A Shabbat Amidah Kavannah

I speak praise, hope and thanks.

I open my mouth, I open my heart.

I feel the Ancient Prayer:

Bless our inventive ancestors
Who have given us the
Jealous God of the Torah;
And the clever God of the Talmud;
And the Kingly God of our Siddur.
To this God we pray.

Bless our inventive ancestors
Who have given us the
The Unknowable God of the mystics;
And the rational God of the philosophers;
The haimish God of our grandparents.
To this God we pray

Bless our inventive ancestors
Who have given us the
The Daddy God of our childhood faith; 
And the nonexistent God of our young skepticism;

And now the complicated doubt-filled God-ness of our adult searching.

To this God, we pray.

Bless our inventive ancestors

Who have given us

God, the Everything;

God, the Everywhere;

God, the One-ness.

To this God, we pray.

With all our histories and memories, 
And with gratitude to all who came before us, 

Praising God, 
However we approach God
And even if we don’t,  
We pray.

What is God's Power?

Rambam says, 

If you can’t imagine God then you don’t exist.

There is nothing that is not God.

Bless Elohim, the Creator; the Created, Creating.

Sanctify God's Name:

How can a name be holy?

Why exalt a name?  

how do we name the Un-nameable?

And yet we’ve come up with so many, because we’re human and we need names.

It has made us so creative. 



Let us look from side to side, to see all these possibilities,

Perhaps then we will be able to comprehend

That which cannot be comprehended.

Or not.

All division is false, 

All superiority is delusion, 

All separation is temporary. 

Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh

We are blessed with many minds with which to imagine God

And many mouths to describe what we see.

Let us step into holiness.

Kadosh Baruch Hu, Blessed be the ONE-ness,

The Day is Holy

The world is filled with the Divine, we are surrounded!

Hear us, know us.

Love us, enjoy us.

Remember us, rouse us.

Forgive us, inspire us.

It is written:

The Seventh Day is holy

It is the day of the Great Rest.

Bless the Profundity of Shabbat, commanding us to take a nice afternoon nap.

We give service.

God of our strengths and our weaknesses,

God of our current understanding and our lack thereof,

We are in this glorious and troubled place

And we take responsibility for how it turns out.

And we are watchful for our opportunities to serve and build.

We’re listening. 

And who or what listens to us?



Blessed Fierce Mystery,  hear our voices.

We are so thankful. 

We give thanks for whatever love and kindness we have received

And even more for the love and kindness we have given.

We give thanks  for those who have forgiven us

And to those who have asked us for our forgiveness.

We give thanks  for the deep rest of Shabbat

And the exciting hope for the coming week

May we never take this for granted.

Blessed  HaMakom,  this place is so amazing.

We pray for Peace and Wholeness.

Let us make peace.


There is no other option.

Adonai Echad, with compassion for all who are in pain or who cause pain, bless us with the peace of wholeness that we may lead decent and ethical and happy lives and help others to do the same.

Open my heart:

Existing.

Creating.

Uniting.

Giving.

Learning.

Forgiving.

Building.

Thanking.

Enjoying.

May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be joyful truth.  

May the good things I pray for happen and, if not, 

May I never forget to hope.  

AMEN

My Day That Day

It’s about 8:45 AM. Brooklyn, 15th St. stop on the F train. I buy tokens (or was it a Metro Card by then) at the booth, and the clerk says a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I don’t know why, both he and I assume it is an accident, a small plane. I ask, should I get on the subway? Sure he says, the F train doesn’t go under the World Trade Center, no problem.

So I get on the subway and after only two stops, at Fourth Avenue & Ninth Street,the train goes above ground. I’m wearing ear buds and listening to music, I notice people coming in to my car look disturbed, so I take out the ear buds and listen. What are they saying, a second plane? The doors close, the train moves and the conductor announces, “The World Trade Center has been attacked by two airplanes, if you want to see it look to your left.” The train veers right, we look out the windows to the left and there are the towers, just across the East River, each tower has what looks like, from this distance, a giant black window. Then we can see, there’s smoke.

