Speedily and in Our Time

A few months ago the coordinator of the weekly rally in Eilat supporting the release of the hostages asked me to collect and send to the coordinating committee some of the hundreds of new prayers for the safety and release of the hostages that have been composed since October 7th. In an outpouring of grief and cry for help, Hebrew prayers of every theological and ideological bent have flooded social media during this long traumatic post-October 7th period: humanistic prayers, secular prayers, deeply religious prayers, Reform prayers, Conservative prayers, Orthodox prayers, Kibbutz Movement prayers. As requested, I collected a variety of these prayers. Along with all the new prayers I collected, I also sent the ancient Jewish prayer for the redemption of captives, “Acheinu”:

As for our brothers, the whole house of Israel
Who are in distress and captivity,
Who wander over sea and land–
May The All-present have mercy on them,
And bring them from trouble to relief
From darkness to light,
From slavery to redemption,
Now, speedily, and soon!

This prayer appears in one of the oldest Jewish prayer collections that we have, The Siddur of Rav Amram Hagaon, from the 9th century. The contemporary popular melody for this prayer was composed decades before the current war, but since October 7th it has become a kind of anthem that is sung all over the world at ceremonies, vigils, and prayer services for the release of the hostages. Nevertheless, the coordinating committee of the Eilat vigil was not familiar with the words or the tune of the prayer. The prayer is in Hebrew but the last line is Aramaic. The committee chair asked me to translate that last line from Aramaic into Hebrew. “Obviously,” she said, “not everyone attending the rallies understands Aramaic!”

I was a bit surprised by this request. The last words of the prayer, “hashta ba’agala uvizman kariv,” are so familiar. I figured that an audience of Israeli Hebrew speakers, even if most of them would define themselves as secular, would recognize and understand that sentence. These words are said over and over again in Jewish prayer, and that final sentence is familiar to even the most non-synagogue-going Jew from the Mourner’s Kaddish.

Because of the familiarity of the lines from the Mourner’s Kaddish, I was told that perhaps it was even more important to translate the words into Hebrew, and not use the Aramaic, with its immediate associations to the Kaddish, because “there are people attending our vigils whose loved ones are hostages. We are praying for their lives, and not, God forbid, mourning their deaths!”

Understanding the sensitivity of the issue, I translated the Aramaic into Hebrew. As I was writing the Hebrew words, I got the chills. The ancient Jewish prayer for the release of captives uses the word “Hashta.” “Achshav” in Hebrew. “Now” in English.

Achshav! Now! We shout these words at every rally and at every demonstration demanding a deal for the release of the hostages. Even I, who am so familiar with these words, had not made the connection before I was actually forced to write down the translation. The composer of the ancient Jewish prayer understood the need to shout out to all who would hear, including God, “Now!” There is no more time. They have no more time.

My sister worked at a summer camp in the United States for the last few months. At her camp, as in so many Jewish summer camps throughout the world, there was a delegation of young Israeli counselors. Many of these young people had just been released from the army a short while before flying off to their gigs as summer camp counselors.

Some of these young Israelis were exposed to daily, or even weekly, Jewish prayer for the first time at camp. One of them told my sister that he didn’t understand why the Kaddish was said during every prayer service at camp. As a soldier, this young man had been at many funerals of other soldiers, friends who have died in the war. He had heard the Mourner’s Kaddish only at funerals. He had never heard the Mourner’s Kaddish, or any of the other kaddishes that use similar words, and that are recited multiple times during a Jewish prayer service, in any other context.

What a tragedy that this recently discharged soldier has attended so many funerals in recent months that he knew the Mourner’s Kaddish by heart. Every time he heard the words of the Kaddish, multiple times every day, during prayer services at a Jewish summer camp, he had to relive the trauma of losing friends his own age in such a brutal war.

I long to comfort this young man by reminding him of the demands of our prayers: “Hashta!” “Now!” “Achshav!”
May they all come home.
May we have peace.
Speedily and in our time.

Thousands of years ago the composers of our ancient prayers knew how to make this demand, and so must we.