Categories: Blessings After Eating, Earth, our Collective Home & Life-Support System, the Shmitah Year (Earth's Shabbat)
Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., eco-conscious, ecoḥasid, HaRaḥaman
Excerpt: This Haraḥaman (prayer to the merciful or compassionate One) for the Shmitah or sabbatical year can be added to Birkat Hamazon (blessing after meals) during the whole Shmitah year, in order to remember and open our hearts to the sanctity of the land. Say it right before the Haraḥaman for Shabbat, since Shmitah is the grand shabbat, and right after the paragraph beginning with Bamarom (a/k/a, Mimarom). . . .
Content:
This Haraḥaman (prayer to the merciful or compassionate One) for the Shmitah or sabbatical year can be added to Birkat haMazon (blessing after meals) during the whole Shmitah year, in order to remember and open our hearts to the sanctity of the land. Say it right before the Haraḥaman for Shabbat, since Shmitah is the grand shabbat, and right after the paragraph beginning with Bamarom (a/k/a, Mimarom).
May the merciful One turn our hearts toward the land,
so that together we may dwell with her,
in her sabbath-resting
during the whole year of the Shmitah.
Haraḥaman hu yashiv libeinu el ha’arets
l’ma’an neishev yaḥad imah
b’shovtah
kol sh’nat hash’mitah
For your festive meal, you can also print out this PDF and add the Haraḥaman prayer to your birkon (bentsher).
Recordings
Here’s a niggun (melody) by Nili Simḥai for the haraḥaman, sung by Rabbi David Seidenberg to the “Sosne Nigun” by Jonah Adels, z”l.
Contributor: David Seidenberg
Co-authors:
Name: David Seidenberg Bio: Rabbi David Seidenberg, founder of NeoHasid.org, teaches text and music, Jewish thought and spirituality, in their own right and in relation to ecology and the environment. With smikhah (ordination) from the Jewish Theological Seminary and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, he has taught at over 100 synagogues, communities, retreats and conferences across North America (and a few in Europe and Israel). Rabbi Seidenberg's teaching empowers learners to become creators of Judaism through deep study and communion with texts and tradition. Areas of specialty include Kabbalah and Ḥasidut, Talmud, davenning, evolution and cosmology, sustainability, Maimonides, Buber, and more. Rabbi Seidenberg has published widely on ecology and Judaism and is the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Website:https://neohasid.org Profile Link:https://opensiddur.org/profile/david-seidenberg
Name: Neohasid·org Bio: NeoHasid.org, founded October 2005, was first created by Rabbi David Seidenberg to help folks integrate ḥasidic song, learning, and nusaḥ into their davenning and communities and to explore embodied Torah. It evolved to focus on eco-Torah and to share liturgy that honors our relationship with the Earth and/or expresses gender parity. Website:https://neohasid.org Profile Link:https://opensiddur.org/profile/neohasid-org
Featured Image: Title: Drork-Shmita_sign (PD) Caption: "Shmita sign." A resident of Holon, Israel, announcing the fruits on the trees in his backyard are hefker (ownerless property) during the year of Shmita, and that anyone can enter and harvest them.
עברית: תושב חולון מודיע כי הפירות על העצים בחצרו הם הפקר לרגל שנת שמיטה. (credit: Drork, Public Domain.)
