We pray for Israel

We pray for Israel,

Both the mystic ideal of our [ancestors’] dreams,

And the living miracle, here and now,

Built of heart, muscle, and steel.

May she endure and guard her soul,

Surviving the relentless, age-old hatreds,

The cynical concealment of diplomatic deceit,

And the rumblings that warn of war.

May Israel continue to be the temple that magnetizes

The loving eyes of Jews in all corners:

The Jew in a land of affluence and relative peace,

Who forgets the glory and pain of his being,

And the Jew in a land of oppression whose blooded fist

Beats in anguish and pride

Against the cage of his enslavement.

May Israel yet embrace her homeless, her own,

And bind the ingathered into one people.

May those who yearn for a society built on human concern

Find the vision of the prophets realized in her.

May her readiness to defend

Never diminish her search for peace.

May we always dare to hope

That in our day the antagonisms will end,

That all the displaced, Arab and Jew, will be rooted again,

That within Israel and across her borders

All God’s children will touch hands in peace.

(Nahum Waldman, Likrat Shabbat: Worship, Study, and Song, The Prayer Book Press of Media Judaica, 1981)