Shalom Rav - “A great peace” on Israel and its people. A prayer that Israel may live in peace among all nations, and within its own land. The rabbis teach that peace is as weighty as everything else combined. So when this prayer asks for peace, it means peace in every sense: the world, our nation, among the children of Israel, in our community, our family, and in ourselves.  So we need not just any peace, but an “abundant” or “great” peace.​

​

Hashkiveinu - “Hashkiveinu” – “Lay me down.” Sometimes called the Jewish lullaby, this prayer is over 1,000 years old.  Recited before we sleep, it asks Adonai to lay us down in peace at night and wake us in the morning refreshed, and with new life. It invokes the “shelter of your peace,” a tender metaphor for the Jewish people’s eternal desire - too-often elusive - for peace. The prayer voices our inner fear that, despite every measure we take to protect ourselves and those we love, to be human is to be vulnerable. To sleep is to relinquish control. In uncertain times and seasons, this prayer pleads for protection, and for a watchful protector through every transition, as the prayer says, to life, and to peace, evermore.​

​

V’Shamru -“V’Shamru” – “And they shall guard…” Exodus 31:16-17. In this part of the Exodus story, Adonai gives Moses the tablets of the Ten Commandments, exhorting and explaining to him that the Hebrew people must specially guard the Sabbath (the only day specifically mentioned in the commandments).  Adonai created for six days, and ceased on the seventh.   Therefore the people must keep the Sabbath for all ages.  Under slavery in Egypt, there was no rest. Shabbat turns this around,  recognizes the critical need for humans to have respite, then makes rest, refreshment, and sacred time a positive duty, a commandment. As Rabbi Heschel has written, “It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”  

​

Oseh Shalom - Oseh Shalom -"Oseh Shalom” – “May the One who makes peace…” (Psalm 19). In our world, peace is elusive; the day might begin and end with headlines that break our hearts. Oseh Shalom acknowledges that peace is not the natural state of the world. We must create it.  This prayer pleads to the Maker of Peace to bring peace to us and to all Israel. In Reform/Ashkenazi tradition, this prayer is often used to bring comfort to those whose loved ones are no longer with us.​

​

Mi Chamocha - "Mi Chamocha ba’elim Adonai.”  “Who is like you, Adonai, among all the gods.”  Exodus 15:11. In this key line from the Song of the Sea (the first song in the Bible), the newly-liberated Hebrews rejoice at the Sea of Reeds, after they witness the defeat of the Egyptian Army by drowning. What ecstasy they must have felt, what emotional release; theirs was a triumph of unarmed and disorganized former slaves over the strongest army in that part of the world. This rendition of Mi Chamocha tries to capture the joy the Hebrews surely felt at that moment.

​