The Light Lab Podcast Episode 5: Thanks-Giving (Modim Anachnu Lach)

12:48AM Nov 17, 2021

Speakers:

Eliana Light

Josh Warshawsky

Ellen Dreskin

Keywords:

mem

gratitude

prayer

words

letters

grateful

thanksgiving

melody

grounding

talking

called

josh

connected

rabbi

eliana

episode

book

names

tradition

sefer

Shalom, everyone. Hi, welcome to another edition of the Light Lab Podcast. My name is Eliana light. And I am here with my dear friends Cantor, Ellen Dreskin.

Good to see you and to be with you. Hello!

Amazing. And Rabbi Josh Warshawsky!

Hello! So great to be back, as always.

So great. I'm so grateful for both of you that we get to share this virtual space together. And I am so grateful for you, listeners. We're recording this after the first episode has come out. So there will be a couple episodes in between. But I just have to say, thank you so much for listening, and learning along with us. It's been really exciting to receive such positive feedback and see that you're, you know, listening, learning exploring along with us. We're really grateful. And speaking of gratitude, when you are listening to this, it will if all goes according to plan, be Thanksgiving, the American holiday of Thanksgiving, and as problematic and complicated as American Thanksgiving is, it does give us a chance to think a little more deeply about gratitude. So I want to ask our panel today, what are some favorite Thanksgiving rituals? Past or present? Ellen, why don't you get us started?

I really do remember, certainly it's a family time, it was a family time growing up. And I don't want to offend any of the vegetarians in the in the room. Of which is okay. Well, of which I am one. But one of our family traditions was arguing at the end of the meal over who got to wish on the wishbone. I don't even know if people still know this tradition of two people grabbing the wishbone of the turkey.

Right?

And and making a wish and then breaking it and whoever ends up with a longer piece their wish should come true. This happened only at Thanksgiving in our home. I can see by the looks on your faces online here while we were recording that this is a tradition that was not your Thanksgiving tradition. And in our home, there was a lot of singing afterwards. It was kind of like the autumn Pesach Seder with all the singing afterwards and just a time of bounty in love.

Beautiful, what were some of the songs that you would sing after Thanksgiving? I'm so curious.

Well, my grandparents sang during World War Two to raise money like for war bonds here in America. So really old, like barbershop quartet kind of tunes. And everybody in my family played an instrument or sang and it was just, it is Thanksgiving, particularly Americana, I must say.

Amazing. So so beautiful. Josh, what about your Thanksgiving rituals?

Well, so so I grew up in in Chicago, and we were very far from any family on either side. So Thanksgiving was one of the main opportunities where we get to go see family, we would always go out east and spend time with both sides of the family, Thanksgiving, we were often in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, or I'll be again, hopefully this year, too. And it was it was for that reason, really a wonderful time to get to be with family and a time when I was really grateful to get to see my cousins and my aunts and uncles that I didn't really get to see as often. So that was always really nice. And my family also has a whole bunch of different religions represented. So it was actually the first time that I experienced saying grace, was we would gather on Thanksgiving. And one of my cousin's father was a priest. And he, so my cousin, yeah, cousin in law's father was a priest, and he would say grace in the beginning of the meal, and then we would all talk about and everybody would go around, share some that they were grateful for. And it had some of those traditions that felt kind of almost like a Seder, like Ellen was saying, which I think is, is really, really lovely. So that was always really a wonderful memory. And the other one has to do with food, which is that got us a kosher Turkey, but all the sides would be dairy, and the desserts are all dairy. So I eat, I would eat the sides and dessert first, and then we would eat turkey. And then because Thanksgiving dinner is always so early at like 4pm or something then by like 7pm then I could also have dessert again. So I always got dessert twice on Thanksgiving, which was always very exciting for me.

That's amazing. Why on this night, do we eat dessert?

Exactly!

