Closing benediction

Tomorrow at 1 pm at Hebrew Congregation there will be an interfaith service in the aftermath of the Holocaust Museum shooting (of course, it's the aftermath of the Tiller shooting as well, but we've already had a service for that). The theme of it is "Love Overcoming Hate." I was asked to lead the closing benediction, and for the purpose I wrote an interpretation of the second prayer of the Aleynu. Here it is:

We hope and pray to you, Eternal One our God, that we may soon behold your full splendor in the world around us, and see false and hateful actions, and the ideologies that spawn them, vanish from the earth. May we soon be blessed to make and see tikkun olam b’malchut Shaddai – a healing of the world under your sovereignty, so that hatred and enmity and those who purvey them will find no followers, and that all humankind will turn to you and to each other in peacefulness and in mutual care and love.

Let all who dwell on earth perceive and know that it is to you, dear God - whose name is truth, whose name is love, whose name is peace – it is to you that every knee must bend and all tongues swear loyalty. Before you, dear God, let us humble ourselves, recognizing that our ideologies, as strongly as we may hold them, must retain within them the possibility that we are wrong, because perfection resides only in you. May we cherish the dignity of your name, and accept your instruction that we care for the Other in our midst.

As Martin Buber said, “When senseless hatred reigns on earth, and people hide their faces from one another, then heaven is forced to hide its face. But when love comes to rule the earth, and people reveal their faces to one another, then the splendor of God will be revealed.” Help us to reveal your splendor, oh God, by revealing our faces to each other. For in that way, and only in that way, will your sovereignty rule over all of us, speedily and forevermore. And as it is written in your holy Torah, “On that day, the many names of God will be one.”

And let us say, Amen.