Live from the Hevria Creative Farbrengen, a collaboration with the amazing supernova of talent and good vibes, rockstar Eli Schwebel:
The Soul is Yours/Haneshema Lach
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Haneshama Lach:
הַנְשָמָה לָך וְהַגוּף פְּעֳלָך חוּסָה עַל עָמָלָך
Text by Rachel Kann:
I/me/us/we
Am/are
All for you.
This spilling starlight of soul?
Yours.
This spiraling miracle of infinite mechanisms?
You built it,
Fashioned a fleshly starship
Out of husks of crumbling galaxy.
I have evidence:
Your fingerprints are all over me.
My body is a prayer.
My body is a pleading.
My praise, a relentless pulsating.
Our heaviness bows the boughs of your tree.
All drinking of the same circulating.
Have mercy.
Here is my humanity:
I am flawed.
Awkward and broken,
Ripped seams
Leak gleaming moonbeams,
There is nothing else for me but to wholly give over
I lean into you,
Bend to you.
This leaning is my leaping.
Let me unfold into your embrace.
Let me let you hold me.
The sweet honey of your gracious interceding:
I am creature,
Crafted to be as I am.
I am open to receive.
Let me take you into me.
Despite the heavy velvet bloodcrush
Of our earthly transgressions,
Part the curtain.
Teach us to forgive ourselves
For missing the mark.
Let us learn from your gentleness.
Show us how to love.
Stumbling
Through paradise,
Blinded by flash and numbed to true substance,
Derailed by the chanciest circumstance,
Distracted by the weakest of cheap glitter.
We are putty in your hands.
We are drowning in our own
Rationalizations, miscalculations,
And outright failings.
Dissolve all separation, let us
Come together like the ocean we are:
Droplets indivisible from one another.
I/me/us/we
Am/are:
All for you.
This spilling starlight of soul?
Yours.
This spiraling miracle of infinite mechanisms?
You built it,
Our heaviness bows the boughs of your tree.
All drinking of the same circulating.
Have mercy.
Have mercy.
Purify.
Rectify.
Make ready.
Rachamim.
Mercy.
Rachamim.
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Filmed by Eric Wallach
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Photo: Saul Sudin