Although they're nice. That's so wonderful. So I'm thinking back to my own childhood. You know, my father was a rabbi. We grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and we had a tradition of participating in an interfaith Thanksgiving service. I know that there are other communities that do this around this time, of course, interfaith meant, like the Church of God and Christ, and the Protestants and the Catholics, and the Methodists, and us, the one synagogue, that's what constituted interfaith. But you know what? I have to say that for Memphis, Tennessee in the 90s, like, pretty good. Good on ya. And it would be hosted by a different community of faith every year of like the five or six participating houses of worship. And that was really when I got to go to see the way, like you said, just the way different communities practice the way different religions practiced. I also remember once my father and I talking because they would have planning meetings before these events. And someone brought up that one of the goals of the interfaith service was to spread religious tolerance. And then one of the Christian leaders said, I don't like that word, we have to stop using that word. I don't want to be tolerated, and I don't want to tolerate you, I want to celebrate you, and respect you and honor you. And that is very different than tolerating, tolerating, that is very different than tolerance. And so I've never forgot that, like, what does it mean to truly do interfaith work and work with people of different understandings and stripes and not talk about it as tolerance but about celebrating and uplifting? So that was always beautiful. And like you, Josh, we don't, we didn't have family in Memphis, but we had our dear friends who have become like family and doing Thanksgiving with them every year, really is something that I'm truly grateful for. I'll be back in Memphis this Thanksgiving, we might be doing it on our own as a family, but we'll have a lovely time. And as the vegan I will be probably making most of the food. Nobody still I've been doing vegetarian thanksgiving for over half my life. And still every year we're like, people are like, what do you do? I'm like vegetables. Vegetables are great. They come from the earth. Anyway, we'll be eating a lot of brussel sprouts. And we're kind of still on this gratitude train. It really works out for the themes of our podcast. In our last episode, we explored Modeh Ani, and today we're keeping on that theme with Modim Anachnu Lach. Modim Anachnu Lach comes from the Hoda'ah section of the Amidah you can even hear it Modim, Hodaah, this section of gratitude. Amidah is one of the oldest prayers that we have in the Jewish tradition. It's also one of the first prayers to have been canonized in the sense that the rabbis in the Talmud were talking about what should be a part of the Amidah? What are the words that need to be said? But also, what parts should it include? And what should we be doing with our bodies? And what should we be doing in our lives? And what time of day, should we say it? A lot of conversations in the Talmud about prayer, actually center on the Amidah, which is also called HaTefillah, - The Prayer - kind of the central prayer. And we're still saying the Amidah today, which I think is really incredible, that we're able to continue this tradition for all these many years. The words Modim Anachnu Lach themselves, come from First Chronicles chapter 29, verse 13, and we'll be talking a little bit more about that later. And with our bodies, we bow at the beginning and the end, and these words, modim anachnu lach, we'll talk a little bit about translations, but you might translate it as we are grateful before you, or grateful we are to you. And anachnu is the we plural. And there's something there about gratitude. And I want to toss it over to Josh to talk a little bit about the structure of this really interesting prayer. What makes it unique.

Thanks, Eliana, I love that there's this chain of tradition that we've continued since the very beginning of the Talmud. Since these words were originally codified. We've been saying them and we've been making them our own, which is actually you know, in the Talmud, it also talks about how the rabbi's used to make this prayer their own, there was this one modim anachnu lach paragraph that you'll see in in most siddurim, when you open it up, it's sitting right here in the in the section of the prayer book. And when I was growing up, and in many congregations, that paragraph is said by the prayer leader, and then there's another paragraph that's a little smaller that said by the congregation at the same time, and this is a tradition that also dates back all the way to the Talmud, with these two prayers that are all about modim anachnu lach that start with those same words from Chronicles that are said simultaneously. And in the Talmud in masechet sotah, it talks a little bit about why - they asked the question while the prayer leader is reciting that first modim anachnu lach, what are the congregation supposed to say? What is the congregation supposed to be doing at that time? And all these different rabbis have different things that they would do. Some would say we give thanks to you, oh G?d, and calling G?d this name or calling G?d that name, Yotzer Bereshit - the G?d of - the Ultimate Creator, calling G?d a whole bunch of names G?d of living flesh El El habrachot, El Hahodaot, of gratitude and and they would finally conclude the prayer by saying al sheanachnu modim lach, we are grateful to you for the fact that we can be grateful to you. Which I think is like an amazing

