Episode 4
What happens when the Israel of our prayers looks different from the Israel of our headlines?
In this episode of Thoughts & Prayers, host Jessica Fisher explores how the creation of a Jewish state has transformed Jewish prayer, and how prayer shapes Israeli life. Through stories and reflections from Na’ama Levitz Applbaum, Tamar Elad-Appelbaum, Tomer Persico, and Akiva Mattenson, the episode asks how prayer might bridge instead of fracture Israeli society and help us glimpse the Jerusalem of our dreams within the Israel of today.
Sources referenced in this episode include:
Mishneh Torah Hilchot Ta’anit 1:1
Mishnah Taanit 2:1
Megillah 29a:11-13
A transcript for this episode is available below.
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Thoughts & Prayers is a new limited podcast series from the Shalom Hartman Institute that explores the tensions, questions, and contradictions at the heart of Jewish prayer today. Hosted by Jessica Fisher, each episode weaves together personal stories, classical texts, and conversations with leading rabbis, scholars, and educators to ask what prayer can still mean — and why it matters.
Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Jessica: Welcome to Thoughts & Prayers, a show from the Shalom Hartman Institute, inspiring new connections to Jewish Prayer in a changing world. I’m Jessica Fisher.
My grandparents immigrated from Cuba to Brooklyn in 1959, right after Fidel Castro entered Havana for the first couple of years. They visited a few times, but as the climate there worsened, they never went back.
Even though she could go, my grandmother says she doesn’t want to return to Cuba because she remembers the Havana of her childhood as a paradise. She doesn’t want to replace those memories with images of her childhood homes, crumbling facade. Of course, it wasn’t paradise even then. It was a real place with plenty of problems, but still from the distance of time and space, her memories of Cuba are perfect.
Jewish liturgy shares some of this approach toward the land of Israel. Remembering Jerusalem as a beautiful, idyllic holy city, but our canon also vividly laments Jerusalem’s destruction and articulates a yearning to return to it nonetheless. My grandma would probably go back to the Havana of her memories, and our liturgy too imagines that we long to return to the ideal Jerusalem that it remembers.
When the state of Israel was established in 1948, there was a sense among its founders that they were bringing history to life. In many ways the state of Israel has done that. Hebrew has evolved into a complex, modern, and deeply poetic language. The Jewish calendar and traditions permeate every part of Israeli society. And for the first time in 2000 years, there is a place, an entire country, where Jews are the majority population, where Jews have sovereignty.
And yet for all of the wonders of the state of Israel, it is not paradise. It is not entirely a reflection of what the sage is called Yerushalayim shel ma’aleh, a celestial city. Instead, Israel is a country mired in the mess of existence and statehood just like other countries. And as a country striving to function like other countries, but also trying to be a Jewish state, Israel faces unique challenges that can be refracted, like other issues of modernity through the lens of prayer.
In this episode of Thoughts and Prayers, we’re going to explore how having a Jewish state has impacted Jewish prayer and how prayer itself shapes the Jewish state.
To begin our episode, my colleague, Rabbi Na’ama Levitz Applbaum, shared a story about how her community in Jerusalem relied on prayer as a tool to bring people together to respond to the heartbreak of October 7th.
Na’ama, thank you for sharing your story.
Na’ama: Thank you for having me here, Jessica. For our community, October 7th wasn’t only kind of a national tragedy, it was also the day when one of our members, Hersh Goldberg Polin, zihrono levracha, was taken hostage and many others in the community, whether themselves or their children or their spouses, were drafted into the reserves overnight.
And really from the very beginning, people turned, you know, to our community and, and to tefillah, and to prayer as, as a major anchor. After a few weeks when things calmed down a little bit, people were coming out of their houses, we started meeting in person in our, in our communal courtyard in Baqa, in Jerusalem. But as we neared the 100 day mark, we felt like we had to take another step and take things further into the public square, so beyond our local community. The hundred day mark just felt too big to be doing alone and to mark by ourselves.
In Israel, as you may know, synagogue and state, or church and state are, are definitely not separate, and Orthodoxy is the default. And it wasn’t an easy decision for us as a community to really move outside to a public service. We really believed that we had to raise awareness for the hostages and, and to really allow others to come into our community.
I really did think that there was a possibility that no one would come and our small group community from Hakhel would stand together alone and disappointed, and instead standing there with thousands of people pouring out their hearts, using the words of our tradition. It felt like it was a small act of chesed or a small tikun for the absolute rupture that was October 7th.
Jessica: It is such a vivid story. I feel like I I can picture myself standing there, you know, shoulder to shoulder with 2000, with no idea of what to say, but being able to turn to the words of tefillot instead.
I actually in a, in a different season, in the summer of 2024, so a few months after you held this public gathering, I was in Jerusalem and joined a mincha service on Shiva Asar B’Tammuz, on a fast day, in support of the hostages, which was also in a public square and standing there sweating on a fast day.
I was so moved to be in that space that so clearly brought together all different kinds of Jews, people from across the denominational spectrum, people who prayed regularly, people who didn’t, and the fact that it was… that was also a rally, but not only a rally was really meaningful.
Naama: Yeah. Yeah, I would say that the piece of feedback that we got over and over again, is that it just felt like a tefillah and not a political rally, but really kind of like a joint crying out.
I think it was obvious to us as the organizers that we weren’t gonna solve the crisis or, you know, end the war with a tefillah, but it, it reminded us and our community that we’re not alone in this and that and, and that actually our tradition has what to say about the morality and the humanity of that moment.
Jessica: Yeah. And that idea of crying out is both so emotionally resonant, right? It’s actually doesn’t even need words, and there’s something that’s so Jewish about it, right? To be able to say either with words that we have or with words that we don’t have that we’re gonna cry out together.
Maimonides actually says that we have an obligation to cry out in times of communal difficulty because this kind of crying out is praying and it brings people together in a moment of pain.
Naama: Yeah. Yeah. I’m always struck by that commandment that the Rambam talks about, that it’s a mitzvah levko bechatzrotzrot, like you have to make sure that everybody knows that something is happening. You know, I think of that idea of really raising, again, the awareness, and that we have an obligation to stand together.
You know, I think back to Masechet Ta’anit, to the tractate of Ta’anit, that describes how in times of crisis, we shouldn’t only be praying or crying behind the closed walls of our synagogue, but, but there is an obligation for the community to take the arl with a Torah out into the public square. Motzi’in et hateva berchova shel ir. And that phrase kind of came up again and again throughout the past two years of, when do we decide that it’s the moment that we are obligated to take the arl out into the streets.
A lot of the way that we organized and, and did our tefillot out in public were really driven by—this is what we know how to do and this is what we do. We’re not politicians and we’re not going to be going out and, and, you know, dealing with peace treaties, but we can pray. Like that is something that everybody can do.
And the prayer, maybe it wasn’t a protest against, you know, the war or against the government, but sometimes, you know, the synagogue itself or the community itself can’t really carry the burden, and the crisis creates a situation where we need to be sharing the burden publicly.
Jessica: Why do you think it worked to bring together Jews of different backgrounds, who ordinarily would not pray together, religiously or politically?
Naama: I think as, again, as, as kind of like in my lay leadership hat, when we were organizing these tefillot, we were very, very thoughtful and conscious of the fact that we were going to be attracting multiple different communities from different backgrounds. We really kept to the traditional liturgy that felt very, very familiar. This was not an alternative service. This was not, you know, something that people wouldn’t recognize
I think davka in Israel, tefillah is in Hebrew. I think, so, even the fact that there’s no language barrier and that the melodies that we chose were really very, very mainstream. And when you have thousands of people that sing Acheinu together, it moves you, no matter where you stand on the war, or the hostages.
I think that the, the fact that we also incorporated, you know, some Israeli songs like Lu Yehi of Naomi Shemer made it so that everybody felt like they were at home and, and they felt seen.
