Prayer Musings

Two blessings said every day invoke the High Holiday mood of returning to God.

Opening this primary prayer by invoking our ancestors emphasizes that our relationships with our parents is a model for our relationship with God.

The capacity to resist the injustice of the world is present with us every day.

This prayer recited during the Amidah is a bit of an outlier in the liturgy.

This blessing, recited prior to the Shema, asserts that God's love for us is expressed by the commandments.

A Hasidic teaching offers a way to understand this prayer that seems to suggest our words of divine praise are inherently insufficient.

This Nishmat Kol Chai benediction is said at the transition between our preparatory prayers and core elements of the morning service.

This biblical verse, traditionally recited as one enters a synagogue, has a challenging provenance.

This climactic prayer of Pesukei d'Zimrah leads us to where genuine expressions of divine praise inevitably must: to service of God.

This section of the Amidah is understood as one of thanks, but that's not the only way to read it.

Like the paradigmatic blessing for rain, the Shabbat practice of blessing children offers the gift of love in exchange for nothing.

This Shabbat prayer is a reminder that the Sabbath is a sign of the enduring covenant between God and the Jewish people.