Shmita Prayer
Jordan Lowe
About Jordan Lowe
I am a musician and elementary school teacher-in-training, living in Oakland, CA, recently emerging into a space of deep discovery and connection to Judaism through music, community, and ritual. I hope to engage my future students in community-building, truth-seeking, and meaning-making through affirmation of identity, creativity, and honesty.
About Shmita Prayer
I wrote this song on Rosh Hashanah as a prayer for the world – a radical imagining of rest, rematriation, and wonder at the beauty and bounty of our planet. It speaks to the need for spirit over capitalism, the need to return land to indigenous people, the need to honor the gifts of clean water and air, the need to acknowledge deep and harmful histories of trauma, colonialism, and white supremacy. Perhaps in the rest and quiet of Shmita we can hear the important lessons of our past, the urgent realities of our present, and the cries for courage and imagination from the future. Shmita Prayer was recorded in collaboration with M’Gilvry Allen.
- Shmita Prayer 00:00
Shmita Prayer
And they said less
And they just watched her grow
And they said less
Instead of opening their pockets they just opened their chests.
And they could hear
All their children’s footsteps
And close behind
All the things that be chasing them life after life.
And they made plans
For the land to be back
And the sky to be open
And the air to be open
And the ocean be ocean.
And they just watched her grow
And they just watched her grow
And they just watched her grow.