VERSES OF SONG
EN ¦` §e If our mouths were full of song as the sea, our tongues with joyful sounds like the roar of its waves, our lips with praise as the outspread sky, our eyes shining like the sun and the moon, our hands stretched out like eagles’wings in the air, our feet as swift as the wild deer; we still could not thank You enough, God our Creator, or bless Your name, our Sovereign, for even one of the thousands upon thousands of the countless good deeds You did for our ancestors and for us.
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<<< EN ¦` §e V’illu finu malei shirah cha–yam, ul’shoneinu rinnah ka–hamon gallav, v’siftoteinu shevach k’merchavei raki’a, v’eineinu m’irot ka–shemesh v’cha–yarei’ach, v’yadeinu f’rusot k’nishrei shamayim, v’ragleinu kallot ka–ayalot, ein anu maspikim l’hodot l’cha Adonai eloheinu, ul’vareich et shimcha malkeinu, al achat mei’elef alfei alafim, v’ribbei r’vavot p’amim ha–tovot, she’asita im avoteinu v’immanu.
Biblical source would have recognised that though it asserts that God’s ‘dwelling’is far removed from us, yet God is present with those ‘whose spirit is crushed’, to revive them. The final sentences, beginning b’fee yesharim, contain, in the Sephardi version, a double acrostic naming Isaac and Rebecca. It is not known whether this hints at the name of the author and his wife, or is a playful way of celebrating the patriarch andmatriarch.
Like other parts of the liturgy it also moves from the universal, God as Creator who watches over creation with love and mercy, to the particular acts of rescue and support God has shown to Israel, only to return to the universal at the end. By its emphasis on God as one who ‘frees the poor … and needy’ it affirms a value system that it is our responsibility, as God’s witnesses and partners, to maintain. The concluding section, recited only on Shabbat and festivals, begins with Shochen Ad (Is 57:15). Those familiar with the
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