Shira Lankin Sheps woke up on shvi’i shel Pesach – the seventh day of Passover, April 29 this year – with a vision, or in her words, “with a divine download.” She saw a booklet of prayers, in English and Hebrew, written by women in the wake of Oct. 7.
The next day, isru chag, she called Rachel Sharansky Danziger and Anne Gordon, her weekly writing partners for the past five years, to share her vision with them. Her dream was to have the booklet ready for Rosh Hashanah. Each of them immediately said, “I’m in!”
“When I closed my eyes and saw the image of Miriam with her timbrels and the awestruck faces of the people, elated at their experience of redemption, what spoke to me most was the fact that Miriam and the women were ready for this triumphant moment.”
Thus Lankin Sheps writes in the preface to the book that materialized. “As I lay in bed thinking of Miriam... I realized that it was time to share this lifeline with other women.”
So began the planning of a thin volume. At first, the women thought it would be about 100 pages long. They thought to include their own prayers and those of another few writers.
But creativity has a life of its own.
A week before Rosh Hashanah, a 505-page book (including introductions and bios), Az Nashir, We Will Sing Again: Women’s Prayers for Our Time of Need, saw the light of day, with 116 prayers written by 55 women.
Prayers from women’s hearts
Many of the authors are well known on the Israeli scene as writers, poets, authors, educators, and creatives in a variety of areas. Some of them are new to the public but were discovered and given a voice by the three editors.
Among the writers are Yael Unterman, Yael Shahar, Sherri Mandell, Nechama Goldman Barash, Yael Levine, Tanya White, Yael Ziegler, Sarah Tuttle-Singer, Jessica Levine Kupferberg, Ruti Eastman, and Sarah Sassoon. About two-thirds of the writers are Anglos, women either born in Israel or who made aliyah – some recently, some many decades ago. The rest are native Hebrew speakers. Az Nashir is the first book published by The Layers Press of The Shvilli Center, of which Lankin Sheps is the executive director.
Every prayer appears on facing pages in both English and Hebrew, each diligently worked on by a dedicated team of translators, led by Juliana Brown and including Leah Reiner-Kornbllt and Chana Shenderovich. The book includes 30 full-color pieces of artwork, also by women, of a number of nationalities (all of whom live in Israel), including two by Avital Sharansky, Rachel’s mother.
Other artists include Yael Harris Resnick, Inbal Singer, Sheva Chaya Shaiman, Leah Luria, Avigail Sapir, Yael Flatauer, Safira Lightstone, and Avigayil Wieder. The artwork on the glorious cover was designed by Malka Klein; the book cover graphics are by Yitzchak Woolf.
There are heartfelt prayers written by women who have sons or daughters, husbands, or grandchildren who are soldiers.
There are prayers for the land, for the people, for children, and for grandchildren (as was my own prayer).
There are prayers for brotherhood and for faith, for safety, and for mercy, for peace and for healing, for the hostages and for their families.
There are prayers requesting, or demanding, responses from God, and there are prayers thanking God.
There are prayers specifically for women about pregnancy, mikveh, and challah; a prayer for agunot, and a prayer for finding a partner during wartime.
There are prayers that read like poetry and those that draw from the well of mysticism.
There are prayers for repentance and prayers for redemption.
Sixteen of the 116 prayers were co-written by the three editors – in addition to their individual prayers, an unusual feat as anyone who has ever co-written a creative work knows, and a testament to their ability to think and create in sync.
One of those is called “A Prayer before Bed.” Here is an excerpt:
Heal my heart from today’s pains,
And may we have no more losses, tomorrow.
Grant me the gift of sleep,
To restore my soul from its grieving.
Bless me with more days,
Where I can continue to draw strength from Your revealed miracles,
And I may witness the final redemption,
Where all our days are lived,
In peace.
