In honor of Nofrat Frankel and in support of her as she and Anat Hoffman
deal with the aftermath of their arrests for daring to carry the Torah and wear a Tallit and pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem
Prayer for Women of the Wall
May it be your will, our God and God of our mothers and fathers, to bless this prayer group and all who pray within it: them, their families, and all that is theirs, together with all women’s prayer groups and all the women and girls of Your people Israel. Strengthen us and turn our hearts to serve You in truth, reverence, and love.
May our prayer be as desirable and acceptable before You as the prayers of our holy foremothers Sarah, Rivkah, Rahel, and Leah.
May our song ascend to Your Glorious Throne in holiness and purity, like the song of Miriam the Prophet and Devorah the Judge, and may it be as a pleasant savor and sweet incense before You.
And for our sisters, all the women and girls of Your people Israel: let us merit to see their joy and hear their voices raised before You in song and praise. May no woman or girl of Your people Israel or anywhere else in the world be silenced ever again. God of Justice, let us merit justice and salvation soon, for the sanctity of Your name and the restoration of Your world, as it is written: Zion will hear and be joyful, and the daughters of Judah rejoice, over Your judgments, O God. And as it is written: For Zion’s sake I will not be still and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be silent, until her righteousness comes forth like great light and her salvation like a torch aflame.
For Torah shall go forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem. Amen, selah.
Prayer by Rahel Jaskow is from Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site, copyright 2003 by Phyllis Chesler and Rivka Haut. Permission granted by Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock VT, www.jewishlights.com.
Mandrakes in Harry Potter:
"The cry of the Mandrake is very fatal to anybody who hears it"
A
Mandrake, also known as
Mandragora, is a plant which has a root that looks like a human (like a baby when the plant is young, but maturing as the plant grows).
The real story of Mandrakes:
Mandrake is the common name for members of the
plant genus
Mandragora belonging to the
nightshades family (Solanaceae). Because mandrake contains
deliriant hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids such as atropine, scopolamine, apoatropine,
hyoscyamine and the roots sometimes contain
bifurcations causing them to resemble human figures, their roots have long been used in
magic rituals, today also in
neopagan religions such as
Wicca and
Germanic revivalism religions such as
Odinism.
The mandrake,
Mandragora officinarum, is a plant called by the Arabs
luffâh, or
beid el-jinn ("
djinn's eggs"). The parsnip-shaped root is often branched. This root gives off at the surface of the ground a rosette of ovate-oblong to ovate, wrinkled, crisp, sinuate-dentate to entire leaves, 5 to 40
centimetres (2.0 to 16 in) long, somewhat resembling those of the tobacco-plant. A number of one-flowered nodding
peduncles spring from the neck bearing whitish-green flowers, nearly 5 centimetres (2.0 in) broad, which produce globular, succulent, orange to red berries, resembling small tomatoes, which ripen in late spring. All parts of the mandrake plant are
poisonous. The plant grows natively in southern and central
Europe and in lands around the
Mediterranean Sea, as well as on
Corsica.
