayer handy for this awesome occasion. The go-to-prayer for awe’some occasions –
Ana b’Khoaḥ – naturally jumped to my lips. It’s a liturgical beauty, with the 42 letters of God’s name encrypted in its terse seven lines. It’s a Ḳabbalistic gem. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with that and that the nurse was probably used to prayerful mumblings at moments like this….so I started my recitation. And then, as if divinely choreographed (well, of course it was divinely choreographed), at that fateful long-awaited moment of contact between needle and flesh, I arrived at line 5: “
חסין קדוש ברב טובך, נהל עדתֶך” (“Holy Protector in your great goodness, guide your community”). — I recited this line like never before as I realized the poignancy of that very poetry at that very moment. I realized that the term ‘Ḥasin Ḳadosh’ means ‘Sacred Vaccinator’. Just like the Hebrew word for vaccine is
ḥisun חיסון.
Right there encoded into this ḳabbalistic prayer, we call out to the Divine Vaccinator. I said it with all my heart and then some, realizing so palpably that the Divine Innoculator was right there in the sterile Meuḥedet Hall, gifting me with healing, gifting our world with healing, in tandem with the myriad doctors, scientists, health professionals and eager recipients the globe over.
I felt an affirmative rush of Yes, we are being gifted a ‘ḥasin ḳadosh‘ a most holy Innoculation…so holy and yet so earthly and mundane.
But that prayer was not just one of thanks and recognition, it was even more a prayer of deep begging. Begging for that great protective Force to ‘nahel adatekha’ – to guide our edah, our community. The Jewish community is so direly in need of guidance in this pandemic; guidance precisely around the contested issue of this vaccine and its rightness.
We so direly need leaders…we need THE Leader.
So, yes, please Holy Vaccinator, steer us, usher us forward in the direction of highest goodness and health. May we be guided from on high and from down below too.
This prayer of gratitude and teḥinah was first shared by Chaya Kaplan-Lester on her Facebook page.
