Every year, I get chills when Amnon the cantor in our synagogue, his voice cracking, proclaims "Haya Am Pipiyot" - a sublime piyyut that was written hundreds of years ago, and seems as if it were written today; as if it came from the keyboard of a contemporary who is well-acquainted with the here and now.
The long and exciting Rosh Hashana prayers pose a challenge that we are less accustomed to on a daily basis. The strong desire to say and connect with them in good quality from the year's prayers, encounters a challenge common to our generation, at a time when attention is shortened in the face of pop-up notifications, a flood of information and knowledge, and a division of attention that has become inherent.
Persevering over time in prayer and petition seems like a difficult, if not impossible, task: we all want to prolong and direct our prayer, we all ask, but it doesn't always work out.
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We bring out a remedy and hope at the beginning of the supplemental prayer, in which the cantor proclaims and asks for special help - "Let there be two-faced ones," as if to say that the prayer they say is not enough, we need the special help of "Let there be.".
For all of us, even those whose mouths are present but whose spirits are absent, the adult who is challenged to listen, a child on the continuum who expresses his understanding of the prayer differently, for all those present and absent, for all who want to but cannot - the cantor asks for the arch of requests, lifting up what they say, understanding what they ask, knowing how they will be praised, even those who cannot speak in full language and from a siddur ask for representation and their eyes are hanging down to ask for mercy.
For them, the cantor Amnon cries out in a special heartfelt tone, "May there be two sides," may there be two sides for those who are not here, may their understanding be restored, and it remains for us to make the effort to overcome the difficulty, to connect and try to glorify our strengths, to see who from our immediate environment needs our prayer or help in mediating prayer, in transforming the days into days of connection with God.
• The writer directs an educational center at the Tel Aviv Municipality.