Wow

Amazing phrase that's sitting right here in the in the second paragraph, which is all about something that I think human beings are unique in that right that that we can we understand gratitude. And the fact that we can be grateful is a reason enough to be grateful. So what do the rabbi's do and the time where they say okay, well, since each one of those things, each one of these rabbis added something unique, we're gonna say all of them. Rav Papa says hilkach nimrihu lekulhu, right, we're gonna say every single one of those things, we're going to call G?d all of these names, we're going to figure out a way for each one of us to find our own moment of gratitude, in this meta moment of gratitude. I think it's just an awesome foundation and structure.

I love that so much. I mean, you know, I love a god names moment. But I also love that this brings up for me one of the core tensions within codified structured tefillah, which is that all of the rabbi's that you just talked about, came up with their own ways of showing gratitude and speaking it out loud. And the Talmud said, Alright, let's put them all together in a paragraph. And then have everybody say it. And then when the printing press is invented, let's stick it in a Siddur. And now that's how we're going to show gratitude. By right it's such a gift that we get these words that we get to say that our ancestors gave to us. And how can we also add our own words? Yeah, Ellen jump in.

Yea it's just occurring to me now the the other words of the prayer about that this gratitude is happening erev vavoker vatzoharayim - in the evening, and the morning and the afternoon. And on the secha shebechol yom, the miracles that are going around us all the time. You know that that's like, anything we could say? Yes, thank you very much.

Absolutely. I love that anything we could say? Anything we could say. And these these words in particular are interesting, because the word modim, we talked a little bit about this last week, how that root can also be seen as acknowledge. And what does it mean that the root of gratitude is acknowledgement, I found this really great d'var t'fillah, which we'll link in the show notes, as we will the text of this prayer, by the way, so that you can follow along and read it and see what we're talking about. Those will be in the show notes, a d'var t'fillah these words of prayer by Rabbi Adam Zagoria-Moffet, who talked about the difference between acknowledge and think, what it means to start from a cognitive place versus an emotional place. Like sometimes to feel that overwhelming sense of gratitude. That's an emotional state, it can be brought on by something or we, it can be inspired in us. But some, we have to be sometimes in a particular state of mind or body to have that experience. But cognitive acknowledgement is a choice, right? Looking around and saying, I I'm seeing I'm clocking that this is happening. And I am choosing to acknowledge it first with my brain, that it is something that I can feel a sense of gratitude for. Right? Some of us start from the heart and some of us start with the head. But it gives everybody a way in. And so you can translate that as acknowledge or think the My People's Prayer Book series. It's translated as gratefully acknowledge, which I like because yes, it's, it's - hi Josh - his green screen picture here. Which is beautiful. We love that series, by the way. Yeah, Josh.

I was gonna say I love that series. So much. It's been so helpful to me and figuring out a lot of different more depth about what's happening and all the different prayers. It's amazing. I couldn't recommend it enough. This episode sponsored by My People's Prayerbook.

It's certainly as I definitely used it in researching for this episode, as well as many other episodes and we'll link to where you can get copies of the My People's Prayerbook series in the show notes. But right, gratefully acknowledged gets to combine that and there's something in particular about this word Modim, Ellen I want to toss it to you.

It's funny there the word modim comes from this root to thank or to be grateful and from the same Hebrew root as yehudim, or often that the Hebrew root for for just being Jewish. That we come from Yehuda from Judah. And so we could even interpret our name as Yehudim, as the grateful ones. That it really is part of our our chemistry part of our nature. When you were talking before Eliana I was thinking about these words being the same in our liturgy, it becomes a habit you know, it continues, now, communally this attitude of gratitude that we mentioned last time we spoke, I think. And I think that's a great connection to just integrate it into our lives, hopefully.

