Modeh Ani

I have never been especially thankful for mornings. I would rather they came a little later and took a little longer to get started up. This was especially true that one semester back in college when I got up at 7am every morning for either an 8am calculus class or an 8am chem lab. 

It was also especially true last Monday, when I faced the rare challenge of getting all four kids to school on time without any help from my wife, who was attending a memorial mass (wearing her mogen  david necklace, no less) half a continent away. 

Now, I have faced a similar challenge every Wednesday this spring, since those days took Elie away to her student teaching internship, but at least on those days she would drive one kid to school on her way. 

This day, I either needed to get two kids to schools 20 minutes apart within the same 15 minute span of time, or I needed to get a different pair of kids to their day care a full hour before they were accustomed to even being ready to leave the house. Option two was the only one that stood a chance of working, so I set my alarm for 6am and gritted my teeth for a battle with sleepiness. 

On a whim, I set as my alarm ringer a musical setting of the prayer observant Jews are supposed to say every morning upon waking: Modeh Ani, a phrase which translates as "I give thanks." 

Give thanks for waking up in the morning? What an odd concept!

So I woke the next morning to the sound of this short prayer, set to pop/rock music, sung several times in a row with a verse or two of English inserted for those who don't grok the Hebrew. The prayer roughly translates as:

I give thanks before you,
  God alive and everlasting,
You restore my soul,
  Great is your faithfulness. 

Something amazing happened. I really woke up. And as I heard those Hebrew words over and over again, as they sank into my consciousness, I felt strength building within me to take on the challenges of that morning, that day, that night. I felt alive, and – yes – I felt grateful for it. 

Perhaps equally wondrous was the response of the two little barely-awake kids as I played the song in the car. They didn't know the words, but they hummed along. They felt that it was sacred, that it was energizing. They still complained about being dropped off, but for that moment in the car they lost their upsetness about being awake too early. They've even asked to do it again. 

I was raised to pray when going to sleep, and now I say the "bedtime sh'ma" with my boys as they go to bed, but for the first time in my life I find myself praying in thanks – sincerely, even – for the privilege of waking up each morning to face a new day. 

Abraham Heschel writes that Judaism is a religion of time, of sacred moments, of valuing the time we have and the life we live over the space we occupy and the things we cling so desperately to. 

And so I add one more ritual to my Jewish life. Gratefully. 


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