We dedicate these Shabbat lights to peace and to lighten the weight of suffering of all those in Eretz Yisrael.
Mayan Hayeinu, Beloved God,
Source of All That Is and Breath of All Life,
in Your Infinite Wisdom, You Created
each of us in Your Image,
all bodies, all identities, all nations, and all loves,
all descendants from You.
Your gift of Creation
is the crucible in which You formed all Life.
Dear God, Bless us once again with this understanding.
Lift our eyes in acknowledgement of each Divine Spark,
every life precious and fragile, so that we may love—not Other—
our fellow humankind with compassion and fond embrace.
Hatred spawns from our assumption of control,
urge to command, and drive to constrict the lives of our fellows.
Help us, God, to fully relinquish this control
and to definitively cast-off hatred from our ranks.
Avinu Malkeinu, guide us humbly towards the Oneness
over which we hold no dominion.
Great Protector, arise in our collective consciousness the commandment
to love one another and to embrace the stranger,
for we were once strangers in a Strange Land.
Implore us, the Jewish people, to deliver in out-stretched hands
compassion, aid, love, and humanity for those currently suffering.
Avinu, we pray for a swift deliverance of wellbeing to all those under duress.
And once we conclude Havdalah, may we extinguish our own misgivings,
inaction, hate, and misunderstandings and act upon these prayers
to speedily save those in harm’s way and
to embrace one another as the Children of God.
Ken Y’hai Ratzon, may it be so.