Amen. I love thinking about how our names have to do with us what it means these names that we've chosen as a people and maybe we can do a whole other episode on this, right because there's Yehudim, the grateful ones, there's Hebrews, Ivrim, right? Those who are on the other side, what does it mean to be on the other side? Kind of looking at the world saying it doesn't have to be this way and holding both of those, and then also being B'nai Yisrael, the children of G?d, wrestlers. Oh my gosh, maybe we should do a separate episode on this!

Okay, yeah, write that one down.

Okay. Okay I'm going to write it down. And with that, we'll be right back!

So let's dive a little bit deeper in to modim anachnu lach, and seeing what we find when we hold it up to the light. Josh, what do you have for us?

I mean, I think it's fascinating that we've been spending a lot of time talking about names this episode already. I know. You know, we'll jump into that in our naming episode. But you know, here in just this one particular prayer there's so many different names for G?d. And I think a lot of the times when and I learned a lot of this from from you Eliana, but we talk a lot about what what it means to, to call G?d by a particular name, and what kind of relationship we're trying to have with G?d, with divinity, with each other in those moments based on the names that we choose. And so in this particular prayer, we call G?d tzur chayeinu magen isheinu, that's what the prayer leader says, tzur chayeinu the the the Rock of our Lives, magein isheinu our Protector, our Savior. And in the prayer of the congregation, the paragraph that's similar but added all those prayers of the rabbi's, we use a lot of different names. Elohei kol basar, the G?d of my flesh, yotzreinu our creator, yotzeir bereshit, the creator of creation. And then we get to these names at the end in the in the prayer leader section that always stuck with me. And I never really thought about what they were actually saying. But we have this name, HaTov, the goodness. And then HaMerachem. HaTov ki lo chalu rachamecha, The Goodness, whose mercy has not ended, and the Merciful One whose goodness and good deeds and loving kindness will not stop from us all times. And so we use the name. And then we use the other thing, and then we flip the name and the thing that's happening right and we, let me try and slow that down and say it again. So HaTov kilo, chalu rachamecha the good one, the all good, whose mercy will never cease Vehamerachem kilo tamoo chasadecha, and the Merciful One whose goodness will never cease. And so we flip these two names, but all going back to what it means for thinking about in this moment of gratitude, all the good things that have been done for us. And so we call name, the goodest name that we could think of, which is just the good, HaTov. I love that idea and what it means for how we're going to interact with G?d in this particular moment.

I love that so much. I also love how even just saying The Good who's mercies never sees and the Merciful One who's goodness never ceases. That that's an infinity symbol right there that just keeps going back and forth. The good who is merciful and the merciful, who is good and the good. Right. And and that kind of poetically gets us in this mode of ongoing infinite blessing. Absolutely beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Ellen, what tidbit do you have to share with us?

One of my favorite one of my favorite phrases in the prayer is this towards the end of Meolam Kivinu Lach, this this word Kivinu from the same Hebrew root is HaTikvah, to hope. And that that I think of it in the context of where the prayer falls, as you mentioned before Eliana and our liturgy at the close ish of the amidah, and that we're now collectively expressing gratitude harkening back to the beginning of the service from Modeh Ani, now we're modim collectively, anachnu lach, and that after petitioning G?d throughout the Amidah that we are expressing we have hope we are going back out into the world of with with faith that the blessings will continue that the gratitude will continue. We say we are grateful for nisecha shebechol yom, that again the everyday miracles that the nisim bechol yom, birchot hashachar from the beginning of the service. So I feel like it's almost like a little bit of a close parentheses that we opened up together before and a sense of landing and security in this meolam kivinu lach.