The train pulls into Smith and Ninth, still above ground. We are all in such shock, no one, not one of us, thinks to get off the train. We don’t understand what we’re going towards. I have a doctor’s appointment, I had a long wait for, I can’t cancel. So I stay on the train. I start talking to the young woman sitting next to me, slowly she and I realize what two airplanes means, that it was deliberate. But neither of us can fully take in what this means, that we should get off this train while the trains are still running back in the direction of home. The train goes underground and for some reason this feels like I have committed to the journey, so I stay on.

The train goes in fits and stops, it takes almost twice as long as it should to get to 34th Street (my doctor is at 31st and Second Ave.). My seatmate gets off, too, and for some reason it’s finally there, on the escalator going up, that we realize that we made a mistake, that we should have gotten off the train and that we might now be in danger. We wish each other luck. I wish I had gotten her name.

Once I get up to the street, I finally hear exactly what has happened. I look around me, and I realize I am standing near Macy’s and the Empire State Building and Penn Station, all potential targets. So I start running, and run all the way to the doctor’s office. Of course, she’s not there. She’s been called to the emergency room, to await the mass casualties that never were.

Thinking the subway will still be running, but afraid to go back to mid-town, I decide to walk to the 23rd Street stop of the F train. This is not logical but this is what I decide. I walk to Sixth Avenue and then start walking downtown. At every restaurant or bar that is open at this early hour, people are gathered to watch TV, and many are people huddled around cars to listen to the radio. I stop now and again to hear the latest, but mostly I forge on. I have to go home, I have to get back to Brooklyn. The black smoke from the towers, which by then have collapsed, is directly in front of me, in perfect perspective, coming to a point and this point, the horizon, has blown up.

I try to call various people, my sister and friends, but the cell phones aren’t working. People pass me walking in the opposite direction. Many of them are covered in white dust. They look exhausted, but determined. They want to get home, too. I know where they’re coming from but I keep asking them, “Where are you coming from?” Everyone answers me, but they don’t stop walking. “The World Trade Center.”

Finally I get to 23rd Street stop and find out that the trains have stopped. Someone says, you should walk home, everyone is walking on the Brooklyn Bridge. But I’m tired. I don’t think I can make it all the way from 23rd to Park Slope. I think, maybe I’ll just sit here until the trains go on, then I remember I know someone who lives on 13th Street and Sixth. I have the presence of mind to get some cash from an ATM and I walk to Missy’s place. Thank God, she’s home and invites me up and I sit in her room and watch TV and for the first time I see the shots of the plane hitting the tower. Missy still has a landline so I’m able to call people.

Missy and I go out. We want to buy food in case the supplies dry up, and she needs cash. By the time we get to the ATMs they’re out of money, so I lend her $80 (which she never pays back). We walk over to St. Vincent’s to give blood but by then they’ve got all they need so they turn us away. We go back to her house and I stay there until they announce on the news that the trains that don’t go under the WTC are running again. I thank Missy and go and get on the F to go home. The trains are packed but no one is talking or even looking at each other. Many people on the train are covered in dust, they are given seats. There are more than a few women who don’t have shoes, I don't understand it then, but now I think they must have been wearing heels and kicked them off so they could run from the cloud.

I get home about 3 PM, I've only been gone about six hours but it feels like six days. I go up on the roof and find some of my neighbors from the building there. There’s some paper from the World Trade Center on the roof but most of that fell in other parts of Brooklyn. There used to be a great view of the towers from the roof but now there’s just the plume of smoke. One of my neighborhs works in Tower One but had the day off. He is distraught.

I get a call on my landline. Members of my shul are getting together with another congregation, to do what I don’t know, but I go. We all sit together and some people get up to say things. Some of the things they say are stupid, using this as an opportunity for political rants. No one has the energy to tell them to shut up. Still, it’s nice to be with my community now.

Later that week, I will be with them again, and all of Park Slope, as we walk down Seventh Avenue on candlelight vigil to the two firehouses in our neighborhood. They both lost guys and we're very sad. Some of the fire trucks are parked along the route, men sitting in the trucks, as if to escort or witness us. Almost all of us touch the trucks as we pass in the quiet parade. Some go up to the firemen, survivors of that day. “Thank you, thank you” or "We're so sorry for your loss" is all most of us can say, and they accept our words and some of them let us touch or shake their hands.