"No Pain Like Our Pain," by Rabbi Tamara Cohen (2021)
Author: Rabbi Tamara Cohen
Cohen, Rabbi Tamara. “No Pain Like Our Pain.” Poems for Reflecting on the Israeli Palestinian Conflict, Moving Traditions, 14 May 2021, www.movingtraditions.org/poems-for-reflecting/.
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Rabbi Tamara Cohen is the VP and Chief of Program Strategy at Moving Traditions. More of her liturgical poetry can be found in Siddur Lev Shalem and on ritualwell.org. In this prayer she speaks of God as “the Divine Exiled and Crying One,” images that come from rabbinic tradition about the Shechinah, which are particularly apt for this last week of the period of the Omer, known as the week of Malchut/Shechinah.
“Look carefully and see if there could possibly be pain like my pain, like the one bestowed by You upon me.” – Lamentations 1:12
Dear God, help us look,
look closer so that we may see
our children in their children,
their children in our own.
Help us look so that we may see You –
in the bleary eyes of each orphan, each grieving childless mother,
each masked and camouflaged fighter for his people’s dignity.
Dear God, Divine Exiled and Crying One,
Loosen our claim to our own uniqueness.
Soften this hold on our exclusive right – to pain, to compassion, to justice.
May your children, all of us unique and in Your image,
come to know the quiet truths of shared pain,
shared hope,
shared land,
shared humanity,
shared risk,
shared courage,
shared peace.
In Sh’Allah.
Ken Yehi Ratzon.
May it be Your will.
And may it be ours.
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