THE EDITORS say that the book is meant to be a companion to the siddur. In their introduction, they mention that the prayer of the childless Chana was “history-altering,” and note that through the centuries, women wrote prayers, from Babylonia to Spain to the medieval beginnings of the tehines (“prayers” in Yiddish), many of which were written by women in what was their mame-loshen [native language].”
Indeed, many women posted on Facebook or in private messages that the book accompanied them during Rosh Hashanah and/or Yom Kippur. I received my copy at a pre-holiday fair at the Oz VeGaon nature reserve in Gush Etzion and found myself reading some of the prayers before Rosh Hashanah and others after “Kol Nidrei” on Yom Kippur eve.
The launch
To celebrate the creation of Az Nashir, a moving, exquisitely executed launch was held on October 9, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, at the Nefesh B’Nefesh campus in Jerusalem.
Almost 400 women filled the hall, where the books sold like hotcakes and the artworks featured in it were on show. We listened to the three co-editors describe their journey to this day. This was followed by songs appropriate for the Ten Days of Repentance – both haunting and uplifting, some even joyous – headlined by Nina Tokayer (one half of the singing duo Yonina, with her husband, Yoni). She was accompanied by female musicians Roni Parnas on percussion and Daniel Arbely on the keyboard. One of the songs Tokayer played was her own contribution to the book, set to music, called “God of the Children.”
We smiled, we cried, we were inspired.
Interspersed between Tokayer’s songs, five women were called up, representing different perspectives, to read their prayers out loud – Rachel Weinstein, Briana Roven Grogin, Adina Kopinsky, this writer, and Miriam Ciner Friedman, who wrote one of the most heart-wrenching, “A Prayer for the Release of the Hostages” (excerpts):
Dear God, full of mercy,
I lay my broken yellow-ribboned heart at Your feet...
Have we ever needed a miracle more than at this moment?
With my tiny and insignificant voice
I make my own decree:
It’s time
For You to come out of hiding.
Give us a miracle
You can split the sea?
Then You can split those tunnels…
Bring them home
With a strong hand and an outstretched arm,
Carry them on the wings of eagles
To the embrace of their families,
To the embrace of their nation,
To the embrace of their land.
I want to hug each one,
Kiss their heads,
As I bow mine,
Entering a time of true freedom together.
The editors included two additional writer-musicians in the evening.
A former teacher of Gordon’s, Rabbanit Batya Hefter, has a prayer in the book. With harmony from Tokayer, she sang her recently recorded evocative song (written many years ago), inspired by the opening words of Psalm 27 (“The Lord Is My Light”), read throughout the month of Elul and until Hoshana Raba: “[A Psalm] of David, The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear?”
At the end of the evening, violinist Ariella Zeitlin Hoffman performed, and one of the songs she played had been her contribution to the book.
In the words of Lankin Sheps at the launch: “We know the geula [redemption] from Egypt came through righteous women. What if we are those righteous women to bring the final redemption? So I asked myself, ‘What can we do to prepare for geula, right now?’ We knew that women would have the language for this moment in time... We need to sing. We need tefila [prayer]. We need to be together.”
Sharansky Danziger said at the launch, “We are tying ourselves to each other... We’re tying ourselves to our foremothers who wrote techines; we are tying ourselves to Chana, mother of Shmuel, who said, ‘I’m not accepting reality.’” She noted that at the end of the prayer “U’netana Tokef,” we say that prayer is one of the three things that can change reality.
Anne Gordon said that the 55 writers represent 55 different voices across a whole range of society. “The project is to bring tefila into the hearts and homes of everybody in different ways... We hope that whatever tears are spilled, whatever hearts are reached... connects us more to Hakadosh Baruch Hu [God]…”
ON OCTOBER 13, an additional launch was held in Hebrew at Yad Ben Zvi, to a mixed-gender audience that included a panel moderated by co-editor Sharansky Danziger and remarks by her father, Natan Sharansky. Additional speakers were award-winning author Emuna Elon, former MK Tehila Friedman, and Rabbanit Tamar Meir, who are also contributors to the book.