That's so great. And I have to save dovetails perfectly with what I found, which is, of course, so often especially what I lovingly refer to as the mumbling bits in the service that I know growing up doing traditional davening prayer practice that we don't notice before, which is that the words modim anachnu lach actually do come in pseukei dezimra, which is the section of Psalms in our service, and after birkot shachar. We should do a whole, a whole episode on prayer structure, but we'll get there. We'll get there. After the Psalms, there comes a section with quotes from Tanakh and it opens with this entire section from First Chronicles, which you might know is Vayevarech David. And, of course, I've read these words a lot and I forgot that modim anachnu lach was actually here. This is where David is blessing, the Holy One calling forth blessing in front of all these people. This is also where lecha adonai hagdulah vehagvura vehatiferet vehanetzach vehahod comes, yours holy one, our greatness might splendor triumph and majesty there's a beautiful melody for this by the way by our friend Jackson Mercer, which I will link in the show notes because it's wonderful. But it's also you might have heard it as lecha Adonai Hagedulah, also is said as the Torah is being paraded around. Right, all of these different pieces from Tanakh that are used and grabbed in different ways. But we get again in line 13 veata eloheinu modim anachnu lach umehalelim leshem tifartecha. Now, Holy One Eloheinu, we praise You and extol Your glorious Name. And this is something I learned from Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, which is that when the line when a piece of text is used in a service, to look at what comes before and after. Not just the text itself. And I love line 14 of First Chronicles here is line 14. Vechi mi ani oomi ami ki natzor koach legitnadev cazot ki memecha hakol umidecha netanu lach. Who am I, and who are my people, that we should have the means to make such a free will offering but all is from You, and it is your gift that we have given to You. I love that so much. It reminds me of the book, The Gift by Lewis Hyde, which I would recommend to everybody about what a gifting economy is, and that gifts, keep going. You give a gift and you give a gift back you receive a gift and you give a gift. A gift is not a transaction that stops. It's infinite. It continues through. And it also actually really connects to a Wikipedia rabbit hole that I went down last night. Somebody mentioned I don't know if I saw an Instagram, Mere Christianity. The phrase Mere Christianity is anybody heard of this? And I'm like, I'm interested in religious stuff. What is Mere Christianity, and it's a book by CS Lewis, based on these, based on the speeches he used to give on the radio during World War Two about Christianity. And within within that Wikipedia article, I read that one of the ideas that he had was the basis of a band from the 90s called Sixpence None the Richer, who sang the song you know Kiss me beneath the milky Twilight - anyway, they're actually a Christian band. And that idea of Sixpence None the Richer comes from a story he tells him this book slash radio segment. I know I'm telling you, it connects I promise. Mere Christianity, where he says like, imagine that you borrow six pence from your dad to buy your dad a gift. And then you give the gift to your dad, you are sixpence none the richer, you actually have the same amount of money that you did before. And that that's like life. When we give gifts back to the Holy One we are giving, we are re gifting things that the Holy One gave to us. It's that infinity symbol, that circulation of gifts that I love. And so that closes the parentheses of the beginning of the service for Modeh Ani at the beginning of birlot hashachar to modim anachnu lach at the end of pseukei dezimra. And then the parentheses is widened even further when we reuse those words again at the end of the Amida. And with that we'll be right back.

Welcome back everyone, just like our beloved Sesame Street sometimes we have a letter of the day. And given that we are talking about modim, our letter of the day is mem. Josh, why don't you tell us some stuff about mem.

