IN THE AGE OF COVID, EVEN PRAYERS FOCUS ON HUMAN SOLUTIONS
Rabbis these days are inundated with resources to help navigate our communities through the present crisis, among these are many newly composed prayers. Of course, none really match our philosophy. I could only recommend them after heavy editing and adaptation. Yet as I read the best of them, I’m struck by how they strike the chord of shared anxieties and hopes. They may be addressed to God, but the humanism at their core is something we can appreciate, too.
A piece written by Britain’s chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis expresses a yearning for strength, resilience, and hope for those who are suffering, lonely, or despondent. His prayer offers the hope that wisdom will lead those who seek a cure and that compassion will inform all who offer comfort. He also writes that “at this time of heightened global awareness of our mutual interdependence” we should seek to see “all of humankind … appreciate the strength that comes from being united in concern and love, rather than divided with hate and prejudice.”
The work of two other liturgists struck me with their appreciation for the burden we’re placing on medical professionals.
Alden Solovy’s composition acknowledges the “insight and skill, dedication and fortitude” of “medical scientists and researchers around the world.” He expresses the universal hope … that their work “yields knowledge and understanding, speedily finding a vaccine, treatments, and deterrents to its spread.” Finally, his prayer urges “public health and government officials” to find “the strength to act swiftly and decisively, with compassion and understanding, in service to humankind….”
Finally, in Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen’s poetic offering we find a petition to God to grant strength and health to “Physicians and nurses and orderlies / Technicians and home health aides / EMTs and pharmacists / Hospital social workers and respiratory therapists / Who navigate the unfolding dangers of the world each day / To tend to those they have sworn to help.” While we do not share in her petition, her sentiment is on all of our minds.
Each of these writers is a theist. Yet while their words are framed as requests for divine blessings, each recognizes that ending this global disaster depends solely upon the dedication, skills, compassion, and resilience of human beings.
Rabbi Cohen concludes with a sentiment upon which we can all agree, no adaptation necessary: “May this plague pass from among us, speedily and in our days.” To that I add a hearty Humanistic “AMEN!”