Jessica: Yeah. It’s interesting that you were able to create that sense of being at home, because the other important piece of the Ta’anit text is taking it out to the public square, right? Being outside. You moved from Zoom to the communal courtyard and then really to public place, which gave, maybe, people the openness of saying, okay, there’s space for all of my pain, but also there’s actual physical space that allows me to feel like I can be part of this even if it’s not my usual style or preference.
Naama: Right. Look, I believe that tefillah has a unique ability to bring people together. It has a power to create change. It strengthens community. It reminds us that we’re a part of something larger than ourselves. And together with that it, it creates kind of a deep sense of responsibility towards each other. We, we literally need each other to make a minyan. We can’t do it alone.
And in Israel specifically, because it’s so much a part of our culture and our history and our language, it really presents like an additional opportunity to tap into something, you know, deep, and maybe if we’re able to pray together, maybe we can also bridge some of those divides between us.
Jessica: Thank you, Na’ama. That was Na’ama Levitz Applbaum, director of Wellspring Camp and Experiential Education initiatives at the Shalom Hartman Institute and part of the leadership of Hakhel in Jerusalem.
The story of prayer in Israel is not limited to Jewish communities whose perspectives converge or conflict. The land of Israel is a Jewish state, but it is also a home to people of other faiths. The competing claims to the land and religious authority often lead to violent, devastating conflict between these groups. But prayer has also brought people of many faiths together too.
This past summer, for example, Rabbi Tamar Elad Applebaum, founder of Kehillat Tzion in Jerusalem, helped organize an interfaith prayer gathering for Yom Yerushalayim, a day that is often marked by strident assertions of Jewish supremacy in Jerusalem and throughout Israel.
The gathering Tamar organized, by contrast, was built on years of relationships that she had cultivated with her Muslim and Christian colleagues. It celebrated the dream of a Jerusalem shared by three faith traditions, living side by side, and strengthened by sharing the same holy place.
In this next segment, Tamara reflects on her inability to process the support she received from these colleagues on October 7th and in the months following, and how she was eventually reminded that even in moments of tremendous pain, those relationships and the shared language of faith and prayer are essential for the future of Israel and all of the people who live there.
Tamar: The very first phone call I received on Motzei Shabbat of October 7th was from my beloved Muslim friend Ibtisam. She was sobbing and could barely speak. “This is no Islam. This is not faith,” she said, “but only brings upon us all a world of death, when we are either/or. Yet in the world of God, it is never either your life or mine, but must only be me protecting forever the holy life you received from God, and you forever protecting mine together.” And so she said that night, “I will raise my voice in action and in prayer. The one prayer for all.”
I know that so very many all around the Jewish world did not receive such phone calls, though they waited for them with trembling, breaking hearts. Rather, on that terrifying day, so many felt deserted by colleagues and partners. I know that this will forever be part of the trauma from that day. Yet, the first phone call I received was from Ibtisam, followed by Father Benny, Father Alberto, Sheikh Khaled, Sheikh Iyad.
These relationships were not built overnight, nor were they taken for granted over many years and so many difficult moments for us all.
Ibtisam and I had written together the prayer for the peace of the mothers, seeking words that could hold both our particular pain and our shared hope. Father Benny, Father Alberto, and I had studied together and tended to our communities, finding pathways to understanding in the midst of trauma. Sheikh Khaled, Sheikh Iyad, and I taught the love of the Holy City, speaking of the sacred responsibility we each carry for this holy place.
These bonds forged through years of hard work were challenged and challenging in our context. They required constant tending and deep faith in the very possibility of understanding across profound pain and difference. Yet they remained essential, for they reminded us that even in our darkest hours, the choice between “either/or” and “for all,” remained ours to make.
And that night they all reminded me of my grandfather’s story of his commander in the French Partisans, a priest fighting to save Jewish life, who would remind my grandfather every day to pray in the language of the people of Israel for all.
But there was so much immediate work to do. The night passed and I put it aside. The community I lead, Tzion, in Jerusalem, alongside so many others, threw itself into supporting our people, supporting soldiers and their families, supporting hostage families held in Gaza, hosting refugee families from the South.
And as we worked to protect the body, it was clear that it was also a moment of emergency for the soul. The trauma was moral and spiritual. The very first Shabbat after October 7th, we went to every kibbutz community that had been evacuated to Yerushalayim, to lead Shabbat prayers.
What do you say? What do you sing?
We cried and sang. We were all guardians of life, body, and soul. Yet it was only internal. Everything was too raw and so deeply, deeply painful. I couldn’t find a place for Ibtisam’s call in our prayers then, for my grandfather’s story from back then in the Holocaust to this time and place in Israel.
Until one Shabbat, a wounded soldier from Gaza, a secular kibbutznik who doesn’t usually attend synagogue, came with his parents and asked very much to say a prayer. I asked, what prayer? He looked at me, tears in his eyes and said, “I want to say a prayer for all.”
This is a moment I will never forget. A wounded soldier who had defended our existence in body in the worst hour, was now asking to also defend our existence through a prayer for all. He, who had witnessed the worst of humanity, asked not for vengeance, but for a future. A prayer that encompasses all mothers, all children, in Yisrael, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, all humanity.
Prayer is not journalism. It doesn’t report what is, but envisions what could be and what is worthy to be. Prayer requires all our prophetic imagination, our complete responsibility for our people, our society, and all humanity. Prayer in this sense is an action of faith in us, echoing to God’s faith in us, insisting that we are destined to save the tree of life itself amidst war.
Just like Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, who in the midst of World War I, darkness, dared to envision a fourfold song: There is one who sings the song of their own life, he taught, another who sings the song of their people, another who reaches beyond to sing the song of humanity, and one who rises to sing with all existence. The song of the self, the song of the people, the song of humanity, and the song of the world, all merge in prayer, in the midst of war, to become the one song of holiness.
In that moment of crisis and darkness, then, Rav Kook called us to be Yisrael, teaching that the name Yisrael, the very name Yisrael, Israel comes from the word shir, to sing a song, a song, to sing all songs in darkness. To believe that one ray of sun could plow a reality one day, recognizing that prayer itself guards life and its sanctity.
Rav Kook’s Fourfold Song reveals how in a time of darkness, each layer builds upon and strengthens the others. The song of the self teaches us to honor our own deep wounds and brokenness, inner vulnerability and existence. The song of our people gives us roots and responsibility. Without this foundation of care within, we cannot offer authentic care to others. The song of humanity expands our concern. It reminds us that our particular calling is in service of the whole. And the song of all existence connects all these to each other and to the one ever-unfolding holiness in all. Each song requires the others.
For generations before us, in the midst of the worst times in our history, our ancestors sang that song, a fourfold song. They dared to sing it. They had to sing it. With faith, with chutzpah, with trust in Hashem. Every day and night, and they sang it.
The Jewish Shema was their radical listening to all four. The Amidah, literally standing, was their practice of chutzpah, of resistance in which they stood on the edge of the abyss, insisting upon the Holy for all. They stood, just like Avraham before Sodom, like Moshe before Par’oh, like Estherl before Achashverosh and Hamman, like my grandfather, who emerged from the Holocaust and prayed for all. Like that wounded soldier.
They all did it with that one ray of light from the future, believing they would sow fields of life, from the beginning, for themselves and for all, declaring forever that no terrorists could make them choose either-or. They stood and prayed for all. For the hostages, for the bereaved families of warriors, for the soldiers, for the children in Israel, for the children in Gaza. For All. For all. They prayed that we be Israel, a fourfold song. That we save that ray of light, sow it in this broken world, and fulfill the promise and the purpose dreamed to us by God, a world over fourfold song.
And so we did. We Tzion, in Yerushalayim, in Jerusalem, and so many others joined. We prayed and pray a fourfold song. It is our duty to pray it in this darkness and never let go. Prayer in wartime reveals both our deepest vulnerability and our highest faith. It forces us to confront the reality that so many abandoned precisely when they are needed most.
Yet it doesn’t free us to be what we took upon ourselves to be, to be Yisrael, to be a fourfold song, to guard an ancient, eternal vision, standing against evil, loyal saviors and servants, insisting on the sanctity of our life for even in our deepest pain. While it seems sometimes impossible, we can and must choose to pray in the language of our people for all.
