A beautiful version of an excerpt from the Shabbat Candlelighting prayer came up in my instagram feed this past month, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it. The song is ‘V’Zakeini’ “May I merit”.

An individual, usually the mother lighting candles on erev Shabbat, says the prayer quietly as she gathers her thoughts and focuses on her household, her children, and our collective future. As with several such prayers, I find it a very intimate opportunity to communicate our needs and dreams directly with God. Here is the prayer, translated:

May I merit to raise children and grandchildren, wise and intelligent, who love Hashem, fear G-d, and speak the truth. May they be holy offspring​, who cleave to G-d, and light up the world with Torah and good deeds, and with service to the Creator.

I’ve always felt that this is a prayer not primarily for a baby, or a small child, but for when you can truly begin to see the trajectory of your child’s interests, personality, and potential.

I’ll digress for a moment to recall a message I wrote last January, about my feelings at celebrating a wedding with friends but being inundated at the same time with reminders about the dangers we face and the sacrifices made to protect our people even at the height of celebration. It angered me.

This week, as Jews in America wondered how a prominent and seemingly proud Jewish politician could negate her own and suggest that we negate our own Jewish identity in pursuit of and support for a political agenda that she (Michigan AG Dana Nessel) perceives as a global imperative and thus worth sacrificing our Jewish future for, I contemplated writing a message of strident rejection and incredulous disbelief. I was even more shocked by her wilful or ignorant misquotation and application of the story of one of our greatest leaders and heroines, Queen Esther.

But I won’t. If you are interested in this issue, please visit our Facebook page for a short analysis. I won’t go there today, because I refuse to allow that which threatens us - even from within our own ranks - to subdue my joy, and the reason the ‘V’Zakeini” prayer has been so subconsciously prominent in my thoughts.

This week, my eldest daughter got engaged to a wonderful young man, and we traveled to celebrate with them. Like all of my elder children, she has taken on leadership responsibilities in her community. Like all of my children, her love for Judaism and the Jewish people has been a constant in her life, and like all of my children, I’m very proud of her accomplishments - as a psychologist and as a leading Israel, antisemitism and Jewish identity educator in her community and across Canada.

So I have been thinking about the prayer - and I have clarified to myself that we want our children to build lives of meaning and purpose, using the gifts they are given, creating light and holiness, building a better world and a stronger Jewish people. My daughter found a young man who matches her and complements her strength in pursuing this. A prayer answered is also a source of joy - a ‘force multiplier’, if you will.

This prayer and these glad tidings that I share also highlight the focus of our community campaign this year. Why? Why do we secure, educate, celebrate, defend, feed, love, give? We do it because we are partners in answering these prayers for a wonderful future built for and eventually by the children we pray will use their talents and knowledge for good.

So join me in wishing the young couple a Mazal Tov, and may all of us have celebrations to outshine any challenge. Shabbat Shalom