One of the prayers that I wrote for myself, when I authored
a personalized version of the Amidah[i] for my daily ritual, makes the petition that I hear
my own prayers and the prayers of others. It is based on the standard appeal
for God to hear our prayers, but in my attempt to make this request meaningful
to one who may not be so sure about the existence of God, per se, I sought to connect to that piece of divine spark
that resides within—surely that is more palatable to the agnostic who also resides
within. Even with all that manipulation, hearing my own prayers is still
elusive—much less hearing the prayers of others—and yet it is one of the
prayers that I recite (almost) daily.
I sometimes find clues to my hidden prayers in my dreams.
This morning I would like to thank my cat for her assistance in this regard.
Sometimes, ironically, we cannot be aware of our dreams until they are
interrupted. Mayla, as has become her recent habit, signaled her desire to
leave the house at about 5:30 this morning. Technically I was no longer
dreaming, nor was I fully conscious. I was in an interstitial space of restful
reverie. I was gently drifting along in the wake of a dream and observing the
ephemeral patterns it was leaving across the river of my consciousness. The
cat’s insistence at having the door opened for her opened the door to my
wakeful awareness.
In the dream I was home, clad in my pajamas. Jacob was in
the house. The doorbell rang. It seemed to be a distant cousin with his toddler
twin girls in tow making a sales call. I thought of Ken Ungar, though it was
not literally Ken, and his twin daughters who I have seen only once in person,
but who are very clearly in the image of the girls in this dream. Ken, let’s
just call him that, had barely uttered a word about whatever business he was
proposing, when the toddlers chimed in, talking at length about their use of
some computer media. At this point my mom was there spellbound, as we all were,
at the sophistication—at least to our uneducated minds—of the technology these
children were able to access as effortlessly and nonchalantly as if they were
playing with sock dolls. They were so sassy that I commented to my mother how
they were surely related to her. I also acknowledged that they were indeed the leaders
of the 21st Century (even though the Mickey Mouse Club of the 1950’s
used to refer to my generation of viewers as such). Another detail of the dream
was my perusing the file drawers of what appeared as one of the early
architecture firms in my career. Everything was in perfect order, and yet just
the thought of having paper stashed away in alphabetically arranged folders seemed
highly anachronistic. (Why paper? Why alphabetically?—when there are much more
logical and efficient ways to store information today!)
In my post-dream reverie I started to imagine the generation
immediately ahead and the generations that may follow. I connected this thread
to the generations that have preceded us and the dream my father was expressing
when he typed his Rosh Hashanah sermon
47 summers ago, in 1965.[ii]
While he hoped for the best—for Jews to live actively Jewish lives of Jewish
study, good deeds based on Jewish values, connecting to Jews of all nations and
of all times, attending and supporting the synagogue—while he prayed for all of
this, he also seemed aware that for many it would not become a reality. Despite
that realization, he held onto the fervent belief that Am Yisrael
Chai—that the People of Israel would still
live, that a remnant would always survive despite our greatest challenges.
I continued to lay in the predawn darkness wondering about
these twins, the progeny that God willing will ensue within my own family, and
the subsequent generations. Of what relevance would they find the words of Torah that my father crafted and that I am lovingly and
optimistically preserving. Will these generations be part of the remnant of
Israel to which his hope clings? Will they be able to comprehend that they are
literally b’nai Yisrael, b’nai
Shimon, and b’nai Yeshaya—the Children of Israel (Ballon, my grandfather), the
Children of Sidney (Ballon, my father), as well the Children of Yeshaya—me!
It dawned on me that that is my prayer, that I petition that this remnant be
connected to their father’s fathers (and certainly their mother’s mothers)
recognizing that there is a reason we are not called b’nai Avraham or b’nai Yitzchak. The reality is that Abraham and Isaac had children
whose paths led to other religions. Nor are we called b’nai Yaacov. The reality is that until Jacob wrestled with God
he was not on his highest spiritual path. Only then did he receive the
blessing. Only then did he become known as God-wrestler.[iii]
Only then did he become the patriarch of the Jewish nation. With obvious
discomfort at comparing myself to Jacob, I would at least want to see the Jacob
in me that wrestles with the angel. I would go forth from that struggle limping
but blessed so that I may bless, so that I may not only hear, but fulfill the
prayer that my father and his father’s fathers had—simply that succeeding
generations live lives imbued with the ideals, knowledge, and practice of our
Jewish heritage.
[i] The Amidah is the central prayer of the Jewish
liturgy. Observant Jews recite it at each of three prayer services in a typical
weekday: morning, afternoon, and evening. viz. my blog for the full text of the
personalized Amidah
that I customized for my personal practice,
http://yeshaya.net/Ethical_Will/Sulam_Shalom.html
[ii] viz., http://harav-shimon.blogspot.com/2012/08/jews-without-problems-rosh-hashanah.html
[iii] Jacob’s name was changed to Israel
(lit., wrestler with God) after he spent the entire night wrestling with a
stranger—perhaps a man, perhaps an angel, perhaps God; Genesis 32:29 And [the
angel] said: 'Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel for thou hast
wrestled with God and with men, and hast prevailed.'
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