And so it seems to me that in these trembling times, this is our calling: to sing the song of our wounded self, to sing the song of our brave and broken people, to sing for the children in Israel and for those in Gaza, and share, all plea for all human life. To sing the song of one creation, defending life and pleading for peace, to transform the either/or into a fourfold song of prayer, carrying forward that one holy ray of light, committed, always, forever to be Yisrael, Shir El, a song of one creator, melech she-hashalom shelo, praying for us every day that we see and bring life and peace for all.
Jessica: That was Tamar Elad Applebaum, Rabbi of Kehillat Tzion, and the director of the Rabbanut Yisraelit Network, and co-director of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Ritual Center.
In our last episode, we looked at how Jews in the United States use prayer as a tool for political engagement and belonging as a religious minority in a country that separates church and state, but is largely shaped by the Christian majority. In Israel, of course, Jews are the majority, and the functions of the state are explicitly linked to Judaism. As we heard from Na’ama, prayer can be a powerful tool for connection, community, and resilience in Israel. Even across diverse communities of practice, there’s a sense of shared vocabulary and symbols that can bring people together.
But Jewish prayer in Israel can also be divisive, often used as a tool to achieve religious and civic goals. For example, there are Israelis who go and pray on the Temple Mount, where the Dome of the Rock is, as a way to claim that space as a holy site for Jews. Or Women of the Wall, a group that organizes monthly services at the Kotel to advocate for women being able to pray at the hotel, while wearing talitot and reading from the Torah.
I spoke with Dr. Tomer Persico, whose work and activism focuses on religious freedom in Israel, including around questions of the political instrumentalization of prayer. Welcome Tomer.
Tomer: Thank you, Jessica.
Jessica: So I just shared two examples of the way prayer is used politically in public spaces in Israel. How would you describe this idea of prayer being used as a tool to achieve religious and civic goals?
Tomer: Well, certainly being the majority in this country, legislating and being sovereign also raises the questions of how do we conduct, how do we organize the public space in order to allow a more or less liberal situation for citizens, Jews, and non-Jews. And, and you brought up, I think, the two most prominent examples of prayer being used also, if not sometimes solely as a political tool.
Specifically on the Temple Mount. We know that politicians activists go up the Temple Mount and pray on the Temple Mount, explicitly in order to assert Jewish Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount. And this is, they actually say it. It’s not something that you need to interpret. We are now asserting sovereignty of Jews. We don’t want only the Palestinians and the Muslims to have the Temple Mount as a holy site. This is of course, the most holy site for the Jews, and we need to pray here. This is, of course, in contradiction to the status quo, what is called the status quo on the Temple Mount, which state that only Muslims pray on the Temple Mount, while other members of other religions can go up, can, can appreciate the site, but not worship in any way.
But I’m talking about, like, politicians, or activists, let’s say Moshe Feiglin, or Itamar Ben Gvir, who will go up the Temple Mount and they will say explicitly, we are here in order to assert Jewish sovereignty, basically assert Jewish dominance on the site, and as such, we will break the status quo and pray in order to show that this is ours.
Jessica: Yeah. I mean, part of what’s interesting about this is that in some ways, this weaponization of prayer is an unexpected consequence of establishing a Jewish state, right? That it has become a tool based on the assumption that the Jewish government in power will be sympathetic to Jewish prayer in a way that clearly wouldn’t be true anywhere else in the world.
Tomer: Yeah, but I mean, on the Temple Mount and also on the Wailing Wall, it depends on, it hinges on the fact that some people are not allowed to pray there, right? So on the Temple Mount, Jews are not allowed to pray. In the Wailing Wall, there’s an Orthodox or an interpretation of Orthodoxy that sets the rules for the Wailing Wall in the framework of which women cannot pray in an egalitarian way. They cannot read the Torah, they cannot put on tefillin.
And these statues that forbid certain people from praying, these are of course the trigger and they set the stage for this, these demonstrations, these political uses of prayer in order to assert on the Temple Mount sovereignty, in the Wailing Wall, it’s in, you know, a demonstration of egalitarian prayer and a demand that women will be treated as equals in the most holy place for the Jewish people.
Jessica: It is interesting that both of them are using the same tool to achieve different aims, right? One, one is asking for more liberalism around prayer, and the other you could say is asking for less liberalism.
Tomer: Look, these politicians and activists that pray on the Temple Mount specifically want to assert Jewish sovereignty. And if it was up to them, of course, Muslims would not be able to pray on the Temple Mount. Women of the Wall, of course, want an equal space, not denying the fact that others can pray for themselves in their own way.
Jessica: Yeah. Do you, do you see these efforts as actually having an impact and shaping the Israeli government or Israeli society?
Tomer: I think the whole activism around the Temple Mount has been very influential for the last, I would say, 15 years. We’ve seen an exponential growth in people ascending the Temple Mount, which by the way, many people think is halakhically forbidden and, and a growth in people that actively pray on the temple Mount
This is now embraced by our Minister of Police, Itamar Ben Gvir. He is one of the people who endorses this and, and so yes, this influences our political situation and, and you know, our Secret Service is very concerned about this has influencing the security situation around the, around Jews in Israel.
Women of the Wall, I think have a less of an influence on the general Israeli public. They had a certain point of entrance into Israeli consciousness, I would say six or seven years ago, there was the whole Kotel agreement in which the, the Reform and Conservative Jews would, or, or pluralistic Jews in general, would have a separate access to the wall in a certain place. There was a whole thing about this, but at the end it died down. And at now, basically push this away. And so Women of the Wall are back to where they were for the last, I think, 30 years, basically coming to the Wall and praying in their own way, every first of the Jewish month.
Jessica: Yeah, and it’s interesting because, so I’ve been to the Women of the Wall once and it doesn’t, it doesn’t really feel like a tefillah space, or at least it didn’t for me, right? You’re there, you’re saying Shacharit. Maybe you’re wearing a tallit or tefillin or both, and reading from the Torah and there is tefillah happening, but it’s so, it’s so contested and there’s so many people protesting what you’re doing, that that becomes the focus. Or at least again for me, that felt like the focus.
Tomer: No, of course.
Jessica: I’m curious, like to hear from you whether or not it’s an effective strategy to use politically. How do you think these types of protest prayer services are affecting tefillah itself?
Tomer: I was there many times supporting Women of the Wall, and yes, it’s, it’s not a prayer, at least not, not the way we would imagine it and the way we would want it to be. It’s a demonstration, with these women praying, they are really praying, but also asserting a certain stance that they want to forward.
And we have demonstrations against them with sometimes hundreds of Haredi young people, even children, with women coming, even bussed in, in order to oppose these Women of the Wall inside the women’s section of the Kotel. Sometimes there’s screaming, sometimes there’s pushing, sometimes there’s spitting, sometimes there’s throwing of things. It can get very ugly and, I mean, as prayer in Judaism’s most holy sight, it’s lacking, to say the least.
But as a political point of activism. I think it’s, it’s relevant and I think it’s powerful. It’s powerful because not only every month, but because this has been going on for 30 years and there is a certain meaning that the passage of time and the commitment that these women show carries with it.
And also you, you’ll have to admit, in both cases, on the Temple Mount, in the Wailing Wall, there’s a certain sense of secularization of the prayer. I mean, things that for us are holy, are things that we don’t use for other purposes, right?
There’s a famous halakha that is the forbidden of a kappandria, a shortcut. You cannot use a synagogue for a shortcut. You know, instead of going around the synagogue, you just go through it both doors, et cetera, you’re not allowed to do it. Why? Because it’s holy. Because you’re not using something that is holy for other purposes for your own gain. Perhaps that’s the very definition of sacredness, is that this is not for manipulation, this is not for use.
And here, of course, prayer is used. It’s used for political purposes, for active purposes, for, you know, sovereign purposes for, for the state of Israel.
