About

Our Jewish prayers are beautiful love songs; full of goodness, affection, adoration, hope, kindness and generosity. They are our DNA, even if we do not know them, because these prayers, our religion, have moulded the Jewish people; our way of thinking, education, who we are, and what we represent. Judaism is all about being good and positive for oneself, family, community, the wider world – all out of respect and love for Hashem*. It fills me with gratitude, humility, and pride.

I love those moments of the Shabbat** morning service when the whole congregation sings, all of us as one, a few of our prayers with tender melodies.

Community is all about family and friends, and we are all friends, it is actually written in one of our prayers[1]. Friends sing together, it so warms our hearts.

Singing a prayer is not like singing a song, they are not just any words. Some are crying out to be sung with great happiness[2] because we love Hashem with all our heart, and all our soul[3]. Some tell us to sanctify clearly and harmoniously[4], and that Hashem wants us to sing tuneful songs of praise to Him[5]. Some are serious, some sad, some educational, but all were written with intent and purpose by the greatest scholars ever produced by our people.

When we share prayer melodies we are connected and together forever, and when we sing together we stay together because there is that lovely feeling of being amongst friends.

AM ISRAEL CHAI – the people of Israel live.

With love, and hope for our children, 

Richard Collis

Literally, * Hashem means “the Name” referring to God, and ** Shabbat means “rest”.  

1. Mi Sh’asa (track 36)
2. Ezrat avotanu (track 16)
3. Shma Israel, paragraph 1 (track 11)
4. Et shem ha’El (track 08)
5. Shochen ad (track 02)

There are so many other prayers which also encourage us to sing; check out the Anim zmirot (track 63) “Please place my abundance of songs before You, and my joyous singing will come close to You”.