Sharansky Danziger said in her welcome that the editors realized how many women – and men – had expressed the feeling that they were “stuck” during this year. “We realized,” she said, “that tefila does not just build a bridge between ourselves and God but also between ourselves and each other... Everyone who writes a prayer frees something within someone else... and we are also building bridges with those women who wrote prayers before us...”
Sharansky described how he also wrote prayers while he was in Soviet prison, “Because it was important to me that we don’t give in to them.” At that time, he said he was skeptical about God’s existence. His captors tried all kinds of threats and temptations to try to get him to expose other dissidents.
While in prison, he said, he wanted his wife and Am Yisrael to also be strong. And how could he speak to his wife and with Am Yisrael? he asked. Only through prayer.
Natan Sharansky knew about 1,000 words in Hebrew and didn’t really know prayers, other than some blessings, so he would say each time along the way as he was walking to the interrogation room, “Blessed art thou God, Lord and King of the universe, give me strength and courage and intelligence and luck and patience to get out of this prison and get to Eretz Yisrael in a straight and proper way.”
By doing that several times a week, he felt that he was speaking to his wife and to Am Yisrael and was building those “bridges” as his daughter Rachel described them.
“Afterwards, someone corrected something in my grammar of the prayer, but I think God understood me,” he recounted, eliciting the audience’s laughter.
TALIA HABER read a heart-rending prayer she wrote after her husband, Zechariah, fell in battle (excerpt):
You have to listen, Father of orphans and judge of widows, I am angry, hurt, and lonely.
Please help me raise my children to Torah, the wedding canopy, and good deeds…
Please give me the focus to be calm, the courage to laugh, and the humility to pray...
My husband didn’t come home. Please bring the rest of them home: hostages, soldiers, families – bring them back...
I am sorry I did not pray sooner.
EMUNA ELON noted that the Hebrew verb l’hitpalel means “to make yourself into someone who hopes.”
She explained: “When I pray, I draw a line between myself and the One Above, between myself and the future, and to everyone who is with me in that first person plural of Am Yisrael.”
She also said that her grandson, Hanoch, who had fought together with Zechariah Haber, was so heartbroken after Zechariah’s death, that he planted a vineyard in the memory of three friends who died in battle, including Zechariah. “The vines are already blooming,” she said.
At the English launch, Lankin Sheps said that after reading each prayer, she had a sense of hope. She shared some of her thoughts at the October 9 launch and posted them on Facebook the next day: “About 10 years ago, when I was very sick from a chronic illness, I desperately missed singing with others. Music has always been a way that I channeled into my sense of spirituality – the way I connected with God. My parents clearly had nevua (prophecy) when they named me, as Shira means ‘song.’
“I missed being with other women in a community, the connection, and the feeling of being a part of something larger than myself. In those painful times, I would sing to myself. Even if it hurt, I just needed to sing.
“What I prayed for was a night like last night, when I could be returned to myself, to my community, to sing together in prayer. Thank you, Hashem, for bringing me to this day. Hodu la’Hashem ki tov [Praise God for He is good].”
She concluded the launch by reading from the last prayer in the book, her own, called “A Prayer for Mashiach,” in which she writes (first and last verses quoted below):
In the early weeks of the darkest month,
When the moon was blocked by fear,
And our blood was still soaking into the ground,
There were whispers that Your face was hidden...
Please –
Show us Your secret messianic vision
We are ready with our timbrels by the door,
Eager to rush into the streets of Your holy city,
Songs of praise freed from our throats,
Feet flying with dance,
As we usher in a new era.
THOSE OF us who had the privilege of contributing, the joy of attending one of the launches, or the experience of now having the book to read and to pray from are witnesses to a deeply meaningful landmark project that will be on our bookshelves and in our hands for many years to come.
May the new era come speedily in our days.
Books may be ordered at www.shvillicenter.org/
The author is an award-winning journalist, theater director, and editor-in-chief of WholeFamily.com/