Somebody Must Keep Praying for the World

A sermon Rabbi Paul Kipnes delivered on Rosh Hashanah Eve 2026 at Congregation Or Ami.

On Rosh Hashana, we say so many prayers, that sometimes we stop paying attention to them. We rise. We open the machzor. We chant ancient words. We sit. But beneath all the poetry, all the melodies, all the memories, there remains a frightening question: Does prayer matter?

More than: "Does prayer make me feel spiritual?" We wonder: Does prayer actually work? And can prayer hold a world together that feels like it is coming apart?

Important questions, right? I have my answer...in a story.

It begins with a woman named Hannah, an old Jewish woman living alone in an apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine. This was years ago, before the world learned once again how fragile peace can be.

Her synagogue in Kyiv was small. Most of its members elderly. The roof leaked. The heat barely worked. Some winters they prayed in coats and gloves.

Yet every Friday night, without fail, before anyone arrived, Hannah would slowly walk the sanctuary aisles, one hand on the pews for balance, one hand carrying a small worn book of Psalms. And with shaky Hebrew, poor eyesight, and a back bent with age and burden, dear Hannah would whisper prayers. Nothing polished. Just names.

She prayed for her grandson, living somewhere far away. She prayed for a neighbor recovering from surgery, for a young mother she had seen crying at the bus stop. She prayed for Jews, for non-Jewish neighbors, for strangers even. She prayed for the frightened, for the forgotten; one by one, name by name.

The rabbi once asked her, "Hannah, why do you come so early every week?" And she answered: "Because somebody must keep praying for the world."

Somebody must keep praying for the world.

Friends, I can't stop thinking about those words. Because sometimes, when I wonder just how the world is still held together, I'm uplifted that there are quiet souls like Hannah who refuse to surrender hope — people who keep lighting candles when darkness argues otherwise, people who keep praying even when they are unsure anyone is listening.

Pirkei Avot, wisdom of our sages, tells us: Al shelosha devarim ha'olam omeid — that the world stands on three things: al haTorah, on Torah; al ha'avodah, on worship; v'al gemilut chasadim, and on acts of lovingkindness.

Al ha'avodah. On worship. Prayer. Our rabbis understood something profound: Prayer is what keeps the world human. Prayer softens what fear hardens. Prayer interrupts despair.

Prayer reminds us that we are more than consumers, critics, or cynics. We are souls, and souls require language for longing.

That is what prayer is: the language of longing, of grief, of gratitude, the language we speak when our hearts finally tell the truth.

And some of the greatest prayers I have ever witnessed never came from a prayerbook.

I once watched a mother sit beside her child's hospital bed, stroking his hair through the night. No siddur in her hands. No Hebrew on her lips. Just: "Please. Please. Please." That was prayer.

I saw a widower in a cemetery, touching his wife's name etched on the headstone, and whisper, "I still love you." That too was prayer.

Prayer can change what happens within us, and then what happens through us. Prayer can turn fear into courage, isolation into connection, anger into resolve.

Prayer can remind exhausted people why we must continue the work of healing. And perhaps that is why Jewish prayer so often happens in community.

Because there are days when our own faith grows thin, days when grief steals our voice. And on those days, someone else carries the prayer for us. Someone sings when we cannot. Someone answers Amen when we have nothing left. Someone keeps praying for the world.

Maybe that is why I love praying with this Or Ami community. We aren't perfect. We surely don't always agree.

Yet every year, through heartbreak and uncertainty, through illness and mourning, through political division and fear, people still walk through our doors. Still open their hearts. Still sing. Still pray.

And maybe that itself is one of the great miracles of Judaism, that after everything our people has endured, everything we individuals have endured, we still believe the world is worth praying for.

The kabbalists, Jewish mystics, taught that every sincere prayer creates a ripple in heaven. I confess I do not know exactly how that works. But I know this: Compassion ripples. Hope ripples. Courage ripples.

And prayers, real prayers, often become the compassion, hope, and courage to live differently: to forgive, to call someone, to begin again.

Perhaps that is how prayer sustains the world. When words alone won't repair creation, prayer keeps us producing people willing to try to repair it.

People like Hannah — bent but unbroken, quiet but determined — standing in an empty sanctuary, whispering names, because somebody must keep praying for the world.

And maybe, this year, that somebody is you.

May your prayers this Rosh Hashanah make someone gentler. Braver. More awake to one another's pain.

May our prayers soften what has grown hard within us and strengthen weary hearts. May they remind us that despair is not a Jewish destiny.

And may the Holy One hear both the words on our lips and the trembling truths beneath them, so that our neshamot, our souls, may soar — for the sake of our children, for the sake of this wounded world, for the sake of hope itself. Amen.