And, you know, there’s something to be said about here. And on the other hand, you know, I guess activism, of course we must sometimes protest things that are wrong. And, and this is one way of doing it.
Jessica: Okay. Thank you, Tomer. That was Tomer Persico, Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the new book In God’s Image: How Western Civilization was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea.
Before the land of Israel became the site of the state of Israel, it was depicted as a place that lived in both history and imagination. The land of Israel was the setting of some of our people’s most cherished and painful origin stories. It was also a place of aspirations and the possibility of miracles.
Now with the existence of a state, it’s easy for those essential elements of the land to fade into the background, for our focus instead to be on the challenges within Israeli society, the Israeli government, and the devastation of war, or more positively, on the ways Hebrew and Judaism has been brought to life alongside the state.
Reflecting on the tension between the vibrant and messy state of Israel that is, and the memory of a land imbued with the possibility of miracles. Rabbi Akiva Mattenson offers us a different framework for navigating the difference between the state of Israel and the land of Israel that is itself a prayer.
Akiva: Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav wrote, faith is, in a way, a prayer. It is said of Moshe, “His hands were faithful,” and the Targum translates this as “his hands were extended in prayer.” And prayers are, in a way, miracles. Now the essence of faith, which in a way is the essence of prayer and the essence of miracles, is found only in the land of Israel. As it says, “Dwell in the land and shepherd faith.” But it is not possible to arrive at faith except by way of truth. Likutei Moharan, 7.
What is the land of Israel? If Rabbi Nachman is to be our guide, it is where one might go looking for the essence of faith, of prayer and of miracles, which are all, in a way, the same thing. But what does that mean exactly to say they are all the same? To pray is to have faith in the possibility of miracles. It’s to hold out a hope that what is, is not what needs to be, that the world could be otherwise. Most audaciously, it is to believe that what seems impossible might nevertheless happen. The dead can live again. Peace, goodness, and blessing can suffuse the earth. Justice can be done.
To be clear, to pray is not to have faith that these things will happen. It is merely, though not trivially, to have faith that these things might happen. That the world’s sometimes cruelly indifferent fixities can be loosened and changed.
So to say that the land of Israel is home to the essence of prayer and faith and miracles is to make a striking assertion: the land of Israel is a prayer. It’s not the place where we go at the end of a long desert journey or a long sojourn in the diaspora to rest on our laurels, finally having arrived at our resting place and inheritance. It’s not even really something to possess once and for all. It’s a place for dreaming beyond the present, for imagining what could be, for believing that we could be better than we are. That what seems impossible could nevertheless happen.
But it’s easier to dream when we’re asleep, unencumbered by the inflexible realities of waking life. And it was easier to dream about the land of Israel without the mundane and muddled realities of a Jewish state there to cloud our vision. We can get lost in the realities of statecraft. The everyday mess of state bureaucracy, the ugliness in real politik, the moral consequences, big and small of political paths taken and not taken.
Add in the squabbling between Jews about religious life and religious authority, and the brutal realities of violent conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, and it becomes almost impossible to clear our minds and hearts enough to dream.
It’s all too easy to settle into the facts of life, whether from a place of self-satisfaction or a place of despairing resignation. This is true even when the facts of life are brutal, as they often are in Israel. Leaning into anguish, trauma and rage feels safer than the vulnerable, courageous work of praying for a different world.
Too many who live in or care about the land of Israel have stopped praying, in Rabbi Nachman’s sense. They’ve given up on miracles. The tragic irony for Rabbi Nachman is that in doing so, they’ve given up on the land of Israel too, because if the land of Israel is anything, it is a faith suffused prayer for the miraculous. Rabbi Nachman fills out this idea with a verse: “Dwell in the land and shepherd faith.”
Faith is not something to be owned and put on a shelf, a piece of furniture for the interior of one’s mind. Like the shepherd’s sheep, it’s a fragile, vulnerable thing in need of our concerted care. This concerted care is also not one thing forever and all time. What the sheep need changes with the seasons and the years, and so it is with faith. We must become attuned to what, in this moment, in this place and time, is impeding our capacity to pray with faith for the impossibly miraculous to take place in the land of Israel.
And this brings us to Rabbi Nachman’s second stunning point. It is not possible to arrive at faith except by way of truth. Real faith, faith worthy of the name, involves looking unflinchingly at the brutal facts of the world. It’s not pollyannish or naive dreaming. It’s not a kind of irresponsible optimism. Praying for miraculous impossibilities that might be, begins with a full accounting of all the brokenness that is.
Fostering the faith that makes praying possible will require us to stare squarely into the brokenness in Israel’s political life. It will require taking stock of everything that makes the present conditions of life in the land seem so intractable, so hard to change. This is hard and painful work. For some, this is work we’ve been avoiding. For others, the work feels like it’s been thrust upon us, making it impossible to avoid.
But it’s crucial that we not lose ourselves in this abyss. Just as God is said to shepherd us through the valley of death’s shadow, we too must shepherd our faith through the dark narrows we find ourselves in.
Rabbi Nachman begins this teaching with the image of Moshe, “hands outstretched in faith,” which turns out to mean outstretched in prayer. It’s worth considering the context in which that image appears. The people of Israel have been caught off guard by the violent onslaught of Amalek. The weak and vulnerable are falling to their swords. After telling Yeheshua to cobble together a fighting force, Moshe ascends the hilltop looking out at the frenzied chaos of war and lifts his hands heaven-ward.
This is prayer in its most urgent, desperate form. This is faith in the shadow, cast by anguish, conflict, war. This is the kind of prayer and the kind of faith we’re talking about. But Moshe can’t keep his arms raised, and as they fall, hope for driving off Amalek wanes. It’s then that we read: “Now Moshe’s hands were heavy, so they took a stone and placed it under him, and he sat down on it while a Aharon and Chur supported his hands, one on this side and one on this side. And so his hands were faithful until the sun set.”
We don’t need to do this work alone. If we hope to keep our hands outstretched, in faith, in prayer, believing in miracles, knowing full well all that stands in their way, if we want the land of Israel to be, more than anything else, a prayer, we will need each other. We’ll need the comfort of each other’s shoulders, the strength of each other’s company, the model of each other’s courage.
The reality of the Jewish state means that the land of Israel can no longer simply be a blank canvas for our wildest dreams. But we can’t lose sight of those dreams, either of the possibilities for a different and better world that could exist in the land of Israel. So find the people who can hold your hands, who can lift them heaven-ward in prayer. These prayers are our faith in miracles and are in their own way, miracles of faith.
Jessica: That was Akiva Mattenson, faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a content advisor for this podcast.
There is a throughline in much of Jewish liturgy that captures a longing to return to Zion. On Shabbat mornings, for example, we ask God, “matai timloch b’Tzion,” “when will you reign in Zion? The liturgy puts an answer in our mouths: “Let it be soon, in our days.”
This articulates a yearning for God’s presence in the land of Israel, something Jews have been reciting since long before the establishment of the state of Israel and continue reciting today, 77 years later. This sentiment notes an absence in the world that Zion does not yet reflect the holiness and divinity that could be for some. This is theologically complicated.
One could understand the creation of a Jewish state as God’s return to Zion. And yet, as we heard in this episode, there’s so much evidence that Zion and Jerusalem that we experience are Yerushalayim shel Matah, a city of this world, a state mired by human shortcomings and conflict.
Each of the stories was tinted with the pain and complexity of violence, disagreement, protests, and struggle. But I also heard in these stories glimpses of Yerushalayim shel Maleh, of God’s reign in Zion, whether through the power of prayer and song to bring people together and offer healing, or through a shared vocabulary of faith across religious divides, or through the reminder that the land of Israel is at its heart, not only a state, but also a land of prayer and miracles.
We have not yet achieved the idyllic vision of experiencing God as described in our liturgy. We may never fully experience the Yerushalayim shel Malah that the rabbis imagined. But including these aspirations in our prayers orients us toward those glimpses of divinity. It inspires us to work toward making the Jerusalem we experience just a little more celestial. It reminds us that striving for a more just state and land of Israel is an ancient and necessary spiritual practice.
