My sister did a wonderful thing for me and sent me a book called Count Your Blessings: One Hundred Prayers For a Day by Rabbi Ron Isaacs. It was a nice, thoughful gift, one that she picked up for me when she took (some of) My Brood to a museam in NYC. Or maybe Philly. I forget which.

I like the book; I really do. Small, compact, it fits in the cargo pocket of my uniform and goes with me wrapped in a Ziplock ™ bag on mission. But there is one thing that struck me right off the bat when I read through it the first time.

There was no commentary. None. Zero. It was just a collection of berachot in a small paperback. Which is not necessarily a Bad Thing, but I don’t think that I have ever seen a Jewish writing on prayer that did not contain commentary of some sort. As “The People Of The Book,” we spend a lot of time commenting, and commenting, and commenting some more on whatever tractate is in front of us.

So I filled in the blanks.

Literally within seconds, I had out a pencil and was scribbling a few notes on the side margins and underneath particular phrases. One berachah in particular was the focus of my attention, part of Refuah, one of the blessings in the Amidah: Baruch atah Adonai, rofei cholei amo Yisrael. Not that there is something particularly wrong with it, I just wanted to expand it some to be more inclusive.

Saying specifically amo Yisrael might lead to the erroneous assumption that this is for The Tribe only; all others need not apply. On my team, there is a theoretical maximum of two Jews, myself and one other who “floats,” that is, fills in when something else pops up that the regularly scheduled crew member can’t make it. (Examples include: being on leave and being in the hospital.) What I wanted to do was have something readily available, something that was both reflective of my specific religious beliefs and something that was inclusive enough to encompass all of the other members of my immediate group.

What I did was to pencil in HaOlam for Yisrael, and make cholay (sick person [translation mine]) plural. Plus, I will usually utter this line of Refuah when I see medevac helicopters flying over, which is a lot more often than I like. I have no way of knowing if the patient is in fact part of amo Yisrael or how many are aboard. This covers the bases all around.

This exercise had the added benefit of me practicing some Hebrew, which was not nearly as rusty as I thought. Maybe it is because of the Siddur and Tanach that My Wife graciously provided me and adorns my shelf here. A little practice helps keep the rust off the mental gears.