Ritual & Liturgy:
Mi Kamokha

Submitted by Leila Gal Berner
email address: lberner@emory.edu

(written after the assassination of Prime Minister Yiztchak Rabin, November 4, 1995)

There is a Hassidic saying that "the real exile of the people of Israel in Egypt was that they learned to endure it."

Perhaps the real miracle of the Crossing of the Sea was not whether God's hand parted the waters or whether it was low tide, but that the people of Israel found the courage to take the plunge into the Sea and in so doing, they birthed themselves, and were birthed by God into a life of freedom.

As a midwife, Source of Life, You birthed us in the waters of the Sea,
As a mother, Source of Life, You pushed us
through the "narrow places,"
the mitzrayim of our own terror.
As a father, Source of Life, You held our hand
as we took our first tentative steps forward.

Today, Holy One, we stand once more at the edge of the Sea.
Now, after the tragedy and the outrage of this past week,
when a contemporary Nachshon has fallen,
when the binding of Yitzchak ended not in miraculous rescue,
but in savage sacrifice,
the waters are red once again with blood,
like the Nile when a plague befell the House of Egypt.

Now, once again, we must learn to be free.
We must banish the plague that has befallen the House of Israel.
As we sing our song of celebration this morning recalling
our people's liberation so long ago,
help us, Source of Life, to liberate ourselves once more
from hatred, from zealotry,
from sinat chinam -- wanton violence and fanaticism.

As a midwife, O God,
birth us through the waters
of this bloody sea.

As a mother, Source of Life,
push us once more through the "narrow places,
"the mitzrayim of our own dangerous disunity.

As a father, Holy One,
hold our hand
as we walk the terrifying and life-affirming
path of peace.