Our people have been longing for signs of God’s presence in Jerusalem and Israel for generations. It’s possible that there are ways our prayer lives keep God away, but as we heard, praying can also draw disparate communities closer together and draw God closer to us in a semblance of the heavenly Jerusalem of rabbinic imagination, even while our feet are firmly planted here on the ground.
May 20, 2025
One of a series of conversations about what religious life in Israel looks like, and even more importantly, what it could look like.
Sep 15, 2025
May 20, 2025
Tamar Elad-Appelbaum joins Jewish Insights with Justin Pines to discuss the hidden wisdom of Torah and Jewish spirituality
Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Jessica: Welcome to Thoughts & Prayers, a show from the Shalom Hartman Institute, inspiring new connections to Jewish Prayer in a changing world. I’m Jessica Fisher.
My grandparents immigrated from Cuba to Brooklyn in 1959, right after Fidel Castro entered Havana for the first couple of years. They visited a few times, but as the climate there worsened, they never went back.
Even though she could go, my grandmother says she doesn’t want to return to Cuba because she remembers the Havana of her childhood as a paradise. She doesn’t want to replace those memories with images of her childhood homes, crumbling facade. Of course, it wasn’t paradise even then. It was a real place with plenty of problems, but still from the distance of time and space, her memories of Cuba are perfect.
Jewish liturgy shares some of this approach toward the land of Israel. Remembering Jerusalem as a beautiful, idyllic holy city, but our canon also vividly laments Jerusalem’s destruction and articulates a yearning to return to it nonetheless. My grandma would probably go back to the Havana of her memories, and our liturgy too imagines that we long to return to the ideal Jerusalem that it remembers.
When the state of Israel was established in 1948, there was a sense among its founders that they were bringing history to life. In many ways the state of Israel has done that. Hebrew has evolved into a complex, modern, and deeply poetic language. The Jewish calendar and traditions permeate every part of Israeli society. And for the first time in 2000 years, there is a place, an entire country, where Jews are the majority population, where Jews have sovereignty.
And yet for all of the wonders of the state of Israel, it is not paradise. It is not entirely a reflection of what the sage is called Yerushalayim shel ma’aleh, a celestial city. Instead, Israel is a country mired in the mess of existence and statehood just like other countries. And as a country striving to function like other countries, but also trying to be a Jewish state, Israel faces unique challenges that can be refracted, like other issues of modernity through the lens of prayer.
In this episode of Thoughts and Prayers, we’re going to explore how having a Jewish state has impacted Jewish prayer and how prayer itself shapes the Jewish state.
To begin our episode, my colleague, Rabbi Na’ama Levitz Applbaum, shared a story about how her community in Jerusalem relied on prayer as a tool to bring people together to respond to the heartbreak of October 7th.
Na’ama, thank you for sharing your story.
Na’ama: Thank you for having me here, Jessica. For our community, October 7th wasn’t only kind of a national tragedy, it was also the day when one of our members, Hersh Goldberg Polin, zihrono levracha, was taken hostage and many others in the community, whether themselves or their children or their spouses, were drafted into the reserves overnight.
And really from the very beginning, people turned, you know, to our community and, and to tefillah, and to prayer as, as a major anchor. After a few weeks when things calmed down a little bit, people were coming out of their houses, we started meeting in person in our, in our communal courtyard in Baqa, in Jerusalem. But as we neared the 100 day mark, we felt like we had to take another step and take things further into the public square, so beyond our local community. The hundred day mark just felt too big to be doing alone and to mark by ourselves.
In Israel, as you may know, synagogue and state, or church and state are, are definitely not separate, and Orthodoxy is the default. And it wasn’t an easy decision for us as a community to really move outside to a public service. We really believed that we had to raise awareness for the hostages and, and to really allow others to come into our community.
I really did think that there was a possibility that no one would come and our small group community from Hakhel would stand together alone and disappointed, and instead standing there with thousands of people pouring out their hearts, using the words of our tradition. It felt like it was a small act of chesed or a small tikun for the absolute rupture that was October 7th.
Jessica: It is such a vivid story. I feel like I I can picture myself standing there, you know, shoulder to shoulder with 2000, with no idea of what to say, but being able to turn to the words of tefillot instead.
I actually in a, in a different season, in the summer of 2024, so a few months after you held this public gathering, I was in Jerusalem and joined a mincha service on Shiva Asar B’Tammuz, on a fast day, in support of the hostages, which was also in a public square and standing there sweating on a fast day.
I was so moved to be in that space that so clearly brought together all different kinds of Jews, people from across the denominational spectrum, people who prayed regularly, people who didn’t, and the fact that it was… that was also a rally, but not only a rally was really meaningful.
Naama: Yeah. Yeah, I would say that the piece of feedback that we got over and over again, is that it just felt like a tefillah and not a political rally, but really kind of like a joint crying out.
I think it was obvious to us as the organizers that we weren’t gonna solve the crisis or, you know, end the war with a tefillah, but it, it reminded us and our community that we’re not alone in this and that and, and that actually our tradition has what to say about the morality and the humanity of that moment.
Jessica: Yeah. And that idea of crying out is both so emotionally resonant, right? It’s actually doesn’t even need words, and there’s something that’s so Jewish about it, right? To be able to say either with words that we have or with words that we don’t have that we’re gonna cry out together.
Maimonides actually says that we have an obligation to cry out in times of communal difficulty because this kind of crying out is praying and it brings people together in a moment of pain.
Naama: Yeah. Yeah. I’m always struck by that commandment that the Rambam talks about, that it’s a mitzvah levko bechatzrotzrot, like you have to make sure that everybody knows that something is happening. You know, I think of that idea of really raising, again, the awareness, and that we have an obligation to stand together.
You know, I think back to Masechet Ta’anit, to the tractate of Ta’anit, that describes how in times of crisis, we shouldn’t only be praying or crying behind the closed walls of our synagogue, but, but there is an obligation for the community to take the arl with a Torah out into the public square. Motzi’in et hateva berchova shel ir. And that phrase kind of came up again and again throughout the past two years of, when do we decide that it’s the moment that we are obligated to take the arl out into the streets.
A lot of the way that we organized and, and did our tefillot out in public were really driven by—this is what we know how to do and this is what we do. We’re not politicians and we’re not going to be going out and, and, you know, dealing with peace treaties, but we can pray. Like that is something that everybody can do.
And the prayer, maybe it wasn’t a protest against, you know, the war or against the government, but sometimes, you know, the synagogue itself or the community itself can’t really carry the burden, and the crisis creates a situation where we need to be sharing the burden publicly.
Jessica: Why do you think it worked to bring together Jews of different backgrounds, who ordinarily would not pray together, religiously or politically?
Naama: I think as, again, as, as kind of like in my lay leadership hat, when we were organizing these tefillot, we were very, very thoughtful and conscious of the fact that we were going to be attracting multiple different communities from different backgrounds. We really kept to the traditional liturgy that felt very, very familiar. This was not an alternative service. This was not, you know, something that people wouldn’t recognize
I think davka in Israel, tefillah is in Hebrew. I think, so, even the fact that there’s no language barrier and that the melodies that we chose were really very, very mainstream. And when you have thousands of people that sing Acheinu together, it moves you, no matter where you stand on the war, or the hostages.
I think that the, the fact that we also incorporated, you know, some Israeli songs like Lu Yehi of Naomi Shemer made it so that everybody felt like they were at home and, and they felt seen.
Jessica: Yeah. It’s interesting that you were able to create that sense of being at home, because the other important piece of the Ta’anit text is taking it out to the public square, right? Being outside. You moved from Zoom to the communal courtyard and then really to public place, which gave, maybe, people the openness of saying, okay, there’s space for all of my pain, but also there’s actual physical space that allows me to feel like I can be part of this even if it’s not my usual style or preference.