Oh mem is such a great letter. I mean, all the letters are such great letters, but this one in particular, I've been really interested in the letters Eliana, you've gotten me to talk a little bit more about the letters and what they're all about. I've been reading this book, which we can put in the show notes. Also, it's called The Book of letters by Lawrence Kushner. And it's really, really great. It has all the different letters and some mystical connections, some things that are connected with the different words that those letters are found in. And I think the Hebrew language is very intentional with all the letters that are chosen and how they all connect to each other. And especially when you're when you're learning how to write in Hebrew calligraphy or become a sofer, you learn that all these letters are made up of other letters. And the way to make it you can't make a letter without crafting it from other letters, which I think is really powerful that letters are the building blocks of other letters. But in any case, this particular letter mem makes up a whole lot of different words and is found in a lot of different places. But two words also that are that are, the foundation is the letter, mem, are the words Melacha, and menucha. Melacha is work, the kind of work that we do during the day the kind of work that is the mundane the kind of work that we refrain from on Shabbat. And at the same time, it makes up the word menucha, which is that rest. And that must mean that they're part of the same coin, right that melacha and manuka have to be connected to each other that we can't continue on working all the time without any menucha. And then again, we don't even realize what menucha is, unless we also have that that work that goes along with it, we can't understand what true rest is, if we're not resting from something also. So I think that's a really powerful way to think about being grateful for the time that we have to rest. And then the only other thing that I want to add is that the two letters that make up a mem when you're trying to write it in crafted in Hebrew script, it's made up of a caf, and a vav. That's how you put those letters together a caf and then a vav next to each other and connected that's how you'd make the letter mem. And in gematria, and Hebrew numerology, caf and vav is equal to 26. Caf is 25, mem is six, which is also the numerical equivalent of G?d's, one of G?d's names, the tetragrammaton, yud hey vav hey. The four letter name for G?d also comes out to that number 26. It's a powerful and mystical number. And so in that letter, mem, we also have connection with divinity and with G?d. So in that gratitude in that mem in that modim, we bring it all back to the source.

That's fantastic. Continuing in that Names of G?d Mode, and the way that mem is connected to that I know it's not our names of G?d episode, but

It's everywhere. It's an part of every episode!

Every episode is our names of G?d episode. Is another name for God is Makom, which begins with a mem, ends with a mem, and highlights the fact that now that mem is such a great letter, there's two of them, there's the one that appears within the word or at the beginning of the word, and then there's the final form of the mem at the end. And these two mems in the word Makom, this name for G?d, which really is The Place with a capital P, Makom, has the word Cav, kuf vav, in between. Kav means line. And it's like G?d in in the above that that that vav that you spoke of Josh that's part of that letter, vav, reaches both up and also the that form of mem empties down to the final mem, the kav in between God as the the above and below the known and the unknown and the kav. The connection, the line between them as well. When I was reading about this, it went from me again, this is my commercial for the day or my phrase of the day, I guess this meolam kivinu lach of also meolam - that mem at the beginning means from. Meolam from also ending a mem, from every universe from every angle from now until forever, kivinu lach, either we hope in you, or kivinu, we are we're the line, we're the connection going forward. So I my my head and my heart just went to all sorts of places a connection to the echad with the mem at the beginning and the end.

I love that I love the idea like meolam kivinu lach could maybe be like, and we're forever on this path with you. Like we're forever on this line forever on this journey with you. And sometimes we stray and sometimes we're back but but the journey meanders and goes word does. I love that. And

We are yeah. And we are the line. We're living it. And it's somehow connected to gratitude. Thank you. What a grand journey to be on.

Oh my gosh, so so amazing. And the word Makom, place connects to what I'm going to talk about as well. In fact, everybody's does because it's all it's all connected, which is that last year I had the opportunity to take a few classes with Victoria Hanna, we'll link to her work in the show notes. She does incredible work around voice vocalization and embodying the letters. Now, Josh, probably some of the stuff in your Book of Letters, comes from Sefer Yetzirah, I'm assuming. Sefer Yetzirah is the earliest Jewish mystical texts that we have. And it's the book of formation, that's what that word safer Yetzirah means. And it the kind of the thesis is almost, if G?d created the world using words, right, let there be light. That's how we have it in our Genesis story. Each letter has significance. And that letters create, letters carve, letters make something happen in space. And in our classes with Victoria Hanna, we didn't learn sefer yetzira on an intellectual level, we felt it. The three base letters and Sefer Yetzirah are Aleph, Shin and Mem. Aleph is everything. It's all around. We'll get into this later, when we do like that whole episode on aleph we've been promising you, Shin is grounding from above, sh - connection and grounding from above. And mem is grounding from below, connection to the earth. You can even try it with me if you're in a place where you can do that - mmm. And think of like, where do you feel it in your body, right? You feel it in your seat, you feel it in where you are connected to the earth, in your base, and it's that bass sound. And in these words that we've been thinking about, if we say, Ma-kom, right, it feels connective, it feels grounding in place. Or even mayim, the word for water also begins and ends with mem coming back into the earth. So with each of these letters, we can learn about it intellectually. But I invite you to play around with these letters, we can include it in the practice that we're going to do at the end of the episode, play around with the letters and see how it feels for you. I have to say that embodying them this way has changed my relationship to Hebrew. It's not just about the words on the page. It's about the sounds that we're making. And I'm never going to look at them the same way again after this conversation, certainly, and with that we'll be right back.

