Va'ani Tefilati - I am a prayer - Video Release! 🙏 🙌 🙏
Va'ani Tefilati - I am a Prayer
Va'ani Tefilati - Yael Bettenhausen and Josh Warshawsky
How can you be a prayer?
Dear Friends,
What does it mean to be a prayer for yourself? And for others? In this week's Torah Portion, Tetzaveh, we are instructed to bring oil to Aaron the high priest to light the Ner Tamid, the eternal flame. The rabbis ask the question: How can it be called the "eternal" flame if it was destroyed when the Temple was destroyed?
The Netivot Shalom, Rav Shalom Noach Berezovsky, explains that when the Temple was destroyed, there were four things in it that were incapable of being destroyed: The Ark, Holy Fire, the "Keruvim" (the two angel statues that were built above the ark), and the Ner Tamid. The reason that they were unable to be destroyed is because they are supernatural. Holy Fire was supernatural because it came straight from heaven and so to heaven it returned, and the Ark contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments inscribed by the finger of God. But why were the Keruvim and the Ner Tamid considered supernatural, and how did they remain intact?
The answer is that they are in us, in human beings.
The Keruvim were facing each other, with arms and wings raised towards each other and towards heaven. When human beings do this, it is supernatural. It is not in the nature of human beings to look at each other, to help others outside of our own inner circles. When we turn our faces towards each other and embrace, we are doing something supernatural, we are raising ourselves and each other up.
And the Ner Tamid?
It could never be destroyed because it is in each one of us. In Proverbs it says, "נר ה' נשמת אדם" "The flame of the Divine is the Soul of a Human Being." The light of the eternal flame shines in each one of us. And when we look at each other and see that light, we are creating and seeing holiness.
"Va'ani Tefilati: I am a Prayer." How can you be a prayer for yourself? Let your light shine out. Be true to who you are. "Va'ani Tefilati Lecha: I am a Prayer to You." And how can you be a prayer for others? Look at others, really see them, and pull their light out. This Shabbat, and every Shabbat, let's turn our faces towards each other, and bring out the Divine light that each one of us has inside.
Shabbat Shalom,
Josh
This track is sponsored by Cantor Alan Sokoloff
About this melody:
I have spent the last eighteen summers at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. Since 2010, I have been working to build a singing culture there, and sharing new melodies to bring the community together. In that work, I have tried to cultivate a cohort of musicians and singers to lead singing and music at camp. On the first day of camp in 2017, one of my former campers, Yael Bettenhausen, came up to me with a guitar in hand. It was the first day of her last summer as a camper. She asked me if she could show me something. She pulled out her guitar and played a melody for Ashrei that she had written. It was beautiful. I was so excited that she had been inspired not only to love Jewish music, but to write Jewish music, to write new melodies for prayer. So we decided we would write a song together that summer. The summer-long theme for her age group (which was created by their Rosh Eidah/Unit Head Maya Zinkow) was “Mah Tovu Ohalecha,” How good are your tents,” Thinking about community and the concept of “home”. We chose to write a melody for these words from “Mah Tovu” as we discussed what it meant to come together at camp to pray. The words, “Va’ani Tefilati Lecha” can be loosely translated as, “And I am a prayer to You.” What does it mean for each one of us to literally BE a prayer? How can we serve as a source of hope, a source of gratitude, a source of love to ourselves and to those around us?