Naama: Right. Look, I believe that tefillah has a unique ability to bring people together. It has a power to create change. It strengthens community. It reminds us that we’re a part of something larger than ourselves. And together with that it, it creates kind of a deep sense of responsibility towards each other. We, we literally need each other to make a minyan. We can’t do it alone.
And in Israel specifically, because it’s so much a part of our culture and our history and our language, it really presents like an additional opportunity to tap into something, you know, deep, and maybe if we’re able to pray together, maybe we can also bridge some of those divides between us.
Jessica: Thank you, Na’ama. That was Na’ama Levitz Applbaum, director of Wellspring Camp and Experiential Education initiatives at the Shalom Hartman Institute and part of the leadership of Hakhel in Jerusalem.
The story of prayer in Israel is not limited to Jewish communities whose perspectives converge or conflict. The land of Israel is a Jewish state, but it is also a home to people of other faiths. The competing claims to the land and religious authority often lead to violent, devastating conflict between these groups. But prayer has also brought people of many faiths together too.
This past summer, for example, Rabbi Tamar Elad Applebaum, founder of Kehillat Tzion in Jerusalem, helped organize an interfaith prayer gathering for Yom Yerushalayim, a day that is often marked by strident assertions of Jewish supremacy in Jerusalem and throughout Israel.
The gathering Tamar organized, by contrast, was built on years of relationships that she had cultivated with her Muslim and Christian colleagues. It celebrated the dream of a Jerusalem shared by three faith traditions, living side by side, and strengthened by sharing the same holy place.
In this next segment, Tamara reflects on her inability to process the support she received from these colleagues on October 7th and in the months following, and how she was eventually reminded that even in moments of tremendous pain, those relationships and the shared language of faith and prayer are essential for the future of Israel and all of the people who live there.
Tamar: The very first phone call I received on Motzei Shabbat of October 7th was from my beloved Muslim friend Ibtisam. She was sobbing and could barely speak. “This is no Islam. This is not faith,” she said, “but only brings upon us all a world of death, when we are either/or. Yet in the world of God, it is never either your life or mine, but must only be me protecting forever the holy life you received from God, and you forever protecting mine together.” And so she said that night, “I will raise my voice in action and in prayer. The one prayer for all.”
I know that so very many all around the Jewish world did not receive such phone calls, though they waited for them with trembling, breaking hearts. Rather, on that terrifying day, so many felt deserted by colleagues and partners. I know that this will forever be part of the trauma from that day. Yet, the first phone call I received was from Ibtisam, followed by Father Benny, Father Alberto, Sheikh Khaled, Sheikh Iyad.
These relationships were not built overnight, nor were they taken for granted over many years and so many difficult moments for us all.
Ibtisam and I had written together the prayer for the peace of the mothers, seeking words that could hold both our particular pain and our shared hope. Father Benny, Father Alberto, and I had studied together and tended to our communities, finding pathways to understanding in the midst of trauma. Sheikh Khaled, Sheikh Iyad, and I taught the love of the Holy City, speaking of the sacred responsibility we each carry for this holy place.
These bonds forged through years of hard work were challenged and challenging in our context. They required constant tending and deep faith in the very possibility of understanding across profound pain and difference. Yet they remained essential, for they reminded us that even in our darkest hours, the choice between “either/or” and “for all,” remained ours to make.
And that night they all reminded me of my grandfather’s story of his commander in the French Partisans, a priest fighting to save Jewish life, who would remind my grandfather every day to pray in the language of the people of Israel for all.
But there was so much immediate work to do. The night passed and I put it aside. The community I lead, Tzion, in Jerusalem, alongside so many others, threw itself into supporting our people, supporting soldiers and their families, supporting hostage families held in Gaza, hosting refugee families from the South.
And as we worked to protect the body, it was clear that it was also a moment of emergency for the soul. The trauma was moral and spiritual. The very first Shabbat after October 7th, we went to every kibbutz community that had been evacuated to Yerushalayim, to lead Shabbat prayers.
What do you say? What do you sing?
We cried and sang. We were all guardians of life, body, and soul. Yet it was only internal. Everything was too raw and so deeply, deeply painful. I couldn’t find a place for Ibtisam’s call in our prayers then, for my grandfather’s story from back then in the Holocaust to this time and place in Israel.
Until one Shabbat, a wounded soldier from Gaza, a secular kibbutznik who doesn’t usually attend synagogue, came with his parents and asked very much to say a prayer. I asked, what prayer? He looked at me, tears in his eyes and said, “I want to say a prayer for all.”
This is a moment I will never forget. A wounded soldier who had defended our existence in body in the worst hour, was now asking to also defend our existence through a prayer for all. He, who had witnessed the worst of humanity, asked not for vengeance, but for a future. A prayer that encompasses all mothers, all children, in Yisrael, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, all humanity.
Prayer is not journalism. It doesn’t report what is, but envisions what could be and what is worthy to be. Prayer requires all our prophetic imagination, our complete responsibility for our people, our society, and all humanity. Prayer in this sense is an action of faith in us, echoing to God’s faith in us, insisting that we are destined to save the tree of life itself amidst war.
Just like Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, who in the midst of World War I, darkness, dared to envision a fourfold song: There is one who sings the song of their own life, he taught, another who sings the song of their people, another who reaches beyond to sing the song of humanity, and one who rises to sing with all existence. The song of the self, the song of the people, the song of humanity, and the song of the world, all merge in prayer, in the midst of war, to become the one song of holiness.
In that moment of crisis and darkness, then, Rav Kook called us to be Yisrael, teaching that the name Yisrael, the very name Yisrael, Israel comes from the word shir, to sing a song, a song, to sing all songs in darkness. To believe that one ray of sun could plow a reality one day, recognizing that prayer itself guards life and its sanctity.
Rav Kook’s Fourfold Song reveals how in a time of darkness, each layer builds upon and strengthens the others. The song of the self teaches us to honor our own deep wounds and brokenness, inner vulnerability and existence. The song of our people gives us roots and responsibility. Without this foundation of care within, we cannot offer authentic care to others. The song of humanity expands our concern. It reminds us that our particular calling is in service of the whole. And the song of all existence connects all these to each other and to the one ever-unfolding holiness in all. Each song requires the others.
For generations before us, in the midst of the worst times in our history, our ancestors sang that song, a fourfold song. They dared to sing it. They had to sing it. With faith, with chutzpah, with trust in Hashem. Every day and night, and they sang it.
The Jewish Shema was their radical listening to all four. The Amidah, literally standing, was their practice of chutzpah, of resistance in which they stood on the edge of the abyss, insisting upon the Holy for all. They stood, just like Avraham before Sodom, like Moshe before Par’oh, like Estherl before Achashverosh and Hamman, like my grandfather, who emerged from the Holocaust and prayed for all. Like that wounded soldier.
They all did it with that one ray of light from the future, believing they would sow fields of life, from the beginning, for themselves and for all, declaring forever that no terrorists could make them choose either-or. They stood and prayed for all. For the hostages, for the bereaved families of warriors, for the soldiers, for the children in Israel, for the children in Gaza. For All. For all. They prayed that we be Israel, a fourfold song. That we save that ray of light, sow it in this broken world, and fulfill the promise and the purpose dreamed to us by God, a world over fourfold song.
And so we did. We Tzion, in Yerushalayim, in Jerusalem, and so many others joined. We prayed and pray a fourfold song. It is our duty to pray it in this darkness and never let go. Prayer in wartime reveals both our deepest vulnerability and our highest faith. It forces us to confront the reality that so many abandoned precisely when they are needed most.
Yet it doesn’t free us to be what we took upon ourselves to be, to be Yisrael, to be a fourfold song, to guard an ancient, eternal vision, standing against evil, loyal saviors and servants, insisting on the sanctity of our life for even in our deepest pain. While it seems sometimes impossible, we can and must choose to pray in the language of our people for all.
And so it seems to me that in these trembling times, this is our calling: to sing the song of our wounded self, to sing the song of our brave and broken people, to sing for the children in Israel and for those in Gaza, and share, all plea for all human life. To sing the song of one creation, defending life and pleading for peace, to transform the either/or into a fourfold song of prayer, carrying forward that one holy ray of light, committed, always, forever to be Yisrael, Shir El, a song of one creator, melech she-hashalom shelo, praying for us every day that we see and bring life and peace for all.
