Prayer Reflections

Prayer is not a regular feature of the lives of most of my friends, family and community. But human beings all over the globe have been worshiping in one form or another since the beginning of time. Additionally, the poetry of the Jewish prayerbook has provided a common religious vocabulary for our people across time and space. I believe that my job as rabbi includes helping people gain access to the Jewish prayer tradition. These reflections contain some of my own thoughts and understandings emerging from over fifty years of living with these words.

page numbers refer to CBB’s Siddur Mashiv HaRuach

Steve Cohen 4/14/22 Steve Cohen 4/14/22

K’dushat HaYom

pp 42-43, 92-93

Over the course of a traditional Shabbat, kedushat hayom is recited four times. Each time, however, the Shabbat idea is conveyed with a different image of wholeness.

Steve Cohen 4/13/22 Steve Cohen 4/13/22

R’tseh

pp 44-45, 96-97

R’tseh is our prayer of longing, a song of hope and yearning for the return of the lost bird, the winged Shechina. The prayer ends with our eyes, scanning the horizon, straining to the outer limits of our perception.

Steve Cohen 4/12/22 Steve Cohen 4/12/22

Modim

pp 46-47, 98-99

At times, gratitude surges spontaneously, a swelling tide of joyful receiving, expressed unmistakably in hundreds of tiny signals flashing across our face and body. Like the ocean rising in the gravitational pull of the moon, natural gratitude is soul responding to soul. Too often, though, our gratitude falls short, dashing hopes and expectations in the delicate hour of love.

Steve Cohen 4/11/22 Steve Cohen 4/11/22

Shalom

p 100-101

as we prepare to step away from the presence of God, we seek the blessing of the light of God’s invisible face. We hope for an inner shift, a surge of vital well-being which has in our past engendered Torah and love, righteousness and blessing, compassion, life and peace.

Steve Cohen 4/10/22 Steve Cohen 4/10/22

Bringing forth Torah

p 104

The old scroll sits hidden within the Ark, waiting to be unrolled and spoken into life by a reader. Even then, however, the language remains darkly sealed until it is illumined by loving human inquiry.

Steve Cohen 4/9/22 Steve Cohen 4/9/22

Etz Chaim

p 119

When we read from the Torah, God brings the Tree of Life to us in our exile, and plants it among us and within us. We read, and eat from the Tree of Life; thus God gives us back that which we had lost.

Steve Cohen 4/8/22 Steve Cohen 4/8/22

Aleinu

p 120-121

“We Jews are different,” this prayer declares in four different ways in the space of the opening verse. But in the messianic closing lines, the holy one sits enthroned and exalted by a united, enlightened humanity.

Steve Cohen 4/7/22 Steve Cohen 4/7/22

Kaddish

pp122-123

The service closes with a rhythmic chant without melody, a rhyming, echoing drum-beat, the mourner’s kaddish. The only prayer in the siddur that is never sung, the mourner’s kaddish intends not to transport us to a different realm, but to ground us and plant us firmly in this difficult reality.