Welcome back, everyone. Let's go back to modim anachnu lach. Now that we have explored the letter mem, learned a little bit more about the meaning and the history behind this piece of text, let's talk about our favorite ways to set it to music. Ellen?

One of the things that I appreciate doing is creating spontaneous prayer in the course of communal worship. And so I appreciate there's a version of modim anachnu lach that was written by Cantor Rosalie Will and Julie Silver and the refrain of the first part is very chant-like, it just repeats the words modim anachnu lac, modim anachnu lach, over and over again. And then there is a b part that is erev vavoker vatzohorayim, evening and morning and all throughout the day. And there's space in between for interaction between leader and congregation or between congregants to express statements of gratitude. And then for the melody to do for there to be underscoring and the communal singing come in and out. It really is a beautiful melody to create a moment and I have to mention another one and that is Debbie Friedman's melody, zichrona livracha. She's, she concentrates on that phrase, meolam kivinu lach. And the refrain is just meolam kivinu lach, leolam kivinu lach. And then she uses other words from the, the liturgy, but it's really sweet. And lest anyone forget it exists. I'm sure it'll be in the show notes, the link and everyone should go back and learn this one because it's a beauty.

Thank you so much. I love learning about melodies from you. And I also have to say because I almost forgot to mention it. And I would be very mad if I went through this modim anachnu lach episode, and forgot to mention that that setting by Rosalie and Julie was the inspiration for my Wi Fi because if you come to my apartment, my Wi Fi network is called modem anachnu lach, which I think is funny and the password, this is even more niche is morning noon and light, which I think is funny on multiple levels. But you know if I have even Jewish people come over, I'm like, I don't know. Now I'll be like listen to the episode to get why morning, noon and light connects to modem anachnu lach and why it's funny. But anyway, I think it's very clever.

I love that. I hope I hope we have a lot of listeners in the Raleigh Durham area that can come over and use your Wi Fi.

Steal my Wi Fi. Yes, everybody steal my WiFi.

You know, growing up, I actually I didn't ever know a melody for modim anachnu lach. So I've discovered a lot of the melodies for modim anachnu lach recently. So I'm really grateful for that. I've now discovered a whole bunch and I'm excited to learn all these new ones. But one that I discovered a couple years ago is by an incredible Israeli musician named Yonatan Razel. And he has a melody that focuses on those words that I was talking about before at the end of the outloud paragraph, which is HaTov ki lo chalu rachamecha, the part about calling G?d The Good. And I like the way that he you know, sort of harps and focuses on that phrase and jumps on it over and over again, the only melody that I ever knew from this text was another melody for that one line. That was sort of a chasideshe melody when I was growing up as a kid. And now I have this other melody that I also really liked, so we'll put it in the show notes too. I really like the way that he loops it around, getting back to that infinite infinity symbol that Eliana was talking about before.