Jessica: That was Tamar Elad Applebaum, Rabbi of Kehillat Tzion, and the director of the Rabbanut Yisraelit Network, and co-director of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Ritual Center.
In our last episode, we looked at how Jews in the United States use prayer as a tool for political engagement and belonging as a religious minority in a country that separates church and state, but is largely shaped by the Christian majority. In Israel, of course, Jews are the majority, and the functions of the state are explicitly linked to Judaism. As we heard from Na’ama, prayer can be a powerful tool for connection, community, and resilience in Israel. Even across diverse communities of practice, there’s a sense of shared vocabulary and symbols that can bring people together.
But Jewish prayer in Israel can also be divisive, often used as a tool to achieve religious and civic goals. For example, there are Israelis who go and pray on the Temple Mount, where the Dome of the Rock is, as a way to claim that space as a holy site for Jews. Or Women of the Wall, a group that organizes monthly services at the Kotel to advocate for women being able to pray at the hotel, while wearing talitot and reading from the Torah.
I spoke with Dr. Tomer Persico, whose work and activism focuses on religious freedom in Israel, including around questions of the political instrumentalization of prayer. Welcome Tomer.
Tomer: Thank you, Jessica.
Jessica: So I just shared two examples of the way prayer is used politically in public spaces in Israel. How would you describe this idea of prayer being used as a tool to achieve religious and civic goals?
Tomer: Well, certainly being the majority in this country, legislating and being sovereign also raises the questions of how do we conduct, how do we organize the public space in order to allow a more or less liberal situation for citizens, Jews, and non-Jews. And, and you brought up, I think, the two most prominent examples of prayer being used also, if not sometimes solely as a political tool.
Specifically on the Temple Mount. We know that politicians activists go up the Temple Mount and pray on the Temple Mount, explicitly in order to assert Jewish Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount. And this is, they actually say it. It’s not something that you need to interpret. We are now asserting sovereignty of Jews. We don’t want only the Palestinians and the Muslims to have the Temple Mount as a holy site. This is of course, the most holy site for the Jews, and we need to pray here. This is, of course, in contradiction to the status quo, what is called the status quo on the Temple Mount, which state that only Muslims pray on the Temple Mount, while other members of other religions can go up, can, can appreciate the site, but not worship in any way.
But I’m talking about, like, politicians, or activists, let’s say Moshe Feiglin, or Itamar Ben Gvir, who will go up the Temple Mount and they will say explicitly, we are here in order to assert Jewish sovereignty, basically assert Jewish dominance on the site, and as such, we will break the status quo and pray in order to show that this is ours.
Jessica: Yeah. I mean, part of what’s interesting about this is that in some ways, this weaponization of prayer is an unexpected consequence of establishing a Jewish state, right? That it has become a tool based on the assumption that the Jewish government in power will be sympathetic to Jewish prayer in a way that clearly wouldn’t be true anywhere else in the world.
Tomer: Yeah, but I mean, on the Temple Mount and also on the Wailing Wall, it depends on, it hinges on the fact that some people are not allowed to pray there, right? So on the Temple Mount, Jews are not allowed to pray. In the Wailing Wall, there’s an Orthodox or an interpretation of Orthodoxy that sets the rules for the Wailing Wall in the framework of which women cannot pray in an egalitarian way. They cannot read the Torah, they cannot put on tefillin.
And these statues that forbid certain people from praying, these are of course the trigger and they set the stage for this, these demonstrations, these political uses of prayer in order to assert on the Temple Mount sovereignty, in the Wailing Wall, it’s in, you know, a demonstration of egalitarian prayer and a demand that women will be treated as equals in the most holy place for the Jewish people.
Jessica: It is interesting that both of them are using the same tool to achieve different aims, right? One, one is asking for more liberalism around prayer, and the other you could say is asking for less liberalism.
Tomer: Look, these politicians and activists that pray on the Temple Mount specifically want to assert Jewish sovereignty. And if it was up to them, of course, Muslims would not be able to pray on the Temple Mount. Women of the Wall, of course, want an equal space, not denying the fact that others can pray for themselves in their own way.
Jessica: Yeah. Do you, do you see these efforts as actually having an impact and shaping the Israeli government or Israeli society?
Tomer: I think the whole activism around the Temple Mount has been very influential for the last, I would say, 15 years. We’ve seen an exponential growth in people ascending the Temple Mount, which by the way, many people think is halakhically forbidden and, and a growth in people that actively pray on the temple Mount
This is now embraced by our Minister of Police, Itamar Ben Gvir. He is one of the people who endorses this and, and so yes, this influences our political situation and, and you know, our Secret Service is very concerned about this has influencing the security situation around the, around Jews in Israel.
Women of the Wall, I think have a less of an influence on the general Israeli public. They had a certain point of entrance into Israeli consciousness, I would say six or seven years ago, there was the whole Kotel agreement in which the, the Reform and Conservative Jews would, or, or pluralistic Jews in general, would have a separate access to the wall in a certain place. There was a whole thing about this, but at the end it died down. And at now, basically push this away. And so Women of the Wall are back to where they were for the last, I think, 30 years, basically coming to the Wall and praying in their own way, every first of the Jewish month.
Jessica: Yeah, and it’s interesting because, so I’ve been to the Women of the Wall once and it doesn’t, it doesn’t really feel like a tefillah space, or at least it didn’t for me, right? You’re there, you’re saying Shacharit. Maybe you’re wearing a tallit or tefillin or both, and reading from the Torah and there is tefillah happening, but it’s so, it’s so contested and there’s so many people protesting what you’re doing, that that becomes the focus. Or at least again for me, that felt like the focus.
Tomer: No, of course.
Jessica: I’m curious, like to hear from you whether or not it’s an effective strategy to use politically. How do you think these types of protest prayer services are affecting tefillah itself?
Tomer: I was there many times supporting Women of the Wall, and yes, it’s, it’s not a prayer, at least not, not the way we would imagine it and the way we would want it to be. It’s a demonstration, with these women praying, they are really praying, but also asserting a certain stance that they want to forward.
And we have demonstrations against them with sometimes hundreds of Haredi young people, even children, with women coming, even bussed in, in order to oppose these Women of the Wall inside the women’s section of the Kotel. Sometimes there’s screaming, sometimes there’s pushing, sometimes there’s spitting, sometimes there’s throwing of things. It can get very ugly and, I mean, as prayer in Judaism’s most holy sight, it’s lacking, to say the least.
But as a political point of activism. I think it’s, it’s relevant and I think it’s powerful. It’s powerful because not only every month, but because this has been going on for 30 years and there is a certain meaning that the passage of time and the commitment that these women show carries with it.
And also you, you’ll have to admit, in both cases, on the Temple Mount, in the Wailing Wall, there’s a certain sense of secularization of the prayer. I mean, things that for us are holy, are things that we don’t use for other purposes, right?
There’s a famous halakha that is the forbidden of a kappandria, a shortcut. You cannot use a synagogue for a shortcut. You know, instead of going around the synagogue, you just go through it both doors, et cetera, you’re not allowed to do it. Why? Because it’s holy. Because you’re not using something that is holy for other purposes for your own gain. Perhaps that’s the very definition of sacredness, is that this is not for manipulation, this is not for use.
And here, of course, prayer is used. It’s used for political purposes, for active purposes, for, you know, sovereign purposes for, for the state of Israel.
And, you know, there’s something to be said about here. And on the other hand, you know, I guess activism, of course we must sometimes protest things that are wrong. And, and this is one way of doing it.
Jessica: Okay. Thank you, Tomer. That was Tomer Persico, Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the new book In God’s Image: How Western Civilization was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea.
Before the land of Israel became the site of the state of Israel, it was depicted as a place that lived in both history and imagination. The land of Israel was the setting of some of our people’s most cherished and painful origin stories. It was also a place of aspirations and the possibility of miracles.
