M
y heart tells me, the Shelah Hakadosh wrote, that Erev Rosh Chodesh Sivan is an auspicious time to recite this tefillah, since it’s the month in which the Torah was given….

Tefillas HaShelah is the tefillah everyone says. Not because of the e-mail deluge, but despite the e-mail deluge. There are parshas Hamahn reciters during Tuesday of parshas Beshalach, and iced-coffee donors on Reb Shaye’le’s yahrtzeit and whole-Tehillim-sayers on Rosh Hashanah night. These demographics don’t always overlap. But Tefillas HaShelah is where we all meet.

Because all parents, however the therapists of 2039 might retroactively diagnose us — maybe in this very magazine — want the best for their children, and the best means all that the heilege Shelah packed into his timeless tefillah.

Since he articulated Jewish parents’ hopes and dreams about 400 years ago, the text hasn’t changed, though one imagines that in the ensuing years parents have read different things between the lines.

At times, the focus was no doubt on life itself: that the children should survive whatever plague was rampant at the time, or find a safe refuge from the pogroms claiming Jewish lives.

There were certainly times when parents closed their eyes and wished that the allure of Haskalah, the dogma that had stolen the hearts and minds of so many young people, spare their children, leaving them ideologically pure, whole, and unsullied.

And it’s not hard to imagine the shtetl water carrier finishing his rounds for the day, slipping the pails off his tired shoulders and heading straight to shul to say the tefillah. His daughter was getting older; where would he find a suitable young man in the small town? And which young man would choose to marry the simple water carrier’s daughter? Perhaps these words of the Shelah — the inherent belief in a system in which each soul is created with its mate — allowed the water carrier and his wife one evening free of worry and stress.

Just a century ago, there were parents who would sit together after davening in the shtibels of the Lower East Side. No kiddush club, no p’tcha or Glenlivet 18. They would say a special tefillah, these parents, asking that the chillul Shabbos of their children, who were hard at work, not destroy the souls of the young people, not cut off the hope of a Jewish future. They likely said this tefillah on Erev Rosh Chodesh Sivan as if their lives depended on it — because their lives did depend on it.

And what of those of parents faced with the most awful choice in history, the mother clinging to her babies even as the mocking blue eyes of the Nazi looked down the barrel of the gun and insisted she choose between her children? Did she have Anyone else to turn to?

Then came that first generation — Jews who understood that forgetting what they’d just seen would allow them to remember, who found ways to smile at their children even as every infant and toddler resembled someone who’d never made it out, who worked to shut out the echo of desperate cries until nighttime, when the house was quiet — whispering their hopes for blessed quiet, that their children be able to grow up in peace.

And here we are, parents in the generation of plenty.

Between the lines of our Tefillas HaShelah, perhaps we find a prayer for ourselves too. That we have the strength to say no even when, we’re told, the other parents said yes. That we have the focus to see them, even when there are so many other things vying for our attention. That we will have the strength to allow no one — not the teacher who has been there for too long or the assistant menahel having a bad day or the fresh-faced camp counselor who got the job because whatever — to tell our children who they are, but rather, to make sure that we — the best versions of ourselves — are the ones who convey the message.

Once upon a time, parents davened that their children should live. Just live. That illness, hatred, or malnourishment shouldn’t fell them, chas v’shalom. Because every child was at risk, always.

Then they asked for life. Today, we ask for… life.

If there is such a thing as a piyut in English, and if the paytan can come from Toronto, then, in my very humble opinion, there is a piyut — a genuine liturgical poem — for Shavuos.

He sits late at night,

in the soft candlelight

As it casts its warm glow on the pages

And the words that he sees,

are the secret, the key

That has kept us alive through the ages.

Why does he cherish the wisdom of old

And delight in its study each day

He knows only Torah can nourish his soul

Come listen and hear what he says.

Vos Zogt Beis Hillel,

Vos Meint Beis Shammai

Rava, Farvos

Haltz Du Nit Vi Abaye

Torah, without you,

I surely would die

Lulei Sorascha Sha’ashuay.

Now, we’re talking about Abie Rotenberg, he of the dreamy lyrics, words cascading softly as a tinkling brook. Couldn’t he find something gentler to rhyme with the word “sha’ashuay”? High? Sky?

Without you I surely would die, he writes, because he’s merely translating what Dovid Hamelech said. Az avadti ve’anyi: I would perish in my affliction.

Our well-fed, well-dressed children are free to ride their bikes to the grocery after supper, and the big worry is how we will keep them entertained in those few days between summer camp and school.

But under it all, under the seamless orchestra of car pools and chavrusas and dentist appointments, there is a mild panic.

Torah, without you I surely would die….

We want our children not just to breathe, to run and jump and shoot three-pointers, but to be allowed entry into the world of life. May our sons taste the sweetness, our daughters experience the joy.

Back when the Shelah Hakadosh wrote the tefillah, parents hoped their children would live.

Today, we want precisely the same thing: that our children live. Really live.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 763)