A Prayer for Peace

The following sonnet was commissioned
for the bat mitzvah of a friend,
Irena Jaffe Goldstein.
I read the prayer/sonnet at her ceremony
at Park Slope Jewish Community center,
February 18, 2006.

A prayer for peace

It is too bold to ask our God for peace,
when we ourselves, whom God has given sense
and conscience seem incapable to cease
the wars which feed our need for recompense.

Rather than some rote, empty, and bland prayer,
this is a time to look within, to find
the strengths which are imperfect but still there,
the limits we have never reached. A mind

is what God gave us, and with that great gift
we can decide to go beyond request,
beyond our passive hopes, to heal the rift
which separates us from the other. Best

it is to see and then accept our foe
as sister, brother—someone we can know.