Now with the existence of a state, it’s easy for those essential elements of the land to fade into the background, for our focus instead to be on the challenges within Israeli society, the Israeli government, and the devastation of war, or more positively, on the ways Hebrew and Judaism has been brought to life alongside the state.
Reflecting on the tension between the vibrant and messy state of Israel that is, and the memory of a land imbued with the possibility of miracles. Rabbi Akiva Mattenson offers us a different framework for navigating the difference between the state of Israel and the land of Israel that is itself a prayer.
Akiva: Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav wrote, faith is, in a way, a prayer. It is said of Moshe, “His hands were faithful,” and the Targum translates this as “his hands were extended in prayer.” And prayers are, in a way, miracles. Now the essence of faith, which in a way is the essence of prayer and the essence of miracles, is found only in the land of Israel. As it says, “Dwell in the land and shepherd faith.” But it is not possible to arrive at faith except by way of truth. Likutei Moharan, 7.
What is the land of Israel? If Rabbi Nachman is to be our guide, it is where one might go looking for the essence of faith, of prayer and of miracles, which are all, in a way, the same thing. But what does that mean exactly to say they are all the same? To pray is to have faith in the possibility of miracles. It’s to hold out a hope that what is, is not what needs to be, that the world could be otherwise. Most audaciously, it is to believe that what seems impossible might nevertheless happen. The dead can live again. Peace, goodness, and blessing can suffuse the earth. Justice can be done.
To be clear, to pray is not to have faith that these things will happen. It is merely, though not trivially, to have faith that these things might happen. That the world’s sometimes cruelly indifferent fixities can be loosened and changed.
So to say that the land of Israel is home to the essence of prayer and faith and miracles is to make a striking assertion: the land of Israel is a prayer. It’s not the place where we go at the end of a long desert journey or a long sojourn in the diaspora to rest on our laurels, finally having arrived at our resting place and inheritance. It’s not even really something to possess once and for all. It’s a place for dreaming beyond the present, for imagining what could be, for believing that we could be better than we are. That what seems impossible could nevertheless happen.
But it’s easier to dream when we’re asleep, unencumbered by the inflexible realities of waking life. And it was easier to dream about the land of Israel without the mundane and muddled realities of a Jewish state there to cloud our vision. We can get lost in the realities of statecraft. The everyday mess of state bureaucracy, the ugliness in real politik, the moral consequences, big and small of political paths taken and not taken.
Add in the squabbling between Jews about religious life and religious authority, and the brutal realities of violent conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, and it becomes almost impossible to clear our minds and hearts enough to dream.
It’s all too easy to settle into the facts of life, whether from a place of self-satisfaction or a place of despairing resignation. This is true even when the facts of life are brutal, as they often are in Israel. Leaning into anguish, trauma and rage feels safer than the vulnerable, courageous work of praying for a different world.
Too many who live in or care about the land of Israel have stopped praying, in Rabbi Nachman’s sense. They’ve given up on miracles. The tragic irony for Rabbi Nachman is that in doing so, they’ve given up on the land of Israel too, because if the land of Israel is anything, it is a faith suffused prayer for the miraculous. Rabbi Nachman fills out this idea with a verse: “Dwell in the land and shepherd faith.”
Faith is not something to be owned and put on a shelf, a piece of furniture for the interior of one’s mind. Like the shepherd’s sheep, it’s a fragile, vulnerable thing in need of our concerted care. This concerted care is also not one thing forever and all time. What the sheep need changes with the seasons and the years, and so it is with faith. We must become attuned to what, in this moment, in this place and time, is impeding our capacity to pray with faith for the impossibly miraculous to take place in the land of Israel.
And this brings us to Rabbi Nachman’s second stunning point. It is not possible to arrive at faith except by way of truth. Real faith, faith worthy of the name, involves looking unflinchingly at the brutal facts of the world. It’s not pollyannish or naive dreaming. It’s not a kind of irresponsible optimism. Praying for miraculous impossibilities that might be, begins with a full accounting of all the brokenness that is.
Fostering the faith that makes praying possible will require us to stare squarely into the brokenness in Israel’s political life. It will require taking stock of everything that makes the present conditions of life in the land seem so intractable, so hard to change. This is hard and painful work. For some, this is work we’ve been avoiding. For others, the work feels like it’s been thrust upon us, making it impossible to avoid.
But it’s crucial that we not lose ourselves in this abyss. Just as God is said to shepherd us through the valley of death’s shadow, we too must shepherd our faith through the dark narrows we find ourselves in.
Rabbi Nachman begins this teaching with the image of Moshe, “hands outstretched in faith,” which turns out to mean outstretched in prayer. It’s worth considering the context in which that image appears. The people of Israel have been caught off guard by the violent onslaught of Amalek. The weak and vulnerable are falling to their swords. After telling Yeheshua to cobble together a fighting force, Moshe ascends the hilltop looking out at the frenzied chaos of war and lifts his hands heaven-ward.
This is prayer in its most urgent, desperate form. This is faith in the shadow, cast by anguish, conflict, war. This is the kind of prayer and the kind of faith we’re talking about. But Moshe can’t keep his arms raised, and as they fall, hope for driving off Amalek wanes. It’s then that we read: “Now Moshe’s hands were heavy, so they took a stone and placed it under him, and he sat down on it while a Aharon and Chur supported his hands, one on this side and one on this side. And so his hands were faithful until the sun set.”
We don’t need to do this work alone. If we hope to keep our hands outstretched, in faith, in prayer, believing in miracles, knowing full well all that stands in their way, if we want the land of Israel to be, more than anything else, a prayer, we will need each other. We’ll need the comfort of each other’s shoulders, the strength of each other’s company, the model of each other’s courage.
The reality of the Jewish state means that the land of Israel can no longer simply be a blank canvas for our wildest dreams. But we can’t lose sight of those dreams, either of the possibilities for a different and better world that could exist in the land of Israel. So find the people who can hold your hands, who can lift them heaven-ward in prayer. These prayers are our faith in miracles and are in their own way, miracles of faith.
Jessica: That was Akiva Mattenson, faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a content advisor for this podcast.
There is a throughline in much of Jewish liturgy that captures a longing to return to Zion. On Shabbat mornings, for example, we ask God, “matai timloch b’Tzion,” “when will you reign in Zion? The liturgy puts an answer in our mouths: “Let it be soon, in our days.”
This articulates a yearning for God’s presence in the land of Israel, something Jews have been reciting since long before the establishment of the state of Israel and continue reciting today, 77 years later. This sentiment notes an absence in the world that Zion does not yet reflect the holiness and divinity that could be for some. This is theologically complicated.
One could understand the creation of a Jewish state as God’s return to Zion. And yet, as we heard in this episode, there’s so much evidence that Zion and Jerusalem that we experience are Yerushalayim shel Matah, a city of this world, a state mired by human shortcomings and conflict.
Each of the stories was tinted with the pain and complexity of violence, disagreement, protests, and struggle. But I also heard in these stories glimpses of Yerushalayim shel Maleh, of God’s reign in Zion, whether through the power of prayer and song to bring people together and offer healing, or through a shared vocabulary of faith across religious divides, or through the reminder that the land of Israel is at its heart, not only a state, but also a land of prayer and miracles.
We have not yet achieved the idyllic vision of experiencing God as described in our liturgy. We may never fully experience the Yerushalayim shel Malah that the rabbis imagined. But including these aspirations in our prayers orients us toward those glimpses of divinity. It inspires us to work toward making the Jerusalem we experience just a little more celestial. It reminds us that striving for a more just state and land of Israel is an ancient and necessary spiritual practice.
Our people have been longing for signs of God’s presence in Jerusalem and Israel for generations. It’s possible that there are ways our prayer lives keep God away, but as we heard, praying can also draw disparate communities closer together and draw God closer to us in a semblance of the heavenly Jerusalem of rabbinic imagination, even while our feet are firmly planted here on the ground.