So my favorite is a recent discovery. It's it's been around for a while, but it's Beth Schaffer's rendering of modim anachnu lach, and I found it while doing research for the J-kids radio show that I host called way to grow. So here's like a little crass promotional thing you can listen to that on J-kidsradio.com. I was doing an episode on gratitude and I know a bunch of Modeh Anis but I didn't really know like you said Josh, lots of melodies for modim anachnu lach and I love it. It's so fun, and groovy, and musically rich. I love the English that she brings in and like anything Beth does, it is like the music is just so good. She's an incredible musician. Her melodies are great, the guitar work is fabulous. It's just really fun. So we're going to dance out of this segment to Beth Schafer's modim anachnu lach.

Welcome back everyone. As we like to say prayer is a practice, not just practice for more prayer but practice for life. So let's do a practice together. If you're able, I invite you to sit, stand or lie down in a comfortable yet engaged position. Feeling connected somewhere to the to the floor to the earth. Feeling into that Makom, that place, rolling your shoulders back, opening up your chest, allowing your organs to breathe, getting comfortable in whatever way that means for you. Allowing your arms to fall to your sides. Open to receive closed to ground palms on your knees to allow your eyes to fall to a close or to focus on the spot in front of you. As you start to breathe in deeply in through the nose to lift out through the mouth to ground. Breathe in to lift breathe out to ground and to start to follow the natural pattern of your breath. Mmm - I invite you if and when you are comfortable to sound that mem with me like a Tibetan singing bowl but resonating from the inside. Mmm. I invite you to play around with that sounding mem, moving it wherever it feels it needs to move. Feling that grounded connection in your body and in the space. Mmm. Mmmodim. Sound that word, play around with it. See how it feels for you. Starting from grounding and coming back to grounding.

Mmodimm. Mmodimm. The oh being connective, the Dalat the D being the doorway, the E being the secret inside place coming back to that grounded mem. Mmo, modimm. As you chant modim, can you invite a feeling of gratitude into your body. This time, not in the cognitive sense, not a list of things you are grateful for, but a feeling of gratitude. For right now, right here, whatever is coming out for you. Invite that feeling of gratitude ground in it into that mem. And feel it wash over from your toes from your seat, up through your chest, through your arms to the top of your head, grounding yourself in gratitude. Mmodimm. Mmodimm. Take a few breaths to sit marinate in that gratitude for a moment. When you're ready, you can open your eyes. Feel that tingling sense of gratitude, keep it with you. It's there whenever you want it. And I am so grateful to you, Ellen and Josh for being here. As always, and I'd love to hear based on what we've talked about today, or just how you're feeling. What is your prayer for us today? Josh, why don't you go first.

I'm feeling grateful. I'm feeling glad for this opportunity. And I'm hoping that we can get back to that earliest primal gratitude, which is the gratitude for just being grateful. Before even figuring out what are the things that we're grateful for just the idea that we can be grateful that we have something that we can be this emotion that we can feel is something that I want to hearken back to and try and ground myself in, as I'm leaving this taping.

Beautiful. Amen.

There's this sense of expansiveness of just giving thanks of, again, the morning, noon and night. Yet just for the very breath and finding in every moment, may we be aware of the abundance and the bounty in every second of our lives.

Amen. Amen. This gratitude that I'm feeling right now, and that I hope, can be my prayer is a gratitude that does not ignore the challenges of life and the pain and suffering that is in this world. It's it's a gratitude that doesn't say, everything that is difficult, I must keep out everything that might make me feel sad or unsure or alone or scared or fearful, fearful, I must keep out. It is a gratitude that recognizes suffering, and difficulty and says, I am still in the flow of life. And there is suffering that is in the flow of life. And yet there is joy in the flow of life. And they start with a place of acknowledgement, even if it's just one little thing, knowing that it might not change everything, but it has the power to reorient myself into how I see the world. Right as as Jews, we are yehudim, we are the people of gratitude, and we are also the ivrim, standing on the other shore and saying the world does not have to be this way, and allowing ourselves to hold both of those truths at the same time. So, so grateful for both of you. Grateful for you listeners, grateful for everyone who is sharing, and subscribing, and reading and reviewing and following and all of those things that we appreciate so much, and we will see you next week. Bye everybody! Shalom!