Ata Gibor

One of the sentences every praying Jew reads at least once per day is this quote. It's part of the Amida, the Shmoresre, but appears a few more times in the Sidur.

As we are not supposed to pray by heart, but rather read the prayer every time, our eyes have seen this sentence thousands of times by the time we are grown up.

And yet, I'm not sure how I feel about the resurrection of the dead. And so every time I get to that part, I need to find a way to wholeheartedly pray, but to carefully not listen. To look at the text but to look away. To mean it without believing it.

When it's both there and isn't, when it's recognizable but peripheral, I can live with it.