Prayers:I
Don't let me fall As a stone falls upon the hard ground. And don't le my hands become dry as the twigs of a tree when the wind beats down the last leaves. And when the storm raises dust from the earth with anger and howling, Don't let me become the last fly Trembling terrified on a windowpane. Don't let me fall. I have asked for so much, But as a blade of your grass in a distant wild field Lets drop a seed in the lap of the earth And dies away, Sow in me your living breath, As you sow a seed in the earth. (this is a very difficult day for me. I carry a heavy heart, the cause of which I cannot say here. The only response I can offer up for the saddness is prayer. Still, I have much good to be thankful for, my health, my husband and daughter, my work and congregation, my friends). The poem above was written by Kadya Molodowsky, an Ashkenazic Jew. It is a type of prose prayer for women known as tkhines, compoese in Yiddish. The recitation of these prayer...