Growing in Awareness | Breisheet | #Broadcast1405

We Begin Again | Breisheet | #Broadcast1405

Habayta | They are home | Hoshanah Rabbah | #Broadcast1404

A Prayer for Release and Healing

A Prayer for Release and Healing

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

At long last, beloved souls are coming home.

After two years of torturous captivity, we dare to breathe—through tears, through trembling, through prayer. We pray for their bodies, broken and starved. We pray for their minds, wounded by terror and isolation. We pray for those whose lives were mercilessly destroyed that their families should be able to bury them with dignity. We pray for all of the hostages’ families, who have lived in the unbearable space between hope and despair for over two years.

We pray, too, for the entire State of Israel, a family of millions aching together, holding each other through the unspeakable. And we pray for Am Yisrael, the global Jewish people, that we might be strong enough and tender enough to receive our siblings and our parents and our children with full hearts—to enfold them in love, to honor their trauma with patience, to surround them with unending care.

The work ahead will be long. The healing will not be easy. But we are a people of covenant, commanded to choose life and to repair what pain has shattered.

May we be worthy partners in the sacred labor of return. May this complicated homecoming ignite the long, hard work of repair—for them, for us, for all of Israel.

Amen.

A Prayer for Burying “Bring Them Home Now” Dog Tags*

A Prayer for Burying “Bring Them Home Now” Dog Tags*
Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Mekor HaChayim, Source of all Life,
We stand today with trembling hearts,
bearing these small pieces of metal —
once cold, now warmed by years of tears
and hope and holy sweat.

For two years, these dog tags rested upon our hearts,
carrying our brothers and sisters,
our children and elders,
whose faces we carried into every prayer,
every dream, every moment of waiting.

We wore them as shields of faith,
as promises never to forget.
Each clink and gleam was a heartbeat of Am Yisrael,
a whispered “Bring them home. Now.”

Now, as we return these amulets to the earth,
we do not discard them.
We lay them gently, as we would lay a loved one,
trusting that memory is eternal,
that love does not rust,
that sanctity can dwell in metal, in tears, in time.

Holy One, let this burial be a bridge —
from pain to promise,
from captivity to compassion,
from symbol to action.

May the ground receive these sacred tokens
as we continue to carry their spirit in our souls.
May every name engraved here
shine in the heavens as a light that can never be extinguished.

And may the world never again need such amulets,
for all Your children to be free,
safe in their homes,
whole in their hearts,
together in peace.

Amen.

____________
*Other rituals will surely arise — songs, prayers, art, and silence — each guided by the wisdom and imagination of artists, rabbis, and ritual leaders who help us make meaning in the wake of sorrow and hope. Let us honor both the moment and the movement — the courage to create holiness even as we live toward wholeness.

Tape Will be Tape Again | Sukkot | #Day734 #Broadcast1402 #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

Building and Rebuilding | Sukkot | #Day731 #Broadcast1401 #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage